The remains exhumed in the Montelupo cemetery are those of Francesco Vinci, a key figure in the so-called “Sardinian trail” for the Monster of Florence crimes, which ended with the acquittal of the suspects. The confirmation comes from the DNA test, as explained by the criminologist and private investigator Davide Cannella, special prosecutor of the Vinci family who had requested the test.
Now "that DNA will be part of the investigative material collected on the killer of the couples - explains Cannella -. It is likely that the Prosecutor's Office intends to compare it with some samples collected at the places where those brutal crimes occurred".
The exhumation was ordered last September by prosecutors Ornella Galeotti and Beatrice Giunti to clarify whether it was really the body of the man found killed, tied up and charred in the trunk of a car in August 1993, in the countryside near Pisa. The remains were then examined at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Florence, by the experts appointed by the prosecution, the forensic doctor Martina Focardi and the geneticist Ugo Ricci, and by those appointed by Vinci's widow, Vitalia Velis, the forensic geneticist Eugenio D'Orio and the forensic doctor Aldo Allegrini.
Together with his brother Salvatore, Francesco was at the centre of the "Sardinian trail" on the "couple murders", starting with the killing of the two lovers Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco in 1968 in the countryside of Lastra a Signa, killed with a 22 calibre pistol. Stefano Mele, the woman's husband, pointed the finger at the two brothers, his wife's lovers, but in the end he was convicted not only for the double homicide but also for having slandered the Vinci family .
The weapon was never found. But it was used in 1974 to murder Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini in Borgo San Lorenzo. In 1982 Vinci was arrested, suspected of being the monster. But while he was in prison, in 1983 the killer of the couples returned to kill, leaving two German boys on the ground. And all charges against him were dropped. Ten years later his body, charred, was found together with that of his shepherd servant in the trunk of a car in the countryside of Chianni, in the Pisan area.
(Online Union)
