Roberto Spinetti
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Manslaughter
Attempted murder
30 years imprisonment (Fabbri)
26 years and 4 months (Rosin and Todorova)
Roberto Spinetti | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 (age 59–60) |
| Other names | "The 7.65 Caliber Killer" |
| Convictions | Murder x2 Manslaughter Attempted murder |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment (Molino) 30 years imprisonment (Fabbri) 26 years and 4 months (Rosin and Todorova) |
| Details | |
| Victims | 3 |
Span of crimes | October 12 – November 10, 2003 |
| Country | Italy |
| States | Aosta Valley, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy |
Date apprehended | November 28, 2003 |
Roberto Spinetti (born 1965), known as The 7.65 Caliber Killer (Italian: Il killer della calibro 7,65),[1] is a Swiss serial killer who murdered three prostitutes and wounded one more in northern Italy from October to November 2003 during robberies, which he carried out to pay off his gambling debts. Found guilty on all counts in three separate trials, he was sentenced to a life term and 56 years imprisonment.
Roberto Spinetti was born in 1965 in Lucerne, Switzerland, to Italian parents from Abruzzo.[2] Little is known about his childhood, but at one point he moved to Zürich, where he married, had two children and operated a successful real estate business. Spinetti was known as an avid gambler, spending a lot of time in casinos in Monte Carlo, Venice and Saint-Vincent. In 1999, he permanently moved to Italy, supposedly to evade prosecution for large-scale real estate fraud and other financial offences in his native Switzerland.[3]
Murders
During the fall of 2003, Spinetti embarked on a crime spree that would leave three prostitutes dead and another with permanent injuries. The first of these was 31-year-old Catena Molino, who was picked up in Châtillon and found shot to death in a forest between Montjovet and Champdepraz on October 12. Spinetti then stole her purse and cell phone.[4]
On October 25, he picked up 41-year-old Graziela Fabbri in Ravenna, who was also robbed and found to death near the Mirabilandia water park.[4] Authorities investigating both murders noticed a peculiar oddity: aside from the fact that the victims had been robbed, some of the shell casings from the murder weapon were apparently missing as well.[4]
Another suspicious death occurred on November 10, when 52-year-old Maria Grazia Rosin was found dead in her camper van on a highway near Montirone. Unlike previous victims, she had apparently died from a heart attack, but due to the fact she had been robbed of all her possessions, investigators considered that she was likely attacked by the same perpetrator.[4]
A day after this, Spinetti picked up 29-year-old Bulgarian prostitute Vanya Todorova in Marghera, then drove a few kilometers towards a highway leading to Cavallino, where he shot her in the neck and left her for dead. Spinetti then stole money, her jewellery and her mobile phone, before leaving the crime scene.[3] Todorova would survive the ordeal after being interned at a hospital in Jesolo, but suffered from temporary memory loss and was paralyzed from the waist down.[5]