The young prostitute’s brother and the serial killer theory: “The crowds at the bar on Via Tortona”
“I was just a kid; Mom and Dad tried to protect me, but I understood what was going on.And almost immediately, I realized that Tiziana’s murder had been swept under the rug. Forgotten. How can I put it? It was closed, shelved… So, today, it’s been forty-five years that I’ve been waiting—no, that we’ve been waiting—for the killer. Forty-five years. Already in the months that followed—if not in the very weeks that followed—prosecutors and police officers didn’t confide a single word to us anymore, perhaps because they had nothing to confide. Not a hypothesis, not a clue, not an idea. Nothing at all. They vanished just as the killer had vanished right from the start.”
Seven months after the launch of an investigation intounsolved murders in Milan during the 1960s and 1970s and the theory of a serial killer, *Il Corriere* tracked down the relatives of Tiziana Moscadelli. After the murder—her body was discovered at 1:15 a.m. by one of her two roommates, both of whom were cross-dressing sex workers, in the two-room apartment at 58 Via Tertulliano—those family members withdrew into silence. Now, out of respect for the parents’ age and physical condition, we spoke with the 20-year-old’s brother. On her body, the two medical examiners identified stab wounds to the heart, liver, right lung, pericardium, carotid artery, and skull… A high number of stab wounds, similar to those of the other women for whom a common killer is suspected: in chronological order, Elisa Casarotto, Olimpia Drusin, Alba Trosti, Adele Margherita Dossena, Salvina Rota, Simonetta Ferrero, and Valentina Masneri. The last of these was Tiziana Moscadelli, murdered on February 12, 1976. The police suspected those transvestites, Salvatore and Pietro, who were 30 and 22 years old, but it was soon established that they were not involved. The interview with the brother is subject to confidentiality; as an investigator specializing in homicides—and cold cases in particular—explains, it is not true that time increases and exacerbates, to the point of nearly nullifying, the chances of results: both because of the technology available to police and the Carabinieri today—whereas back then they relied on intuition—and because the passage of time allows family members to discuss with a stranger a bloody event that ended one life and devastated others.“My father’s wife, and Tiziana’s mother, died young; later, Dad married another woman—my mother. If I can’teven imagine surviving the loss of a son, imagine surviving the murder of a daughter without ever knowing the face of the culprit or the reasons why he did it… This infinite pain—more than infinite, and devoid of even the slightest, non-soothing relief—namely, the identification of the murderer and the motive—hollows you out, consumes you. There is the unjustified guilt that haunts a father: that of not having prevented the crime, and, even before that, the gnawing remorse that if Tiziana hadn’t left home… But she was a free-spirited girl, with her own ideas… Why did she start prostituting herself? And who can ever truly understand the inner workings of another person’s mind, even if she is your sister or your daughter? No one can.”
SoTiziana Moscadelli, who was 5’1” tall and was found lying on her back in a corner of the living room of the apartment on the top floor of that non-residential building—a building, on the contrary, known to law enforcement for the people it housed—had lived with her family on the Navigli until she was eighteen. Then, perhaps aspiring to total independence, perhaps disagreeing with her father over life choices, she left, swearing she would never return. In fact, the scenario changed rapidly, even whirlwind-like: Via Tertulliano 58 and two parks, Sempione and Ravizza, places where Tiziana sold herself and waited for men. Perhaps not just men: along with locating her brother, the Corriere was able to read and examine documents—the subject of upcoming installments—that allow us to explore Tiziana’s world and her demise, and additionally provide evidence that supports the theory of a serial killer. But now let’s hear from her brother again. “I repeat, I was young… But chatting with her, I remembered a bar. A seedy bar, located near Via Tortona… Tiziana went there often. I only went once; I entered the place with her, but—perhaps because of the grim faces there and a generally unwelcoming atmosphere—I told my sister clearly to keep me away. I’m drawing a conclusion: since she was a prostitute and someone was inevitably “protecting” her, maybe that someone hung out at the bar… I wonder—and I do so without any intention of being controversial or trying to teach investigators their job, since it’s too late now, perhaps pointless—whether the investigation began at that very bar on Via Tortona. Yes? And with what results. No? And why?”
Contrary to what was read and heard in Milan that February of 1976,Tiziana Moscadelli was fully clothed and not naked; the anomaly—the fact that she never received visitors in her two-room apartment but instead in parks or in cars, yet on that occasion she met her future killer at home—remains exactly what it is: a profound anomaly. Period. There was no sexual intercourse, no attempt at sexual intercourse, no sexual assault: the killer—or the serial killer—had not climbed the stairs to the fourth floor for any of those “purposes.”
We show the brother a photo of the crime scene, which he had never seen before and which allows him to explore the modest apartment; and we show him some of Tiziana’s writings, which he was also unaware of. The photo focuses on the body; whoever took the picture had technical constraints and didn’t capture a detail that makes us go back. To others among the eight murders. At least two. And perhaps in connection with what Tiziana left written in block letters on white slips of paper.