On August 22nd 1968, a car was found on the outskirts of Signa, not far from Florence, Italy. Inside were the bodies of a married woman, Barbara Locci and her lover, Antonio Lo Bianco, both having died from multiple gunshots. Perhaps in the most obvious fashion, Barbara’s husband Stefano Mele was interrogated, arrested and charged with the murders. He confessed to having been on the scene and shot his wife, and was convicted on March 25th 1970. His appeals were soon exhausted and he vanished into prison for the rest of the 70s before he was moved to a halfway house in Verona in the early 80s.
That’s where it might have ended. A fairly uninteresting murder from a long time ago, solved and forgotten among many of a similar kind. But in the summer of 1982, the carabinieri of Borgo Ognissanto, Florence received an anonymous letter which led the police to test the shells from the Signa murder. The gun that shot Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco was identical to the weapon used by Italy’s most notorious serial killer, the Monster of Florence. By 1982 the gun had claimed the lives of four more couples and would go on to kill three more before the Monster retired, never caught.
The Signa case was reopened and the investigators had hopes they would finally find the Monster’s true identity. Instead, they spent a decade trying to make sense of Signa and its relation to the Monster killings – and failing spectacularly. Soon Signa became something of an embarrassment, a millstone around the investigators’ necks that they would prefer to disregard when they found new suspects and created new theories.
So what happened in Signa? And can solving that mystery tell us who the Monster of Florence was?
The Murders
At 2 am on the night of August 22nd 1968 a man named Francesco De Felice was up with his wife at their home in Sant’Angelo a Lecore. They were new parents and like so many before them had their sleep schedule regularly disturbed. Still, they were surprised when the door bell rang, and even more so when they opened the door and found a six-year-old boy standing outside, shoeless, telling them ”I’m tired and I want to come in and sleep. My father lies sick at home and my mother and uncle are dead in the car.” De Felice took the boy inside where he would repeat the same phrase as if by rote. They got him to tell them his name – Natalino – and that he lived in Lastra a Signa across the river. He also said the car with his mother was off Via Pistoiese with one light going on and off. After hearing De Felice went with his neighbor to the local carabinieri station and returned with an officer. Together they took Natalino on a long search for the car, until some 2 kilometers from De Felice’s door, on a dirt road off Via Castelletti, they saw a parked Giuletta with the right indicator light blinking.
In the car the carabinieri found two bodies in the front seats. The woman was in the driver’s seat, sitting slumped over. The man was in the passenger seat, with the backrest lowered and his pants undone. The two were quickly identified; Antonio Lo Bianco (26) was the owner of the car, while the woman, Barbara Locci (31), lived in a house in Lastra a Signa with her husband Stefano Mele and her son Natale, also known as Natalino. Barbara had four bullet wounds, Antonio three. Based on the wounds, Barbara had been shot first, struck with three bullets in her left side that killed her immediately. The location of the wounds (and Antonio’s undone pants) suggest she was performing fellatio when she was shot. Antonio then received three shots to his left side. Both groups of shots would have been made through the gap in the driver seat window. Some of the shells (but not all) were recovered from the ground outside. There was an additional bullet wound in Barbara’s back, unlike the others it wasn’t lethal or precise. Two shells were found inside the car, on the back seat, implying the shooter had stretched his hand inside the backdoor window. The final bullet was never found, but would probably have hit some part of the car’s interior. Barbara’s position and torn necklace indicated she had been pulled into an upright position after having been shot. No gun was found on the scene.
Marshal Ferrero of Signa contacted marshal Funero of Lastra a Signa as soon as the victims were identified. Funari was familiar with the Mele family and Barbara’s reputation. She had been openly unfaithful to her husband their whole marriage, and while the husband was the natural suspect, there were many more to be looked at.
