79: Italy, a Murder and a Mystery: The Most Haunted Island & The Maso Murders
36:26 Share

I need to tell you about a new podcast that I think you'll really enjoy called Fear Thy Neighbor. On Fear Thy Neighbor from i-D, hear true stories from the victims of deadly neighborhood disputes. Most violent crimes that capture the public's imagination are about serial killers or crimes of passion. But what happens when the person you fear the most is living right next door? Ugh, that's my worst fear.

Each episode focuses on a different town where neighbors fall out over what should be minor and resolvable issues. Hear these true stories told by the victims, their families, and their neighbors, featuring real 911 calls and surveillance archives.

I'm very interested in listening because I feel like we've all had that one weird neighbor that we felt like we couldn't trust. And I know after listening to this podcast, I'm never going to look at my neighbors ever the same. I'm probably going to be afraid to go outside, but I like to do that to myself. So listen to Fear Thy Neighbor wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your ghost, Kaelin Moore.

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to take a trip to Northern Italy. And usually when I travel, I like to talk to locals just to get a better sense of the area. And when I do this, I like to ask them for scary stories they grew up with. But recently, I found that people will offer me these stories without me even really having to ask. I think we as people just really like telling each other the craziest stories we've ever heard.

This was also the place, mind you, where a woman on a train told me about how her daughter saw the ghost of a Civil War soldier in a hotel from the most recent Listener Tales episode.

I started this trip in Venice, off the coast of northeastern Italy, probably the best place in the world to hear a ghost story. It's a small floating island and to get there, I got dropped off by a taxi at the only area cars are allowed. Once you're actually on the island, there's not streets for cars, just cobblestone alleyways split in half by canals. There's plazas, there's bridges, but no cars.

And that, coupled with the fact that the island is always slightly moving because it's gently bobbing in the ocean, can make it a little disorienting. Many of the buildings in Venice are original, some from as early as the 12th century, when they were built by merchants, travelers, and members of the church.

On the first day of my trip, I was standing by a canal watching the boats and the gondolas come in and out of their docks. I remember looking down at the canal and not being able to tell how deep it was. It could have been two feet deep. It could have been 200. But I noticed that as the gondolas took off into the Venetian Lagoon, they passed a bunch of other much smaller islands, some with very beautiful new buildings on them.

To my right was a gondolier leaning against a wooden pole. He was wearing the classic striped shirt and red bandana, and his jacket had the gondolier emblem on it signifying that he was part of the thousand-year-old Gondoliers Guild. "Excuse me, do you know what's on those islands?" I walked up to him and asked, "Are they part of Venice?"

The man pointed out into the water and nodded. He explained that two of the smaller islands were basically owned by resorts. Each one looked the size of a few football fields and had one resort on it a piece, hence why the buildings looked so new and beautiful. But then he squinted and he looked farther out into the sea. He got down to my level and held his arm out as if to guide my eye where he was looking in the distance. "Do you see that bell tower over there?" He asked me.

And sure enough, far in the distance, past the two gilded resorts, I could just barely make out a stone bell tower peeking through thick, overgrown trees. It looked much, much older than the buildings on the other islands. That's a forbidden island. It's the most haunted place in all of Venice. Okay, well, now he had my attention. He told me that when the breeze was just right,

A gray dust cloud from the island can get kicked up into the air. He once saw the dust and wanted to see where it was coming from. But the closer he got, the dust started to cake on his hair and skin. It started to obscure his view of the beautiful but eerie island. When he pinched the dust off of his skin and rolled it around in his fingers, he realized it wasn't what he thought it was.

It had the consistency of ash, which he was later told was from the charred remains of corpses that had been burned on the island. I needed to hear more about this place. So I asked if I bought a ride in his gondola, if he'd tell me the story of the island and he agreed.

So today, I want to take you with me on a trip to Northern Italy and tell you some of the scary stories as I heard them from the people who know them best. Our first story is going to be about the most haunted island in Venice. And our second is going to be about an unspeakable crime that happened just outside of Verona. One that set off a chain of copycat attacks by teenagers. But first, I want to talk about Jinx.

