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sienamysticI'm not a hard-core true crime reader, but I do dip into the genre occasionally, and when I came across a book titled The Monster of Florence, about a serial killer who operated in Tuscany, I went ahead and picked it up. Interestingly, the timing of my reading the book coincided with the Amanda Knox case (which I hadn't followed due to somehow not seeing any news about the story until recently) - the link between the two is that not only is it a murder case set in the same general Italian locale, but the same Italian prosecutor figures in both cases.
Between 1968 and 1985, seven couples were murdered in the vicinity of Florence. They were young couples out parking, or camping, and the murderer would shoot them and then mutilate the woman's body. Over the years, new suspects, new theories, and wildly implausible theories on Satanic rituals would spring up. Eventually, the Italian journalist who covered the case for most of his career, Mario Spezi, would be accused of being the murderer, and Douglas Preston, an American crime/thriller writer, would be accused of helping him plant evidence, obstructing justice, and other assorted crimes. Preston was eventually told to leave and never come back, under threat of prosecution. Here's a little book-trailer that gives a bit of an overview about the story. Here's the wiki entry on the topic.
Since I wrote this post about reading police procedurals set in Italy, I haven't really returned to my stray thoughts about justice, police, and society in Italy. I did read several Andrea Camilleri books to finally get a perspective on how Italians themselves enjoy police procedurals, and perhaps a clue into how they view a policeman as the hero of the story. It confirms a lot of what I already thought - that Italians prize cunning and the ability to bend departmental power-games and bureaucracy to achieve their goals, which in this case results in solving the crime. The stories are less bleak than the ones written by foreigners seem to be, or at least that's my perception of them - there's a strand of hope that as long as these good, smart people are out there surreptitiously gaming the system for good, and not personal gain, that things will be ok.
With this book, detailing real investigations of a real case, I was interested to see how it compared to fiction. I'm not qualified to do any heavy lifting on the topic, for a variety of reasons - I'm not Italian, I haven't even been immersed in the society for long periods of time (two summer stays, and a lot of reading, that's it), and I'm no cultural scholar. But a part of me is still fascinated - and was really saddened - by the book and the light it sheds on the Italian justice system, the Monster of Florence crimes, and also the Amanda Knox case (which a newly-added afterword to the book discusses). It essentially confirms the most cynical view of Italy as a modern, first-world society but where, if you turn the wrong corner, you find yourself face to face with entrenched attitudes about power, justice, and the law that are purely medieval and less interested in finding the guilty and preventing them from doing any more damage. It's pretty shocking to an American, because no matter how cynical we get about our justice system, we don't believe corruption on these levels truly exists here, and we tend to think of Italy in the same ways as we do the rest of Europe (probably for us, Europe=England, which is wrongheaded but tempting to do). American law has more built-in protections to help the accused, and seeing a justice system without those things in place makes us blink and do a double-take. Set this story just about anywhere else in the world, and it becomes less shocking, rightly or wrongly.
Like I said earlier, I came away from this book very saddened. I have a special love for the city of Perugia, which is where I lived for my first visit (Amanda Knox was a student at the same university where I took classes. Thinking so badly of it hurts me - how bad must it be for the citizens who live there, and who see this sort of thing go on?
The book itself is fascinating, particularly for those who are interested in true crime. But it's also immensely frustrating, because there is no tidy resolution, there is no killer behind bars at the end of the book. He's still out there.
Between 1968 and 1985, seven couples were murdered in the vicinity of Florence. They were young couples out parking, or camping, and the murderer would shoot them and then mutilate the woman's body. Over the years, new suspects, new theories, and wildly implausible theories on Satanic rituals would spring up. Eventually, the Italian journalist who covered the case for most of his career, Mario Spezi, would be accused of being the murderer, and Douglas Preston, an American crime/thriller writer, would be accused of helping him plant evidence, obstructing justice, and other assorted crimes. Preston was eventually told to leave and never come back, under threat of prosecution. Here's a little book-trailer that gives a bit of an overview about the story. Here's the wiki entry on the topic.
Since I wrote this post about reading police procedurals set in Italy, I haven't really returned to my stray thoughts about justice, police, and society in Italy. I did read several Andrea Camilleri books to finally get a perspective on how Italians themselves enjoy police procedurals, and perhaps a clue into how they view a policeman as the hero of the story. It confirms a lot of what I already thought - that Italians prize cunning and the ability to bend departmental power-games and bureaucracy to achieve their goals, which in this case results in solving the crime. The stories are less bleak than the ones written by foreigners seem to be, or at least that's my perception of them - there's a strand of hope that as long as these good, smart people are out there surreptitiously gaming the system for good, and not personal gain, that things will be ok.
With this book, detailing real investigations of a real case, I was interested to see how it compared to fiction. I'm not qualified to do any heavy lifting on the topic, for a variety of reasons - I'm not Italian, I haven't even been immersed in the society for long periods of time (two summer stays, and a lot of reading, that's it), and I'm no cultural scholar. But a part of me is still fascinated - and was really saddened - by the book and the light it sheds on the Italian justice system, the Monster of Florence crimes, and also the Amanda Knox case (which a newly-added afterword to the book discusses). It essentially confirms the most cynical view of Italy as a modern, first-world society but where, if you turn the wrong corner, you find yourself face to face with entrenched attitudes about power, justice, and the law that are purely medieval and less interested in finding the guilty and preventing them from doing any more damage. It's pretty shocking to an American, because no matter how cynical we get about our justice system, we don't believe corruption on these levels truly exists here, and we tend to think of Italy in the same ways as we do the rest of Europe (probably for us, Europe=England, which is wrongheaded but tempting to do). American law has more built-in protections to help the accused, and seeing a justice system without those things in place makes us blink and do a double-take. Set this story just about anywhere else in the world, and it becomes less shocking, rightly or wrongly.
