The Monster of Florence

PART SIX
-1984–5-

6.1. THE MISSING PAGE

This page concerns Silvano Vargius.

As has already been observed, Sergio Muscas, on the few occasions when he withdrew his accusations against Flavio Vargius, transferred them to Flavio’s brother Silvano. The last time this happened was in 1984 when Flavio was under arrest and Sergio was being questioned yet again about his accomplice in the ’68 murder. The transferral, as always, was of short duration and the one-page report of it separated from the main file as being irrelevant. Only after the murder of the two German boys seemed to demonstrate Flavio’s innocence did the investigators find and re-examine it. Its contents ran as follows:

Quite suddenly, for no apparent reason, Muscas began to talk about Silvano Vargius: “Still it’s true that Silvano was no better than he should be. He killed his wife before he left Sardinia and the kid was saved that time as well—no, I’m not saying anything against Silvano. I’m not suggesting anything. Silvano Vargius had a car.”

6.2. SERGIO’S AMBIGUITY

Muscas had made this reference to the death of Silvano’s wife the first time he accused him in ’68 but immediately after that he confessed and the seemingly irrelevant remark, though recorded, was ignored as being an invention. As regards the car, Sergio by now knew that his other accusations were against people who did not possess a car and so were unconvincing.

As regards Muscas’s original accusation against Silvano it should be remembered that when the latter was brought to Sergio’s cell for a confrontation Sergio fell to his knees sobbing and begging for forgiveness. When the case went to trial in 1970, Silvano was present and was wearing the dead woman’s engagement ring.

6.3. CAUSE OF AMBIGUITY

A re-examination of the documents of Sergio’s trial revealed an alarming piece of information. Sergio’s sister-in-law Tina declared in the witness box that Belinda Muscas had frequently declared that Nicolino was not Sergio’s son but the son of one of the Vargius brothers. Tina said she didn’t know which brother was referred to but that Sergio himself admitted the story was true. In fact, the brother referred to could only have been Silvano. At the time of Nicolino’s conception, Flavio was still living in Sardinia. Silvano had just arrived in Tuscany and was living with the Muscas couple. This puts Sergio’s twice-repeated statement, “He killed his wife … and the kid was saved that time as well,” in an even more alarming light. What remained unclear was a credible motive for Silvano’s having killed Belinda and any reason why Sergio, instead of accusing him openly, continued to accuse his brother.

In 1985 Sergio was questioned again about Flavio, once it was clear that he was not guilty of the six double homicides committed since 1974.

“It’s true that I was lying about Flavio when I accused him. It’s true as well that Silvano wanted me to accuse Flavio because they’d quarrelled. They didn’t quarrel about Belinda, though. It was to do with Amelio, Silvano’s kid. He always said Flavio had ruined him, teaching him to steal and to hate his own father. Silvano took the kid to live with him when he married again but it went badly. He ran away from home and went to work for a shepherd for a bit—a bad sort—I forget his name but he was always in and out of prison and, in my book, it was him got the kid involved in thieving, not Flavio. Anyway, then he did go and live with Flavio for a bit and that was when him and Silvano started fighting. It’s not true that it was because Silvano had picked up with Belinda again—I know he said he didn’t but he did. It wasn’t her, it was that he was pissed off about his kid running away and he even went to the carabinieri to try and get him brought back, claimed the kid had stolen a truck and a moped from him and set fire to his workshop. Silvano reckoned it was all Flavio’s fault. I don’t know whether it was or not. It’s true the lad got caught trying to steal an Alfa Romeo when he was fifteen or so but it was only a kid’s trick so it came to nothing. He just had a passion for red sports cars. I think he pinched a few of them—or he tried to—until he bought himself one when he came home—he took off from Flavio’s after only a few months and went somewhere up north to his mother’s sister. Stayed away for years. Anyway, that’s all there was to it. Silvano called that corrupting him and he never forgave Flavio and that’s why he wanted me to accuse him. You can believe me or not as you want but I swear it wasn’t because of Belinda. Now I’ve told you the truth, but Flavio did it, anyway, and if you bring him here I’ll accuse him to his face.”

Checking began on every contradictory element of his latest statement.

6.4. SILVANO VARGIUS IN 1968

Silvano’s alibi for the night of 22 August, 1968 had presumably been checked verbally but there was no written record of this. Silvano claimed to have been playing billiards that night with a young man called Salvatore Angius. Angius, a homeless Sardinian labourer, was indebted to Silvano for a number of reasons. He had employed him on building jobs and found him places to live. Most of the people questioned seemed to regard the younger man as having been treated as an adopted son. Angius was still living in Tuscany and working as a builder. On being questioned in 1984, he said he had often played billiards with Silvano but had never been sure about the exact day they’d played that week, but nobody had brought the matter up again and then Sergio was convicted. He was still in touch with Silvano but he wasn’t working for him now. Silvano, he said, had an emergency house call firm now, the sort you call if you lock yourself out or your pipes burst.

The employees of Silvano’s firm “Domestic Emergencies” were questioned in the spring of 1984. Two disturbing facts emerged about Silvano’s 1968 alibi: the first was that the relationship between him and the much younger Angius was a homosexual one. The second was that the address given by Angius when asked to confirm Silvano’s alibi in ’68 was that of his brother. Salvatore Angius had used his brother’s address for years as his official place of residence but had never lived there. In August 1968 he was actually living on the Pistoia road at number 156 on the stretch known as Via Torrente. That is, he was living next door to the Rossini house where Nicolino had been left that night, in the peasant’s cottage which Sergio had mistakenly described as the Rossini house.

