Antonio Mantovani served 13 years for the murder of a friend's wife before he was granted semi-liberty in September 1996 and walked out of Milan's Opera prison by day. Within months, two more women he knew were dead. A Milan assize court convicted him in November 2001 of murdering Simona Carnevale, a 26-year-old hairdresser whose body has not been found, and Cesarina De Donato, 60, the owner of the apartment he rented. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. The death of a third woman, Dora Vendola, who was also on semi-liberty, was investigated as well, but he denied it, and no charge in her case is reported.
The Court of Cassation upheld the convictions in June 2002. Mantovani never confessed to any of the killings. He died in Saluzzo prison, in Piedmont, on March 28, 2003.
Mantovani was born in 1957 at Trevenzuolo, in the province of Verona, and was known by the nickname "il Morin", according to Il Giorno. When he was 7, his mother left him at a boarding school, and both Il Giorno and the prison police magazine Polizia Penitenziaria describe the separation as an abandonment: she no longer wanted to care for him.
His record began early. As a young teenager he was reported for an offense against a small child and was acquitted because he was a minor, Polizia Penitenziaria reported. A 1971 complaint involving a minor also appeared on the record that investigators examined in 1983, along with offenses of theft and receiving stolen goods. In 1979 he was accused of attacking the wife of a friend; he was not convicted, because he was judged to be of partly unsound mind, "seminfermo di mente" in the Italian legal phrase.
By 1983 he was 26, lived at Sesto San Giovanni, just north of Milan, and worked as a warehouseman for a Milan transport company.
Carla Zacchi was 26. She worked for a fashion magazine in Milan and had been married for seven months. Her husband, also 26, worked for a finance company, and the couple were waiting to move into a new home in Cologno Monzese, Il Giorno reported in a 2017 retrospective.
On a Friday evening in February 1983, her husband went out to dinner with a group of friends. When he came home, she was gone, and the next morning he reported her missing to the carabinieri.
Her body was found in Monza on February 11, 1983. She had been strangled, according to the autopsy as reported. Her husband told investigators that he thought she had been with someone who knew them both. "In questa storia ci sono tanti, troppi fatti strani che io ancora non riesco a mettere insieme," he said: in this story there were many, too many strange facts that he still could not piece together.
It was the husband who first gave investigators a name. Antonio Mantovani, a friend, had been expected at the same dinner that Friday and had not come. Three witnesses said they had seen him that evening at a pizzeria in Sesto San Giovanni, eating alone and looking sullen, with scratches on his face and hands. The next morning he took a stained jacket to a dry cleaner. He said he had been hurt at work, but his colleagues contradicted him.
He was detained, and the detention was confirmed on February 16, 1983. At trial he protested his innocence throughout. The court found him responsible for Carla Zacchi's death, and on December 5, 1985, he was sentenced to 29 years and two months in prison. The prosecution had asked for 30 years.
In September 1996, after 13 years in prison, Mantovani was granted semi-liberty, which let him spend his days outside the prison and return to his cell at night. He left the Milano-Opera prison under that regime, Polizia Penitenziaria reported. According to the experts consulted by the court, he had progressed during his detention, and their assessment, as the magazine quotes it, found a "progressiva strutturazione delle difese e di una conseguente attenuazione del giudizio di pericolosità sociale": a gradual building of his psychological defenses and, as a result, a lessening of the judgment that he was socially dangerous.
Dora Vendola was 38. She too was a prisoner on semi-liberty, serving a nine-year sentence and working by day for a cleaning company, l'Unità reported at the time. She was found dead in Milan on the morning of November 6, 1996. The paper said that she appeared to have been strangled, probably on October 31, and that the carabinieri were investigating; its report on the day after she was found looked at her own criminal record and her associates and did not mention Mantovani.
Mantovani knew her. When investigators questioned him, he admitted knowing her and pursuing her, and denied killing her, according to Il Giorno and Polizia Penitenziaria. He was believed, and his semi-liberty was not revoked. No charge against him in her death is reported, and the courts that later convicted him tried him only for the deaths of Simona Carnevale and Cesarina De Donato.
Simona Carnevale was a 26-year-old hairdresser in Milan. She disappeared on March 7, 1997. Her case was taken up by Chi l'ha visto?, the long-running Italian television program about missing people, and for two years it went unsolved. Her body has not been found.
Cesarina De Donato was 60. She owned the apartment that Mantovani rented. On June 2, 1997, she was found dead in Milan. She had been strangled, according to the findings reported by Il Giorno. Some passages in the retrospective reports give her first name as Carolina; most use Cesarina.
