Tuesday 9 August 2022 04:34 PM Emanuela Orlandi: New evidence suggests gang member confessed to 1983 kidnap of ... trends now

Newly unearthed evidence in a mysterious Italian cold case came to light today, implicating an underworld mob-boss in the disappearance of a Vatican schoolgirl almost 40 years ago.

Emanuela Orlandi was on her way home from a flute lesson in Rome when she disappeared near the city's Piazza Navonaon on June 22, 1983 - at the age of just 15.

The vanishing of Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, has horrified and intrigued Italians for decades. Theories around her disappearance have run rife - with some convinced the Holy See knows more about the case than it has revealed.

Some say it was an attempt to blackmail the Vatican to release Mehmet Ali Agca - a Turk jailed in 1981 for trying to assassinate 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 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.

Now, 39 years after Orlandi vanished, new 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 Opus Dei.

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

'I later learned that my son, for this courtesy, had a Suzuki 1100 motorcycle as a gift,' Sarnataro said - according to a transcript published by Italy's La Republica newspaper on Tuesday. Sarnataro said Marco told him of his involvement in the infamous plot when the pair were serving time in prison on drugs charges.

The transcripts show Sarnataro said he did not know why his son told him about his involvement in the kidnapping. 'I understood immediately that he was living through a period of great fear,' he told police. Marco had died a year prior to the testimony.

It was not immediately clear why Sarnataro's testimony has only come to light now.

His 2008 testimony came two days after two of Orlandi's friends had identified Marco Sarnataro from a police photograph, according to The Times.

They said at the time he was the person they had seen following them and the teenage girl in the days leading up to her kidnapping.

Orlandi's friends said they saw Marco twice before she disappeared. The first time, they said, a man riding in the passenger seat of a car had touched her on the arm and told the driver: 'That's her.' 

The second time was the day before Orlandi vanished. The man had trailed the group until she had walked through the gates into the Vatican, they said.

Police records seen by La Republica show that one of Orlandi's two friends - named only as Angelo R - said with 'a high degree of certainty' after viewing photographs of Marco Sarnataro that he was the man they saw following them.

Another former boss of the Magbliana Band - Maurizio Abbatino - has also previously said that the kidnapping was organised by De Pedis to recover money it had lost in a Vatican bank. Some say Orlandi's father - who died in 2004 - worked as a banker. 

In addition to being linked to the death of Calvi, Orlandi's death has also been linked to the death of Michele Sindona - who had ties to the mafia and the Vatican.

Abbatino told author Raffaella Fanelli that Sindona committed suicide in prison in 1986, The Times reported.

In April 2020, the Vatican formally closed an investigation into Orlandi after remains dug up at a cemetery proved to be more than a century old.

The cold case had resurfaced a year earlier after an anonymous tip Orlandi's family suggested her body might be buried in the Teutonic cemetery inside the walls of Vatican City.

The Vatican had underground burial chambers near the cemetery opened and brought in forensic experts to investigate.