The Beasts of Satan: Black magic worshippers carried out ritual murders involving sex, heavy metal music and dancing on the graves of their victims

There was a full moon the night Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino were slain in a wood outside Milan in January 1998. Witness statements would later testify the young couple, just 16 and 19 respectively, died during a cocaine-fuelled ritual murder 'involving sex and heavy metal music', carefully planned out by their peers.

Tollis, an aspiring young singer, had joined the Beasts of Satan band as a fan of the heavy metal cover songs they performed together at venues across the city. It was only when his girlfriend had thoughts about leaving the circle that things took a sudden turn.

Many years later, Tollis was discovered to have been bludgeoned to death that night when trying to intervene in the slaughter of his girlfriend, stabbed through the heart with a knife in the moonlight in what local media reported as a ritual sacrifice.

Across the city, Tollis' father, Michele, had begun a desperate search for his son after receiving an unusual call before his disappearance. But it was too late. Years later, police would learn how Tollis and Marino were buried in a hole in the woods, their killers dancing on the grave chanting: 'Zombies, now you are only zombies!'

In the first few days of his son's disappearance, as police tried to assure Michele his son had run off with Marino in some youthful fit of passion, the determined father became convinced a trail of Satanic artefacts and a strange detail in the suspects' alibi would lead him to his son. He would be proven right.

Fabio and his father Michele Tollis in an undated photo. Michele became convinced of the link to his son's music and fascinations, and spent six years investigating what happened to him

Band member Andrea Volpe would lead police to the place where they buried the bodies of Fabio and his girlfriend Chiara some six years after the killings

Fabio was killed with a hammer while trying to defend his girlfriend from a ritual murder

Andrea Volpe, ultimately sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the murders

It was late on January 17, 1998, when Michele Tollis received a call from his son, asking if he could spend the night with his young girlfriend, Chiara.

Michele thought the call was unusual, that his son would know he would not be allowed to stay out with his 16-year-old partner.

The questions felt contrived, he later reflected, as if 'someone was telling him what to say on the phone, or that perhaps he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol'.

'Usually my son speaks in a very confident manner,' he said in an interview for the Occult Crimes television series, 17 years later. 

'That night it felt strange to me. He was hesitating, almost mumbling.'

Fabio conceded and agreed to come home, but Michele could not help but feel the exchange odd. He got dressed and drove into Milan, heading for the Midnight Pub - a local haunt for heavy metal fans frequented by his son and band members.

Michele knew some of the people his friends associated with. He did not know about the rituals, or the 'aim' to commit 'an indeterminate number' of murders, injuries and acts of sexual violence, as judges later concluded.

'Drugs are known to have figured prominently in their activities and it is not clear whether they did more than flirt with black magic,' The Guardian would later report.

Years later, the attorney for at least one of the defendants planned to plead insanity, saying her client was too high on LSD to know what he was doing, the LA Times claimed. 

Later in life, Michele became convinced the music had a role in the obsessive Satanic practices they engaged in together.

The trail went cold upon arriving at the bar. Fabio met his son's associates, who all recounted the same story - Fabio and Chiara had left to go to the bistro next door to use the phone and not come back. 

The owner confirmed the couple had dropped in, but could not say where they had been.

Paolo Leoni, a friend of Chiara and bandmate of Fabio, led Michele on a hunt with other band members around several bars and a construction site. He shared a number of Chiara's parents, who confirmed they had not been home either.

The group assured Michele that 'soon enough the two lovebirds will come back home' and disappeared into the night with a friend.

In the days that followed, Michele received similar assurances from the police, who found his persistence 'irritating' and told him he was 'busting their balls'. Michele probed what he saw as a lead in the search, strange artifacts, a goat's skull and black sheets in Chiara's bedroom. But the police told him to stay away from the case.

Convinced his son's association with heavy metal and Satanic trinkets was somehow connected to his disappearance - and suspicious that all his bandmates relayed identical accounts of what had happened - Michele began touring the bars of Milan in hope of anything that might bring him closer to his son.

