The Monster of Florence

by Magdalen Nabb

  Twelve

  PART SEVEN

  -THE BLOODSTAINED RAG-

  7.1. THE RAG

  On 30 July ’84, the day after the Vicchio murder, which was, if possible, even more horrifying than the previous ones, house searches were made of anyone who had for any reason been suspected up to now. Among these was Silvano Vargius.

  The search of his house brought to light a flat, round, straw bag lying underneath heavy blankets in a cupboard. The bag contained three pieces of cloth, assumed to be cotton. Two of these pieces were printed with yellow flowers and sandwiched between them was the third piece which was plain white and stained with grey and blood-red marks. Suspecting that the red stains might indeed be blood, the carabinieri removed the bag and its contents. Silvano was present and showed no concern whatsoever. A report was made and consigned to the Public Prosecutor’s office, along with the bag, and Silvano was asked to produce an alibi for the previous night.

  Some months then passed but the consignment of the rag and the accompanying report produced no response from the Public Prosecutor’s office. Eventually, in April 1985, the rag was sent to be tested. The results of these tests showed that the red stains were blood and that the rag also had traces of gunpowder.

  Silvano Vargius was unable to furnish a convincing alibi and this office suggested that the Prosecutor should ask that the accusation against him be formalized. The suggestion was rejected.

  The reason given was that the bloodstained rag could not be the basis of a specific formal accusation since it was evidence in a preliminary, generic enquiry into the whole series of murders and the said enquiry was not under instruction.

  This office then requested the relative documentation. The Chief Prosecutor delivered this, together with a letter expressing doubts as to the value of the material evidence concerned and on the basis of these doubts requested the acquittal here presented.

  Such a request, whilst preventing the enquiry here documented from proceeding, does not alter the fact that until further tests prove evidence to the contrary, the bloodstained rag remains a piece of evidence which is, in however limited a way, of value.

  The rag was discovered in the home of a suspect against whom other significant evidence had already been gathered with regard to the ’68 murder. It was found the morning after a double homicide had been committed with the same gun used in ’68. The suspect could produce no alibi.

  However little was known about the origins and reasons for the presence of the rag in the suspect’s home, it seems evident that the proper enquiries and tests should have been made, even considering these as being of positive value to the accused in defending himself from suspicion.

  The Public Prosecutor’s refusal to proceed with the tests even at an informal level was defended in his accompanying letter as follows: “… it seems to me incredible that Vargius, who had already been searched (after the previous murder) should, while still under suspicion in this same enquiry, keep a bloodstained rag, which could connect him with the murder, in his bedroom.”

  A fact is a fact. A piece of material evidence remains such regardless of whether we are capable at this stage of understanding the whys and wherefores of it. In the absence of scientific proof any suppositions about its positive or negative value remain just that: suppositions.

  7.2. PROVENANCE

  Silvano maintained, not unreasonably, given the nature of the object, that the straw bag belonged to one of the women who had frequented the house. He attributed it, rather uncertainly, to his ex-partner. This woman, however, had ceased to cohabit with him a year previously. Shown the bag, she denied its being hers.

  Vargius’s second wife had left him even earlier (in 1981) and she denied ever having seen the bag.

  His present partner, likewise, had never seen the bag before. The only person who claimed to recognize the bag was the cleaner who said she’d seen it around the house during the previous winter and spring but had no idea what it might contain.

  Obviously, ownership of the straw bag is of relative unimportance compared to what it contained. The bag was in the house at Silvano’s disposition no matter who first owned it, which is all that counts.

  To the Public Prosecutor’s comment that it is incredible that Silvano, under suspicion, should keep such damaging evidence in the house, one could well respond that it is equally incredible that such a piece of cloth should be kept between two other clean pieces, carefully placed in a bag and hidden under blankets in a cupboard, if it were nothing more than a dirty rag. It is not improbable that suitable tests carried out immediately would have solved the mystery.

