Luca Spada, the former ambulance driver in prison accused of killing six patients with air injections, 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 investigating judge’s no to his release
The report is cited in the opinion of the 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 in October for the murder of 85-year-old Deanna Mambelli, has so far always rejected.
«A pattern that repeats itself over time»
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”.
Hospital admissions and the “cooling-off”
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 conscious decision-making processes. Spada’s hospital admissions would also be worthy of attention from a criminological point of view: according to the report 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 operational 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.
The chats with the macabre photos
Selfies with coffins in the background, photos of hearses, exhumations of corpses, crematoriums, with joking comments. These were some of the contents that Spada shared between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, in some group chats in which he participated, now in the records of the investigation into him. Some work colleagues revealed this to the Forlì police.
When heard as a witness, a colleague reported his propensity to publish the macabre contents of his second activity, with particular tones. In September 2024, for example, there is a photo of Spada in the foreground with four coffins in the background and the writing “I’ll accompany you to Edmondo”. In February 2025 other coffins and the comment: «Guys, special offer! They have arrived and I don’t know where to put them, if you find one to sell, give a shout”, or always in that period an image of a hearse in front of a mortuary and the comment “if you want to take a ride with me, just call me”. Another time, an open coffin and the writing “Today is exhumation day”.
Work with funeral services
Spada, as it emerged at the time of his arrest last April, collaborated with a funeral home in Meldola, despite the absence of a formal working relationship. An element that was explored by investigators in search of a possible motive for the disputed gestures, but then effectively discarded, since none of the deaths indicated in the files were treated by the company with which Spada was in dealings.