The remains of Francesco Vinci, the man from Villacidro who was imprisoned in 1982 on charges of being the “monster of Florence,” only to be later exonerated and released, were exhumed this morning in the cemetery of Montelupo Fiorentino.
The operation was ordered by the Florence Public Prosecutor's Office after the widow Vitalia Velis and her children independently requested the exhumation of the body to find out, through DNA testing, whether the man found killed, tied up and charred in the trunk of a car in August 1993, in the Pisa countryside, was really Vinci.
Together with the body in the car, that of his servant shepherd Angelo Vargiu was also found.
The circumstances of the crimes have never been fully clarified, the relatives' hypothesis is that Vinci may still be alive. On site, shortly after dawn, in addition to the Carabinieri and the two prosecutors Ornella Galeotti and Beatrice Giunti, also one of Francesco Vinci's sons. The remains were taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Florence, where they will be examined - with DNA comparison - by the experts appointed by the prosecutor, the forensic doctor Martina Focardi and the geneticist Ugo Ricci, and by those appointed by Vitalia Velis, the forensic geneticist Eugenio D'Orio and the forensic doctor Aldo Allegrini.
Who was Francesco Vinci
At the time of the investigation into the Monster, Vinci was at the center of the so-called "Sardinian lead." He had in fact been the lover of Barbara Locci , killed with the Sicilian Antonio Lo Bianco in 1968 in Castelletti di Signa, in what has been hypothesized could be the first crime attributed to the Monster series because of the same gun (a 22-caliber Beretta). Vinci was accused by Locci's husband, Stefano Mele, who had also already been convicted, as the perpetrator of the double homicide in 1968. He would have acted out of jealousy towards Locci, but the manner and the fact that he could possess a gun of that type fueled investigative suspicions about him also for four other subsequent murders of couples.