  7.3. THE BLOODSTAINS

  Preliminary tests carried out in Florence showed the rag to be stained with human blood group O. Further tests carried out in Rome in May 1986, a year and ten months after the evidence was delivered by the carabinieri to the Prosecutor’s office, revealed that there were stains of two different blood groups, B and O Rh positive. The identification of the B group was less certain than the O because of the rag being polluted by other substances previously (such as washing powder).

  The final report, deposited in December 1987, three years and five months after the evidence was delivered, stated that the bloodstains were rather old and that such conclusions as had been drawn were insignificant because of this.

  At this point in history, scientific progress had made DNA matching possible. Whilst such tests were not yet being used in this country, they could have been carried out in Great Britain where the inventor of the tests himself assured us that he could work on a sample as small as that available. Whilst the victims of all the homicides had been buried without the conservation of samples, it would at least have been possible to match the DNA to samples taken from Vargius and his current partner.

  The DNA tests were not carried out.

  There remained only the evidence of the blood groups. The Prosecutor’s statement that the rag carried only one blood group, and that it was the group to which Silvano’s partner belonged, is unacceptable. Two groups were identified when the evidence was fresh. It was Silvano’s ex-partner who was blood group B and she had been gone a year. Carlo Salvini, victim of the Vicchio murder, was blood group O, which was first identified on the rag, but so was Silvano himself. Since half the population of Italy is blood group O and a large part is group B there seemed little point in proceeding with blood tests on other members of Silvano’s family, who might have had some connection with the rag.

  In the absence of scientific evidence, the bloodstained rag cannot be used against Silvano Vargius but its existence remains a cause of suspicion against him, because if it cannot be accepted, at a merely hypothetical level, as proof against him, by the same token it cannot be used as hypothetical evidence in his defence as suggested by the Public Prosecutor (“It is incredible that Vargius who had already been searched”, etc …).

  7.4. THE GUNPOWDER

  About the presence of gunpowder on the rag there are no scientific doubts. We can only agree with the Public Prosecutor’s comment, “Who could reasonably assert that the traces are residue from the Beretta 22 pistol used to commit the crimes?”

  Nobody could, of course. The ballistics report states: “Currently available scientific tests do not allow us to identify the ammunition from which this gunpowder came.”

  The fact remains that the gunpowder, from whatever ammunition, is present, and no explanation has been offered for it. Silvano Vargius stated clearly under questioning that the blood on the rag might well be human blood but it was impossible that there was also gunpowder on it. A statement which must leave us perplexed, since he also states that the bag and its contents are not his and he knows nothing about them.

  The fact remains that the experts’ reports provided on the bloodstained rag offer no judicially valid proof that the rag is in any way connected to the crimes in question.

  7.5. ALIBI AND SEARCH

  Checks on the alibi offered by Silvano Vargius for the night of the Vi
cchio murder are remarkable chiefly for their resemblance to the same checks carried out after the ’68 murder. According to Vargius, he left the house at about nine-thirty and returned an hour later. The purpose of the outing was to take his current partner and her little girl for an ice cream in the centre of Florence. The woman, when questioned, stated that such an outing occurred so rarely that it would be memorable and that she had no recollection of it as regards that date. They had, she said, gone out once for an ice cream. She remembered it well and it was on another evening. The mechanics of this alibi are easily recognized from ’68 when Vargius claimed he had been playing billiards with a friend who later realized that, though they had played billiards one evening that week, it was not on that date.

  Silvano Vargius went out a second time on the night of the Vicchio murder, in order to find his dog, between ten and half past ten. He then left the house a third time between three and three-thirty in the morning “to go jogging.”

  As in ’68, Vargius’s companion at first confirmed the part of the alibi which involved her, but she later recounted that he had insisted that she do so and that, on attempting to reconstruct that evening for herself, she found that no such outing occurred on that date. The result of the checks made indicates that there was nothing to prove that Silvano could not have driven to Vicchio to commit the murders that night.

  When Silvano was subsequently asked to provide an alibi for the 1985 murder, the same situation repeated itself in that Silvano had the time and opportunity to commit the murder. However, no conclusions could be drawn since there was some argument as to when the murder was committed (during the night of Saturday/Sunday or Sunday/Monday). The bodies were not discovered until Monday afternoon.

