A poster calling for information on Emanuela Orlandi, who disappeared aged 15 from a Rome street in 1983
More bones have been found on the grounds of the Vatican embassy in Italy linked to a teenager who vanished more than 30 years ago.
Last week, remains were discovered at the consulate in Rome, sparking a fresh interest in the case of Emanuela Orlandi who vanished aged 15 in 1983.
As police returned to the compound yesterday, coroner Giovanni Arcudi said preliminary examinations of bones found last week indicated they belonged to a woman likely in her 30s.
It’s raised concerns that the missing teenager, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was held captive for years before being killed.
Despite the age of the bones, the Orlandi family lawyer, Laura Sgro, told the ANSA news agency her clients are waiting for DNA results.
The teenager was one of two 15-year-olds, along with Mirella Gregori, who went missing in Rome in the space of 40 days in 1983.
The two girls’ disappearance has sparked a range of theories over the years, especially surrounding Emanuela’s case and its links to the Vatican.
Cold War politics, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, alleged Vatican links to the Italian criminal underworld and claims of satanic orgies by prelates have all been blamed for the girl’s disappearance.
Emanuela, who was last seen on a street in Rome, disappeared after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a member of the Holy See police force.
Rome’s chief prosecutor has been called in to investigate the find.
One theory suggests she was kidnapped by hostage-takers trying to have Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot the Pope in St Peter’s Square in 1981, freed from prison.
Shortly after she disappeared the police are claimed to have received anonymous calls, which said Emanuela would be freed if the Turkish gunman was released.
Forensic investigators are working to determine the age of the bones as well as the date of death.
The Rome embassy is in the upscale residential neighborhood of Parioli, near the city’s Villa Borghese museum.
Protesters hold posters with Emanuela Orlandi’s image calling for ‘truth and justice’ for the 15-year-old who vanished in 1983, in a demonstration in St Peter’s Square in 2012
The last major twist in the case came in 2012, when forensic police exhumed the body of a reputed mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica in hopes of finding Emanuela’s remains too.
However, that search turned up no link.
More recently, a leading Italian investigative journalist caused a sensation when he published a five-page document last year that had been stolen from a locked Vatican cabinet that suggested the Holy See had been involved in Orlandi’s disappearance.
The Vatican immediately branded the document a fake, though it never explained what it was doing in the Vatican cabinet.
The document was purportedly written by a cardinal and listed supposed expenses used for Orlandi’s upkeep after she disappeared.
The Vatican has repeatedly maintained that it has co-operated fully with police investigating the Orlandi case.