Donato Bilancia was convicted of killing 17 people in Liguria and southern Piedmont in a little over six months, from October 1997 to April 1998. He was a thief and gambler from Genoa who, by the accounts of those who studied his case, had not been known for violence before. His victims had almost nothing in common. The first were men he had gambled with, then people he robbed, then women he picked up or met by chance. For months, prosecutors in different cities treated the killings as separate crimes.
He was arrested in Genoa on May 6, 1998, and within days he confessed to all of them, including a death that had been filed as natural. Italian news reports in 2020 said he was serving 13 life sentences for 17 murders and 16 years for an attempted murder. He died of Covid-19 in custody in Padua in December 2020, at 69.
Bilancia was born in Potenza, in the southern region of Basilicata, in 1951. According to AlessandriaNews, the family moved first to Asti, then to Capaccio in the province of Salerno, and in 1956 settled in Genoa. His relations with his mother, his father and his brother were difficult, the paper wrote.
The journalist Carlo Piano, who covered the case for years and later wrote a book drawing on the trial papers, described a harsh childhood. Panorama, reviewing the book in 2023, summarized it this way: an authoritarian father who cared mainly that food was on the table, and who hung his son's mattress on the balcony for the neighbors to see after the boy wet the bed; a submissive mother who beat him and showed him little affection. Doppiozero, reviewing the same book in 2024, wrote that he grew up among the young people of Piazza Martinez in Genoa and used the name "Walter" to hide his southern origins. Panorama reported that as a young man he spent time in the circle of the comedian Beppe Grillo, smoked heavily, collected baseball caps and liked Pupi Avati's film "Regalo di Natale."
He began stealing young. AlessandriaNews reported that his first trouble with the law came at 15, that he was arrested in 1974 and again for robbery in 1976. The weekly il Settimanale, of Novi Ligure, wrote in 2017 that he started stealing at 15. In the years that followed he lived on theft and gambling and spent several periods in prison, according to AGI's 2024 interview with Piano. Piano told AGI that, as far as he knew, Bilancia had never hurt anyone before 1997.
In 1987 his brother died. AlessandriaNews wrote that the death deepened problems Bilancia already had, and il Settimanale described him as marked by it.
Gambling ran through his adult life. In Genoa's illegal gambling dens he was known as "Walter," AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale reported; Panorama gave the name as "Walterino." Piano's account, as Panorama described it, is of a man who always needed cash and who said in one interrogation that he could never control his generosity and that he repaid favors "three to one." Panorama wrote that during the six months of killings he applied the same ratio to wrongs, real or imagined.
The word Piano chose for his book's title, "Il torto" (The Wrong), came from Bilancia himself. According to the trial papers, as AGI reported, he said that everything began with a wrong done to him by a friend who ran a gambling house. Il Settimanale quoted the Genoa prosecutor Enrico Zucca on what Bilancia said in his confession: that he had suffered "a grave wrong" from two men, especially from Maurizio Parenti, who had betrayed a friendship.
The first death was that of Giorgio Centanaro, in Genoa, on October 16, 1997. He was suffocated. His death was recorded as natural and stayed that way until Bilancia confessed to it after his arrest, AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale reported. Bilancia told investigators that Centanaro had cheated him at the gambling table. AGI wrote that it was Bilancia himself who listed this first killing for the prosecutor.
On October 24, 1997, Maurizio Parenti and his wife, Carla Scotto, were killed. AlessandriaNews reported that Bilancia accused Parenti of being Centanaro's accomplice. In his confession to Zucca he said he was sorry for Carla Scotto's death, the paper reported, but felt no regret for the two men, who he said had wronged him.
Three days later, on October 27, Bruno Solari and Maria Luigia Pitto were killed. On November 13, 1997, Luciano Marro was killed in Ventimiglia, near the French border. The Swiss agency ATS, in its 2020 obituary report, counted the deaths of Solari, Pitto, Marro and later Enzo Gorni among robbery killings.
On January 25, 1998, Giangiorgio Canu was killed in Genoa. ATS reported that this killing was said to have been an act of revenge against the police.
The next killings came close together in March. Stela Truya, an Albanian woman, was killed at Varazze on March 9, 1998. Ljudmyla Zubskova, from Ukraine, was killed at Pietra Ligure on March 18. Two days later, on March 20, Enzo Gorni was killed in Ventimiglia.
On March 24, 1998, at Novi Ligure, in Piedmont, Bilancia shot two men dead and wounded a third person, who survived, according to AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale.
Massimiliano Gualillo was 31. He came from the province of Catanzaro and lived in Ovada. Candido Randò was 43. He was originally from Pizzo Calabro and lived at Castellazzo Bormida with his wife and their two children.