Jinx is the mascot for our Rogue Detecting Society, the friendly ghost with headphones you may have seen on the website or the new Rogue Detecting Society stickers. Thank you to everyone who's been scooping those up and the whole sticker pack. I'm so excited to see how you use them. So please tag me. If you want to see what the stickers look like, check out shop.heartstartspounding.com. I'll link it here in the bio too.

Remember, if you're a patron at the $5 tier, you'll get a free Jinx sticker when you hit your third paid month and discounts on any other orders. And of course, anyone listening can purchase stickers from the Heart Starts Pounding store at any time. Now, last week, I shouted out a new listener review, but today I wanted to call out a review from an OG listener. Cheyenne Marie B on Apple Podcasts said, "'Love, love, love. I am hooked. I've been listening for almost two years now and I cannot get enough. Every show is captivating.'"

Two years is basically the entirety of Heart Starts Poundings Run, so thank you for sticking around and thanks to all of the OD listeners listening today. If you're new here, welcome. We're here every Wednesday around 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time or 7.30 a.m. on Thursday if you're listening in Mumbai or elsewhere in India, which I know quite a few of you are. Now we're going to take a quick break, and as always, listener discretion is advised.

This episode is brought to you by Miracle-Made. I love the summer. I like being hot and lying in the sun like a cat until it's time to go to bed. And then I want to be inside of a freezer, which is unfortunately not what my century old house feels like.

That's why I love Miracle-Made sheets. Miracle-Made sheets help keep your temperature regulated all night long, which is one of the biggest factors in sleep quality. So even if my room isn't the perfect frigid temperature, I can still feel cooler. They also use silver-infused fabrics, which were inspired by NASA, that prevent up to 99.7% of bacteria growth.

which is so important in the summer because I'm always covered in sweat and bug spray and sunscreen. And I feel like it sticks to me even when I shower and my sheets get all gunked up, but not anymore thanks to Miracle-Made. Go to trymiracle.com slash HSP to try Miracle-Made sheets today. And whether you're buying them for yourself or as a gift for a loved one, if you order today, you can save over 40%.

And if you use our promo code HSP at checkout, you'll get three free towels and save an extra 20%. Miracle is so confident in their product. It's backed with a 30 day money back guarantee. So if you aren't 100% satisfied, you'll get a full refund.

Upgrade your sleep with Miracle-Made. Go to trymiracle.com slash HSP and use the code HSP to claim your free three-piece towel set and save over 40% off. Again, that's trymiracle.com slash HSP to treat yourself. Thank you, Miracle-Made, for sponsoring this episode. The local saying goes, when an evil man dies, he wakes up in pulvelia.

It exists like some stage of purgatory, a place where the living once were and the dead remain. To be on Poveglia Island, the island that the gondolier pointed out to me, is to have one foot in our world and one foot in the next.

The island is in the South Lagoon, halfway between Lido and Venice. It's said that the first people to ever live there took refuge around 420 AD to escape military invasions on Italy's mainland. Records from the year 800 showed that these refugees were mainly from cities like Este and Padua,

The island's inhabitants lived in the small community on an island the size of 14 football fields for hundreds of years until they were forced back onto the island of Venice, leaving the place abandoned.

Over the following years, Italy was bombarded by the plague. First in the 1340s and then in the 1630s. I mean, you've heard the stories. The dead piled up in the streets because graveyards were full. Their faces and lymph nodes black and bulbous. It's said now that as you walk around the island of Poveglia and hear the dirt crunch under your feet,

that up to 50% of what you're stepping on is ash from the bodies of those killed by the plague and rushed out of Venice to be brought to the island. Crematoriums were set up to burn bodies so quickly that sometimes the infected weren't even fully dead as they were loaded into the fires. But you would only know that once you heard their screams. With nowhere else to put the remains, they were mixed in with the dirt around the island.

So if you're brave enough to walk around Poveglia, it's rumored that you may find a stray bone protruding from the ground, especially if you find the remains of a giant community garden that was built in the 18th century. Once people re-inhabited the island after the plague died down, not knowing the extent of the casualties, they built their garden directly on a graveyard.

