Sounds like one of those horror film plots, eh?
I told my kind hosts F. and B. about my last serious visit to Italy: ages ago, hitchhiking with my then boyfriend through Tuscany.
It was a hippie-teenage-cheapo-trip, you know. We had started in Florence. Breakfasts in small bars, tours through museums and churches throughout the day, cheese and cheap red wine and dancing in a piazza to some folk music in the evenings. Late at night we walked until we found a suitable spot for our sleeping bags, some park, some unclaimed grass, some seemingly empty garden, somewhere at the outskirts of Florence.
F. and B. asked again when all this took place. 1985 or 1986, I said. Then they told me about Il Mostro, the “Monster of Florence” who had killed a young tourist couple in their tent around that time. On September 8, 1985, to be precise.
Scary. Today it's "Il Berlusconi" rambling the lush hills of Tuscany! *shudder*
gHack (May 30, 11:27 pm) #
I was also tramping through Toscana in 1985 I think, but only 14 years old and with 4 or 5 friends rather then as a couple. But of course we were fully aware of the mostro di Firenze, which added some suspense to our nights in the open. I didn't realize that he was still active in 1985, though. And I didn't know the case was considered closed. (And I even own a book about it!)
hns (May 31, 12:58 pm) #
Hey, it's really something to realise about 19 years later that people you know could have been killed at the same time as you, and even in the same place, and by the same person!
According to the BBC article I linked, the case "remains officially unsolved". But the murder in 1985 seems to have been the last one of this kind, anyway.
Actually, I remember now that I was there Easter 1986. The only thing we became aware of in terms of news was that Reagan bombed Lybia. So far for useful knowledge.
katatonik (May 31, 01:29 pm) #