After its premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival, the Netflix series "Il Mostro" (The Monster) has been out for just four days, but it's already enjoying a massive stream. The four-episode series focuses on the infamous "Sardinian lead" in the investigation into the so-called Monster of Florence. Its success is sealed by the all-Sardinian cast, directed by Stefano Sollima, who created it with Leonardo Fasoli, and some scenes were filmed in Villacidro.
Francesca Olia, an actress from Cagliari, born in 1996, plays the "monster's" first victim: Barbara Locci, originally from Villasalto, killed with her lover, Antonio Lo Bianco, at age 32 in Sigma in 1968. Giacomo Fadda from Cagliari and Valentino Mannias from Serramanna play the brothers Francesco and Salvatore Vinci, originally from Villacidro. Marco Bullitta, from Sassari, and Antonio Tintis, a Roman of Sardinian origins, play the brothers Stefano and Giovanni Mele. And then there's Giordano Mannu, a very young actor from Carbonia, who plays Natalino Mele, Barbara Locci's son, who was sleeping in the back seat of the car where the couple was traveling at the time of the attack. Among the other Sardinian actors Alberto Marcello, Giuseppe Boy, Alessandro Cucca, Luca Pusceddu, Adele Piras, Barbara Pitzianti, Monica Demuru, Sabina Zicconi and Marta Proietti Orzella .
Sixteen people were killed in eight double homicides between 1968 and 1985 by one or more serial killers. The series retraces the entire first phase of the investigation, specifically the Sardinian lead, explored before Pietro Pacciani and his "cronies" entered one of the longest and most controversial investigations in Italian history.
The woman's husband, Stefano Mele, originally from Fordongianus, was sentenced to 14 years for the murders of Locci and Lo Bianco. Mele initially denied any responsibility and accused two of his wife's other lovers, the Vinci brothers, also Sardinian emigrants, before confessing. Yet the murders of couples living alone in the Florentine countryside continued.