The Mele Clan and the Vinci Brothers
Palmerio Mele had five children, Maria and Stefano with his first wife, then Giovanni, Antonietta and Teresa with his second. They lived in Fordongianus in the at the time impoverished island of Sardinia, where Stefano was born in 1919. In 1953 Stefano’s younger brother Giovanni became part of a great migration of Sardinians to the province of Tuscany on the mainland, and the rest of the family followed in 1957. While the sisters found husbands easily, the sons were another case. Giovanni was a lifelong bachelor with no desire to be tied down to one woman. Stefano on the other hand was meek, pliable and dim, and few saw him as marriage material. So many had doubts when Palmerio arranged a marriage between his 40-year old son and Barbara Locci, 22 at the time.
That Barbara’s family accepted the match can be explained by their relative poverty. Like the Meles the Loccis had emigrated from Sardinia, living together in a small house in Romola. Barbara was the youungest, with four older brothers, among them Pietro and Vincenzo. From the very start Barbara stepped out on her husband, going to bars in Piazza Mercatale in Prato to pick up men. If Stefano showed any bitterness or anger over this, he never showed it. One of the men she met in 1960 was Giovanni Vinci, another immigrant from Sardinia. As it turned out, Giovanni’s younger brother Salvatore had just arrived from the island and needed a place to stay.
Salvatore Vinci was born in Villacidro, Sardinia, the middle of three brothers (and a couple of sisters). He was good friends with the Steri family who wanted him to marry their daughter, another Barbara. Barbara was in love with another but was forced into an unhappy marriage with Salvatore, their son Antonio being born in 1959. In January 1960 the 19-year old Barbara was found dead in a gas-filled room with a suicide note, the baby in the next room. Immediately rumors spread of Salvatore having killed his wife and he decided to relocate to Florence. He moved in to a room in the Mele residence where he began a relationship with Barbara. It would later be revealed that Salvatore, best described as pansexual, had also had a relationship with Stefano. Little Natalino was conceived while Salvatore lived with the Meles, and many had suspicions about his true parentage. Salvatore moved out in 1962 when he married Rosina Massa. He still maintained a close relationship with the Meles, helping Stefano to get a job working construction.
Stefano needed the help. Palmerio, angry at Locci’s affairs, threw the pair out and they moved in with the Locci family in Romola. After a few years, Palmerio relented, mostly due to Natalino being his only grandson, and the family moved back into the Mele house. However, Barbara mistreated the elderly patriarch to the extent that he sold his house in 1967, dividing the money among his children and helped Stefano use his share to buy a cheap house in Lastra a Signa, damaged by the flood of 1966. The price Palmerio got for the family house was lower than expected, and the other siblings deeply resented the squandering of their inheritance.
By 1967, the youngest Vinci brother, Francesco, had also fled Sardinia with his new wife Vitalia Melis. While his older brothers sought respectability, Francesco often moved in criminal circles and carried himself with a large amount of swagger. He fell hard for Barbara Locci and began an affair with her. In November 1967 the lovers were caught by Vitalia, resulting in a loud brawl and Francesco serving 10 days in prison for concubinage. It didn’t seem to deter Francesco, however, and in February 1968 he was driving Stefano on his lambretta (registered to Salvatore since Francesco had no license), when they were hit by a car. Stefano was badly hurt and the initial cost of the damages were paid by Palmerio. However, months later, the insurance company paid out a sizeable sum – 480,000 lira – to Stefano Mele. The Mele clan, who not only had to suffer the damage Barbara caused their family name, but were also expected to pay the debts she racked up spending money on her lovers, didn’t take any risks. Antonietta's husband Piero Mucciarini accompanied his brother-in-law to the bank in Prato in June 1968, and the money was earmarked for much needed reparations to their Lastra a Signa house.
While this happened, Barbara and Francesco had an ugly and public break-up. Several men tried to fill the spot, but it was one of the laborers Stefano hired to work on their house, a Sicilian named Antonio Lo Bianco, who won out. On Wednesday August 21st 1968 he picked up Barbara and her son Natalino for a trip to the cinema Arena Michelacci in Signa, where they watched a 22:15 screening of the Japanese movie Akai Tenshi. After the movie they drove to a small dirt road by the Vingone stream where Natalino fell asleep in the backseat, while Barbara and Antonio prepared to make love.
