Murder in an ambulance in Forlì: for Racis the former driver Luca Spada acted with serial logic

Luca Spada, the former ambulance driver in prison since April 11th on charges of killing an elderly woman with an air injection, and suspected of five other deaths, acted on the basis of an "internal, obsessive and uncontrollable motivational drive", selecting the victims, elderly and sick, in ways compatible with a predatory and serial logic. These are the considerations of the specialists of the Racis of the Carabinieri of Rome, investigative psychology section, to whom the Forlì Prosecutor's Office has entrusted an in-depth investigation into the personality of the 28-year-old. The report is cited in the opinion of the public prosecutor and in the provision of the investigating judge who in the summer rejected the request for release of the suspect.

The defense had requested house arrest, indicating that with the dismissal of the Red Cross, which arrived in May, there would be no risk of reiteration of facts similar to those contested, accusations that Spada, who will go to immediate trial on 15 October for the murder of 85-year-old Deanna Mambelli, has so far always rejected.

But the prosecutor Andrea Marchini instead underlined how the Racis report signals a still high danger. The characterizing element of the story is "a criminal behavior with a serial character" and from the examination of the documents the reiteration over time of conduct characterized by common and recurring elements emerges, and an "identifiable operational scheme is recognized which cannot be traced back to single isolated or merely occasional episodes" but a "behavioral scheme which is repeated over time through similar and functionally coherent methods", so as to bring the facts back to a unitary dynamic characterized by the "compulsion to repeat".

For the Carabinieri specialists, the typical characteristics of those who commit crimes such as those contested are "the maintenance over time of the motivations and objectives of elimination without repentance or second thoughts" and the presence of "well-linked actions and articulated ideas", based on accurate choices of the victims and on informed decision-making processes. Even Spada's hospital admissions, which in one case would have caused an embolism, are worthy of attention from a criminological point of view: they seem to be part of a preparatory phase characterized by persistent elaboration of the action, and are compatible with a sort of experimentation, verification or refinement of the operating methods.

From this perspective, the so-called "cooling-off", the "cooling-off" period in which a serial killer does not act, would not represent a suspension of the criminal project, but rather its continuation in less visible but equally functional forms for the commission of the crime.