  7.6. CONCLUSION

  The information collected about Silvano Vargius was extremely suggestive: the death of his young wife in 1960, his strange sexual relationships with men and women, couples and groups, his manic depressive states which resulted in hospitalization in 1981, his probable part in the ’68 murder and the ambiguity of his relationship with his brother Flavio, all serve to build up an image of an altogether remarkable personality.

  However, none of the evidence listed above can be translated into proof such as would be acceptable in court. The evidence, such as it is, was considered sufficient to warrant Silvano’s being ordered to present himself before the carabinieri to answer accusations by Sergio Muscas of his responsibility for the ’68 murder and by his ex-partner, who claimed he’d always kept a pistol in the bedroom during the time she was living with him.

  However, when Silvano was released from prison on being acquitted of murdering his first wife, he not only failed to present himself before the authorities in Florence as ordered but he left the country.

  THEREFORE:

  At the request of the Public Prosecutor’s office—

  IT IS HEREBY DECLARED:

  That no further proceedings will be taken against—

  1) VARGIUS FLAVIO

  2) VARGIUS SILVANO

  3) MUSCAS FABIO

  Florence, 13 December 1989

  The Instructing Judge

  Michele Romola

  “Well, I’d have arrested him,” mumbled the Marshal, dropping the last of the report on to the floor by the bed and rubbing at his tired eyes. “Whole thing’s a disgrace. If we had even half that amount of evidence against our wretched Suspect …”

  He felt himself drifting into unconsciousness even as he decided to switch his lamp off and go to sleep. It was dark, though, anyway. The Marshal’s most urgent wish was that the man beside him would keep quiet. He didn’t want to be distracted. He couldn’t understand quite why the scene passing before his eyes should be lit by a red glow when he’d just turned the lights off. Perhaps it was because otherwise, in the thick warm darkness, you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

  His heart was beating very loudly and he knew the reason was fear, without his feeling the fear itself very clearly. In any case, he had to watch. He’d never been a Peeping Tom and he’d never even been able to imagine what it would feel like. Of course, he was here for work, so that was different.

  The man beside him uttered a little panic-stricken whine.

  “Hush …”

  Concentrate. He had to concentrate. He was being given the chance to see everything and he must take in every detail. The thin figure dressed in black was pulling the girl’s body down the little slope below him, now. She was naked and her skin glowed pink because of the red light. Infrared, that’s what it was …

  He was laying the pink body down and spreading the limbs. His movements were fast and jerky like in a silent film. Before beginning work in earnest he seemed to rear up and stare straight at the Marshal, his red-tinged eyes glittering. But only one of the eyes, its pupil dilated with drugs, made contact with the Marshal’s own gaze. The other was fixed and dead.

  Then he plunged down again, grunting.

  “No …” But the scene rolled on inexorably, and beside the Marshal the Suspect began crying loudly. “Don’t … Be quiet.” To the Marshal’s relief he wasn’t shown the mutilation. The man appeared to be making frenzied love to the acquiescent body and it was left to him to work out for himself that each rapid kiss and bite at the neck was really a small knife cut, and that when he grasped her left breast and pushed himself into her with his other hand it was really the knife at work, cutting deeper.

  The howling at his side grew louder. How could he cope with both problems at once? It was too much. Fortunately the Suspect was so tiny a version of his normal self that the easiest answer was to pick him up and take him away.

  He tucked the tearful creature under his left arm and turned to go along the dark road.

