“monster of Rome”: the murdered girls, the psycho, the Girolimoni hunt and the mystery of the Anglican minister

Between 1924 and 1927, Rome is haunted by a shadow which will travel through the poorest alleys in the center, near the Bernini colony that surrounds St. Peter’s Square. Seven little girls are kidnapped and raped. Only two will be saved, bearing marks forever violence suddenly

The newspapers do nothing but talk about the “monster”. The second case, the case of Bianca Carlieri, is causing outrage throughout the country. There are several impressive titles, good devotion for Mussolini: in the same days, a voice shouts all the anger in the Parliament, before it ended up being murdered. That’s it Giacomo Matteotti, and if it is silence with the screams of innocent little girls that fill the pages of the newspapers, so much the better.

Then, something happens. Suddenlymedia change direction. All is well in the Bel Paese: Italy is strong, healthy and ready to reclaim its part in history, ready to return to the place where it already was.
Il chest order: the news agency Stephaniethe only one qualified to spread the news that will be reported in the newspapers, to death. The testwithout fear, they are on their knees. Crime news almost disappears from the pages of newspapers and all traces of the monster of Rome are lost.

But one monster – just one? – continues to work in the city: there are other victims, other brutal murders of innocent girls. The police are under pressure; its leader, Arturo Bocchini, does not know what to do: continue the gatherings of poor people, beggars, the waste of that perfect society that could not count such sick seeds among its members.
However, all witnesses refer to the abducted as a handsome, handsome man, “pain”, as a popular man was described in Rome.

The turning point came in 1927: he was arrested Gino Girolimonimediator for some lawyers, lame, son of nn.
The Stefani group publishes press releases that glorify the police and describe in detail the perversions of the monster Girolimoni. Private photos on the front page, Lombrosian rumours, headlines praising the death penalty.
Too bad Girolimoni is outright a stranger to the facts and, despite misdirections and false testimonies, in less than a year the case crumbles and falls also under the blows of the parallel investigation of the super Dosi policeagent who reported directly to the Ministry of the Interior, convinced that he had found the culprit in a prelate’s obscure English: Ralph Lyonel Brydges.

Gino Girolimoni leaves Regina Coeli without knowing what has happened in the meantime: his life it is destroyed, recreated for the hungry mouths of those looking for a witch to burn at the stake.
It will never be revived, perhaps by direct order of Mussolini: the Romanian police already are failed in hunting the monster, we should also not report this big mistake in the newspapers.
Gino Girolimoni’s life ends here. Then, just survive on the edge of town.
Two burialin 1961, not many people follow the coffin. Among them, that Dosi who freed him from an unfair conviction.

Why should an innocent man be in prison? Why was that last name cursed?
And a goat a scapegoat had to be found and, as René Girard teaches: “The violence Dissatisfied, she always searches and finds another victim.” And this anger he even made the surname of the immortal Gino a offensive epithet: until about thirty years ago it was not uncommon, on the streets of the Romans, to hear someone say “he is the Girolimon». Someone you wanted to call a satirist, a pedophile, maybe even just as a joke.

Gino Girolimoni is the an unfortunate sacrificial victim of an amazing story, whose main characters are from novels: agent Dosi, who in his life was cheating D’Annunziorecognized on the high walls of a mental hospital, wrote books and gave his name to Interpol; the pedophile prelate Brydges, who fled to who knows where, after mocking them and – perhaps – killing girls and boys, and many others.

A hundred years have passed. Between both, wars, the creation and fall of European totality, the birth of democracies today in deep crisis. In these hundred years the world’s population has gone from 2 to 8 billion people; the world has changed so much that talking about it is like saying “a hundred years ago” Punic wars: a great distance that destroys reality.

However, the actual events of this story are set in motion wheels that are still turning: then develop mass control through information; born the «fsnews» about which we talk so much today.

Everything is has changedbut envy, career, genuflections and lies – what concluded the parable of the life of the innocent Gino Girolimoni – no. Perhaps because, as Konrad Lorenz said, “we are the long-sought link between animals and human beings”.

A hundred years have passed, the world is different. Unfortunately, the man is not yet.