The Investigation
Marshal Funari sent officers to fetch Stefano Mele, but he was aware of Francesco Vinci and his violent tendencies and called for him as well. Francesco claimed to have been home all night, and his wife Vitalia confirmed this. When the carabinieri arrived at Mele’s house they found the husband awake and nervous, with greasy hands. At the station, Stefano said – much like Natalino had told the De Felices – that he had been home sick, his colleague Giuseppe Barranca (brother-in-law to Lo Bianco) having brought him home from work. Another hopeful lover of Barbara’s, Carmelo Cutrona, had come over to visit and could confirm this. He had no idea who had killed the couple, but he threw suspicion on Francesco Vinci and Carmelo Cutrona both, mentioning Francesco owning a firearm. All houses were searched, with no weapons found. With nothing more to go on, the police gave their three detainees – Stefano, Francesco, Carmela – a paraffin glove test to see if they had fired a weapon, before sending Stefano home with Natalino.
The next day, just before noon, Stefano Mele presented himself to the carabinieri. He was accompanied by his brother-in-law Piero Mucciarini, and told the officers that his former lodger Salvatore Vinci had borrowed 300,000 of the insurance money before the murders. When Stefano wanted the money returned, Salvatore had denied him, but instead offered to kill Mele’s wife, the source of all his woes. It would be no problem, he said, since he had already killed his wife in Sardinia with gas. The carabinieri were incredulous and once Piero Mucciarini had left for his work at the bakery in the evening they leaned on Stefano. As a result, Stefano made his first confession:
That evening he had gone into town to look for his wife when he was met by Salvatore Vinci in his car. Salvatore had chided Stefano and told him to end it. When Stefano proclaimed his fear of the young and fit Antonio, Salvatore said that he had ”a small gun”. The two of them waited for Barbara to exit the cinema and followed them to the murder site. Salvatore handed Stefano the gun and told him there were eight bullets inside, after which Stefano walked over to the car, shot Barbara and Antonio, pulled Barbara’s body in an upright position (at which point he hit the indicator switch) then ran as he heard his son wake up. Back in the car Salvatore asked Stefano what happened to the gun, to which Stefano replied that he threw it away close by the car.
The interrogation had lasted well into the night and the carabinieri took Stefano back to the scene to go over his story. One immediate discrepancy was the gun – it was nowhere to be found. Once the interrogation began again, Stefano now added that after Salvatore’s question he had gone back to get it, returning it to its owner. Stefano was arrested and Salvatore Vinci was brought into the station. Unfortunately for Stefano, Salvatore immediately produced two witnesses (Nicola Antenucci and Silviano Vargiu) with whom he had spent the evening in a bar in Prato until after midnight. Confronted with Salvatore, Stefano fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness. After having retracted his accusation against Salvatore, Stefano turned towards Francesco Vinci. Francesco, he said, had given him a ride to the scene on his scooter, where Francesco had shot the couple, then carried little Natalino to the De Felice house.
Even before Stefano’s change of heart, marshal Ferrero had doubted Natalino’s story where he walked 2 kilometers in the middle of the nights on ill-kept roads all on his own. Natalino’s socks had been worn and full of holes, but nothing near what such a journey would have done to them. After some coaxing and outright threats, Natalino admitted he had been carried, but not by Francesco – by his own father. Stefano immediately had to amend his story to match Natalino’s. Two days later, Stefano was informed that the paraffin glove test indicated that he and Carmelo Cutrona had fired a gun that night – but not Francesco. Without missing a beat, Stefano switched out Francesco for Carmelo in his story. Thoroughly tired of Stefano Mele at this point, the carabinieri and prosecutor ignored his accusation and began preparing to put the husband on trial - alone.