I couldn't tell if the gondolier was pulling my leg as he told me all of this, but he may be right. When I was looking up the island on my own, I came across a National Geographic article that estimated 100,000 bodies were buried on the small island. That's 100,000 people, again, in the area the size of 14 football fields. Some estimates claim it's as many as 160,000 people.

The gondolier told me he had heard the story of a man named Giovanni, a cold cuts delivery man from Venice who knew about how haunted the island was all too well. His father would take him fishing near the island when he was just a small boy. And he always got the sense that something evil had happened there and he was entranced by the mystery of the island.

So when he got older, he decided to sneak over and he spent two weeks living amongst the decay. In 2014, he told an Australian reporter about his experience. He said that on the island, he felt like there were three main spirits that were interacting with him. He called them Paolo, Marco, and Giorgio. Giorgio was friendly, he remarked. Marco would push him around and he seemed mean,

But Paolo, Paolo was the bad one. It was like Giovanni could feel Paolo's aura and he knew that he was a bad person in the time he was alive. But he also got the sense that Paolo had been a doctor there. "Paolo most likely was not a plague doctor back in the day," the gondolier told me. "Who was he then?" I asked.

"Well," the gondolier said, "there's a legend about another doctor that lived on the island. On Poveglia sits a few brick buildings that have seen better days, including the bell tower I could barely make out from the docks. If you were to peer in through the windows, you may see cracked tile and shards of glass littering the floors. Evil, twisted faces are spray-painted on the walls from vandals who've sneaked onto the island under the cover of night.

Parts of this building were constructed in 1814 when Poveglia was turned into a naval medical base. Cases of the plague were still treated there at that time, though there weren't many.

Today, these buildings are still there, but they're dilapidated. They have collapsed terracotta ceilings and mud plastered floors, every inch overgrown with ivy and rust on the rogue items like bathtubs, molded tiles and shower curtains, hospital beds and surgical tables.

The lush greenery is wrapped with poison ivy, rats, as well as scores of rabbits, lizards, millipedes, and blackberry barbs. Asbestos is caked onto some walls. When Giovanni told the Australian reporter about the ghost of Dr. Paolo, the reporter actually went out to these buildings to stay the night and was overwhelmed by the feeling of decay and death.

The reporter actually snapped a photo of a hospital bed that was left in a chapel on the island and was all the way to the left of the room. In the morning, as they were walking out, they noticed that the bed moved without explanation all the way to the far right. It was terrifying.

But in one of the photos that was captured is a plaque that commemorates the mental asylum that used to be on the grounds. And that's where the legend of Dr. Paolo comes from. The gondolier got really serious at this point. Mental illness wasn't regarded with care back in the day and the island was far away from the rest of society. So the asylum was not carefully regulated and the patients were left in a nightmarish hell.

Rehabilitation was not the goal of the asylum. Instead, patients were tormented in attempts to be, quote, "fixed," with surgeries and mistreatment like being chained up to their beds and left alone in the dark for days at a time. People were sent to pulvelia against their will, not unlike the plague victims, and this included people with developmental disabilities, neurological disorders, and other physical disabilities.

Dr. Paolo was running the asylum and he would choose from a menu of cruel and barbaric experiments to try and, quote, "cure" these patients.

Lobotomies, electric shock therapy, and force feeding are among the legends passed down. During these intense, physically debilitating procedures, it's claimed by believers that anesthesia was not used and tools were incredibly dirty, which led to infection, illness, and death. The many patients who died under the asylum's care were buried and forgotten about in unmarked graves, adding to the island's already high body count.

In an episode of Ghost Adventures, Zach Bagans was able to actually go onto the island and film. I don't know how this man gets permits for every single location. It blows my mind. But he explained that the legends say that Dr. Paolo went insane while he was on the island. And eventually, he leapt from the bell tower to his death. The hospital seems to have been shut down after that in 1968. And the island has lain abandoned ever since.

Now, those that get close to the island all experience the same strange phenomenon. Disembodied screams can be heard echoing through the thick trees. "I've heard the screams," the gondolier told me, rounding a corner near an ancient-looking stone wall.

