The Serviatti case

MURDERER: Cesare Serviatti
VICTIMS: Bice Margarucci - Pasqua Bartolini Tiraboschi - Paolina Gorietti
PLACES AND DATES: Rome, La Spezia, 1928 - 1930 - 1932
MATERIAL EVIDENCE: kitchen knife
PROVENANCE: La Spezia, Court of Assizes, 1934

On the morning of 16 November 1932, a suitcase was found on the train from La Spezia, at Naples station. The contents were gruesome: the dismembered body of a woman. A second suitcase, containing the rest of the body, was found on the La Spezia-Rome train. Investigations began in La Spezia, where a young boy had found a kitchen knife, the blade covered in blood, near the railway station. The inquiry was assigned to the Rome Police Headquarters, and was led by Superintendent Musco, who two years earlier had investigated a similar case: on 3 November 1930, the body of a beheaded woman, a certain Bice Margarucci, had been pulled out of the sea at Santa Marinella.

The investigation attempted to trace all the women missing around Italy, and all possible means were used to identify the body in the suitcases. Things took a dramatic turn when a woman recognized the mutilated body: it was her best friend, Paolina Gorietti, who had told her before disappearing mysteriously about a meeting with a man who had claimed to be a retired marshal, disabled in service, and had convinced her to go with him to La Spezia, where they would get married. The man’s name was Cesare Serviatti. Born in Rome on 24 November 1880, the coarse-looking Serviatti had had many jobs in his stormy past; among other things, he had been a butcher and a nurse at a hospital, where he had been sacked for maltreating patients.

The police caught Serviatti at his home in Via Principe Amedeo, Rome. When charged with the murders, he denied any responsibility, but after further interrogation finally admitted his guilt.

Serviatti was also linked to the case of the woman found at Santa Marinella, whom he contacted by means of a marriage advertisement in a newspaper – the ploy he always used to get to know wealthy middle-aged women looking for a husband. Serviatti had strangled Bice on 30 October 1930 in an apartment in Via Ricasoli in Rome: the body had been cut into pieces and thrown in the Tiber near the Isola Tiberina.

The cynical Serviatti confessed to five other murders, but refused to reveal the names of the victims. Only one of the five was identified: Pasqua Bartolini Tiraboschi, who had disappeared in 1928, and was probably the first of his many victims. Charged with three murders, Serviatti was committed for summary trial. The prosecution described him as the worst kind of criminal and he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Pasqua Bartolini Tiraboschi and Bice Margarucci, and to the death penalty for the murder, mutilation and concealment of the body of Paolina Gorietti.

Serviatti was executed at 6.24 am on 13 October 1933 by firing-squad at the Chiara Vecchia shooting range in Sarzana.

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