Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, lecturer, and cofounder and head of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group. His website is at www.massimopolidoro.com.
A forensic sketch of the “Monster of Florence”
Fernando Pucci recently died at age eighty-six. He was the last of the serial killers collectively known as the “Mostro di Firenze,” the Monster of Florence, or “i compagni di merende,” the “picknicking friends,” as they started to be called during trials after one of the convicted killers, Mario Vanni, described his relationship with the others: “We were just picknicking friends.” This is considered one of the most heinous stories of violence in Italian history, and in the 1997 trial of this bizarre case, it was Pucci who placed the murderers at the scene of some of the crimes, helping to condemn them.