Vatican REOPENS 40-year-old cold case of schoolgirl Emanuela Orlandi, 15, who vanished in 1983 sparking mystery that inspired Netflix documentary

• Emanuela Orlandi disappeared in June 1983 when she was just 15 years old 
• New probe led by Vatican’s senior prosecutor Alessandro Diddi will revisit files
• The case was the subject for the four-part Netflix series Vatican Girl in October

Vatican officials are to reopen an investigation into the mystery disappearance of a teenage girl almost 40 years ago.

Emanuela Orlandi, 15, vanished in Rome in June 1983 – just two years after a failed assassination on the life of the then Pope John Paul II – and there has been no trace of her ever since, with some linking her case to that of attempted hit.

The Vatican’s senior prosecutor Alessandro Diddi will lead the new probe, which will go over old case files and speak again to witnesses, although many are thought to have died – but Emanuela’s brother Pietrro is still alive.

Emanuela was the daughter of a Vatican employee and disappeared as she was on her way to a music lesson. There have long been suspicions that the Vatican knows more about what happened but has kept silent.

The Vatican is to reopen the case of Emanuela Orlandi, 15, who vanished in Rome in June 1983

The Vatican’s senior prosecutor Alessandro Diddi will lead the new probe, which will go over old case files and speak again to witnesses

Some say it was an attempt to blackmail the Vatican to release Mehmet Ali Agca – a Turk jailed in 1981 for trying to kill Pope John Paul II.

Another theory put forward in 2012 by an exorcist said she was kidnapped by a member of the Vatican police to be used as a sex slave and later murdered.

Others said there is a connection to the grave of Enrico De Pedis, a mobster buried in a Rome basilica who was a boss inside the Magliana Band criminal organisation.

Investigators looked into the possibility that she had been kidnapped by members of the Banda della Magliana (Magliana Band) in an attempt to recover money lost by crime groups when the Banco Ambrosiano, a Vatican-linked bank, collapsed.

In 1982 Roberto Calvi, the bank’s chairman, was found hanging from scaffolding underneath London’s Blackfriars Bridge.

Last year evidence linking De Pedis has emerged in testimony given in 2008 by a former mobster named Salvatore Sarnataro, who pointed the finger at his own son and De Pedis when speaking to police at the time.

Sarnataro said his son – Marco, a gang member – had confessed to taking part in an operation to follow and kidnap Orlandi on the orders of De Pedis – who in addition to being a crime boss was also a member of the ultra-religious Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

According to Sarnataro, Marco was ordered by De Pedis to tail the teenager for days before he and two others took her in a BMW to Rome’s EUR district, before handing her off to another crime boss who took her away.

A poster announcing the vanishing of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee

A handout picture provided by the Vatican Media shows experts opening the ossuary at the Teutonic Cemetery, to help solve the 36-year-old disappearance of Italian teenager Emanuela Orlandi, in Vatican City, 20 July 2019

People hold pictures of Emanuela Orlandi reading ‘march for truth and justice for Emanuela’ in St. Peter’s square at the Vatican, in 2012

Sarnataro said Marco told him of his involvement in the infamous plot when the pair were serving time in prison on drugs charges.

In October the mystery was the subject of a four-part series on Netflix called Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi.

Three weeks ago a senator in the Italian parliament called for a commission to be investigate the disappearance – and the reopening is thought to be linked to his request.

Senator Carlo Calenda said the aim of a commission would be to pressure the Vatican to finally turn over everything it knows about Orlandi’s disappearance to Italian law enforcement authorities, saying its longstanding official claim of ignorance was ‘hardly credible’.

‘We are a great secular nation that treats the Vatican with respect, but this case certainly cannot be considered closed in this way.’

In July 2019 the tombs of two princesses in the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery, opened in a search for Orlandi’s body, were found empty.

Speculation on Orlandi’s disappearance, and that of another 15-year-old girl in the same summer of 1983, has been rife over the years.

In late November 2018 Rome prosecutors said bones found in an annex to the Vatican’s nunciature to Italy do not belong to Orlandi or the other girl, Mirella Gregori who disappeared a month before Orlandi vanished.

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