6.5. SILVANO VARGIUS IN 1984–5

Two new lines of enquiry were now opened. In Florence an extensive and detailed report was made by the carabinieri of Silvano Vargius’s way of life, medical and social history and, in particular, sexual habits. In Sardinia, magistrates reopened the enquiry into the death of Silvano’s wife in 1960, which had been treated as suicide at the time.

Silvano’s second wife had left him in 1981. She was traced and questioned as to his sexual habits, as was his present partner. Both women testified that they had been forced into group sex, organized by Silvano, in which he sometimes participated, sometimes not. His wife also described homo-heterosexual encounters which Silvano organized with certain couples of their acquaintance and stated that she had left Silvano because of his unacceptable sexual habits. This was confirmed on examination of documents relating to their separation. Silvano denounced his wife for abandoning the conjugal roof (Civil Code para. 146 absolves the husband of supporting his separated or divorced wife if she abandons her home and refuses to return). Although this was patently the case here, judgement was in favour of the wife because of his violence and sexual practices. His wife also revealed that Silvano had been in a psychiatric hospital during 1981.

At this point the ambiguity of Sergio Muscas as regards Silvano becomes explicable. Confronted with the above information, Sergio admitted that Silvano had sexual relations not only with Belinda but with Sergio himself. He confessed that while Belinda enjoyed her relationship with Silvano and all that it entailed, she also enjoyed herself with her other lovers, including Flavio, but Sergio himself was totally dominated by Silvano. It was true that at his request Sergio brought home other men for his wife, to satisfy Silvano’s taste for group sex and voyeurism, and that his remark about Flavio’s “screwing my wife in front of my eyes” was to be taken literally and in truth referred to Silvano more than Flavio. He recounted now that Silvano would organize group sex with other men for Belinda in the Cascine park and that on these occasions it was his habit to take along both Sergio and the child Nicolino.

Two things were now clear: Sergio was so dominated by Silvano that, even to save himself, he hadn’t had the courage to accuse him to his face but fell to his knees crying and begging for forgiveness, and that the other principal reason for his reticence was shame. In the culture he belonged to, homosexuality was something so shameful and disgusting that its existence was not even acknowledged. It is notable, also, that though Sergio was too weak to react against his wife’s behaviour, he was the one to separate the lovers’ bodies after the murder so that they were not discovered in the lovemaking position.

Unfortunately, at this stage Sergio’s subservience to Silvano, and his overpowering shame, meant that he would still not make a clear unequivocal statement regarding the ’68 murder so as to facilitate the investigation of the later crimes.

6.6. 1960

In 1960 Silvano was still living in his native village in Sardinia. He was married with a one-year-old son, Amelio. When his wife was found dead with an unlit gas canister turned on in the room, she was presumed to have committed suicide. The little boy, in his cot nearby, was saved. The case exhibited such strong analogies with the ’68 murder—especially given the new information that Nicolino was also Silvano’s son—that the case was reopened and the wife’s body exhumed.

However, the results of an autopsy had only a negative value. A body exhumed after twenty-five years was obviously not in a condition to provide accurate positive information.

Enquiries as to the likelihood of the woman’s wishing to commit suicide revealed that she had decided to leave Silvano because of his violence and had obtained a position as a residential housekeeper at an orphanage in another village. She was to leave and take up this position on the morning after she was found dead. It was likely, according to the information received, that Silvano, with the help of his wife’s brother, smothered her with a pillow to prevent her leaving and damaging Silvano’s pride and her own family’s respectability. Again, this could in judicial terms have only a negative value, i.e., there was evidence against the likelihood of the woman’s having wanted to commit suicide, but no real proof of Silvano’s guilt.

6.7. THE BERETTA 22 L.R.

Ever since it was established that the Beretta 22 used in the double homicides was the same one used in ’68, efforts to trace its provenance were intensified. Of the guns of this type, regularly licensed but reported missing by their legitimate owners, was one belonging to a Sardinian emigrant worker, returned home after many years working in Belgium. He had died some years before in his native village and the gun had never been found. It was the same village where Silvano Vargius was born and which he left after his wife’s “suicide” in 1960. The gun disappeared at the same time as he did. The owner of the gun was the uncle of Silvano’s wife.

6.8. 1985 SILVANO’S MOVEMENTS

From this point on, all of Silvano’s movements, habits and activities were checked on. The following points were established:

1. Given the type of job he did, Silvano had no fixed hours. He was frequently absent during the night responding to emergency calls, and such absences were not notable.

2. For obvious reasons, he kept, and was expert in using, both knives and awls such as were used on the female victims.

3. He also owned a miner’s lamp to be attached to the head and which must have been necessary to a killer working on the bodies in total darkness.

4. Silvano was unable to furnish alibis for any of the double homicides when required to do so, except for the ’83 murder of the German boys. He claimed that he had been called out to an emergency in the centre of Florence at the house of a known prostitute. A singular but not necessarily helpful circumstance was that a receipt from Silvano’s firm was indeed found in the prostitute’s house, but it was dated 1982 not 1983 and it was discovered because the house was being searched after she had been murdered in 1984.

An attempt was made to follow Silvano, particularly on the darkest night of the month, but this was extremely difficult to achieve in the country without being seen by him and on most occasions he eluded his followers. This was the case on the 29th July 1984. On that night Carlo Salvini and Patrizia Renzetti were murdered in their car at Vicchio.

The following morning a search of Silvano’s house revealed the presence of a bloodstained rag. The blood on the rag was of two distinct groups and further analyses revealed the presence of gunpowder.

Eleven