Some even claim to see the apparition of a small girl standing on the shore. She's been named by locals, Little Maria, and they believe she died from the plague. Another apparition that's commonly seen is a woman who looks like she's hiding, dressed in just a hospital gown. Perhaps she's hoping that Dr. Paolo doesn't find her.

Anyways, we're here. The gondola bumped into the side of the canal, backed by the steps we entered through. I couldn't believe we were already back. I wanted to know more. I wanted this man to take us there. I wanted to be like Zach Bagans and see Poveglia for myself. I went back to the docks and looked out at the island, trying to catch a glimpse of the shadowy figures he spoke about, trying to hear a disembodied scream above the sounds of small waves and boat engines.

When I got home, I looked more into the story of Poveglia and I found that some historians do dispute this telling of the island's history. They say that plague bodies weren't brought to that specific island. In fact, it was other islands in Italy. And they say historical records show that actually less than 100 people are really buried on the island. They say that most of Poveglia's history has been turned into folklore.

And maybe that is true. Maybe the gondolier knew I would pay him to take me around and tell me the story, which is fine. That's good marketing on his end. But as I stood on the edge of the dock, looking out to the island, I felt a big gust of sea breeze blow towards me. And I could have sworn I saw a small gray dust cloud form near the bell tower. Our next story after short break.

The Let's Read podcast features a wide array of horror stories, ranging from true crime and paranormal encounters to creepy personal experiences, making it a must listen for fans of the genre. Many of the stories are submitted by listeners, providing a diverse and authentic range of terrifying tales that resonate with a broad audience.

Hosted by Joel, whose storytelling prowess creates an immersive and chilling listening experience, perfect for fans who love to be on the edge of their seats. Dive into a rich archive of episodes with spine-tingling stories that include everything from haunted houses and ghost sightings to unsettling true crime cases and creepy encounters. Join a vibrant community of horror enthusiasts who engage with the podcast, sharing their own stories and experiences with us.

making it an interactive and dynamic show. Stay tuned for special episodes and themed story collections that explore new and exciting facets of horror storytelling. Search for Let's Read on your favorite podcast platform and remember to hit follow so you never miss an episode. Our next story takes us away from the island of Poveglia, way inland in Italy, outside of the city of Verona.

I heard this story from an older man who lived in the area and watched the coverage of this case as it unfolded in the early 90s. He and every other person in Italy, it seemed. The story of the Masso murders captivated and disturbed the entire nation.

The man and I sat next to each other at a dinner for an event I was at, and we got to talking. That's my favorite thing, by the way. When everyone else is up and chatting and making their rounds at an event, I love sitting in the corner with someone as they tell me the craziest story they've ever heard. It really takes the pressure off of me to be so extroverted at those kinds of things. I guess I fancy myself a bit of a wallflower in that way.

So anyways, after a couple of glasses of red wine, I told him about the podcast and about you guys and the kinds of stories you find interesting. And he told me he had just the story for you. Let's set the scene. Antonio Maso sat in his car with his wife Rosa while he watched his garage door slowly open.

The couple were in their driveway after returning home from a night out. It was April, just outside the city of Verona, and spring had not fully bloomed. The air was still chilly, and the moon hardly broke through the clouds. As the garage finished opening, Antonio noticed that the light inside wasn't coming on. Oh, shoot, he thought. The fuse must have blown. He opened the car door and told his wife to stay in the passenger seat until he flipped the breaker.

And Rosa watched as Antonio disappeared into his dark garage. Inside their home, it was even darker. And the breaker box was in the kitchen. He bumbled around, feeling the smooth kitchen wall for the indent of the box, when all of a sudden, three masked intruders descended on Antonio. They seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. One was holding an iron, one was holding a crowbar, and the other was holding a pot.

On their faces, they wore carnival masks in the classic old Venetian style. Harlequin-inspired gold masks that covered only the top half of their faces with pointy noses and holes cut out for eyes, allowing the wearer's true gaze to remain hidden.

If Antonio screamed, it wasn't audible because out in the car, Rosa wondered what was taking her husband so long. The light should be on by now. She started getting worried, so she slipped out of the passenger door and into the house where she stumbled upon her husband's body laying in the middle of the gruesome scene. Standing above him were the three intruders. And before she could do anything, they lunged at her.

