Between August 1968 and September 1985, eight couples were killed in the countryside around Florence. Sixteen people died. Most were young men and women who had parked on dirt roads and lanes outside the city, and every one of them was shot with the same .22 caliber Beretta pistol, loaded with Winchester ammunition stamped with an H on the base. The pistol has never been found. The Italian press called the killer Il Mostro di Firenze.
The case has produced some of the longest investigations and trials in modern Italian history, and it is unsolved. Only three people have been finally convicted for any of the killings. Stefano Mele, the husband of one of the 1968 victims, was convicted of that double killing alone. Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti, two men from San Casciano in Val di Pesa, were convicted in 2000 of taking part in the last four double killings. The man convicted at first instance in 1994 of seven of the double killings, a farmer, P.P., was acquitted on appeal; the acquittal was annulled, and he died before he could be retried. Under Italian law he died unconvicted of those crimes. No court has ever named the person who fired the gun.
On the night of August 21, 1968, Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco were shot in a parked car near Castelletti, in the countryside of Signa, west of Florence. Il Post gives their ages as 32 and 29; Sky TG24 gives 29 and 31. Barbara Locci was a married woman of Sardinian origin, described by Il Post as a housewife. Antonio Lo Bianco was a mason who had come to Tuscany from Sicily, and he was also married. The car was his Alfa Romeo Giulietta. They were on a secluded road near the cemetery, about 100 meters from the turning for Comeana, according to Fanpage.
Eight shots were fired at close range, four at each of them, Il Post and Fanpage report. The cartridges were Winchester, marked with an H. The gun was not found.
Barbara Locci's six-year-old son was asleep in the back seat. He was not harmed. La Nazione reported in 2023 that the killer approached from behind and kept the child out of the line of fire. The boy reached a farmhouse about two kilometers away, in the dark, over stony ground, and raised the alarm. The carabinieri found the car at about 3 a.m. by its flashing indicator, Fanpage reports. How he got to the farmhouse has never been fully explained, the Unione Sarda noted in 2019. As an adult, asked about that night, he has said he does not remember it.
The first suspect was Barbara Locci's husband, Stefano Mele, a Sardinian laborer living in Tuscany. He first denied involvement, Il Post reports, then implicated two of his wife's Sardinian lovers, the brothers F.V. and S.V., then cleared them, and finally confessed. According to Fanpage he later accused another man as well, before returning to his son's account. The boy at first said he had heard nothing and later said he had seen his father that night.
A parliamentary report gives the court history. The Florence Assize Court convicted Mele on March 25, 1970. An appeal followed on March 4, 1971; the Court of Cassation annulled that ruling and sent the case back, and the appeal court in Perugia ruled on April 12, 1973, making the conviction final. The Florence judgment, the report says, firmly excluded the presence of any accomplices and tried to rule out the idea that anyone had helped him. Il Post and Fanpage give the sentence as 14 years. Fanpage says the court found him partly unable to understand and to will his actions, which reduced the sentence, and that he received a further two years for slander against the brothers F.V. and S.V. Il Giornale, in 2025, gave the sentence as 13 years with the mitigating circumstance of a crime of honor. Il Fatto Quotidiano reported that he served 16 years.
The parliamentary report records that the 1968 killings rest on a judgment that can no longer be challenged, finding that Mele committed them. In a 2024 overview, La Nazione noted that the later trials treated the Signa killings as a crime within the Sardinian circle of Barbara Locci and her husband, and that Mele remains the only person convicted for them. Doubt about whether he fired the gun has never gone away, the Unione Sarda wrote in 2019, and La Nazione asked in 2023 who could have supplied him with the pistol.
On the night of September 14, 1974, Pasquale Gentilcore, 19, and Stefania Pettini, 18, were killed in his Fiat 127 on an unpaved road at Rabatta, near Sagginale and Borgo San Lorenzo, in the Mugello north of Florence. They had been going out together for about two years, Il Post reports. Sky TG24 gives both their ages as 19.
Stefania had told a friend about an unusual encounter the day before, and her driving instructor said that they had been followed during a lesson, according to Il Post. Her handbag was found several hundred meters from the car, Sky TG24 reports. No one connected the killings with the case at Signa at the time. The same gun had been used, but that was established only in 1982.
On the night of June 6, 1981, Giovanni Foggi, 30, and his fiancée, Carmela De Nuccio, 21, were killed in their car in the Roveta hills at Mosciano, near Scandicci, close to a discotheque. LaPresse describes him as an employee of Enel, the electricity company, from Pontassieve, and her as a leather worker from Scandicci.
