Giancarlo Giudice

Giancarlo Giudice (born 11 March 1952), known as The Monster of Turin (Italian: Il Mostro di Torino), is an Italian serial killer who murdered nine prostitutes in Turin from 1983 to 1986. Convicted and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for the crimes, he was released in 2008 and has lived as a free man ever since.

Biography Giancarlo Giudice was born in Turin on 11 March 1952. His father Primo, originally from Cuneo, was a veteran of the Russian campaign and current employee at Fiat who was known for being crude and an alcoholic. On the other hand, Giancarlo was close to his mother, and after she became ill from a heart ailment when he was eight, he started to take care of her. However, he was then sent off to the Don Orione Boarding School in Fubine Monferrato, and during his stay there, his mother died. At age 13, after attending his mother's funeral, Giudice attempted suicide by swallowing tablets from the infirmary - upon learning of this incident, he was sent back to his father. Distraught by this, Giudice began to use crack cocaine and LSD, and frequently changed jobs. Fazio would later claim that the pair never got along, mostly due to Giudice's preference to stay at home, and that he did not even attend his father's funeral when Primo died from cirrhosis. One colleague would later note that Giudice never mentioned ever being in a relationship, sometimes did not show up for work because he "didn't feel like it" and often brought pornographic magazines to his workplace. Reportedly, when he stopped paying his bills and both his electricity and gas were turned off, Giudice just brushed it off and hooked it illegally to his neighbour's junction box, as well as borrowing cylinders from his neighbour's mother to cook. Then, in the dead of night, he stole a Bianchina from a garage on the same street where she lived and burned the car with the corpse inside on Enna Street in the Barriera di Stura area. After strangling her, Giudice dumped her naked body in Mezzi Stura in Settimo Torinese. It was later found on 8 January and identified on 22 January via fingerprints.

On 19 March 1985, he strangled 64-year-old Giovanna "Gianna" Bricchi, a woman who was forced into prostitution due to her son's drug addiction, whose corpse he then threw into the Po River. Finally, he carried both bodies wrapped in a blanket and threw them into canals: Corda inside the Risale Rocca canal in Villareggia, and Belmonte into an unnamed canal in Saluggia.

When questioned later, Giudice claimed that he killed those eight prostitutes because they were all ugly, dirty, and old, and because they resembled his stepmother. He also claimed that he felt a "chill down [his] spine" that led him to kill.

On 28 June 1986, in Castello di Annone, he loaded his last victim, 36-year-old former NAP-affiliated terrorist and prostitute Maria Rosa Paoli, into his Lancia Fulvia. He then shot her in the temple near Rocchetta Tanaro, after which he hid the body behind a bush near the Santhià cemetery. In August 1986, he confessed to the other murders, whereupon he was transferred to a prison in Ivrea.

Giudice stood trial on 22 March 1989, after a court in Turin, presided over by Vladimiro Zagrebelsky, ruled him sane. While initially sentenced to life imprisonment, the sentence was later commuted to 24 years imprisonment and several years detention at a mental health facility. For this, he was convicted of attempted murder and given an additional 8 years imprisonment. A subsequent appeal was denied and his sentence was commuted to 30 years imprisonment and 3 years in the Judicial Psychiatric Hospital.