The Rome prosecutor's office has opened a new investigation into the mysterious disappearance in 1983 of a teenager who lived in the Vatican, one of the most famous judicial enigmas in Italy, said Monday, May 15, transalpine media.
Emanuela Orlandi, 15, one of whose parents worked in the Vatican, was last seen in central Rome after leaving a music lesson on June 22, 1983. For forty years, this affair has given rise to countless speculations and has continued to fascinate Italians against a background of conspiracy theories involving the secret services, the mafia, the high Vatican authorities or Freemasonry. The case also inspired a recent hit documentary series, Vatican Girl, which aired on Netflix.
The family's lawyer, Laura Sgro, told AFP on Monday that she had learned of the opening of the investigation by the media and assured that "it would undoubtedly be good news". It was the family's incessant requests that first led the Vatican in January to reopen its own investigations into its most notorious cold case. After this step, "the Rome prosecutor's office has also formally reopened the investigations into the Orlandi case," says the Corriere della Sera daily.
Kidnapped by mafiosi?
Over the years, the Vatican has been accused of slowing down investigations but, according to La Repubblica newspaper, its chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi and his Roman counterpart are "cooperating on the case." It would be "the first time Italian and Vatican prosecutors have worked together to seek the truth," Sgro said.
According to Corriere della Sera, the new investigation would be based in particular on the statements of a former prosecutor to whom two Vatican representatives would have promised to reveal where the body of the victim was. One of the most popular theories is that the girl was kidnapped by mafiosi to pressure the Vatican to recover a loan. Others say she was abducted to force authorities to release Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish national who attempted to assassinate John Paul II in 1981, from prison. In the Netflix series, one of her friends claims that Emanuela would have confided to her, a week before her disappearance, that she had been harassed in the Vatican gardens by a relative of Pope John Paul II.