Over the fall of 1968, marshal Ferrero kept up his contact with little Natalino, who lived with the Mucciarinis. At first the boy had talked about Francesco being there that night, but as the months passed he started talking about having seen ”Salvatore among the reeds”. Suspecting the boy was being manipulated, Ferrero had him placed in the Vittorio Veneto Institute, to keep him away from the Mele clan. And in April 1969, he came to the examining magistrate to tell them Natalino had begun telling a new story. Arriving at the Institute for a new interview, Natalino told them that the shooter was his ”uncle Piero” or ”Pierino” from Scandicci, the father of his cousin Daniela. Piero had come with his father, and after the murders and before his father carried him away, Natalino saw uncle Piero throw the gun in a ditch. He also made it clear that his father had told him to name Francesco Vinci, and his uncle Piero had told him to mention ”Salvatore in the reeds”.
It was no mystery who ”uncle Piero” was. Piero Mucciarini lived in Scandicci and had a daughter named Daniela. However, when the investigators returned two days later, Natalino had become reticient and only answered reluctantly. Now uncle Piero had become ”uncle Pietro”, brother of his uncle Vincenzo, who worked as a tiler. This was a description of his mother’s brother Pietro Locci, much to the confusion of the investigators. When they pressed Natalino for details, he said ”uncle Pietro” worked nights and parted his hair on the right, elements that fitted Mucciarini and not Pietro Locci. He also said ”uncle Pietro” had rummaged to the glove compartment after the shootings, and that once he had seen ”uncle Pietro” in his home with a gun in his pocket.
Whatever the investigators made of this, it came to nothing. A year later, in May 1970, Natalino came to court to give his testimony. He was accompanied by his uncle Giovanni Mele. In front of the judge he denied seeing anyone other than his father. Not Francesco, not Salvatore, not uncle Pietro or Piero. Stefano Mele, left without any lifelines, was convicted of the murders the same year, and after appeals that were done in neighboring Perugia, the verdict became final in 1974.
Re-opening
When it was revealed that the Monster’s gun had committed the Signa murders in 1968, the investigators thought they had an easy path. Whoever shot at Signa and took the gun away was the Monster. Even with the verdict, few believed Stefano had been the only one shooting. The initial six shots had been precise and lethal, while the last two had been clumsy and unnecessary – one even having missed. With the positive paraffin test in mind, most thought the last two shots were Stefano’s. So it was just a matter of finding the other shooter.
But it proved to be a lot more difficult than that. Stefano, old and infirm after his sentence, once again accused Francesco Vinci, first as the sole shooter, then admitting to having been there with him. The Mele clan were re-interviewed, and they blamed the Vincis as well. Francesco looked good for the role – he had kept up his criminal lifestyle, had violent tendencies and had gone to ground as soon as he heard the police were looking for him. Once caught and arrested, he denied everything, but the police thought they had a good case – until the Monster struck again in 1983 with Francesco in custody.
Frustrated, examining magistrate Rotella went back to Stefano (living with his brother Giovanni at the time) and after a particularly confused interview – where Stefano changed his accusations multiple times – he ordered a search of Giovanni’s house and Stefano’s possessions. He found a note from Giovanni to Stefano, that seemed to instruct Stefano to say Natalino had (back in 1969) accused ”uncle Pieto”. Rotella went back to the old records and found the odd change Natalino had made from ”uncle Piero” to ”uncle Pietro” and deduced that elements of the Mele clan were trying to divert attention away from Piero Mucciarini towards Barbara’s brother Pietro Locci. After another interrogation, Stefano confessed that he had been accompanied not by a Vinci, but by Giovanni and Piero, and that Piero had been the shooter.
Unfortunately for Rotella, this too was a dead end. Both Giovanni and Piero were arrested, but denied it all. Even the youngest in-law, Marcello Chiaramonti, was accused (though never arrested) when it turned out neither of the two had a car at the time, but he did. And if the idea was that either Giovanni or Piero had taken the gun from the scene and gone on to become the Monster, that was soon disabused by the next set of murders in 1984.
