“This series does not serve the truth”: The Monster of Florence (Netflix) was severely criticized by an expert in the case

With 38 million hours viewed In one week worldwide, The Monster of Florence is currently the most watched series on Netflix. Therefore, this fictional reconstruction of one of the most mysterious Italian criminal cases of all time attracted special attention.

Director Stefano Sollima takes this unsolved case to examine the morality of Italian society in the 70s, between misogyny and voyeurism. The approach is not to everyone’s taste and especially to Salvatore Maugeri – the author of “Rebus Tuscan The Bloody Odyssey of the Monster of Florence”.

This Montbellier native grew up with Jean-Michel Kraveishvili, the last male victim of the serial killer. A childhood friend with him “took 400 steps”between two music sessions. During the meeting with him, he informed us that he started to be interested in this issue “Not out of personal curiosity” But because Jean-Michel’s older brother asked him.

During our 30-minute interview with him, Salvatore Mauger tried to address the Netflix series’ flaws and problematic treatment of history.

“The series is primarily presented as bloodthirsty entertainment. I mean, it does not serve the truth in any way. It takes such liberties with the facts and serves a commercial purpose that is so obvious, so crude, so brazen and obscene that we can only be disappointed. This is not a series about the Monster of Florence.”

Who Was Barbara Loach Really?

The first female victim of the Monster of Florence, played by Francesca Olia, Barbara Loch plays the lead role in the Netflix series. An approach strongly criticized by Mauger:

“Solima is ready for all the arrangements, all the disguises, because it portrays, for example, Barbara Loch as a submissive woman who is raped by a tenant imposed by her husband. This is absolutely contrary to the facts.

Barbara Loch was a completely emancipated woman who was 17 years younger than her husband – known for oligophrenia. Oligophren literally means “little brain”, i.e. village idiot.

It was a marriage arranged by families for their own interests. This woman finds herself in Florence with a husband who would rather play cards and drink with his friends at a bar than take care of his family and work for the betterment of everyone.

Barbara herself used to go to bars and that’s where she met her lovers. And the character of Salvatore Vinci back home is actually the one who meets him. He had already gone out with his older brother, a certain Giovanni Vinci (who is Natalino’s real father, editor’s note).

She was a woman who was extremely free in her actions and in any case did not care what her husband thought about her comings and goings and extramarital activities. This is already a lie that Solima tells us to support his thesis about male dominance over women.

I’m not going to go so far as to deny that, historically, patriarchy has characterized relationships between men and women. But it turns out that life is much more nuanced than that. We are not puppets without any free will.”

Salvatore Vinci, not the powerful man the series portrays

“Salvatore Vinci, you have all the characteristics of a dominant macho who can bend anyone to his will. When you see what he looked like… I know he was barely 1 m65. Forgive me, but he certainly had a very hard time imposing his power on anyone who faced him, even if it was a woman in the case of Barbara Loch.

We know that he committed domestic violence, that two of his partners or his wife left the family home because he led them into threesomes that they did not agree on. The incident was revealed by the police investigation.

Salvatore Vinci was extremely decisive in his sexual choices, obsessive, he did everything, he loved orgies. He forced his wives and abused them.

He was the kind of domestic tyrant we often see around us, who wouldn’t hurt a fly outside, who couldn’t impress anyone. He only brought fear into his home. So it’s a shame that the Netflix series missed an opportunity to work towards finding the truth about these cases. “

Who is the Monster of Florence?

So, my book, I try to explore all the ways, to show how great is the confusion among the investigators, the numerous disagreements, first of all, between the gendarmerie and the police, in a kind of deaf and insidious war that opposes the establishment of the truth.

At least 15 alleged criminals have been brought to justice, their names dragged through the mud and never even the slightest apology from the police.

My book tries to emphasize the fact that we don’t know anything tangible. We can only speculate: for the Sardinian clan, against Pietro Pacciani or the doctor from Perugia who was suspected. Or even more recently against an American soldier stationed in Italy during all those years when the monster was rampant, and who was presented by an Italian journalist as the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer.

One of the lawyers for the guilty party always insisted that the monster could only be a policeman or a member of the police who regularly acted in the uniform of a policeman or gendarme and who took advantage of the surprise of his lovers to kill them in cold blood and then mutilate them. This is a good hypothesis, but unfortunately not supported by conclusive evidence.

We understand that there is no shortage of explanatory avenues. There is only one of the Sardinian clan, and it is a safe bet that with the success of the first season, Netflix will order several more, and that the chapter about Pietro Pacciani and his “food friends” will not turn to the satanic hypothesis and occult sponsors that the last investigator wanted to “sell” to the Florence prosecutor’s office.

He pursued this idea for some time, dragging the names of several famous people in the village through the mud, before ending this esoteric delirium, which was created from scratch by the inability of the police to find the real culprit. This is a real topic that the series should have addressed. Alas, the statement is probably too polemical and not enough marketable…”.

Monster of Florence, watch on Netflix.