This June day, the girl takes her bus, as usual. She then joined the Conservatory on foot, which adjoins the Saint-Apollinaire church. But she arrives late, which surprises her friends, who find her a distracted air, a little absent. She leaves the course ten minutes in advance, a phone call to her sister to inform her that she met, in the street, a man claiming to be a Cosmetics brand Avon, who would have offered her a most attractive and extremely well paid job. Flashing the scam, his elder advises him to talk about it, first, to his parents.
At 7:30 p.m., Emanuela kisses her friend on both of them who climbs on the bus. She stays on the sidewalk and then … volatilized.
The next day, his parents contacted the police, who delayed: at 15, the fugues are common. Besides, the family having Vatican citizenship, their complaint does not depend on the Italian police. Faced with the insistence of the Orlandi, an investigation for disappearance is open. And the craziest theories start to swarm, including the one who claims to have been removed by a boss of the mafia that would have flowed her body into concrete.
As often, in this kind of tragic story, we think we see the girl everywhere. In Rome and elsewhere. Unprecedented fact, on Sunday July 3, during the Angelus, Pope John Paul II called upon “Those responsible for disappearance“. The thesis of the kidnapping is therefore, for the first time, clearly mentioned. A few days later, the parents of Emanuela receive calls from a man saying to belong to the organization of gray wolves, a Turkish Turkish terrorist group. He claims to hold the young girl. She will only be returned to her family if the authorities release Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who, in May 1981, John Paul II.
Years go by and the track, obviously, does not lead to anything. When she left prison in 2010, Mehmet Ali Ağca met Emanuela’s brother, to whom he swears that his sister is fine, that she saw recluse in a house “in Switzerland or France “ And hypothesizes that it is the Vatican who is behind the abduction. Later, in an interview on Turkish television, he will say that she is nun in a monastery somewhere in a country in central Europe. And let her parents see her when they want. We swim in full delirium.
In 2022, Netflix seized the case in a documentary, The missing of the Vaticanwho will be talked about a lot. We see in particular Emanuela’s brother affirm that Pope Francis would have said to him “She is in heaven “. For the family, that is no doubt, the Vatican knows what happened to the girl. The track followed in the documentary is that known as Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. This prelate, who was president of the Vatican bank under John Paul II, would have bleached funds to help the Solidarność union. The money being “taken” on the funds of the Roman mafia, the kidnapping of Emanuela would, in fact, would have been only a warning addressed to the Vatican.
As far-fetched that it could seem, in January 2023, the press service of the Holy See announced that the “Promoter of Justice” of the Vatican, the equivalent of a prosecutor, had opened an investigation. Emanuela’s brother was also received at length by the Vatican body, to which he would have brought new evidence.
In this case too, as in those already mentioned by Michael Peterson or Robert Durst, it is therefore a documentary series which will impact the course of justice, which will be back in motion after long years of blur.
To date, the case is always open and has never been elucidated.
Our series “When the eye of the camera reopens the eyes of justice”
From the brothers Menendez to Michael Peterson, our summer series looks at these documentaries and fictions that have influenced the course of justice, going so far as to reopen files.
