The Arrest

In January 1993, over two decades after the first killings, a seventy one year old Pietro Pacciani, a semiliterate farmhand and amateur taxidermist was arrested. It was not Pacciani’s first arrest. In 1951, he had caught his fiancée with a travelling salesman. Pacciani stabbed the man and stamped on his head till he was dead. He then raped the corpse. After his release, Pacciani started a family. He was arrested again for beating his wife and sexually molesting his daughters.But many considered him too stupid to have carried out the killings alone, and without direction. It was believed that he was part of an occult ring and two other people, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti, were believed to have aided him.