A man was arrested soon afterward and held in prison. He was an ambulance driver, V.S., according to Sky TG24. He was cleared when another double killing took place while he was in custody, Il Post reports.
On October 22, 1981, Stefano Baldi, 26, and Susanna Cambi, 24, were killed in her black Volkswagen Golf at Travalle, in the municipality of Calenzano, near Prato. He was a textile worker and she was a shop assistant, according to LaPresse, and they were soon to be married, Sky TG24 reports. Susanna had told her mother that she was being followed, Il Post reports. The final judgments later found that Vanni and Lotti were not at Calenzano that night, La Nazione reported.
On June 19, 1982, Paolo Mainardi, 22, and Antonella Migliorini were attacked in his car in a lay-by on a provincial road at Baccaiano, in the municipality of Montespertoli. He was a mechanic and she worked for a clothing company, according to LaPresse, which gives her age as 19. Paolo was wounded by the first shots and managed to start the car and drive it across the road, where it became stuck. The killer fired again. Antonella died at the scene. Paolo was taken to hospital and died the next day without regaining consciousness, Il Post reports.
This was the killing that joined the cases together. After Baccaiano, Il Post and Fanpage report, a former officer from Signa remembered the 1968 case. The old file was reopened, and the bullets showed that the same gun had been used in 1968, 1974, both killings of 1981 and now 1982. La Nazione wrote in 2023 that the link came from a marshal's recollection and an anonymous tip. The later trials concluded that the same gun was used in all eight double killings but had changed hands, La Nazione reported. Sky TG24 notes that Mele was in prison and could not have committed the later killings.
The link turned the investigation toward the men around Barbara Locci. The carabinieri followed what became known as the pista sarda, the Sardinian line, for seven years, La Nazione wrote, without result.
Mele, questioned again, again accused F.V. In August 1982 F.V. was arrested for mistreatment of his wife, and two months later he was accused of being the killer, Il Post reports. Sky TG24 and La Nazione say he had been a lover of Barbara Locci and was thought to have had the pistol. On September 9, 1983, while he was in the Murate prison in Florence, two young men were shot at Giogoli. He was released. In 1993 he was found dead with a friend in a burned car near Chianni, in the province of Pisa; that double killing has never been solved, Sky TG24 reports.
Next, on new statements by Mele, investigators arrested his brother and his brother-in-law, G.M. and P.M., in 1983, Sky TG24 and Il Post report. They were in custody when the 1984 killings took place, and they were cleared.
S.V., F.V.'s older brother, was arrested in 1986 over the death years earlier of his first wife in Sardinia, and was acquitted at that trial, Sky TG24 and La Nazione report. In December 1989 Judge Mario Rotella closed the case against the Sardinian suspects, La Nazione reports, and the pista sarda was formally archived. In 2024 La Nazione reported that S.V.'s whereabouts were unknown and that it was not known whether he was alive.
AFP summed up the pattern in 2022: five men had been accused at various points, and each was freed when another killing took place while he was in jail.
On September 9, 1983, Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Jens-Uwe Rüsch, both 24, were shot in their Volkswagen camper van at Giogoli, on the edge of Florence near Scandicci. They were German students; LaPresse says they were from the University of Münster. Both were men. Il Post and LaPresse report that one of them had long hair and a slight build and was probably taken by the killer for a woman. Their bodies were not mutilated. Prosecutors later said that a German drawing pad and a soap holder found in the course of the investigation had belonged to them, La Nazione reported.
On July 29, 1984, Claudio Stefanacci and Pia Gilda Rontini were killed in his Fiat Panda on a dirt road off the provincial road near Vicchio, in the Mugello. Claudio was a university student, 21 according to LaPresse and 22 according to Sky TG24. Pia was 18 and worked as a barmaid. According to LaPresse, she tried to escape.
Pia Rontini's father spent the rest of his life seeking the truth about her death, the Unione Sarda reported. Vicchio was also the birthplace of P.P., the man later tried for the killings, and of a former Foreign Legion soldier who would be investigated decades later.
