This October, Netflix is once again offering us some glimpses into the minds and workings of serial killers. In addition to the third season of Ryan Murphy’s series Monster, we will be getting a look at the investigations into Italy’s most brutal serial killer with The Monster of Florence, a miniseries directed by Stefano Sollima (Without Remorse, Sicario: Day of The Soldado).
The title comes from the nickname that Italian journalist Mario Spezi coined for the homicidal maniac who killed 16 people in the countryside outside Florence. The victims were primarily couples. The perpetrator has never been identified, despite an ill-famed string of investigations.
Sollima is bringing us a miniseries as intriguing and complex as the investigation into the murders themselves.
On June 6, 1981, the bodies of a man and woman were found shot and stabbed in the hills outside Florence. A news article about the crime compared it to the 1974 murder of another couple in the countryside. This prompted police to compare shell casings found at that crime scene with those found at the 1974 scene, discovering both sets were fired from the same .22-caliber gun, which had a defective firing pin.
While a local voyeur was soon arrested and kept in jail for the crime, he was released three months later when another couple were found shot and stabbed to death. The police matched those shell casings to the same gun from the previous murders, realizing the killer was still at large.
After the next couple were murdered in June 1982—the same gun used, as well as the same mutilations carved—an anonymous letter was sent to the police. It contained an old news clipping about the closed 1968 double murder of a married woman and her lover in a car while her son slept in the backseat unharmed. A message was scribbled onto the paper telling investigators to look into it again. When they looked through old evidence, they found the shell casings from the scene and discovered they came from the Monster's gun.
The husband of the married woman had confessed to the crime and was in prison during the 1981 murders. After the police connected the crime to The Monster, he had already been released and living in a halfway house. When detectives visited him there, he spread the blame to an alleged "Sardinian circle" he was part of that primarily consisted of his wife's lovers.
The investigation only continued to get more complex and surreal as the killings continued. The last known victims were found in 1985. Despite numerous arrests and newfound DNA evidence, The identity of The Monster remains a mystery.
The crimes of The Monster are often compared to those committed by the Zodiac Killer, who also remains unidentified. Judging from the trailer below, the structure of the miniseries looks similar to David Fincher’s 2007 film Zodiac.
The miniseries features an exclusive Italian cast and was filmed on location in Florence and its surrounding areas.