The break in the Carnevale case came through the television program. On March 1, 1999, Chi l'ha visto? received an anonymous letter about her disappearance, and the program appealed on the air to the writer: "se il suo racconto è vero ci aiuti a scoprire i colpevoli," if your account is true, help us find those responsible.
A prisoner who had shared a cell with Mantovani saw Simona Carnevale's photograph on television and recognized her. He told investigators that he had seen her with Mantovani. He also said that on the evening she disappeared, Mantovani had come back to the cell from his day outside visibly agitated, had told him that he had killed a girl, and had asked for help to bury her.
On June 1, 1999, a Milan judge for preliminary investigations issued a custody order against Mantovani, who by then was back in prison. He insisted he was innocent. At one point he tried to escape and was recaptured, Il Giorno reported. Among the charges later brought against him was the forgery of a passport and an identity card.
The trial opened before the Corte di Assise di Milano, the Milan assize court, on April 19, 2000. Mantovani was charged with the double murder of Simona Carnevale and Cesarina De Donato, with the destruction and concealment of corpses, with receiving stolen goods, and with forgery of the passport and identity card.
Polizia Penitenziaria called it "un processo difficilissimo, per via dell'imputato, uomo intelligente e con una personalità complessa": an extremely difficult trial, because of the defendant, an intelligent man with a complex personality. He maintained his innocence throughout.
On November 12, 2001, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of Simona Carnevale and to 29 years for the murder of Cesarina De Donato. The conviction for Simona Carnevale's murder was reached although her body had not been found. The sentence was confirmed on appeal and, finally, by the Court of Cassation on June 13, 2002, which made the convictions final.
Mantovani was held in the prison at Saluzzo, in the province of Cuneo. He took his own life there on March 28, 2003. He had never confessed to the murders of Carla Zacchi, Simona Carnevale or Cesarina De Donato, and had denied any part in the death of Dora Vendola.
The case is remembered in Italy as much for the decisions that preceded the 1997 killings as for the killer. Mantovani had a final conviction for murder when he was granted semi-liberty in 1996, on the strength of an expert assessment that his danger to society had lessened. He was then questioned over the death of another prisoner on semi-liberty, whom he admitted pursuing, and the measure stayed in place. Both Simona Carnevale and Cesarina De Donato died while he was spending his days outside the prison. Il Giorno's 2017 retrospective, which began with the discovery of Carla Zacchi's body, described him as the man whose first victim was found in Monza and who went on to three more killings years later; the courts convicted him of two of them.
The death of Dora Vendola. Mantovani was questioned about it and denied it. No charge against him has been reported, and the courts did not try him for it. Retrospective press pieces count her among his victims, but that remains an attribution, not a finding.
The dates of the later trials. Il Giorno and Polizia Penitenziaria both date the assize court verdict to November 12, 2001, and Polizia Penitenziaria dates the Cassation ruling to June 13, 2002, with an appeal in between. The date of the appeal hearing has not been published.
Names and spellings. Il Giorno spells the surname once as "Mantovano" and gives Simona Carnevale's first name once as "Simonetta". Cesarina De Donato is called "Carolina" in some passages of both retrospectives.
His motives. Mantovani admitted none of the killings, and no explanation from him is on record.
1957: Antonio Mantovani born at Trevenzuolo, province of Verona.
Childhood: left by his mother at a boarding school, at age 7.
1971: a complaint involving a minor is entered on his record.
1979: accused of attacking a friend's wife; not convicted after being judged of partly unsound mind.
February 1983: Carla Zacchi, 26, disappears; her body is found in Monza on February 11.
February 16, 1983: Mantovani's detention in the Zacchi case is confirmed.
December 5, 1985: sentenced to 29 years and 2 months for the murder of Carla Zacchi.
September 1996: granted semi-liberty after 13 years; leaves the Milano-Opera prison by day.
November 6, 1996: Dora Vendola, 38, also on semi-liberty, is found dead in Milan; Mantovani is questioned, denies killing her, and keeps his semi-liberty.
March 7, 1997: Simona Carnevale, 26, disappears after leaving her shop in Milan.
June 2, 1997: Cesarina De Donato, 60, his landlady, is found dead in Milan.
March 1, 1999: Chi l'ha visto? receives an anonymous letter about Simona Carnevale.
June 1, 1999: a Milan judge orders Mantovani held in the Carnevale and De Donato case after a former cellmate comes forward.
April 19, 2000: trial opens before the Milan assize court.
November 12, 2001: life imprisonment for the murder of Simona Carnevale; 29 years for the murder of Cesarina De Donato.
June 13, 2002: the Court of Cassation confirms the convictions.
March 28, 2003: Mantovani dies in Saluzzo prison, having never confessed.