The last killings took place at Scopeti, in the municipality of San Casciano in Val di Pesa, in September 1985. Nadine Mauriot, 36, and Jean-Michel Kraveichvili, 25, a musician, were French and came from Audincourt. They were camping in a small tent in a clearing in the woods. LaPresse reports that Nadine Mauriot was killed in the tent, and that Jean-Michel Kraveichvili tried to run and was caught a short distance away. Their bodies were found on Monday, September 9, 1985, La Nazione reported.
Days later an anonymous envelope reached the Florence prosecutor's office addressed to Silvia Della Monica, one of the prosecutors on the case. It held part of the woman's body. Letters containing photocopies of newspaper pages followed, Sky TG24 reports. In all, the bodies of four of the women killed were mutilated, AFP reported in 2022.
The judgments that followed fixed the date of the Scopeti killings as the night of September 8. That date has been challenged by experts working for Mario Vanni's family, who argue from insect evidence that the couple died up to two nights earlier.
After Scopeti the killings stopped. The parliamentary inquiry, Il Post and La Nazione all describe the series as ending in 1985.
Couples in the province of Florence had been killed in places where young people went to be alone. Most of the victims were killed in their cars, AFP reported, and police suspected, at one time or another, everyone from a farmer to Italy's secret services and a satanic cult. The investigations by the Florence and Perugia prosecutors produced no concrete result before 1991, and everyone who had been detained was released, Il Post wrote.
A special police unit, the Squadra Anti Mostro, or SAM, was formed for the case. In 1987 it drew up a list of possible suspects. The list included, at number 131, the name of a Perugia doctor, F.N., the parliamentary report found.
F.N. was a gastroenterologist from Perugia. In October 1985 he disappeared, and he was found dead in Lake Trasimeno. The parliamentary report notes that his disappearance was already being talked about in the autumn of 1985. Years later, investigators in Perugia and Florence pursued the idea that he had been linked to the killings and that his death might not have been an accident. The Perugia side came to favor drowning, probably after a fainting episode, the parliamentary report says, and in 2017 Panorama reported that the Perugia prosecutor had asked for the murder inquiry into his death to be archived because the evidence gathered was not sufficient. A DNA profile from the letters sent to prosecutors in 1985 did not belong to him, the Unione Sarda reported in 2019. He was never charged with any of the killings.
The man who would be tried for the killings first appeared in the files two days after Scopeti. In September 1985 the carabinieri at San Casciano received an anonymous letter naming P.P., a farmer from Mercatale Val di Pesa, La Nazione reported in 2021. The carabinieri visited his home, found nothing, and he dropped out of the inquiry.
P.P. was born in 1925 near Vicchio. As a young man he had killed a rival for the affections of his fiancée and served 13 years in prison, according to La Nazione and Il Post. In 1987 he was convicted of sexual offenses and sentenced to four years and three months, Sky TG24 reports, and he was in prison when the SAM's attention turned to him.
That happened in the spring of 1991. SAM officers cross-referenced data on a computer, La Nazione reported, and found that he fitted the profile they had drawn up of the killer of the eight couples. La Nazione listed the points against him that investigators assembled: he wrote "Repubblica" with one B, as it was spelled on the envelope sent to Silvia Della Monica; he kept many newspapers about the crimes and photographs he had marked in pencil; he had links to the places of all eight double killings; and the killings had stopped when he went to prison. La Nazione itself called these indications, not proof.
In April 1992 police carried out a large search of his property. A single .22 cartridge was found in his garden, the Unione Sarda reported. There have been doubts from the start about how it came to be there; the Unione Sarda reported in 2019 that the marks on it suggested it had been placed there rather than cycled through the Beretta. Sky TG24 says the search also turned up a note with a license plate number from the area of the 1985 killings. At trial, prosecutors also presented a drawing pad and a soap holder that they said had belonged to the German students killed at Giogoli.
He was arrested on January 17, 1993, Il Post reported, and charged with the double killings.
The trial before the Florence Assize Court was televised. On November 1, 1994, the court convicted P.P. of seven of the eight double killings, 14 of the 16 deaths, and sentenced him to life imprisonment, La Nazione and Il Post report. He was not convicted of the 1968 killings, for which Stefano Mele's conviction already stood. The court's reasoning said that he could not have acted alone, La Nazione noted.
One of the witnesses at that trial was Mario Vanni, a retired postman from San Casciano and a friend of the accused. Asked about their relationship, he said they had only gone together for merende, picnics or snacks, and the phrase compagni di merende, "snack companions," stuck to the group of friends, Il Giornale and La Nazione report. The presiding judge, Enrico Ognibene, warned him that he risked a charge of giving false testimony.
