Ready to take a journey with us into the minds of America’s most ruthless predators — and of those who tried to stop them?
Stefano Nazzi will join us to talk about his book Predatori (Mondadori) in conversation with Edoardo Orlandi!

The Book:

There were years in America when evil seemed to lurk everywhere: in dark parking lots, on the sides of roads, in the most unsuspecting homes. The FBI called it “the epidemic”—the golden age of serial killers—when, between the 1960s and the 1990s, there were nearly two thousand of them. They killed silently, methodically, with imagination, and often with a reassuring face. “We are your children, we are your husbands, we are everywhere,” said Ted Bundy, one of the most infamous. And he was right.

With his vivid, relentless prose, Stefano Nazzi retraces those dark decades, taking us into the minds of some of America’s most terrifying serial killers:

• John Wayne Gacy, who dressed as a clown at children’s parties and buried teenagers under his house.

• Edmund Kemper, the “gentle giant” who discussed Shakespeare with the police and then returned to dismember bodies.

• David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, who claimed to kill on the orders of a demon-possessed Labrador.

• Dennis Rader, a family man and security technician who signed his crimes BTK—“Bind, Torture, Kill.”

• Aileen Wuornos, who said she killed to defend herself but did it six times, in cold blood.

• And Ted Bundy himself: educated, brilliant, magnetic, “a typical American boy who killed typical American girls.”

Alongside their stories are those of the men and women who hunted, studied, and catalogued them. In the basements of Quantico, two FBI agents—Robert Ressler and John Douglas—began analyzing the profiles of serial murderers and then speaking with them. Together with psychologist Ann Burgess, they visited maximum-security prisons and interviewed thirty-six killers. From those conversations came the science of profiling: the idea that behind the apparent chaos there was a method, and that even the unpredictable could be anticipated. Ressler coined the term “serial killer,”and Douglas outlined the first typologies. They searched for patterns, models, and recurrences. They were the first mindhunters, the hunters of the mind.

This book tells the story of that era.

The Author:

Stefano Nazzi is an Italian journalist, podcaster, and author. He runs the blog Kronaka.it, where he tells contemporary stories, often of true crime. The same theme dominates his successful podcast Indagini for Il Post. In 2011, Laterza published Kronaka. Viaggio nel cuore oscuro del Nord. Mondadori later released Il volto del male (2023), Canti di guerra (2024), and Predatori. I serial killer che hanno segnato l’America (2025).