Emanuela Orlandi (born 14January 1968) was a Vatican teenager who mysteriously disappeared while returning home from music school in Rome on 22June 1983. The case received worldwide attention due to the public appeal of Pope John Paul II for her release after an unnamed terrorist organisation claimed to be holding the girl in exchange for the liberation of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish terrorist who had attempted to assassinate the Pope two years prior. However, the subsequent investigation discovered that the allegation of international terrorism was a misdirection, and the real motive of the disappearance remains unknown.
The case was the subject of two judicial investigations, the first between 1983 and 1997, the second between 2008 and 2015, both closed without finding a solution. The case was opened again in 2023 by the Vatican magistrates, by the Rome Prosecutor's Office, and by a bicameral parliamentary commission, thus being the subject of three investigations simultaneously.
Over the course of four decades, the case has led to much speculation about the involvement of international terrorism, organized crime, the role of a possible serial killer, a possible familiar trail, and a plot inside the Holy See to cover up a sex scandal involving ecclesiastical figures. Orlandi's family, in particular her brother Pietro, have consistently pressed the Vatican for the release of information about the case, believing that the Holy See knew more than it admitted. The Vatican has always maintained strict silence about the matter, denying any accusation of involvement.
Early life Emanuela Orlandi was the fourth of five children of Ercole Orlandi (died 2004) and Maria Pezzano. Her father was a lay employee in the papal household. The family lived inside Vatican City and, according to her older brother Pietro, the children had the free run of the Vatican Gardens.
Orlandi was in her second year of secondary school in Rome. Although the school year had concluded, she continued to take flute lessons three times per week at the Scuola di Musica Tommaso Ludovico da Victoria, connected with the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music. She was also part of the church choir at the Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri in the Vatican.
Chronology Disappearance Orlandi usually travelled by bus to the music school, located in Piazza di Sant'Apollinare, next to Piazza Navona. She would get off after a few stops and walk the last few hundred metres. Upon leaving home around 4:00p.m. on 22June 1983, Orlandi was late to class and the weather was extremely hot. She asked Pietro to drive her to school, but he had other commitments. "I've gone over it so many times, telling myself if only I had accompanied her maybe it wouldn't have happened", he recalled decades later.
At the end of class, Orlandi phoned home and explained to her sister Federica that before the lesson, she had received a job offer from a representative of Avon Products to hand out flyers at a fashion show for two hours, adding that she would meet him again at the end of the lesson to give him an answer. Federica told her not to accept the offer, believing the compensation to be excessive and thus unreliable, and suggested discussing the matter with their parents first. While leaving school, Orlandi spoke of the job offer with two female classmates, who then left her at a bus stop in Corso Rinascimento, in front of Palazzo Madama. She was last seen around 7:30p.m. at the bus stop, in the company of another girl, who was never identified.
Later that night, after hours of waiting, Orlandi's family began to worry and started looking for her in an area between the Vatican and the music school. They called the director of the music school to ask if any of their daughter's classmates had any information about her. Her father then went to the police to report her missing, but the police assumed she was with friends and suggested waiting. Orlandi was officially declared missing the next morning. Over the next two days, announcements of her disappearance were published in the Italian newspapers Il Tempo, Paese Sera, and Il Messaggero.
Subsequent events In the first days after the disappearance, Giulio Gangi, a young agent of the SISDE and friend of the Orlandi family, questioned the two police officers who were on duty in front of Palazzo Madama on the evening of the disappearance. Both confirmed they saw a girl fitting Orlandi's description talking to a man who was holding an Avon cosmetics bag, although they disagreed on the time of the sighting. One of the officers placed this event before Orlandi's music lesson, while the other thought it was around 7:00p.m., after the class had ended. According to the police, the man was driving a dark green BMW. Gangi managed to track down the car, which was being repaired by a mechanic, as one of its windows had been broken from the inside. Gangi discovered that the car belonged to a woman, but before he could dig deeper, he was removed from the investigation by superiors.
At 6:00p.m. on Saturday 25June, a phone call was received from a youth who claimed to be a sixteen-year-old boy named "Pierluigi". He reported that he and his fiancée had met a girl fitting Orlandi's description in Campo de' Fiori. The young man mentioned her flute, long dark hair, and a pair of glasses that she did not like to wear, along with other details that matched the description. According to "Pierluigi", the girl had just had a haircut and had introduced herself as "Barbarella", stating that she had run away from home and was selling Avon products. The girl's description and the mention of Avon products at a time when that was not yet public knowledge led people to think that "Pierluigi's" tip was genuine. "Pierluigi" called two more times the same day and the day after, providing other information about himself and more details about the girl.