  “Come away. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  He must have spoken aloud. He opened his eyes and could still sense the sound of his own voice in the room as his eyes gradually focused on the white wall, the muslin curtain, his dressing gown on the chair. He was sweating and his breath was shallow. His head seemed to have a great weight dragging it down behind. There was still that residue of fear that nightmares always leave in their wake and he was shamefacedly glad that he’d dropped off leaving the light on. He’d have been even more glad to find Teresa beside him. She’d have gotten out of bed, saying crossly as she always did, “If you can’t eat at a proper time at least eat something light. You might well have nightmares …” Then she’d make him a camomile tea. He could make himself one, then he’d feel as though she were with him. He struggled into a sitting position, trying to breathe normally, trying to shake the effects of the nightmare off. But although most of it had developed in that illogical way which seemed so real at the time and dissolved the instant you opened your eyes, the image of the killer remained clear and detailed. It showed no signs at all of dissolving on impact with the waking world. He’d been thin, thin faced and sharp featured, and his hair had been clipped very close to his head.

  “Camomile …” He got out of bed to go and make it. He didn’t think he had indigestion at all—he was more likely just overtired—but the tea would be soothing, anyway.

  Sometimes, when you dream about somebody you know they have another person’s appearance. Could it be something of that sort?

  “Better sleep on it …”

  But the truth was that he wasn’t too comfortable about falling asleep again just yet. Besides, he was really very wide awake now. He carried the tea into his bedroom and set it down near the bedside lamp. Now there’s where the answer might be. He’d just finished the Romola report when he dropped off and before that he’d been looking at the book lying next to the lamp. It was one of Bacci’s books of case histories. Typewritten sheets were slotted in at intervals where Bacci had chosen a case he thought might be useful and given them a translation. In some cases Bacci had translated himself, making a precis, leaving out anything he thought irrelevant and writing very much in the style of an official report. The others, done by his girlfriend, who
’d offered to give him a hand so as to speed things up, were complete, since she couldn’t know what was relevant and what wasn’t. It was something of hers he’d been reading. That glass eye was something she’d written about.

  He soon found it.

  I went to school but I don’t remember nothing about no lessons. I remember my ma put me in a dress. She made me go to school in this dress and she said that’ll learn you to behave like a boy and not be screamin’ and hollerin’ every time you get a beatin’. She give some terrible beatin’s.

  There was a teacher once give me some shoes because I didn’t have none and she beat me for that, for acceptin’ them shoes. And she beat me when I didn’t want to watch her with men. She liked me to watch her with her johns. I grew up watching her like that till I was fourteen, then I left home. I hated all my life. I hated everybody. You ask me if I ever loved somebody, I don’t think so. There was the mule and I loved him, I think. We was like friends and I’d talk to him. In the summer he’d have these sores on his legs and I’d tell him I know them sores hurt you, boy, I know that. I knew they hurt him because I had them the same as him. We was both hungry all the time as well and I’d get somethin’ for me and somethin’ for him. He’d eat most anythin’ and then he’d lick my hand for a long time and I liked that. I liked sleeping near him some of the time, ’specially after a real bad beatin’. He was soft and quiet and he’d breathe on me, warm like and I’d feel good. Only then my ma caught me doing that and she said you love that mule, don’t you? You love him? And I said I guessed maybe I loved him and she came out right away with a shotgun and she shot him right there in the yard. Then she beat the hell out of me because she had to pay for the truck that came and took him. They tied his four feet together and drug him off and his head was bent back, trailin’ behind like he was still lookin’ at me, and it was my fault he was killed. I never loved nothin’ after that. I’m bad all through like she said. That was one hell of a beatin’, but that wasn’t when my eye got took out, that was another time and I don’t remember much of that because I didn’t wake up for days. It was one of my “uncles” took me to the hospital and they took my eye out. He said I fell downstairs and I didn’t say nothin’, not then. He wasn’t really my uncle, he was one of her johns but he talked to me once in a while and he was the one first showed me about sex and stuff. He used to do it to animals. He killed ’em first and then he did it and showed me how. He said you should get yourself some girl as well, you’re fourteen. So I went after this girl but she wouldn’t let me do it to her. She was scared of my eye, of the hole. Lots of people was scared of that because stuff come out of it all the time. She said I smelled bad too and she wouldn’t let me touch her. I had to kill her to get sex. Most of the time I had to do that, wasn’t no other way to get it. Killin’s the only thing I was ever good at and now I’ve been caught I’m not scared of dying. That’s the best thing for somebody like me. I know that.