The survivor's account later became central to the case. That person helped produce a composite sketch, described the black Mercedes the attacker drove, and after the arrest identified Bilancia face to face, the reports said. AlessandriaNews treated the Novi Ligure double murder as the turning point of the investigation.
On March 29, 1998, Tessy Adodo, a Nigerian woman, was killed at Cogoleto, on the coast west of Genoa. Ballistic tests by the Carabinieri forensic unit (RIS) in Parma linked her death to that of Stela Truya and to the other killings of women, AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale reported. It was the first firm link between cases that had been handled as unrelated.
In April the killings turned to people Bilancia did not know at all. Elisabetta Zoppetti, a 32-year-old woman from Milan, was killed on April 12, 1998, which was Easter Sunday, Open reported. Kristina Valla was killed on April 14. Maria Angela Rubino was killed on April 18. The April killings caused alarm across Italy, AlessandriaNews wrote, and AGI reported that women began traveling in company for safety. Panorama wrote that the chief prosecutor in Genoa advised travelers to take care, and that plainclothes officers were assigned to patrol. Mistakes followed: Panorama reported that an innocent man who resembled the sketch was questioned.
The last victim was Giuseppe Mileto, who was robbed and killed at Arma di Taggia, in the province of Imperia. Quotidiano Nazionale and AGI date his death to April 20, 1998; AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale give April 21. Quotidiano Nazionale reported that he had refused to sell Bilancia fuel on credit.
The killings crossed the boundaries of several prosecutors' offices. AGI reported that the offices in Genoa, Savona, Imperia, Sanremo and Alessandria each followed their own line of inquiry, and that only the killings of women suggested a single attacker. In a report by Quotidiano di Ragusa after his death, the criminologist Donato Lavorino said the investigations had been fragmented and that Bilancia could have been caught many months earlier. Doppiozero, in its 2024 review, wrote that ballistic evidence pointed to one pistol but that investigators long treated the deaths as separate crimes tied to Genoa's underworld.
Several lines of evidence came together in the spring of 1998. ATS reported that the black Mercedes described by the Novi Ligure survivor was spotted repeatedly because its driver avoided paying motorway tolls; Panorama wrote that he had a habit of following cars with electronic toll passes through the gates. AlessandriaNews reported that the Carabinieri received a complaint that a black Mercedes, handed over for a trial drive, had never been returned. The man who had it closely matched the composite sketch, and tire tracks from several scenes matched the car.
The decisive evidence was DNA. Investigators collected cigarette butts and a coffee cup used by Bilancia, and the DNA on them matched DNA evidence from the killing of Maria Angela Rubino, AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale reported. AGI wrote that it was the first time DNA had been used in this way in such an inquiry.
Bilancia was arrested on May 6, 1998, as he left his home in the Marassi district of Genoa. Open reported that the judge for preliminary investigations ordered him held for the murder of Tessy Adodo, on evidence that included two cigarette butts, the statement of the Mercedes's owner and the survivor's account.
He was held at Marassi prison. A few days after his arrest he gave a long confession to the prosecutor Enrico Zucca, Open reported, and admitted all of the killings. According to Panorama, when a magistrate wanted to proceed only on the most recent killings, Bilancia said he wanted to start from the beginning and told him, "I am responsible for a massacre."
He could not explain what he had done. AFP reported in 2020 that he was at a loss to explain his crimes to psychiatrists, but said he had suffered a splitting headache before each one. Zucca, interviewed by ATS more than 20 years later, said Bilancia killed 17 people in a few months and that he killed because he found it easy.
Piano met him in the prison visiting room after the arrest. Bilancia would not look at him, he told AGI, but stared at a crucifix on the wall and asked what he was doing there among criminals. Piano said Bilancia talked about the killings as if he had been a witness to them rather than the man who committed them. Panorama reported that throughout the months of killings he telephoned his mother every day, as he always had.
The case was tried in Genoa. AFP reported that a Genoa court found him guilty of 13 counts of murder in April 2000. Italian outlets reporting his death in 2020, including Quotidiano Nazionale, Open and ATS, said he had been sentenced to 13 life terms for 17 murders and to 16 years for one attempted murder. Piano told Panorama that the case file he worked from ran to 75 binders and 90,000 pages, with 80 files of wiretap transcripts. Whether he appealed, and with what result, has not been reported.
After his first years at Marassi he was moved to the Due Palazzi prison in Padua, where he spent the rest of his life. By November 2017, il Settimanale reported, he was regarded as a model prisoner. He had earned an accounting diploma and was continuing university studies. At a prison Christmas party, Panorama wrote, he played "Imagine" and "La vie en rose" on the guitar. In one of his rare interviews he said his conscience was tormented by remorse, Panorama reported.
