Ralph Brydges

Ralph Lyonel Brydges (born  1856 in Cheltenham, England – April 18, 1946 in Florida, US) was an English Protestant pastor.

Suspected of being a pedophile who, between 1923 and 1928, kidnapped, attacked, raped (in 8 cases) and sometimes killed (in 5 cases) girls in Rome . For this series of crimes Gino Girolimoni was initially wrongly convicted. Brydges was never convicted or prosecuted for the crimes.

Biography

An English native, Brydges was a deacon of the Anglican church and between 1910 and the outbreak of the First World War he served in New York State, where he was repeatedly reported to local authorities for child molestation.

Returning to England during the war, he held the office of military ordinariate and reported a serious injury to his head.

In 1922 he moved to Rome, where he and with his wife took up an apartament in Via Po until spring 1927. Here he became a ministry pastor of the "Holy Trinity Church of England" in Romagna.

During this period, the capital was consumed by the atrocious crimes by what the press called "The Monster of Rome".

On April 24, 1927, while on holiday in Capri, Brydges was arrested by the island supervisor accused of harassing an English girl from his own hotel. The commissioner of Capri was convinced that the man had a profile compatible with that of the maniac who wandered around the capital, and was also suspicious of Brydges's firm refusal of taking fingerprints.

The friendships and luster enjoyed by the family of his wife Florence (daughter of a powerful man who was several times the mayor of Toronto) and the discrepancy between the actual age of the pastor at that time and that of the maniac (roughly around 40 years old), urged the English consul of Naples to press for his release, which finally took place in a supervised manner in August of the same year.

This was enough for Brydges and his wife to leave in the blink of an eye and return to Rome, and despite a report to the police station, track of them was lost.

On April 13, 1928, while Brydges was on board a ship from Portuguese Africa, moored at the port of Genoa and headed to Canada, Commissioner Giuseppe Dosi (to whom we owe the credit for having continued the investigation despite the climate of ostracism of the fascist regime) reached him on board to question him. Dosi came to him following a witness account from the maid of the Brydges' Rome house and numerous witnesses (one of whom specified that the mysterious man could spread a single finger on his left hand) in cases of kidnapping and rape of Roman girls, crossing which he had come to the conclusion that the wanted man was one with a history of sexual crimes, of a height above the Italian average, of middle age, with a foreign accent and who occasionally changed his hair and mustache color.

During the search of Brydges' berth, the commissioner was able to collect evidence: notes that referred to times and places of crimes (including "Piazza S. Pietro" from which Rosina Pelli was kidnapped, and "Charleri": surname of another victim) and especially encrypted handkerchiefs absolutely identical to these used to strangle small victims.

Moreover, he personally ascertained what the commissioner of Capri had told him: Brydges' left hand, with the exception of a finger, was totally paralyzed.

Commissioner Dosi could then pose to the suspect an important question: he was aware of the fact that beside the body of one of the poor victims, little Armanda Leonardi, crumped and burnt pages of an ascetic catalog in English had been found. When asked if he used to order catalogs of sacred art and ascetic books, Brydges' answer was: "Yes! From Mowbray Library!".

Despite the protests of the British Consul present on the event, and the attempt to set sail the ship, with these elements it was possible to get the pastor arrested and later to send him to a psychiatric institute where he underwent an expert assessment. The conclusion was that the subject had a profile perfectly compatible with that of the "Monster of Rome".

Despite this, the constant pressures of the Anglican Church and British consular authorities for the liberation of Brydges meant that only three months the man was released from prison and sent to Toronto, Canada.^[1]

It must be said that on October 23, 1929, Brydges was acquitted in full from the investigation from the Rome Court of Appeals. But the man had already left Italy for some time, so as to never return.

Officially, therefore, the crimes of the Monster of Rome were unsolved.

Thanks to Dosi's investigations, however, the suspicion was strengthened that in the years before his stay in Rome, the man had been guilty of murders in the countries he had stayed in. All of the crimes (one in Geneva, another in Germany and two in Johannesburg) were united in terms of modalities and characteristics, of course, that they had remained unsolved.

Also thanks to Dosi's work is owed to the public rehabilitation, even if late, of the main indictee of the crimes Gino Girolimoni, unjustly accused and acquitted in silence from the newspapers, and sometimes still remembered as the Monster.

References

Bibliography

• Fausto Bassini, The monster and the commissioner who chased him to Genoa, Il Giornale, 9 May 2012.
• Cristiano Armati, Yari Selvetella. Criminal Rome, pp 62–76. Roma, Newton Compton, 2006. ISBN 88-541-0706-9.
• Damiano Damiani, Gaetano Strazzulla. Girolimoni: the monster and fascism. Bologna, Cappelli, 1972.
• Giuseppe Dosi, My autobiographical will, Vasto (Chieti), 1938.
• Giuseppe Dosi, The monster and the detective. Firenze, Vallecchi, 1973.
• Massimo Polidoro, Chronicle, p. 23-68. Casale Monferrato, Edizioni Piemme, 2005. ISBN 88-384-8132-6.
• Fabio Sanvitale, Armando Palmegiani: A monster called Girolimoni: A story of serial killers, girls and innocents. Roma, Sovera, 2011, ISBN 88-6652-003-9.
• Federica Sciarelli, Emmanuele Agostini. The innocent monster. The truth about Girolimoni condemned by the news and history. Milano, Rizzoli, 2010. ISBN 88-17-03546-7.

External links

• "The chain of crimes of the children's tortizer". La Stampa. 12 May 1927. p. 4.
• "Dead Girolimoni the innocent accused of having tortured and killed seven girls". La Stampa. 20 November 1961. p. 3.
• Adelfi, Nicola (21 November 1961). "Victim of a police error lived thirty-three years alone and in misery". La Stampa. p. 9.
• Pacicco, Luigi (January 2008). "Ralph Lyonel Brydges". occhirossi.it.