Victor Podesta, brother of John and Emmeline Podesta, was the author of the short story The Devil Within. In 1928, he witnessed Jack Harkness getting murdered ruthlessly and then reviving, and chose to write a story on the matter.
The Podestas ran a grocery store about ten miles east of the butcher shop, and they had connections to organised crime and possibly The Families. The Podesta family disappeared entirely in 1938. Victor apparently moved to Buenos Aires and changed his name to "John Forester" where he kept writing short stories in a similar prose to The Devil Within. Rex identified him through his stories and the fact that a blood bank had recently been destroyed in the area. Podesta had died at age seventy six of an unknown cause by that point, but the information helped identify where half of the Blessing was located. (TV: The Gathering)