Over the next six years, Michele would continue diligently pooling information on his son's friends and associates. But with police disinterested in his suspicions of a darker, Satanic motive, the case eventually went cold.

Chiara Marino (left) and Fabio Tollis (right) were killed and buried in a grave in 1998

The now closed Midnight Pub in Milan, where the bandmembers used to hang out

Mariangela Pezzotta was killed after an argument as Volpe feared she knew too much

Mariangela was found buried in a mount of dirt in a greenhouse behind their house, which police found almost abandoned - except for a live Boa Constrictor

Six years later, in 2004, the body of 27-year-old shop assistant Mariangela Pezzotta was found under a mound of soil in a greenhouse in Golasecca, near Somma Lombardo, with limbs still visible and the body still warm.

The greenhouse joined with a seemingly abandoned summer cottage belonging to Beasts of Satan bandmember Andrea Volpe and his then girlfriend, Elisabetta Ballarin.

Inside, police only found a live Boa Constrictor, apparently kept as a pet. 

Police made their horror discovery after finding Volpe wandering the streets in an intoxicated state, having crashed a car registered in the name of Pezzotta's mother in attempt to get rid of it while on a cocktail of cocaine and heroin with Ballarin.

Still, there was nothing to link the murder of Mariangela Pezzotta to those of Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino.

After speaking to Pezzotta's mother, authorities learned how Volpe had joined the Beasts of Satan and had troubles with drug addiction after returning from military service.

Mariangela had broken off their high school romance but continued to lend him money as his troubles worsened.

Andrea Volpe, already known to police for his drug use, eventually confessed to the murder under interrogation.

With mounting evidence undermining his efforts to downplay his role in her death, Volpe admitted that he had killed Pezzotta after trusting her with information about the murders of Tollis and Marino, judging that she knew too much.

Under pressure, Volpe told police how he called assumed ringleader Nicola Sapone after accidentally shooting Pezzotta, and was cornered into ending her life and hiding the evidence.

Sapone was accused of hitting Pezzotta with a shovel in an attempt to kill her, before telling Volpe to dispose of the car.

But learning of Volpe's confession, Sapone continued to deny any involvement in the death of Pezzotta.

Volpe had already changed his story, and his girlfriend, Elisabette Ballarin, insisted that she remembered nothing.

Elisabetta Ballarin is escorted by penitentiary police officers as she enters the Busto Arsizio court, near Varese, northern Italy, January 31, 2006 for a hearing

Lina Marino, the mother of Chiara Marino, 19, reacts at the Milan court in Italy, April 11, 2005

Paolo Leoni is escorted by penitentiary police officers as he enters the Busto Arsizio court, near Varese, northern Italy, January 31, 2006 for a hearing of the Beasts of Satan

Andrea Volpe is escorted by penitentiary police officers out of Milan's court, Italy, June 16, 2006, after the appeal sentence of the trial

The story of Mariangela Pezzotta, and mention of the Beasts of Satan, pushed Michele Tollis to come forward once more with his research into the group.

As the dots started to join up, the dossier was enough to prompt Italian intelligence services into investigating Tollis' work.

And then, on May 17, 2004, with the evidence mounting against them, Andrea Volpe confessed to all the murders and the nature of the group.

Volpe named his bandmates, lining up with Tollis' research, and told police they had killed Pezzotta after Sapone became paranoid about her knowledge of the murders.

Volpe also alleged Sapone had threatened him and Ballarin if he refused to kill Pezzotta.

He then agreed to take investigators to the woods near Busto Arsizio where the bodies of Fabio and Chiara were buried.

Here, archaeologists recovered the knife believed to have been used in the murder of 19-year-old Chiara Marino.

They found parts of a broken space, cloth and leather in their search of the area.

And uncovering the remains of the teenagers, they managed to identify various injuries suffered before their death.

Police learned how the group danced on the graves after killing their victims and burying them in a hole, before reportedly returning to douse the hole in ammonia in a bid to deter animals drawn to the site. 

They also learned more horrifying details about the group, who had apparently moved on from Black Sabbath covers together and embraced graverobbing and Satanic practices, hoarding bizarre artifacts and taking hard drugs.

