Status: 01/10/2023 3:18 p.m
Emanuela Orlandi has been missing for 40 years. There are many rumors surrounding the case of the daughter of a Vatican employee. Now the public prosecutor’s office is starting investigations again and apparently wants to re-examine documents from back then.
Almost 40 years after the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl in the Vatican, the Papal State’s public prosecutor’s office has opened a new investigation. The prosecutors want to investigate the suspicion and the indications that Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Curia employee and a citizen of the Vatican, was kidnapped or murdered.
The teenager did not come home on June 22, 1983 after a music lesson in the historic center of Rome. A body was never found. As reported by the Italian media, the Vatican’s main prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, now wants to re-examine all the evidence and documents from back then and hear witnesses, including cardinals.
Family had fought for recovery
The Orlandi family had previously put pressure on them through the media and their attorney to get the case reopened. The Italian public prosecutor’s office concluded its investigation in 2015 without indictment. However, the Vatican did not announce on what basis it would now be re-determined. According to their lawyer, the Orlandi family was also not informed of the details.
The missing person case gained new attention worldwide in 2022 thanks to the Netflix series “Vatican Girl”. In the first decades after Orlandi’s disappearance in the summer of 1983, lawyers, investigators and the media had constantly put forward new hypotheses about a suspected course of events and alleged connections. Some have suggested Roman mafia involvement, while others have speculated that the Vatican was being blackmailed in connection with the 1981 Pope’s assassin Ali Agca.