The appeal was heard by the Florence Assize Court of Appeal, presided over by Francesco Ferri. At that hearing the prosecutor general, Piero Tony, asked for the defendant to be acquitted, La Nazione reported. In February 1996 the court acquitted him on the ground that he had not committed the acts, Panorama reported. By then he had spent 1,100 days in jail, according to Il Post.
The appeal court had declined to hear four new witnesses whom prosecutors had kept under the code names Alfa, Beta, Gamma and Delta. On December 12, 1996, the Court of Cassation annulled the acquittal because of that procedural fault, a defect of form rather than of substance, Panorama reported, and ordered a new appeal hearing.
That hearing never took place. On February 22, 1998, P.P. was found dead at his home in Mercatale, La Nazione and Il Post report. Authorities said he had died of natural causes, according to NBC News and a Philadelphia broadcaster's report, though Il Post wrote that the circumstances were unclear. Because the acquittal had been annulled and no new verdict was ever reached, he died without a final judgment on the charges. In law he was never convicted of the killings. Il Fatto Quotidiano wrote in 2025 that he had been "acquitted posthumously," which is not what happened: the proceedings simply ended with his death.
While the appeal was still under way, the Florence prosecutor Piero Luigi Vigna gave a new inquiry, known as the mostro bis, to the new head of the Florence Squadra Mobile, La Nazione reported. Investigators turned to the friends of the accused: Mario Vanni, Giancarlo Lotti, F.P. and G.F., Il Post reports.
Vanni was accused of taking part in the double killings in January 1996 and arrested on February 12, 1996, while the appeal was still under way, according to La Nazione.
Lotti, known locally by the nicknames "Garibaldi" and "Katanga," first appears in SAM records on July 19, 1990, La Nazione reported. Sky TG24 describes him as an orphan with intellectual disabilities and a drinking problem. F.P. first placed him near the Scopeti scene in 1985. Lotti then confessed that he had taken part in the last killings and became a pentito, a cooperating witness, under state protection. He named P.P. and Vanni. F.P. testified against Vanni and Lotti, saying he had seen two of the eight killings, Il Post reports. F.P. was not convicted of any of the killings.
In his statements Lotti said that he had seen P.P. and Vanni at the French couple's tent on the evening of September 8, 1985, Fanpage and La Nazione report, and that a doctor had paid for the items taken from the victims. La Nazione wrote in 2017 that the judgment against Vanni and Lotti states that someone "ordered" the killings, and that Lotti spoke of a shadowy figure who appeared after each killing and collected what had been taken.
In December 1997 the Florence Assize Court allowed Vanni to move to house arrest in San Casciano, Il Post reports.
Vanni and Lotti were convicted of taking part in four of the double killings: Baccaiano in 1982, Giogoli in 1983, Vicchio in 1984 and Scopeti in 1985, according to Il Giornale, La Nazione, Panorama and AFP. Vanni was sentenced to life imprisonment and Lotti to 26 years. Their convictions became final in 2000, Panorama reports. In both cases the prosecutor general had asked for acquittal, La Nazione noted. G.F. was acquitted at every level, and he has no conviction for any of the killings.
The courts did not convict anyone for the double killings of 1974 and of June and October 1981. The final judgments found that Vanni and Lotti were not at Calenzano in October 1981, and the prosecution did not charge them with Mosciano in June 1981 or with Rabatta in 1974, La Nazione reported. La Nazione wrote in 2024 that the final rulings place the entry of the accomplices into the case in 1982, and that the court treated the gun as having passed from the Sardinian circle to the group from San Casciano.
Lotti was released in 2002 and died 15 days later, Il Post reported. Vanni's sentence was suspended in 2004 because of his health, and he lived in a retirement home in the province of Florence. He died in April 2009 at Ponte a Niccheri hospital in Florence, at 82, Il Giornale reported.
Lotti's talk of a doctor who paid for the items taken from the women led to years of investigation into possible instigators. The inquiries in Florence and Perugia explored a group engaged in sex parties and esoteric rituals, La Nazione reported in 2017, and Il Post wrote that investigators had hypothesized a magical or esoteric motive, based on testimony and on large sums in P.P.'s bank account that seemed incompatible with a farmer's income. F.N., the Perugia doctor found in Lake Trasimeno, was among those suspected, and a Florentine journalist was jailed for almost a month. The line of inquiry led nowhere, Il Post concluded.
