Vitalino Morandini

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 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 exhitibing strange behavior such as growing fearful of the color red and ordering her to remove any red-colored objects from her house. A scarf found at the crime scene was established to belong to Morandini, who was arrested on 8 March. While searching his home on Montonale Street in Pontoglio, investigators found several souvenirs taken from some of the crime scenes: these included his cousin Giovanni's umbrella; a sweater belonging to the Oberti spouses and some photos linked to the Adrara San Martino massacre. Initially, Morandini claimed that he was solely responsible for the Breno family murder, but eventually admitted guilt in the other killings as well. He was also suspected in the death of his aunt, Pasqua Elisabetta Bresciani, who died in April 1947 in what were deemed to be "suspicious circumstances", but was never charged in that case. It was initially suspected that Morandini might have had accomplices in some of his crimes, as a witness supposedly claimed that she had seen him in the company of one or possibly two individuals on the night of the Pontoglio massacre. This claim was dismissed by investigators, who insisted that Morandini was the sole killer. ==Trial, imprisonment and suicide==

At the subsequent trial, Morandini showed no remorse for his deeds, and when asked what it felt like to kill someone, he claimed it was like "wringing the neck of chickens". 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. ==See also==

The Morandini case was discussed in the book "It's like wringing the necks of chickens. The ten murders of Vitalino Morandini, the 'Monster of Pontoglio" (), written by lawyer Roberto Trussardi in 2017. ==References==