page_title: Donato Bilancia
section_title: The murders
hierarchical_section_title: Donato Bilancia / Biography / The murders
context_page_description: Donato "Walter" Bilancia, is an Italian serial killer who murdered seventeen people – nine women and eight men – on the Italian Riviera in the period from October 1997 to May 1998.
  Bilancia's inconsistent modus operandi made him difficult to identify and capture. There were no obvious links between the majority of his murders. He chose most of his victims at random, across a vast area of Northern Italy and becoming synonym for fear among the Italian Riviera population, being nicknamed Mostro della Liguria and L'assassino dei treni.
  Initially attributed with only nine homicides by the Italian police, Bilancia later confessed to having killed eight other people. With a sentence to 13 terms of life imprisonment, and no possibility of release, Bilancia has been defined by some Italian newspapers as "the most horrifying serial killer in the history of Italy".
context_section_description: Bilancia was a compulsive gambler who lived alone.  His first murder was the October 1997 strangulation of a friend who betrayed him by luring him into a rigged card game, in which he lost £185,000 (about $267.00). The authorities originally thought this death was a heart attack.  Bilancia's next two murders were the revenge shooting of the game's operator, and of his wife. He emptied their safe afterward. Bilancia later said these first killings gave him a taste for murder.  In all his killings he used or carried a .38 caliber revolver loaded with wad cutter ammunition.  He made no attempt to conceal his victims' bodies. That same month, he followed a jeweller home to rob him, then shot him and his wife dead when the wife began screaming.  He emptied their safe of jewelry. He next robbed and murdered a money changer.  Two months later, he killed a night watchman making his rounds, simply because he did not like night watchmen. He killed an Albanian sex worker and a Russian sex worker. A second money changer was killed next, shot multiple times and his safe emptied. 
  In March 1998, while receiving oral sex at gunpoint from a sex worker, he shot and killed two night watchmen who interrupted, then shot the sex worker, who survived to help develop a police sketch and later testify against him. He also killed a Nigerian prostitute and a Ukrainian prostitute, and robbed and assaulted an Italian sex worker without killing her. On April 12, 1998 he boarded the train from Genoa to Venice because he "wanted to kill a woman".  Spotting a young woman travelling alone, he followed her to the toilet, unlocked the door with a skeleton key, shot her in the head and stole her train ticket.
  Six days later, he boarded the train to San Remo and followed another young woman to the toilet.  He used his key to enter, then used her jacket as a silencer and shot her behind the ear.  Excited by her black underwear, he masturbated and used her clothes to clean up. The murders of two "respectable" women sparked a public outcry and the creation of a police task force.
  In his last killing before his arrest, Bilancia murdered a service station attendant after filling up with petrol, then took the day's receipts, about 2 million lira (about $1000).
caption: A map showing the subdivisions within the Liguria region. Most of Bilancia's murders took place in then existing Province of Genoa (Genova) – replaced by Metropolitan City of Genoa, since 2015.