Vitalino Morandini

Vitalino Morandini di Battista (1916 – 10 June 1960), known as The Monster of Pontoglio , was an Italian serial killer and mass murderer responsible for at least nine murders committed in the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia between 1955 and 1956. He was also suspected, but never charged, in the 1947 death of his aunt.

Convicted and sentenced to life for his confirmed crimes, Morandini hanged himself only two months after the conclusion of his trial.

Early life and crimes Born in 1916 in the small rural town of Adrara San Rocco, Morandini grew up in a very poor family and dropped out of school in the fourth grade to help his father in his pastoral and agricultural activities. He was nicknamed "Angèl" by locals due to his fervent religiousness.

While he was still young, Morandini's mother died, leaving him with even more work that left him with very little free time. For this, Vitalino was sentenced to six years imprisonment, which he served at the penal colony in Castiadas, Sardinia.

Murders Following his release in 1955, Morandini moved in with an aunt living in Pontoglio, but decided to kill his cousin for reporting him to the police. He snuck into the house above the shop around 2:30 am, and after wrapping a stone in a pillowcase, he proceeded to attack the family inside. He fatally bludgeoned Cesare Giuseppe Breno and his wife Colomba Vignoni on the heads, after which he attacked their daughter Emilia, who was trying to get help by tapping on the window to the passers-by below.

Investigation and arrest Initially, local authorities focused on a cattle thief named Vincenzo Volsi, but they turned their attention to Vitalino Morandini after receiving a tip from his aunt in which she claimed that on the night the Breno family was murdered, her nephew seemed unusually restless and agitated. His girlfriend, Franca Camanini, also reported that Morandini started exhibiting strange behavior such as growing fearful of the color red and ordering her to remove any red-colored objects from her house. He was convicted on all counts and sentenced to four life terms, which he was ordered to serve at the Porto Azzurro prison. The two alleged accomplices in the crimes, Vincenzo Volsi and 26-year-old Felice Castoldi, were acquitted. Morandini did not react to his own sentence in any notable manner, but seemed relieved that the two men had been acquitted, after he had initially accused Castoldi of masterminding the Pontoglio murders and accusing Volsi of being his accomplice. When found, he was quickly rushed to the hospital, where doctors were shocked to learn that his heart was still beating – they then attempted to resuscitate him by doing CPR and giving him needle injections. However, Morandini died a couple of minutes later, with the autopsy determining his official cause of death to be pulmonary emphysema.