Modena, September 6, 2026 – Ten victims, ten battered bodies of young women and no culprit. Forty years and more after that trail of murders that shocked Modena, the ‘Monster of Modena’ case is now reopened.
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The investigations resume from where they left off but using very different techniques, scientific and not only traditional ones, which may provide a new interpretation and, hopefully, useful elements to identify the monster or monsters who stained their hands with blood between 1985 and 1995.
Killed by stabbing, stone blows or strangulation
The young women, all prostitutes or drug-addicted girls, were killed by stabbing, stone blows or strangulation. Some knew each other, frequented the same environments, and got drugs from the same suppliers. Why reopen the case today? Because the wounds in the hearts of brothers, sisters, cousins of the young victims continue to bleed. It was precisely at the urging of a first ‘brave family’ that everything started: the relatives of Anna Maria Palermo, found dead on January 26, 1994, filed a request to reopen the case through lawyer Barbara Iannuccelli in recent months but, since then, the sisters, brothers and cousin of four other girls have also turned to the lawyer who is currently preparing the last requests.
We are talking about an ‘expanded’ investigation because the Modena Prosecutor’s Office has tasked the Mobile Squad with analyzing the investigation files from that time and possibly identifying useful elements for the inquiries, perhaps never thoroughly examined in those years. At the same time, in recent days, the Modena Carabinieri went to Legal Medicine to request the recovery of still existing evidence.
The evidence from that time
To date it is not known what those rooms still hold, but at the time, handkerchiefs, syringes, knives, hair were collected from which, today, perhaps with new techniques, it might be possible to extract a genetic profile to compare with the various subjects monitored at the time of the murders. Among these is also an almost 70-year-old man who spent the night with one of the victims before she was found dead the next day.
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Filomena Gnasso, the first victim
It all started on November 15, 1983 when the body of Filomena Gnasso, 43 years old, was found on the roadside, in the northern area of Modena. Two years later Giovanna Marchetti, resident in Medolla, was found dead (on August 21, 1985) next to a hedge, in Baggiovara. Her skull was crushed by a block of cement.
And also: Donatella Guerra, from Concordia, was killed with stab wounds to the neck and chest. The body was on the riverbank in San Cesario. Marina Balboni was strangled with a scarf: the corpse was found in Carpi. Cause of death: strangulation also in the case of Claudia Santachiara, whose body was found on May 30, 1989, in a canal in Campogalliano.
Fabrizia Zuccarini, from Pavullo, was also strangled with her own tracksuit: the body surfaced in San Prospero while Antonietta Sottosanti was killed at home on the fifth floor of a building in the suburbs. In February ’92, the body of Anna Abruzzese, stabbed, was found in a field. Two years later, the body of Anna Maria Palermo, killed with several blows, was found in a canal on via Formigina. The last victim was Monica Abate, killed at home where someone simulated an overdose. It was January 3, 1995.