In Florence prosecutors identified a pharmacist from San Casciano, F.C., as the "doctor." He had first been investigated in 1988, after a former spouse accused him of commissioning the killings, Il Post reported. He was tried in an abbreviated trial and acquitted in 2008, and the prosecution did not appeal, Panorama and La Nazione report.
A later inquiry turned to a former soldier of the French Foreign Legion, born in Vicchio and living in Prato, who knew P.P. and the snack companions. He had briefly come to investigators' notice in 1985, after Scopeti, when newspaper clippings about the killings were found at his home, La Nazione reported. In 1994, Sky TG24 reports, police found more than 170 bullets compatible with those used in the killings at his house. The carabinieri special unit, the ROS, searched his home again in December 2013. He owned a .22 caliber pistol, not a Beretta, and said it had been stolen months before that search.
In 2014 Vieri Adriani, the lawyer for the French victims' families, filed a complaint with prosecutors, and in 2017 the former legionnaire, then 86, and his former doctor, 87, were placed under investigation for complicity in the eight double killings, Fanpage and La Nazione reported. The prosecutors were Paolo Canessa and Luca Turco. La Nazione stressed that coincidences were not proof. In 2019 the Unione Sarda reported that the inquiry was being closed, with the evidence described as fragile and uncertain. Il Post reported in 2022 that it had been archived. He died in 2024, La Nazione reported, without ever having been charged. His doctor was never charged either.
None of the convictions rests on DNA. In the 2010s the old exhibits were examined again. In 2015 the geneticist Ugo Ricci analyzed the Scopeti tent for the killer's DNA and found none, La Nazione reported. In 2017 Fanpage reported that geneticists at Careggi hospital in Florence had obtained a genetic profile from saliva on three envelopes containing Winchester H bullets that had been sent to the prosecutors Piero Vigna, Francesco Fleury and Paolo Canessa after the 1985 killings, and a second profile from a bloodstained handkerchief found at the scene.
In 2019 the Unione Sarda reported that Ricci had found an unidentified male profile, labeled "Unknown Man 1," on trousers from the Scopeti scene, and another profile on a letter sent to the prosecutors. The profile on the letter did not match F.N. or P.P. The genetic profiles of Lotti and Vanni had not been preserved, the paper reported, which made comparison with the convicted men impossible.
In August 2024 a consultant to the families' lawyers, Lorenzo Iovino, a doctor in the United States, re-examined earlier analyses of a .22 Winchester bullet found in 2015 in a cushion from the French couple's tent, AFP reported. He said the DNA on it matched neither the victims nor anyone previously convicted, and that a similar trace appeared on cartridge cases from the 1983 and 1984 killings. La Nazione reported that one earlier examiner had unquestionably contaminated the item. Roberto Taddeo, quoted by AFP, warned that the DNA could have come from people who had handled the evidence. Daniele Piccione, a lawyer who had chaired a parliamentary inquiry, called it potentially very important.
Adriani asked for the remains of Stefania Pettini and Jean-Michel Kraveichvili to be exhumed so that they could be searched for the killer's DNA, and a member of parliament put a question to the justice minister about it. The Florence chief prosecutor, Filippo Spiezia, expressed many doubts about reopening the investigations, citing cost, logistics and staff shortages, La Nazione reported. In September 2024, as the Borgo San Lorenzo cemetery prepared to move Stefania Pettini's remains after 50 years in line with normal practice, Adriani, acting for a cousin of hers, planned to ask that the remains be preserved for possible testing, La Nazione reported. Her mother had wished their remains to be reunited.
In March 2022, lawyers Vieri Adriani, Valter Biscotti and Antonio Mazzeo filed two requests with the Florence Assize Court on behalf of the families of Carmela De Nuccio, Nadine Mauriot and Jean-Michel Kraveichvili, Il Post reported. One asked for access to the records of the 1994 trial, after an earlier request had been rejected; the other asked for the investigation to be reopened. They pointed to a 1984 carabinieri report from Borgo San Lorenzo about a .22 Beretta stolen from a gun shop and later found with a man who had been reported for sexual offenses, whose name, they said, never reached the list of suspects. They asked that the DNA on the 1985 letters be compared with everyone involved in the case. AFP quoted Biscotti as saying that inconsistencies in Lotti's confession and the unsolved killings showed the trials had not reached the full truth.