In 2017, about 20 years after his arrest, he was granted a permit to leave prison for a few hours under escort to visit his parents' grave at Nizza Monferrato, in the province of Asti, il Settimanale and Quotidiano Nazionale reported.
A later request was refused. He had asked to visit a child he wanted to help, according to Quotidiano Nazionale and ATS. The surveillance court found him still dangerous. ATS reported that the court said he had never shown remorse, that he believed he had been "possessed" by an illness when he killed, and that he had not completed treatment for his personality disorders. Panorama quoted the judge's finding that he remained "socially dangerous and psychologically disturbed."
Bilancia's death from Covid-19 was reported on December 17, 2020. He was 69. Quotidiano Nazionale, ATS, Open and AlessandriaNews reported that he died at the Due Palazzi prison in Padua, where he was still serving his sentences. Piano told AGI that he learned Bilancia had refused treatment. Panorama, drawing on Piano, wrote that he refused a ventilator and a mask, and quoted him as saying, "Someone like me has to die." Piano said Bilancia had known from the start that the whole affair would end in something like suicide.
Zucca, the prosecutor who had taken his confession, told ATS that news of the death in prison was unsettling.
Carlo Piano's book "Il torto: diciassette gradini verso l'inferno" (The Wrong: Seventeen Steps Toward Hell) was published by Edizioni E/O in 2023. AGI reported that Piano, a Genoa crime reporter at the time of the killings, built it on about 90,000 pages of trial documents. Doppiozero wrote that Piano met Bilancia at Marassi and later at Chiavari, and that the book opens with his death.
A novel, "Che venga la notte" by Alessandro Ceccherini, published by nottetempo in 2024, tells the story from Bilancia's point of view and mixes invented and real people, Doppiozero wrote. The television miniseries "Ultima pallottola," inspired by the case, aired on Canale 5 in 2003, according to the same review.
The count of convictions is reported in two ways. AFP said the Genoa court found him guilty of 13 counts of murder in April 2000; the Italian reports of 2020 speak of 13 life sentences for 17 murders. The gap between the two figures has never been explained.
The date of the last killing is given as April 20, 1998, by Quotidiano Nazionale and AGI and as April 21 by AlessandriaNews and il Settimanale. Both of the latter also describe the 17 killings as committed between October 1997 and March 1998, while their own lists run into April.
Accounts of how investigators found the Mercedes differ. ATS and Quotidiano Nazionale stress repeated sightings of a car avoiding motorway tolls; AlessandriaNews describes a complaint about a car taken for a trial drive and never returned; Panorama mentions a coincidence involving license plates.
The surname of the Cogoleto victim is spelled Adodo by Quotidiano Nazionale and Open, which gives her full name as Evelyn Tessy Adodo, and Adobo by AlessandriaNews.
Bilancia offered no lasting motive. He spoke of a wrong done to him by men he gambled with, and the criminologist Lavorino pointed to money, anger and revenge. For the later killings, reports offered no motive at all.
1951: Donato Bilancia is born in Potenza, Basilicata.
1956: after moves to Asti and Capaccio, the family settles in Genoa.
1974: arrested; arrested again for robbery in 1976.
1987: his brother dies.
October 16, 1997: Giorgio Centanaro dies in Genoa; the death is recorded as natural.
October 24, 1997: Maurizio Parenti and Carla Scotto are killed.
October 27, 1997: Bruno Solari and Maria Luigia Pitto are killed.
November 13, 1997: Luciano Marro is killed in Ventimiglia.
January 25, 1998: Giangiorgio Canu is killed in Genoa.
March 9, 1998: Stela Truya is killed at Varazze.
March 18, 1998: Ljudmyla Zubskova is killed at Pietra Ligure.
March 20, 1998: Enzo Gorni is killed in Ventimiglia.
March 24, 1998: Massimiliano Gualillo and Candido Randò are killed at Novi Ligure; a third person survives.
March 29, 1998: Tessy Adodo is killed at Cogoleto; ballistic tests link the cases.
April 12, 1998: Elisabetta Zoppetti is killed.
April 14, 1998: Kristina Valla is killed.
April 18, 1998: Maria Angela Rubino is killed.
April 20 or 21, 1998: Giuseppe Mileto is robbed and killed at Arma di Taggia.
May 6, 1998: Bilancia is arrested in Genoa; within days he confesses to prosecutor Enrico Zucca.
April 2000: a Genoa court finds him guilty (AFP); he is sentenced to 13 life terms and 16 years for attempted murder.
2017: granted an escorted visit to his parents' grave at Nizza Monferrato.
Later: a permit to visit a child he wanted to help is refused; the court finds him still dangerous.
December 17, 2020: his death from Covid-19 in custody in Padua is reported.
2023: Carlo Piano publishes "Il torto."