Like I said earlier, I came away from this book very saddened. I have a special love for the city of Perugia, which is where I lived for my first visit (Amanda Knox was a student at the same university where I took classes. Thinking so badly of it hurts me - how bad must it be for the citizens who live there, and who see this sort of thing go on?
The book itself is fascinating, particularly for those who are interested in true crime. But it's also immensely frustrating, because there is no tidy resolution, there is no killer behind bars at the end of the book. He's still out there.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 08:52 pm (UTC)I've been finding it fascinating reading US takes on the Knox case, because stuff being said about the Italian justice system is what I would think about the US. But that is partly because I think that outsiders always see (that is, their media shows) the things about a system that will shock them, sometimes because they are simply different, other times because they go against ethical codes - when US stories show up in the UK they are often ones where the British system is completely different and are framed in "Look how hideously inhumane and corrupt the US legal system is".
Personally, I'd rather take my chances in Italy - at least the corrupt judge won't get me executed. But now I am becoming political :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:44 pm (UTC)And for me - and this is probably because I'm inside my culture - the odds of somebody in the US getting unfairly railroaded all the way to an execution feel like they've been lessening. Many states have or are abolishing it, the process to actually be sentenced to death takes years and years, the appeals process can drag out even longer, and there are, if all else fails inside the system, groups that police the legal system and will try to work to correct miscarriages of justice. I'm not saying it never happens - we all know that's not true. And I'm not too keen on the death penalty myself, so I can't defend it with much vigor. But the idea that, if the Amanda Knox case occurred in the US, that she might be executed, seems very unlikely.
The actions of several corrupt prosecutors in the Monster of Florence case are just...outrageously over the top. And the idea that the same head prosecutor (from Perugia) who so badly and deliberately mangled the Monster case is now working on the Amanda Knox case...despite the fact that he stands legally charged with all sort of violations...is unbelievable. And yet, some of the Italians Preston encounters are not surprised that any of this is happening, and seems to expect it, in a rather gloomy way. Preston describes an attitude he frequently encountered, of thinking that Americans and their silly ideas of justice were naive beyond belief, and that everybody is always playing a deeper game, that there is always a story behind the story that they don't want you to see, reflects some of the themes that I see in the Andrea Camillari books, so I do think it's accurate (although obviously not universal to every Italian - Preston is helped a great deal by various people who want to fight against the various railroadings.)
And this reply has officially rambled off the deep end...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 08:13 pm (UTC)And for me - and this is probably because I'm inside my culture - the odds of somebody in the US getting unfairly railroaded all the way to an execution feel like they've been lessening.
I think the being inside the culture issue is crucial. I'd probably rather be tried in the UK than anywhere simply because I understand the UK in a different way (though I'd probably rather be in prison in Iceland :-) ). THere is a huge difference in comparing Us and Them and Them and Them. The UK press doesn’t report the routine executions - they are simply mild;y wrong and we shrug - whereas it does routinely report the mentally ill, the under eighteens at the time of the crime, the Guilty of Being Black etc. We know wrongful execution does happen, and any chance is a big one when compared to no chance whatsoever*. Likewise we don’t see the sensible policemen with guns in the USA and so worry about them being trigger-happy, whereas though I’m sure there have been wrongful shooting of French people by French armed police, they aren’t part of our crime narrative about France (well they are, but only in terms of when I was a teenager it was routine for the first time people saw guns to be on a trip to France. It was part of the school trip excitement).
*On this thought-frame, it’s notable that the UK executions that remain most in the public consciousness are those among the last performed that are now felt to be “wrong” even if the individuals concerned had committed the crime. It's also been the framing of more recent miscarriages of justice.
I don’t think we’ll agree on Preston/Perugia, so I’ll leave that! However I also found the sentence nigita quotes interesting, as it is something I have seen elsewhere from Americans (and Canadians) in relation to the Kercher case in terms of "concepts of justice" that I think are about profound cultural misunderstandings.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 03:47 am (UTC)" if you turn the wrong corner, you find yourself face to face with entrenched attitudes about power, justice, and the law that are purely medieval and less interested in finding the guilty and preventing them from doing any more damage."
The US justice system is worse than Italy's in mine opinion, by miles and miles.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 02:57 pm (UTC)I do think (and perhaps this *is* simply my own privilege, but it's one of those gut-level beliefs that I'd have to actually research to prove or disprove) that the American judicial system does have more basic-level protections for the accused (like the right to be told the crimes you're being charged with) built in. I'm not contending that those protections can't be circumvented by dirty cops, by exhausted (or possibly incompetent, or dirty) public defenders struggling under impossible workloads, or a society that is obviously still quite racist. Perhaps my brain is insisting on seeing a distinction where there isn't a difference here.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 10:04 pm (UTC)anyways, Dateline did a piece on the case, including the whole Spezi/Preston vs Giuttari/Italian police, back in 2007. They still show it on msnbc and/or investigative discovery on occasion, it's called Murder on Lovers Lane. The transcript of it is http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19333195/ns/dateline_nbc-crime_reports/. If you're interested.
The book I am trying to recommend was one in a (fiction) series. All I can remember is that in the first book, the serial killer tortured the victims with old viking methods, like blood angels. And it was modern. And that I did read at least 2 other books by the same author. And I believe the author had a long last name. and the book title had neither "blood" nor "angel" in it. But I can't find anything on the web that leads me to the author/book. *sigh* my sister has the books right now, one day I'll get them back & be able to remember who the author is.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 02:58 pm (UTC)