The Italian parliament's Anti-Mafia Commission, in the XVIII Legislature, which ended early, examined parts of the case to fill gaps in the historical record of the killings of couples, its report says. It limited itself to two key questions, one of which concerned F.N. It concluded that his name had been placed on the 1987 SAM list, that police checks on his movements had probably been carried out with a positive result, though this could not be verified with certainty, and that the theory that evidence had been fabricated or planted was implausible. Its inquiry into an unidentified Florentine Masonic figure remained incomplete because the legislature ended early.
In September 2024 the remains of F.V. were exhumed from the Ambrogiana cemetery at Montelupo Fiorentino with the authorization of the prosecutors Ornella Galeotti and Beatrice Giunti, La Nazione reported. The exhumation was sought by his family, through a private investigator, Davide Cannella, because they doubted that the body found burned in 1993 was his. Remains were sent to forensic medicine for DNA comparison, which depended on whether DNA could be extracted from the fire-damaged remains. No result of that comparison has been reported.
In July 2025 La Nazione reported, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, il Giornale and Sky TG24 followed, that a genetic test ordered by the Florence prosecutor's office had found that Stefano Mele was not the biological father of the child who survived the 1968 killings. The reports linked the finding to the Sardinian circle around Barbara Locci. Sky TG24 reported that the information should not affect the legal proceedings. The finding revived interest in the Sardinian line, but no new charge was reported.
In January 2025 lawyers Valter Biscotti and Antonio Mazzeo filed a request for the revision of Mario Vanni's life sentence on behalf of his nephew, La Nazione reported. The request went to the Court of Appeal in Genoa. It rested on a new forensic entomology report by Stefano Vanin and Fabiola Giusti, which concluded from fly larvae on the French victims' bodies that they had died on the night of September 6 to 7, 1985, two days before the date in the judgments. If correct, that would contradict Lotti's account of seeing the tent occupied on the evening of September 8. The request also cited a textile expert's view that the cut in the tent which Lotti attributed to Vanni might be an older tear, and police reports that placed shots at Vicchio in 1984 at about 9:45 p.m., earlier than Lotti's account of the group's departure from San Casciano allowed.
The Genoa court, presided over by Vincenzo Papillo, postponed a hearing on admissibility from May 9 to June 13, 2025, because the prosecutor had not finished reviewing 34 binders of files sent from Tuscany, La Nazione reported. In July 2025 the court declared the request inadmissible, finding the entomological evidence not applicable, Fanpage reported. The lawyers said the court had improperly ruled on the merits and announced an immediate appeal to the Court of Cassation. A ruling on that appeal was not reported. An earlier revision request based on insect larvae had been rejected, La Nazione noted in 2024.
On January 31, 2026, ANSA reported that a lawyer, Mattia Alfano, had filed a further complaint with investigators proposing a new line of inquiry linking the killings at Calenzano, Baccaiano and Scopeti. No response from the Florence prosecutor's office was reported. No court has accepted any of these theories.
As of that January 2026 report, no one had been charged with firing the gun, the Beretta had not been found, and the 1974 and 1981 killings had no conviction at all. The 2025 genetic test, the DNA traces and the dating of the last killing remained matters of private petitions and press reporting, not of new judgments.
Proven by final judgment: that Stefano Mele committed the 1968 killings of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco, without accomplices according to that court; and that Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti took part in the double killings at Baccaiano (1982), Giogoli (1983), Vicchio (1984) and Scopeti (1985). The judgments did not identify all the participants, and La Nazione reported that they speak of someone who "ordered" the killings.
Not proven: who fired the gun in any of the eight cases after 1968; who killed the couples of 1974 and of June and October 1981; and whether anyone instigated or paid for the killings. P.P. was convicted at first instance of seven of the double killings, acquitted on appeal, and died before the new appeal ordered by the Court of Cassation; he was never finally convicted. G.F. and F.C. were acquitted. Everyone else arrested or investigated, including F.V., S.V., G.M., P.M., V.S., F.N., the former legionnaire and his doctor, was released, cleared, or never charged.
The link between 1968 and the later killings: the bullets show the same gun was used, but the Florence court of 1970 found that Mele acted alone, and the later courts treated the gun as having changed hands. How it did so has never been established.
The date of the Scopeti killings: the judgments fixed it at the night of September 8, 1985; entomologists for Vanni's family say September 6 to 7. The Genoa court found their evidence not applicable.