Following this, poor Rotella only really had one more suspect, Salvatore Vinci. He went back to work on a deteriorating Stefano, who admitted to the sexual relationship he had with Salvatore and went on to add Salvatore to the party of relatives that was at the scene in Signa. With little to go on, and another (as it would turn out, final) set of Monster killings in 1985, Rotella had Salvatore arrested – not for the Monster killings, but the murder of his wife in 1960. The trial was a fiasco – if anything it proved she had indeed committed suicide – and Salvatore was released and promptly vanished before the verdict could be appealed. Rotella had a public break with the Florentine prosecutors and was made redundant with a change to Italian criminal law, putting an end to the Sardinian trail.
The prosecutors then took a completely different tack, going after a brutish old farmer named Pietro Pacciani. They had little evidence for anything but his character (but plenty of that), yet the major problem was Signa, since Pacciani had no connection to Mele, Vinci or any of the Sardinians. When Pacciani was convicted, the Signa killings were excluded. The same went for the subsequent trials of his supposed accomplices, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti – Signa was barely mentioned. A few half-hearted attempts were made at connecting Francesco Vinci (murdered by unknown criminals in 1993) with a young dead prostitute who had been the daughter of Pacciani’s lover, and in the latter Satanic Panic craze it was easy enough to stick Francesco or Salvatore in one of the many imagined Monster-related orgies that seemed to occur constantly.
But as the Monster trials ended and faded from the public, so did the question of Signa. What actually happened that August night? Who was the other shooter?
The Suspects
Francesco Vinci? While he wasn’t the Monster (at least not after 1982), he could have been the perpetrator at Signa. He was violent after all, and his only alibi was his wife Vitalia. Perhaps most damningly, his brother Salvatore had told the police Francesco kept a gun in his lambretta (he claimed to have heard it from Vitalia). While the lambretta was at the shop that day and the gun was unlikely to have fit inside it, it did say that Salvatore thought his brother capable. And while Francesco and Salvatore would later fall out (as Salvatore would say it, over Francesco leading his son Antonio into a life of crime), they were cordial at the time, having dinner together the day before the murders. In fact, the accusation of Salvatore seems to have opened up a rift in the Vinci family, with Francesco going scorched earth and revealing that oldest brother Giovanni had slept with their underage sister when she had arrived from Sardinia, which turned most of the family against Francesco. But his wife Vitalia never retracted his alibi, even decades after his death. She also denied telling Salvatore about a gun. And even if he was the killer at Signa, how did the gun end up in the hands of the Monster?
Salvatore Vinci? He was never cleared for any of the Monster killings (though many would exclude him based on his height – the murders in 1983 required a Monster that was at least 180 cm tall, and Salvatore was much shorter), and he was the favored suspect of Rotella. The main question is why? Not money, he had already got his hands on the lion’s share of the insurance money. Jealousy? Stefano claimed Salvatore was still in love with Barbara and that was part of the reason for the murder. But Salvatore was notorious for having an endless supply of sexual encounters with men and women, both before and after his marriage. His second wife Rosina testified to Salvatore bringing men and women into their bed – rather unlikely to be the jealous type. The biggest strike against him was his alibi – it was discovered to be fake. Both witnesses had been out with Salvatore – but on the day before, Tuesday, not Wednesday. They had said the latter because Salvatore had told them to. So why did Salvatore need a fake alibi? One possible reason could be that he had been away on an affair – in 1988 Salvatore could banter with reporters about his bisexuality, but in 1968 being outed could have dire consequences.
For both these suspects, a complicating factor is Natalino’s testimony about ”uncle Piero”. It was clear that his father was pushing him to accuse Francesco Vinci, while the rest of the clan wanted him to point the finger toward Salvatore, but who would pressure him to accuse Piero Mucciarini? The idea that the baker was a part of it wasn’t on anyone’s radar until Natalino began talking about it. And if Piero was there, it defies logic that any of the Vincis were. Spezi and Preston, writers of the best known English source for the Monster, claim it was a clan killing, the Meles and Vincis working together, but they gloss over the details – if Salvatore and Piero were both there, then why would Piero bring Stefano to the station the day after to accuse Salvatore? The Meles hated the Vincis – the former saw the latter as using Stefano for his wife and money, destroying their own reputation as well as their inheritance. And Salvatore had been the one who took the 300,000 lira from Stefano, ruining the one shot they had at being free from constantly bailing their brother out.