Three hours later, at 2 a.m., the couple's son, Pietro Masso, stumbled home after a night out with his friends. When he entered his house, he saw both of his parents laying on the kitchen floor, dead. Blood was everywhere. His mother had cotton wool shoved into her mouth, and his father had a sheet over his head. In some of the rooms, drawers had been ransacked.

He grabbed the phone off the wall and he dialed the police, telling them exactly what he saw. And then he ran over to a neighbor to ask for help.

Police came on the scene fast. Remember, this happened in a small community. Violent murders like this were not common. And when the police arrived, they saw that the scene was somehow even worse than what Pietro described. It was clear that the couple did not die immediately after being struck. It looked like both of them were also suffocated, as if the blows did not do the job.

Pietro was there walking them through the house and chatting with officers. He told them he figured it was a robbery based on the fact that some of the drawers had been opened and emptied. But there was something about that theory that didn't sit right with the police. There was something about all of this that didn't sit right with the police.

First and foremost, they had never seen a thief that opened and completely emptied drawers while looking for valuables. Typically, when they were investigating robberies, they found that the drawers were opened and rummaged through as intruders looked through the contents. But dumping things out on the floor was atypical.

And they also felt like something was off with Pietro's demeanor. While he sat and chatted with the police, they couldn't help but notice how nonchalant he seemed about the whole thing, which was surprising considering hours ago he walked in on the gruesome murder of his parents. And it's not long before Pietro's two sisters realized that nearly $20,000 in today's U.S. currency is missing from their parents' bank account.

And so Pietro is brought in for questioning, but he insists he had nothing to do with the murder of his parents. But the more he speaks, the more he contradicts himself and the details of his story keep changing. Eventually, after two days of interrogation, Pietro breaks down. He admits that he and three of his friends are responsible for the deaths of his parents.

Why would he do that? I asked the man. Well, back in the 80s and 90s, there was a kind of mania that drove a bunch of young adults insane, including Pietro. He took a long sip of his very full wine glass and continued.

Pietro was born in 1971 to Antonio and Rosa Masso. He had two older sisters, Nadia and Laura, and the family of five lived outside of Verona, located in one of the poorest regions in Italy, Veneto.

But something interesting happened when Pietro was born. And this is what the man claims infected the youth with a form of insanity. He told me that Veneto went through a huge economic boom in the 1970s, while the rest of the country was plunged into economic turmoil. A series of advancements in agriculture and industry left the general population of Veneto richer and more employed than other people throughout Italy.

It was believed in Italy at the time that this generation of kids who were born into wealth from parents that used to be poor had evil tendencies. It was as if the wealth was corrupting them. Pietro's father really benefited from this time. He was a once poor farmer who made a lot of money during the boom and enjoyed spending it on his family. And since Pietro was the baby, he seemed to be spoiled the most.

Eventually, when Pietro was old enough, he enrolled in agricultural school himself to follow in his father's footsteps. But he found school to be a waste of time, and he very quickly dropped out. He tried seminary, but he was expelled, and he was also discharged from the military shortly after for schizoaffectiveness.

Symptoms of schizoaffective disorder can be delusions, hallucinations, mania, or depression. It can vary from person to person, so it's unclear exactly what symptoms Pietro was suffering from at the time, but he was deemed unfit for military service.

So while his sisters left the house to find work and get married, 20-year-old Pietro moved back home. And instead of trying to figure out what to do with his life, he devolved into complete hedonism. He started buying designer clothes, going out to the clubs every night. He started taking ecstasy and doing an amount of cocaine I can only imagine would kill most people. All of these pursuits were financed by his parents.

Pietro also developed a cult of personality with younger guys who admired his lavish lifestyle. They were 19-year-old Giorgio, 18-year-old Damiano, and 19-year-old Paolo. Each time Pietro saw these guys, he had a different girl on his arm or a different pair of expensive shoes. The young guys all wanted to be him.

But his parents were not as excited about this lavish lifestyle. They enjoyed spoiling their son, but this was getting out of control. Everything he wanted, he would buy. And the family started arguing constantly. And that's when Pietro decided that his whole family had to die. That way, he could have his inheritance and his sisters in peace.