Chiara, the only girl in the circle, was trying to move away from the Beasts of Satan when she tragically killed. 

Judges would later claim that the accused had 'aimed' to commit an 'indeterminate number of murder crimes, sexual violence, injuries, private violence... defamation of graves and aggravated theft'. 

They heard how Fabio had suspected something was wrong the night the band decided to kill Chiara, and told Volpe he should get back home to his father.

And they heard how it was Andrea Volpe who told Fabio to call his father and tell him he wanted to stay with his girlfriend.

They had barely stepped out of the car in the area where they were killed when Sapone and Volpe allegedly set on Chiara with knives. 

Mario Maccione, one of Fabio's school friends, would later confess to having bludgeoned him to death with the hammer as he tried to intervene in her murder.

Nicola Sapone arrives for his trial in Busto Arsizio on January 31, 2006

Paolo Leoni arrives at the Busto Arsizio court, Italy, July 12, 2005, during this trial over the ritual killings linked to their band

The case rocked Italy. In June 2004, Italian media reported Chiara had been killed after Satanists had become obsessed with the idea that she was the re-embodiment of the Virgin Mary.

Accounts differed, and soon the band were believed to be linked to as many as seven murders within six years, according to the media.

Among them, police revisited the 1999 death of Andrea Ballarin - apparently a childhood friend of Volpe - who had been found hanged in his school aged 21. 

It was unclear from contemporary reporting whether he was related to Elisabetta Ballarin.

Police also looked into the 1999 death of Angelo Lombardo, a 28-year-old caretaker known to the group, who was found burned alive in the cemetery where he worked.

And separately, it was revealed Andrea Bontade, a drummer for the band, had been 'terrorised into committing suicide', drugged and forced to drive his car into a wall at high speed in September 1998.

He was named as one of the 'elders' of the 'sect' in Italian media, which claimed he had 'decided to back out' after helping dig the hole where Tollis and Marino were buried.

For years, Italian media continued to probe the alleged practices of the group, detailing how Sapone and Volpe would orient a pentagram with a compass to connect to other sects - without providing evidence.

The revelations about the links to heavy metal music saw claims the band played Slayer album 'Hell Awaits' at full volume during their 'rituals'. 

And it was claimed initiates would prove themselves with bizarre hazing exercises, including throwing 'himself dead weight, after a long run, against the hedges in the park... without complaining of the pain' and being made to 'drink a cocktail of alcohol and drugs and do somersaults without vomiting'.

Reports emerged that a university in Rome linked to the Vatican had begun a course for Roman Catholic priests, training them in diabolical possession and exorcism as the Beasts of Satan faced trial. 

The nation was gripped by the mystery around the group, brought to light with significant help from one man only hoping to find out what happened to his son - and fearlessly willing to press and probe the truth about Beasts of Satan until they were brought to justice.

Andrea Volpe was released early after 16 years and reportedly went on to study science

Volpe is escorted by prison police as he arrives at the courthouse in Busto Arsizio, northern Italy, February 22, 2005

Andrea Volpe, convicted of fatally wounding his former girlfriend, Mariangela Pezzotta, was given 30 years in jail. He was released in 2020.

Nicola Sapone was sentenced to life behind bars for the murder of Fabio Tollis and his girlfriend, Chiara.

Elisabetta Ballarin was jailed for 23 years for her role in the murder of Mariangela Pezzotta.

In 2016, she featured in a documentary, speaking candidly about the crimes and affiliation with the group as she tried to rebuild her life.

Paolo Leoni was handed a 26 year sentence for his involvement, later a life sentence. 

After the sentences were relayed, Chiara's mother shouted down: 'Leoni, you're going to pay, you're a murderer, 26 years is too little.'

Pietro Guerrieri was sentenced to 16 years in prison for his role in the murder of the young couple.

Others reportedly received sentences between 24 and 26 years, later raised. 

Upon hearing of the sentences, Michele Tollis relayed his feelings in a pithy statement: 'Today justice rewarded me.'