Maurizio Giugliano

For the remainder of his incarceration, Giugliano gained notoriety for his violent behavior. On October 27, 1988, when put on trial for theft and robbery committed in 1982, he threw handcuffs at the court. In November 1989, during the trial for the Rosa murder, he hurled a chair at the judges and threatened to kill them. In 1990, he was admitted to the Montelupo Fiorentino Judicial Psychiatric Hospital, where he remained for three years until he was ordered to be transferred - the reason for this was that he suffocated a fellow inmate with a pillow when he denied to give him a cigarette. From there, Giugliano was transferred to a hospital in Reggio Emilia, where he died the following year of a heart attack.

When put on trial for the Meschi murder in 1986, he was successfully convicted and sentenced to 17 years and 8 months imprisonment, largely thanks to the witness testimony of the man who had seen him walking away from the crime scene. The psychiatric reports performed during the three trials produced very different outcomes, which caused confusion over Giugliano's mental state. He was never charged with the murders of Lupi, Durante and Skerl, which, coupled with his acquittal in the Rosa case, remain unsolved.

After his release, Giugliano moved around the outskirts of Rome in his caravan. He then married Rosa Bussaglia, whom he had met as a teenager, and had a daughter with her, with the trio living in his caravan. In February 1984, following a violent argument with his mother-in-law, Giugliano set fire to the Bussaglias' apartment and was arrested for arson. While in jail, he was accused for a series of murders that had recently plagued the capital and the surrounding area.

Between July 1983 and January 1984, six women were murdered in the Ager Romanus and the Pontine Marshes, all of which were attributed to Giugliano. The victims were the following:

Giugliano's wife, mother and mother-in-law were interviewed several times by investigators and described his personality in detail. According to his wife, Giugliano would implicate himself in the murders during domestic disputes, while his mother informed the authorities about her son's suspicious behavior as early as October 1983.

Once incarcerated in Rebibbia, Giugliano shared a cell with Agostino Panetta, leader of the 'Clockwork Orange Gang' who had been imprisoned for robbery. Giugliano supposedly confided to him that he was responsible for the murders of Rosa and Maria Negri, who was killed inside her home in Cavallino on August 3, 1983. In his account, he was reportedly in Veneto for a summer vacation with his wife and brother-in-law, and while pumping gas, he noticed Negri. Feeling an urge to kill, he made up an excuse to his relatives and drove to the woman's house, where he strangled her with an electric wire. He then hurried back to his car and returned.

When queried about the new suspect, the witness to the Meschi murder immediately recognized him as the killer. However, investigators struggled to link him to the other five murders, leading some newspapers to question his guilt. Some commentators also pointed out that in the 1980s, before and after Giugliano's arrest, similar murders occurred in and around Rome, which remain unsolved to this day.

In the 1970s, the family frequently changed residences before eventually settling in Rome. In 1977, Giugliano was arrested for robbery and served a short prison term at the Casal del Marmo juvenile prison. Two years later, he was arrested for sexually assaulting an acquaintance. He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, which concluded that he had a personality disorder aggravated by his upbringing. While awaiting sentencing, he was imprisoned at the Aversa Judicial Psychiatric Hospital, and once convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment, he was transferred to the Pianosa Prison.

Maurizio Giugliano (June 7, 1962 – 1994), known as The Wolf of Ager Romanus (Italian: Il Lupo dell'Agro Romano), was an Italian serial killer who killed between two and seven women in Rome and the surrounding area from 1983 to 1984. He later murdered a fellow inmate at a mental hospital in 1993. For these crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and remained imprisoned until his death in 1994.

Maurizio Giugliano was born in the hamlet of Acciarella, Latina, on June 7, 1962, the second of four children of cow herders. He suffered from malnutrition and psychological problems since birth, which caused him to start speaking at age four. In 1970, he was accidentally hit by a motorcycle driven by carabinieri, and from then on he became more unstable and aggressive. Over the years, Giugliano had repeated outbursts against his father, siblings, and classmates, even going so far as to kill animals on the family farm. He was detained in several psychiatric hospitals for this, but always managed to escape.