The original plan was to kill every member of his family, and it went as follows. He was going to place two gas cylinders in the basement of the house that would slowly leak. And then he would program an alarm clock so that a noise would activate disco lights that he set up. In this plan, turning on the lights was supposed to ignite the gas that had dispersed in the room

Pietro also had filled the chimney with clothes so that the gas wouldn't be able to escape, and that would cause an explosion. But the man said that Pietro was too much of an idiot to execute a plan that complicated. He couldn't figure out how to remove the knobs of the gas cylinders, and then his mother found them in the basement. Giving up on that plan, Pietro recruited his friend Giorgio to help with a new one. Rosa had recently found money in her son's pants pockets while she was doing laundry. She asked him where it came from.

She knew that Pietro was not working, so she worried that having that much cash meant that he was involved in something sketchy.

But he told her that the money was from commissions he was owed by a car dealer. And to prove it, he was going to bring her along to the dealership so she could see that he was telling the truth. But in reality, Giorgio was going to be hiding in the car with a hammer. So once she stepped in, he was instructed to hit her from behind, killing her. And then the two boys were going to head back to Pietro's house and kill his father. But Giorgio got scared and he backed out of the plan.

Instead, Pietro told her that the money was from a friend who bribed him to keep quiet about his illegal computer sales. She believed him, and so Pietro turned the car around and they all went home. After these two failed attempts, Pietro asked for a loan of about $20,000 in today's currency so that he could buy a new car, which his parents denied.

Really, he needed this money to help Giorgio, who was in debt with his bank for that amount. He had squandered the money on nights out, fancy meals, designer clothes, and I cannot stress this enough, an insane amount of cocaine. So Pietro went ahead and just stole this money from his parents by forging his mother's signature on a check written out to Giorgio.

And this puts a ticking clock on Pietro's plan because he felt like he needed to kill his parents before they figured out about the missing money. So on April 17th, 1991, his parents were going out for the night and he asked them to come back by 11 p.m.

While they were out, he unscrewed the light bulb in the garage so that his father would come inside and check the fuse box. Then, he and his friends hid in the house wearing carnival masks and holding different household items that they would use to bludgeon the couple. Both of his parents were alive after the bludgeoning, so Pietro instructed the group to hold a sheet over his father's head until he stopped breathing 53 minutes after the initial attack,

And then they shoved cotton wool down his mother's throat so she would stop breathing as well. And after that, they went out to the club. More after the break. I need to tell you about a new podcast that I think you'll really enjoy called Fear Thy Neighbor.

On Fear Thy Neighbor from i-D, hear true stories from the victims of deadly neighborhood disputes. Most violent crimes that capture the public's imagination are about serial killers or crimes of passion. But what happens when the person you fear the most is living right next door? Ugh, that's my worst fear.

Each episode focuses on a different town where neighbors fall out over what should be minor and resolvable issues. Hear these true stories told by the victims, their families, and their neighbors, featuring real 911 calls and surveillance archives.

I'm very interested in listening because I feel like we've all had that one weird neighbor that we felt like we couldn't trust. And I know after listening to this podcast, I'm never going to look at my neighbors ever the same. I'm probably going to be afraid to go outside, but I like to do that to myself. So listen to Fear Thy Neighbor wherever you get your podcasts. Where's

Prescription products require completion of an online medication consultation with an independent healthcare provider through the LifeMD platform and are only available if prescribed. Subscription required. Individual results may vary. Additional restrictions apply at LifeMD.com. Read all warnings before using GLP-1s. Side effects may include a risk of thyroid C-cell tumors. Do not use GLP-1s if you or your family have a history of thyroid cancer.

If you've struggled for years to lose weight and have given up hope, did you know you can now access GLP-1 prescription medications through LifeMD? LifeMD is now offering eligible patients online access to GLP-1s, the breakthrough prescription medication that can help you lose body fat and weight. Listen to what people are saying. I've been able to live my normal lifestyle, and I've lost 20 pounds already. Changed my life. I wasn't expecting it to shut off the food noise. This was life-altering, and if I can do it, I feel like anybody can do it.

