It's a fascinating Italian story that involves aristocrats, ghastly murders, magic and the occult, and the secret services. And it remains unsolved to this day.

As journalist Toby Jones once said, it's a chilling tale with an extraordinary cast, wizards,

chemists, doctors, peasants, and at every twist there's a macab supernatural practices.

The setting is Florence, the capital of Italy's beautiful Tuscany region, home to the

artworks of the Renaissance masters, including Botticelli's of the birth of Venus, and Michelangelo's

David. The city of Florence is surrounded by this stunning landscape of the Tuscan hills and lakes, and is the place travellers and citizens alike love with a deep passion.

It was here that Thomas Harris set Hannibal, his sequel to Silence of the Lambs.

Harris had spent weeks in a courtroom in Perugia, observing a trial and taking copious notes, and directly inspired by the

trial. He set his own monster here, but the real story is even more intriguing, terrible, and many

believe, still to be solved. A series of grisly murders took place in the hills of Tuscany,

and they were carried out by the monster

of Florence, otherwise called, the Surgeon of Death.

But who was this monster?

And, was there one monster, or many, all working together?

Was it just your common or garden serial killer?

Or was it something far more sinister, secret, complex and well-organised?

Prosecutors are investigating whether a secret club of professional men ordered the killings,

wrote AP News in 2004. Magic Ritual Men's Club suspected, said the Sydney Morning Herald,

a group of high society, which the Express,

declared, included powerful members of the Italian elite. It all began in August, 1968,

when 32-year-old Barberloki and her lover 29-year-old bricklayer, Antonio Libyanco, were murdered inside their car as they

parked on a countryside dirt road, near the small town of Cigna, located to the west of Florence.

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