The Monster of Florence: Why did the killer target couples? Details revealed 

Netflix’s The Monster of Florence reveals the dark tale of one of Italy’s most disturbing murder mysteries. The four-part true crime series returns to the gruesome slayings that rattled Tuscany between 1968 and 1985, when an unknown killer targeted young couples in the rural countryside.

Written and directed by Leonardo Fasoli and Stefano Sollima, the series captures the disorder in the investigation as panic, obsession, and guesswork eclipse rationality. Taking place in the shadowy hills of Florence, Italy, it re-enacts the fear and hysteria of a serial murder spree that remains one of Italy’s best-known cold cases.

The series also focuses on Italy’s social fabric in the 1970s-1980s, including its patriarchal social attitudes, moral policing, and culture of fear. The result is an intense portrait of a nation consumed by paranoia where the search for truth became myth, and the line between victim and monster became blurry.

Why The Monster of Florence Targeted Couples?

Between the years 1968 and 1985, couples in the countryside were prey for The Monster of Florence. The monster would catch them off guard as they made love. The slayings followed a grisly routine: the young couples were executed, and in some cases, the females were disfigured. As Cosmopolitan points out, only roughly ten serial killers in known history have targeted couples. That, in turn, made the Monster’s crimes uniquely horrifying.

The violent attacks, in which none of the victims survived, were grouped as

“lust murders”

by the FBI’s 2007 profile, which was disclosed to NBC. Prosecutors said the men were the enemy's tools and

"obstacles"

to be eliminated, but the women were the recipients of the attack. The disfigurement of the female body, such as the removal of breasts and genitals, indicated a compulsive sexual motive against women.

Notably, when one of their victims was a male couple, the latter were not dismembered, reminding us once more of the slasher’s obsession with women. In one of the most devastating attacks, a woman was stabbed 97 times.

The profile from the FBI went on to speculate that the killer did not believe they could overpower or control their victims, which is part of why they chose to attack couples while distracted by sex. This technique gave the killer a psychological upper hand as he gained the element of surprise at what was the moment of greatest vulnerability for his targets.

After years of investigation, not a single piece of forensic evidence has definitively linked any suspect to all sixteen murders. The knife employed in the murders has not been discovered. Theories about occult ceremonies, secret societies, and government cover-ups circulated for years, but none were proved. Nearly forty years later, the Monster of Florence remains a spectral figure in Italian history, a token of fixation and mass terror.

The Monster of Florence: The Series Behind the Mystery

The Monster of Florence does not present itself as a breezy whodunit, but rather as a multi-layered psychological and cultural investigation. Director Stefano Sollima told TIME that the series opted to start in 1982, when investigators first linked the murders using evidence. She described:

“We decided to tell the story from the beginning, when investigators started connecting the dots and realized this might be the act of a serial killer.”

The show’s creators avoided taking a definitive stance on who the killer was. Sollima explained:

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“We wanted to tell the story of the Monster without taking a position. Instead of focusing on the investigation, we kept it in the background and decided to focus on the individual suspects who, in each episode or case, were considered by the investigators to be the culprits.”

With its haunting setting and low-key pacing, The Monster of Florence transcends being a mere crime series. It is a lens into how paranoia, prejudice, and institutional inadequacies can wrest justice away from reality and place it into mythology. Now streaming on Netflix, the series will ensure the defining mystery of Italy’s past continues to haunt and shock.

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