A reexamination of the autopsy reports of five murdered women: the theory of a left-handed killer in the cases of Adele Margherita Dossena, Salvina Rota, Simonetta Ferrero, Valentina Masneri, and Tiziana Moscadelli.
The victims’ bodies, the killer’s actions. In a comparative analysis ofthe five autopsy reportsinthe Corriere’s possession, criminologist Franco Posa identified, among numerous other factors, the predominant use of a left hand. He did so in relation to the type, size, and shape of the wounds inflicted by the blade onAdele Margherita Dossena (killed in 1970),Salvina Rota andSimonetta Ferrero (1971),Valentina Masneri(1975), andTiziana Moscadelli(1976).
At first glance—and quite predictably—that left hand could point toa left-handed serial killer. But at the same time, it could shed new light on these fivecold caseswhich, along with three others (Olimpia Drusin, Elisa Casarotto, Alba Trosti), are believed to have been committed by a single man. A man who, according to a study conducted using American geolocation software employed by the New York Police Department and then adapted by Posa to the geography of Milan, lives or would have lived (or worked) within a triangular area of the city bounded by Via Filzi, Piazza Cordusio, and Via Pace. The alternative scenario—involving a left-handed perpetrator at the crime scenes, most of which were set in the area between Porta Venezia and Central Station, a notorious hotspot for crime and depravity in those years—is based on the following reasoning.
The reports confirm the serial killer’s consistent modus operandi, in which he stood face-to-face with his victims; the initial shock of the women, who were attacked by someone they knew (sometimes calmly welcoming him into their homes and offering him a glass of liquor); the victims’ desperate subsequent reaction, as soon as they were struck, namely turning around and raising an arm in a futile attempt at self-defense; further stabs by the killer with the blade after pinning the women down with his right hand. In this last case, therefore, precisely to immobilize his victims and continue the attack, the serial killer may have switched hands, moving the knife to his left to finish the massacre after having begun it with his right.
In at least three cases—including the most high-profile murder (Simonetta, who was stabbed 49 times in a bathroom at the Catholic University)—there is another common thread. It is too early to officially claim that this constitutes a definitive “signature” or “trademark.” Yet Posa points out that the wounds concentrated around the chin—especially during a frenzied killing spree (the high number of blows is a constant, with strikes landing even after the victims had died)—hardly fail to suggest the recurring modus operandi of a single individual.
As the medical examiners who examined those bodies noted, the serial killer used a blade that cut only on one side, between 2 and 3 centimeters wide and between 12 and 15 centimeters long, a weapon that was the constant companion of an unsuspected killer and which, perhaps as a result of his work—and perhaps even the very clothing he wore to perform his profession—did not trigger a sense of alarm in others but, on the contrary, earned immediate trust, except when he “gave in” to his rage and killed, perhaps following a sexual rejection.