And here's the best part. Your insurance may cover 100% of the cost of your medication. So go to TryLifeMD.com to have your eligibility checked right now. Get started today at TryLifeMD.com. That's T-R-Y-L-I-F-E-M-D dot com.

Prior to their trial, Pietro, Giorgio, Damiano, and Paolo all underwent psychiatric evaluation, which determined that they were mentally sound and culpable for the crime. Pietro was advised by a council to renounce his portion of the inheritance, and because of that, he received a lesser sentence of 30 years in prison.

Giorgio and Paolo received 26 years while Damiano was only sentenced to 13 years because he was a minor at the time the crime took place. What's really crazy to me though is Pietro became a rock star, the man told me. He said that Pietro inspired a bunch of other kids to kill their parents, ones that also had gone mad from their wealth.

And the man was kind of right. Once Pietro was in prison, he started receiving fan mail from other young adults around Italy saying that they too wished they could have killed their parents and that they understood why he did what he did. Some even called him brave.

Pietro's story caught fire in the Italian press and people could not get enough of the updates on the case. One Italian paper I read referred to him as an unscrupulous dandy. And I am begging you guys to please start using that as an insult.

Not long after the Masso murders, a teen boy in Lazio, Italy, south of Rome, killed his parents. And another boy and Verona hired some friends to kill his parents for not telling him he was adopted, but they backed out and told the police.

I found a statistic at the time that said 30% of Italian men age 29 still lived at home with their families at the time. I can only imagine the number is higher the younger you go, but 30% of 29-year-olds is a lot. So it caused immense panic throughout the country. Parents were looking at their children with suspicion, while some children looked at Pietro with admiration.

But Pietro was not the first person to commit this kind of crime. And he himself may have been inspired by the Menendez brothers who two years prior killed their parents with shotguns in their Beverly Hills home.

At the time, they looked like greedy rich kids eager to get their inheritance. However, now we know that those boys may have been afraid of their father's abuse. Pietro's motivation always just remained financial though. He never even tried to hide it. When asked directly why he murdered his parents, he would always talk about what he had to gain financially from their deaths. When on the stand at his own trial, he said, quote,

We did it for the inheritance, so we could buy more expensive cars and clothes." Eventually, Pietro was released from prison in 2013 after only serving 22 years of his sentence. Three years after that, his sisters claimed he began harassing them for the portion of the inheritance he believed he was owed. He told them he was, quote, "finishing the work he started 25 years ago."

The following year, he was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for undisclosed mental disorders and cocaine addiction. I asked the man if he really believed that wealth had infected the minds of young people and drove them to kill their parents. "The only God in Veneto was money," he said. "People would go to church, but they were worshiping clothes and cars. Their values were all messed up, and that's why the kids all went crazy.

Maybe Pietro had been driven mad by his family's wealth and lack of values, or maybe he was a mentally unstable kid with the drug problem. But the people of Italy seemed to think it was the former. I have a feeling it was a mix of both.

So those were the two stories I heard on my travels, as told by the locals. I hope you enjoyed them. And if you have any trips coming up, you can send me the stories you hear on heartstartspounding.com. We're actually off next week. So if you've been wanting to catch up on the Dark Summer series or other older episodes ad-free, now is a great time to check out the free trial on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

We also have our August bonus episode on the scary history and ghosty stories of specific games like Bloody Mary. And when I come back, I have a more current episode that I've been working on for a few months. A true and tragic story that took me down a lot of rabbit holes. And until then, stay curious.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaylin Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious.

And live the Chumba life. BDW.

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest. Life comes at you fast, which is why it's important to find some time to relax. A little you time. Enter Chumba Casino. With no download required, you can jump on anytime, anywhere for the chance to redeem some serious prizes. So, if you're interested,

Treat yourself with Chumba Casino and play over 100 online casino-style games, all for free. Go to chumbacasino.com to collect your free welcome bonus. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. If there's anything better than getting a few of your favorite things from McDonald's, it's getting a few of your favorite things from McDonald's for less in the McDonald's app.

Delicious. And what could be better than two of your favorites for $3.99? Like the four-piece McNuggets, McDouble, or hot and spicy McChicken. So stop in for twice the delicious. Prices and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.