Early life Born in Rome on 1 October 1889, Girolimoni worked as a photographer and mediator for workers who were victims of accidents at work. Through his job, he managed to achieve a certain prosperity.
Miscarriage of justice Monster of Rome murders Between the period of 1924 to 1927, Rome was hit by a series of kidnappings, rapes and murders, to which seven little girls fell prey. The first of them was 4-year-old Emma Giacomini, who was kidnapped while playing in a public garden in
Monte Mario on 31 March 1924. Later that day, her body, showing signs of violence but no sexual assault, was found. The newspapers became interpreters of popular anguish and demands that the person responsible be arrested.
Benito Mussolini, who was disappointed by the failures of the investigators and fearing that the prestige of his regime could be affected, appointed the then police chief
Arturo Bocchini as the main investigator. Pressure from superiors, the media, and the public prompted the police to immediately search for a culprit. Despite numerous witnesses describing the killer as a tall man in his 50s who dressed neatly and sported a moustache, the policemen arrested Girolimoni, a young photographer who was known as a nice, polite individual. The news of his arrest was published in the newspapers with great prominence, announcing that the Monster of Rome had finally been captured. Girolimoni's arrest came about after a 13-year-old waitress told her landlord about a man who spoke to her from time to time; suspicious, the landlord waited for the stranger to show up, wrote down his license plate numbers and later informed police, who promptly arrested Girolimoni. The evidence against him was flimsy; at the time, it was argued that twelve dresses had been found in his closet, supposedly demonstrating that he changed often with different outfits while attacking and to avoid detection. Despite the lack of concrete evidence, the investigators pressured him into confessing for four months, which Girolimoni never did. He was also accused of other crimes, such as the murder of a
Paduan girl in 1919, which he also denied. The acquittal received barely any press coverage; for example, the newspaper '''' gave the news in a small paragraph on page four. Girolimoni's reputation was irreparably tarnished even after his acquittal, and he died in poverty in 1961, having never been compensated for the wrongful accusation. During Girolimoni's incarceration, a police commissioner by the name of was allowed access to the case files. After reading through them, he became convinced of his innocence and opposed his superiors, for which he was arrested and interned at an insane asylum for seventeen months. He was released in 1940 and reintegrated to the police force after the fall of fascism, working on important cases in the country, and later wrote a book presenting his findings on the case. During the investigation, Dosi identified as a more likely suspect an English pastor named
Ralph Lyonel Bridges. Born in
Cheltenham in 1856, Bridges was a
deacon at The Holy Trinity
Church of England in via
Romagna who had been repeatedly accused of molesting children while serving in
New York City but had never been convicted. After returning to his native England, he held the office of a military chaplain for some time, during which he reportedly suffered a bad head injury. He settled in Rome with his Canadian wife, Florence Caroline Jarvis, sometime in 1922, settling in an apartment in via Po where the pair resided until the spring of 1927. During this time, the murders attributed to the Monster of Rome occurred. == See also ==