The young woman, then 15 years old and the daughter of a Holy See employee, disappeared when she was returning from music class.
The Promoter of Justice Vatican (prosecutor) has reopened the research on disappearance of the young Emanuela Orlandi almost forty years ago, in 1983, one of the great mysteries of italian history. The decision of the Vatican City Prosecutor’s Office follows “the requests made by the family in different judicial venues,” sources from the papal state pointed out.
The Orlandi family lawyer, Laura Sgrò, filed complaints in 2018 and 2019 and various instances until last year but does not know the reason that led to the reopening of the investigations and hopes to meet soon with the Vatican promoter, Alessandro Diddi. The defender, in conversation with Efe, assured that “nobody” has notified them and that she has found out from the press. She and she does not exclude that the new investigation occurs after collecting new evidence on the case, recently picked up by the Netflix series “Vatican Girl” or with numerous books.
The Vatican Prosecutor’s Office closed in April 2020 the investigation into the search for possible remains of the girl in the German cemetery in Vatican City. Orlandi was a Vatican citizen – her father was an employee of the Holy See – who disappeared on June 22, 1983 at the age of 15 when she was returning home after her music classes in Rome.
various theories
The event often reappears in public debate and continues to arouse enormous interest in Italy because, forty years later, no one knows the whereabouts of the girl, while the mafia, intelligence services and even the Roman Curia are accused. His disappearance, in fact, has been surrounded by numerous theories, from the involvement of men from the Curia, to the “Magliana Gang”, the Rome mafia, or even the Turkish terrorist who attacked John Paul II in 1981, Ali Agca.
The girl’s brother, Pietro Orlandi, expressed on RAI public television his wish that “it can start from the beginning” with the investigations that take into account the latest evidence and indications that have emerged. Emanuela Orlandi’s family has been tirelessly searching for the young woman for almost forty years and the Vatican authorities have recently agreed to open certain spaces in search of her possible remains, although without success.
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In 2012, the family called for an investigation when unidentified skeletal remains were found next to the tomb in the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaris of Enrico De Pedis, the head of the “Magliana Gang”, Rome’s mafia during the decades of 1970 and 1980. In July 2019, the Vatican opened the graves of two German princesses in the Vatican’s Teutonic Cemetery after the family received an anonymous letter with a photo of the pantheon and the message “look where the angel points.” The graves were empty.
Months before, some bones found in the basement of the nunciature (embassy) of the Holy See in Rome were also analyzed, but it was finally determined that they were older.