The DNA profiles: profiles on the 1985 envelopes, the handkerchief, the Scopeti trousers and a bullet do not match the victims, P.P. or F.N., but contamination by people who handled the exhibits has not been excluded, and the convicted men's profiles were not preserved.
Details that vary between sources: the ages of Barbara Locci (32 or 29) and Antonio Lo Bianco (29 or 31); the ages of Stefania Pettini (18 or 19) and Claudio Stefanacci (21 or 22); Stefano Mele's sentence (14 years plus two for slander, or 13 years with mitigation, or 16 years served); the number of double killings in P.P.'s first-instance conviction (seven according to La Nazione and Il Post; six according to AFP in 2022); the number of double killings in Vanni's and Lotti's convictions (four according to most sources; five in an NBC News report of 2006); and Lotti's sentence (26 years according to most sources; 24 years in a 2017 La Nazione report).
August 21, 1968: Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco are shot in a car at Castelletti di Signa; her six-year-old son survives. Stefano Mele is arrested.
March 25, 1970: the Florence Assize Court convicts Mele; appeal March 4, 1971; after a Cassation remand, the Perugia appeal court rules April 12, 1973, and the conviction is final.
September 14, 1974: Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini are killed at Rabatta, near Borgo San Lorenzo.
June 6, 1981: Giovanni Foggi and Carmela De Nuccio are killed at Mosciano, Scandicci; V.S. is arrested and later cleared.
October 22, 1981: Stefano Baldi and Susanna Cambi are killed at Travalle di Calenzano.
June 19, 1982: Paolo Mainardi and Antonella Migliorini are attacked at Baccaiano, Montespertoli; she dies at the scene and he dies in hospital the next day. The gun is linked to the 1968 case.
August 1982: F.V. is arrested; he is accused two months later.
September 9, 1983: Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Jens-Uwe Rüsch are killed at Giogoli while F.V. is in prison; he is released. G.M. and P.M. are arrested in 1983.
July 29, 1984: Claudio Stefanacci and Pia Rontini are killed near Vicchio; G.M. and P.M. are cleared.
September 1985: Nadine Mauriot and Jean-Michel Kraveichvili are killed at Scopeti; their bodies are found on September 9. An anonymous letter names P.P.; an envelope reaches prosecutor Silvia Della Monica.
October 1985: F.N. is found dead in Lake Trasimeno.
1986: S.V. is arrested over his first wife's death in Sardinia and later acquitted.
1987: the SAM list of suspects is drawn up.
December 1989: Judge Mario Rotella closes the Sardinian line.
Spring 1991: the SAM focuses on P.P.
April 1992: his property is searched; a cartridge is found in his garden.
January 17, 1993: P.P. is arrested.
1993: F.V. is found dead in a burned car near Chianni.
November 1, 1994: the Florence Assize Court convicts P.P. at first instance of seven double killings; life sentence.
February 12, 1996: Mario Vanni is arrested.
February 1996: the Assize Court of Appeal acquits P.P.
December 12, 1996: the Court of Cassation annuls the acquittal and orders a new appeal.
December 1997: Vanni is moved to house arrest.
February 22, 1998: P.P. is found dead at home before the new appeal.
2000: the convictions of Vanni (life) and Lotti (26 years) for four double killings become final; G.F. is acquitted.
2002: Lotti is released and dies.
2004: Vanni's sentence is suspended for health reasons.
2008: F.C. is acquitted in an abbreviated trial.
April 2009: Vanni dies, at 82.
December 2013: the ROS search the former legionnaire's home.
2015: no killer's DNA found on the Scopeti tent; a bullet is recovered from a cushion.
2017: the former legionnaire and his doctor are placed under investigation; DNA profiles reported from the 1985 envelopes and a handkerchief.
March 2022: victims' families ask Florence to reopen the case; Il Post reports the inquiry into the former legionnaire has been archived.
July 14, 2022: last hearings of the parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission recorded in its report on the case.
August 2024: DNA on the Scopeti bullet is reported not to match victims or convicted men; exhumations are requested.
September 2024: F.V.'s remains are exhumed for DNA comparison.
2024: the former legionnaire dies, never charged.
January 2025: Vanni's nephew asks the Genoa Court of Appeal to revise the conviction.
July 2025: press reports say a genetic test found that Stefano Mele was not the 1968 survivor's biological father; the Genoa court declares the revision request inadmissible, and an appeal to the Court of Cassation is announced.
January 31, 2026: a lawyer files a further complaint with investigators; no response reported.