An answer to the pretentious “debunking” of my journalistic inquiry on the Zodiac-Monster of Florence connection follows.
I would like to highlight that the author of that “fact-checking” was careful not to use any quotation marks while paraphrasing the main object of his examination (my newspaper articles) neither to provide a linked reference to it.
Links
Zodiac-Monster of Florence inquiry
A recent piece of news that confirms the connection
The first article on suspect’s admissions
Joe’s testimony in the Monster trial
1. WHAT IS THE TRUTH?
Bosco demonstrates that his is not a real “fact checking” from the beginning of his post (image above).
As you can see, there is no link to my journalistic inquiry, but only to the “denial” of “J.B.”. This is the method Bosco uses throughout the article: selecting and highlighting only what he wants, out of any context and without complete references, often expressing his dubious beliefs as the “only” truths.
The first example of this selective approach (“cherry picking”) often apodictic is when he presents the reader with Joe’s denial as “the only certain fact” of this story, while instead there are many others. I am not only talking about my complaint about his admissions relating to 19 murders (reference), but also about the unreliability of other public statements by the American, such as those made at the Pacciani trial. For instance…
- when he claims (jokingly?) that he did not have a gun while in the Army (here);
- when he states not to know the defendant (EDIT: when in 2018 I write that he told me that he has known Pacciani since the 80s, it is not yet known that he also reiterated it to the judicial police, on May 30, 2018).
2. “THE ONLY RELIABLE INFORMATION”
“The journalist claims”…
No quotes, no links to my work. The whole post was built like this. The debunker mentions a paragraph of an article in La Nazione which reports an unofficial opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office. Here is the entire piece linked by the debunker with two words highlighted in red. The source defines my complaint “already dead” (EDIT: it is probably the lieutenant of the carabinieri Liberato Ilardi, who works together with the person in charge of the investigation on the Monster, the prosecutor Luca Turco).
Beyond the considerations of the Prosecutor’s Office, “the journalist” was heard as a witness by the carabinieri of the ROS a few weeks later, on June 19, 2018. I would also like to remind you that “the only reliable information” comes from a newspaper, La Nazione, which came out on newsstands on January 27, 1984 with posters that claimed: “ARRESTED, there are two monsters” (image below). The real killer killed at least 4 more people after that proclamation.
3. MISLEADING INFORMATION
I have just never written that «the Vallejo Police Department is working on the case». Indeed, there are no links to prove it.
4. YET APODICTIC
Ulysses is an American accused by postman Mario Vanni of being the real serial killer. In a conversation intercepted by the police in 2003, Vanni states that Pacciani (it is not very clear) met a man in the woods, an “American”, a “black” (later Vanni says “negro”) who was called “Ulisse” and who would have confessed to him to being the Monster of Florence. “Why black?”, Joe will ask me when I show him the transcript of the interview, immediately snapping angrily: “They’re going to kill Vanni.”
Perhaps “il Vampa” had seen Ulysses wearing a black hood with a Celtic cross, identical to that of Zodiac in the attack on Lake Berryessa some 15 years earlier. Having mistaken Ulysses for a neo-fascist due to the Celtic cross (considered by the neo-fascists their most representative symbol), Pacciani called him “black”, that is a word commonly used to summon neofascists in Italy.
As I wrote in my first article in Il Giornale, to reassure Joe, I told him that a witness (of dubious reliability) had pointed out an Italian-African American as Ulysses Mario Robert Parker, son of an American soldier domiciled in a villa near a crime scene.
The reality is that this identification has always been uncertain. It is known, however, that the only American present in the Monster investigation that Pacciani met near woods is Joe himself (“Pacciani was in the woods” by Franca Selvatici, La Repubblica, June 7, 1994).
5. THE WATER THEORY
The “water theory” is composed of a series of observations made first by Dr. Leonti Thompson in 1969, then Robert Graysmith in “Zodiac” in 1986, regarding the fact that Zodiac made many references to the water. In particular, all the crime scenes and the location of the phone booths from which Zodiac called the police had a connection with the water in their names.