"Pierluigi"'s phone calls drew suspicion not only for the obvious references to Orlandi but also for the mention of one of her friends. "Pierluigi" stated that he was calling from a restaurant in a seaside location. The police learned that that very evening, Pierluigi Magnesio, a friend of Orlandi, was in a restaurant in the seaside town of Ladispoli. This coincidence led investigators to believe that the callers were either aware of Orlandi's group of friends in the Vatican or were instructed by someone inside the Vatican. Agents of the Italian secret service visited Orlandi's house and made an inspection, after which they suggested that the Orlandi family should start recording all phone calls.
On 27June, a man calling himself "Mario" phoned the family and claimed to own a bar near Ponte Vittorio, between the Vatican and the music school. He reported that he knew a boy and two girls who in those days were selling Avon products. One of them was a young girl from Venice named "Barbara", who had confided to him about being a runaway but said that she would return home for her sister's wedding. This element could fit Orlandi, as her older sister Natalina was going to marry in September. When Orlandi's uncle asked "Mario" the height of the girl he saw, asking if she was around 150 or 160 cm, a second male voice could be heard in the background saying, "No, more". On 30 June, a large number of posters displaying Orlandi's photograph were plastered across Rome.
During the Angelus on 3July, Pope John Paul II issued an appeal to those responsible for Orlandi's disappearance, making the hypothesis of kidnapping official for the first time. Two days later, the Orlandi family received the first of a number of phone calls made by an anonymous male with an American accent, who would later be called "the American". The man claimed to be calling on behalf of a terrorist organization that was holding Orlandi captive, demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish man who shot the Pope in May 1981, in exchange for the girl's release. As proof, "the American" played a recording of Orlandi's voice over the phone. The anonymous caller also mentioned "Mario" and "Pierluigi" of the previous phone calls, identifying them as "members of the organisation". Despite decades of investigations, the real identity of "the American" has never been discovered.
The next day, on 6July, "the American" informed the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) news agency of the demand for a prisoner exchange, asking for the Pope's participation within twenty days and indicating that a wastebasket in the public square near the Italian Parliament would contain proof that Orlandi was indeed in his hands. These were to have been photocopies of her music school identity card, a receipt for tuition, and a note handwritten by the kidnapped girl.
On 8July, a man with an alleged Middle Eastern accent phoned one of Orlandi's classmates, saying the girl was in his hands and that they had twenty days to make the exchange with Ağca. He also asked for a direct telephone line with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state. The line was installed on 18July. A total of sixteen telephone calls were made by "the American" from different public telephones.
On the instructions of the alleged kidnappers, an audio cassette was found near ANSA's offices on 17July, which appeared to be a recording of a girl being tortured. Police told the family they did not believe the victim to be Orlandi, although her brother has expressed doubts about this. However, former DIGOS agent Antonio Asciore, who first found and listened to the cassette, claimed that the recording given to the family and later published was not the original one he found. He claimed that the original recording was longer than the published recording, and a male voice could be heard in the background. The presence of male voices was also reported in the original transcription of the recording made by police immediately after discovery, giving support to Asciore's claims that the published recording had been manipulated or faked.
On 4August 1983, ANSA received a written statement from an organization calling itself the Turkish Anti-Christian Turkesh Liberation Front, later simply referred as "Turkesh", who claimed to be holding Orlandi in exchange for Ağca's release. Turkesh sent seven letters in total between August 1983 and November 1985. Although they showed no evidence of Orlandi's captivity, Turkesh was able to provide many precise details about her private life, even mentioning the number of moles on her back. In the first "Turkesh" statement, there was also an ambiguous reference to Mirella Gregori, another 15-year-old girl who had gone missing in Rome forty days before Orlandi. In the following days, both Turkesh and "the American" confirmed that both Orlandi and Gregori were their captives. On the request of the Orlandi and Gregori families, Italian President Sandro Pertini made a public appeal for the girls' release on 20October 1983, linking the two cases in the public consciousness.
From this moment on, the Italian Secret Services appointed to both the Orlandis and the Gregoris the legal aid of lawyer Gennaro Egidio, who had a long career in international affairs, terrorism, and international crimes, including the death of Jeanette Bishop Rothschild, in order to redirect all phone calls from the alleged kidnappers to his office. In the following months, whenever "the American" called, Egidio attempted to make a deal for the girls' liberation, or at least to secure proof of their condition. However, no such proof was ever obtained. Years later, Egidio stated that the lack of this proof demonstrated that there was no real kidnapping.
In a phone call with Egidio on 27 October 1983, "the American" announced the death of Mirella Gregori, saying they would return her body one week before Christmas, but nothing was ever given. When Egidio asked about Orlandi, "the American" replied he had nothing to say about her for the moment.