Seriously Mysterious - Missing Persons, Unsolved Murders & Historical True Crime · John Lordan - Respectful True Crime Content Creator, Advocate and Host

Monster(s) of Venice

·23 min·1 clip

Judges secretly investigated cases in Italy—and justice became a hammer.

The episode opens by making the case that criminal justice can be painfully slow when it is trying to catch the monsters people later remember as serial killers. It sets the story in Italy and points to a legal culture shaped by an inquisitorial model. That matters because the investigation turns on what police noticed, what they missed, and what they were never able to recover. The narration stays procedural. It keeps circling back to dates, locations, and the sequence of attacks. One of the killings discussed involves Pia and Claudio near the Vecchio train station. Pia worked at a bar there, and a bar owner later described a strange man with a very large ring who had been watching them. The description of that man stays frustratingly vague. The episode then shifts to September 1985. Jean-Michel Cravitch-Villy and Nadine Morayot are camping when they are attacked in their tent. Jean-Michel is shot, gets out of the tent, runs briefly, and is caught and stabbed repeatedly. Nadine is mutilated, and the handling of the body at the scene is treated as a major failure. The episode notes that her body was removed before forensic teams fully processed the area, and that investigators were careless when searching the surroundings for clues. Even so, important evidence showed up later. Spent .22 casings marked with the famous H were eventually found, and bloodied surgical gloves were recovered days after the crime. The case then widens again. The Monster of Florence sends a slice of Nadine Morayot to Celia de la Monica, the investigating magistrate. He does not realize de la Monica has already been taken off the case. More letters go to other magistrates. Those envelopes contain spent casings with the H mark inside surgical gloves. The messages threaten murder. The carabinieri compile a long list of suspects, and one suspect is arrested and interrogated. The episode stays with the gap between what was proven, what was mishandled, and what still feels unresolved.

As heard by us

A methodical Italian case study that leans on chronology, evidence, and procedure.

It reads as a careful procedural study of a historical Italian killer, moving from the attacks through the chronology, witnesses, and physical evidence.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a patient, evidence-first walk through a historical case from Italy, press play here closely.

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