6. THE BIRTHDAY CALL
I have meticulously reconstructed the story of the “birthday phone call” in this post.
7. RED PHANTOM LETTER
Zodiac probably did not write the Red Phantom letter according to the FBI laboratory experts who examined it in 1974, stating that the postmark on the envelope was illegible (reference). The date “July 8” was just a supposition of the San Francisco Chronicle based on the fact that it was received on July 9. This is not great proof because the previous two letters were received respectively 11 (reference) and 25 days after be mailed.
8. JOE’S REAL NAME
Joe’s real name is Giuseppe, according to the Italian Registry Office. It might be his baptismal name, a variant of the American Joseph which appears on his American documents.
9. QUOTES WITHOUT QUOTATION MARKS
I never said that Joe fought «in the Cambodian campaign» and he did not. I mentioned that he fought in Vietnam along the Cambodian border and that he and his fellow soldiers would sometimes go past it.
I stated that he told me that he also worked for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in Vietnam. At the time it was not yet a command and was composed of several detachments, not just the 5th.
The suit wore by Joe in that picture is not «navy» but the uniform of the cemetery superintendent of the American Battle Monuments Commission for which he worked from 1974 to 2010, as you can see below.
10. PRESUMED IGNORANCE
Joe saw the last official victims of the Monster a few hours before they were killed near Florence between September 6 – 8, 1985. On June 6, 1994, he told the court at Pacciani’s trial that he saw the girl wearing a swimsuit. She was not on a beach but about 80 km away from the sea. However, swimsuit among her personal effects had been found by the police after the murder. Joe’s big error was saying that he knew about the crime before it was found out by the police (here’s the translation of his whole testimony). That could just be a murderer’s mistake.
I think now that Joe gave the name “Raggianti” (radiant) to Vigilanti to allude the solution of his name cipher based on the song “Aquarius-Let the sunshine in” by the Fifth Dimension.
Maybe “J.B.” was not informed of Vanni’s death because the closest relatives, according to him and for reasons I do not know, did not let him read any other newspaper than “Famiglia Cristiana”. Or maybe because he had not inquired about Vanni’s fate, after his final conviction.
11. WOODS
It is not known whether Pacciani saw “Ulysses” in the face or if “the American” had his face covered, as is probable. But even if he had recognized Ulysses in Joe during the trial, who would have believed him?
12. RIDDLES
14. I furnished the solution to Zodiac’s Halloween riddle, the decryption of the Mt. Diablo and Zodiac’s name ciphers (supplemented with this video), for example.
13. DONNA LASS’ CORPSE
Joe said that the best way to hide a corpse in the Lake Tahoe area was to launch it from a helicopter on the peak of the mountains near the lake, because it would be almost impossible to be found. It was just what he would have done if he had been the killer and had a helicopter.
According to Joe, another good place to hide a corpse would be Emerald Bay, if it weren’t for the presence of campsites and rangers.
Except for Zodiac, obsessed with his “paradise”, I do not know how many people a part from Joe would have said that, thinking about it, the best choice to hide a corpse was represented by «Heavenly Valley because it means “paradise”»
14. A BIG MISTERY WITH A SCIENTIFIC SOLUTION
Here’s the answer. Here are some examples of how Joe could reach San Francisco from Saigon in December 1968.
CONCLUSION
The main evidence of the Zodiac-Monster of Florence connection, for now, is my “real” testimony put in writing in a complaint and in two interviews with me by the judicial police. The task of verifying the contents of a testimony through scientific examinations, such as comparisons of fingerprints, DNA, etc., or invasions of private property, such as a search, certainly is not up to journalists, but to law enforcement agencies. The fact that this “concrete” investigation has not yet been carried out does not mean that there is no “physical evidence”, but that it has not yet been sought.
Zodiac, the Monster of Florence 
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