Piero Mucciarini? As mentioned above, Natalino had no reason to mention him if he wasn’t actually there. And if he was there, the note to Stefano implies that Giovanni at least knew about it. The Mele clan was in fact the ones with the best motive to kill Barbara. Even more so, they had every reason to set up Salvatore for it. Stefano had admitted to the police that when he had asked for his money back from Salvatore, the latter had given him his gun as payment, telling him to take care of his wife himself – an added detail to his very first story. Shooting Barbara and leaving Salvatore’s gun at the scene would kill two birds with one stone. And letting Stefano take the final shots, ensuring he’d fail a paraffin glove test, might just remove a third – though it’s unlikely the clan told Stefano that. Both Stefano and Natalino says the gun was thrown on the ground. If Marcello Chiaramonti had driven Stefano and Piero to the scene (possibly along with Giovanni), he could have taken the long way around, picking up Stefano on the opposite side by De Felice’s house once he had sent Natalino off. A few confirming details emerged later. Giovanni Mele told Lo Bianco’s widow at his funeral that Barbara had been a dead woman walking, and Antonio was just unfortunate to be with her when it came. Giuseppe Barranca, Antonio’s brother-in-law, tried to get with Barbara after her break-up with Francesco, but she told him they couldn’t because ”they” had threatened to kill her. And finally, there was Natalino’s memory of uncle Piero showing off a gun to his parents…
Finally, the question has prevented this old, obscure murder from fading into history? Who took the gun from the site? Who became the Monster of Florence? Francesco has his problems, since he was imprisoned for the 1983 and 1984 murders. One theory is that he was the Monster up until 1982, after which his nephew Antonio took over, to finish the job, though no evidence was ever found for this. A lot of people still believe Salvatore was the Monster, but another theory popularized by Spezi and Preston is that it was his son Antonio who took the gun from his father in 1974 and then went on to become the Monster. But there is another possibility – a complete stranger.
After all, both Natalino and Stefano had said the gun was thrown on the ground by the car. Stefano didn’t change his story until they searched the area and found nothing. He obviously expected the gun to be there. So who took it? There are a few tantalizing hints. Natalino, in the Institute, said that when he, his mother and Antonio left the cinema there was a man outside that both the adults took note of but didn’t talk to. Similarly, the owner of the cinema noted that Barbara and Antonio were followed into the cinema by a man who arrived after the movie had already begun. Giuseppe Barranca also mentioned Barbara complaining about being followed around by an unknown man on a scooter. Was there a stalker? Perhaps someone who was (to use an anachronistic word) an incel, attempting to get with an ”easy” woman? The next victim, Stefania Pettini in 1974, also complained to her friends about a man around 35 following her around in the days before she died. While the subsequent Monster killings (1981-85) were more impersonal, Stefania was the only one of the victims who wasn’t shot to death – the Monster climbed in to the car and stabbed her to death.
The End?
Almost 55 years later, there is no offical resolution to the Signa murders. Much like with the Monster of Florence itself, it seems that the truth will never be fully known. To me the idea that Piero and the family was behind the murders and Barbara’s stalker was the one who took the gun from the site makes the most sense, but there are many other theories, both among the investigators and amateurs, and who knows what may be revealed in the future?
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! And if you want to know more, plenty has been written (in Italian). The best source in my opinion is Antonio Segnini, from whom I’ve gotten most of the above information and documents. It’s all in Italian, but many of the videos have CC in English, and Google Translate will get you pretty far with the blog.
https://www.lanazione.it/cronaca/mostro-di-firenze-1.7987630
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_of_Florence
Segnini:
https://www.youtube.com/@QuandoseiconmeilMostrononce/videos
https://quattrocosesulmostro.blogspot.com/p/indice-degli-articoli.html
https://quattrocosesulmostro.blogspot.com/2018/10/la-dinamica-di-signa.html (warning: photos of bodies)