RedHanded - Episode 286 - Emanuela Orlandi: The Vatican’s Only Missing Citizen

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Organised crime, sex scandals, terror plots, hundreds of millions of missing dollars, a gangster known as ‘God’s Banker’ found hanging from a bridge in London, a 100-year-old apocalyptic prophecy, an anonymous tip-off that sounds like it comes from Dan Brown’s never-released Godfather sequel, and messages hidden in crypts…this is the story of Emanuela Orlandi, the only missing citizen of the smallest country in the world.  And though she disappeared more than 40 years ago, Emanuela’s story remains, to this day, one of the biggest mysteries in Italian criminal history.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Sruti. And welcome to Catholicism and also Red Handed. We're going to the Vatican this week but before we go there you have to go to redhandedpodcast.com and buy your tour tickets. Yes please. We're not doing a show at the Vatican but we are doing a show in 15 cities across the

US and Canada and also one in Dublin. So go to redhandedpodcast.com right now and get your tickets because we are coming for you North North America and Dublin, in an alarmingly short amount of time. Yeah, assuming my passport ever leaves the US Embassy. Today's case is that of the only missing citizen of the smallest country in the world. This took place about 40 years ago, and in January 2023, the Vatican announced its decision to reopen what remains to this day one of the biggest mysteries in Italian criminal history. It's got everything. We've got organised crime, sex scandals, terror plots, hundreds of millions of missing dollars, a gangster known as God's Banker found hanging from a bridge in London, a 100-year-old apocalyptic prophecy,

and an anonymous tip-off straight out of the page from Dan Brown's never-released Godfather sequel. It is very Dan Brown today. Yes, yes. And it all ties into just one thing, the disappearance of Emanuela Olandi, a 15-year-old girl and resident of the world's oldest and most secretive autocracy. Dun, dun, dun.

The 40-year-old cat and mouse game between the Italian police, the Italian criminal underworld and, at the centre of it all, the Catholic Church. They always are. Emanuela Orlandi was born on the 14th of January 1968, the fourth child of Ercole and Maria Orlandi. The Orlandi family were one of just 13 families living in the Vatican. The family had lived there for over 100 years and had served under seven popes. Ercole worked as a clerk for the prefecture of the Pontifical House and at the time his children were some of the only young people

with Vatican citizenship. That is crazy. Do you know when the Pope dies they have a special Pope hammer that they hit him on the head three times with to check if he's dead? No, I didn't know that. Dan Brown didn't put that in his books. They also, when you become a Pope, they have to look up your address to check that you actually do have balls and you're not Pope Joan.

Wow. Yep. So what happens when shit's really old? I mean, yeah. I tried to Google Vatican passport and there's lots of different colours of them so I don't actually know which one it is. But there you go. One of the few families in the Vatican

and one of the few kids with these passports. So with a population of less than a thousand, and covering an area of less than 0.2 miles squared, the Vatican could be described as a village in the centre of Rome, surrounded by walls, and as one of the most exclusive villages in the world. Governed by an absolute monarchy, the Pope serves as the kingly figure at the centre, and the ruler from this tiny little village city of over a billion believers worldwide. Today, there are only around 800 residents of the Vatican,

and unlike other countries, you cannot become a citizen based on birth or blood. Instead, you'll need to have your citizenship approved by the papal authority, which is of course the office of the Pope himself, which just won't happen unless you work for the Vatican or the Holy See. And just so we're clear, because I did not know this, the Holy See is the universal government of the Catholic Church, and the Vatican is the independent state. Interestingly, both of them issue unique separate passports, which is probably why when you just Google Vatican passport, many different colours seem to come up. So another way to become a resident of the Vatican is to join the world's smallest army, the Swiss Guard, of which there are only 110 members. And the Swiss Guard's sole

mission is, of course, to protect the Pope. And you can recognise them based on their brightly coloured, somewhat clown-like costumes. Oh yeah, these guys. Yeah, them. They look like harlequins, kind of. Yes, they do. They do. But let's get back to the case in hand. You can look at the Harlequin Guard on your own time. It was the 22nd of July, 1983, and 15-year-old

Emanuela Orlandi was running late to her flute lesson in Rome. It also happened to be the hottest day ever recorded in the Italian capital, 43.6 degrees Celsius. Not wanting to be late or to travel in the heat, Emanuela asked her older brother for a lift. He refused, saying that he was too busy, a decision that would haunt him every day for the next 40 years. So, with no other option, Emanuela made her way to the music school on the bus, like she always did.

Just before she went inside, she phoned her mum. Emanuela told her mum that a man in a green BMW had approached her outside of the school and offered her a job selling Avon products. And although Emmanuela's mother said that she felt troubled by the encounter at the time, she didn't really think that much of it. Such an 80s move. Avon. Avon. What was their cash phrase? I feel like we both went Avon and then paused because neither of us know what their tagline is. I don't know, but they do very good mascara. Oh, well, let's find out. Avon.

No, I don't know. Maybe they didn't have one. They did. Tagline. Ding dong, Avon's calling. Is that what it is? Apparently so. Oh, this one also says, on Avon Worldwide, we believe in the beauty of doing good.

Right. Oh, ding dong, Avon Worldwide, we believe in the beauty of doing good. Right. Oh, ding dong, Avon calling. And we make it easy, you make it beautiful. Yeah, we are an MLM. Later that afternoon, Emanuela's little sister, Christine, came home looking for her sister. Christine told their parents that she was meant to meet Emanuela in Rome, but she never showed up. By 9.30pm that night, there was no sign of Emanuela anywhere. Her family began to panic and contacted the police, only to be told it was too early to report her missing.

So, not knowing what else to do, Emanuela's uncle rode around Rome on his motorbike with a photo of his 15-year-old niece, asking anyone and everyone whether they'd seen her. The following day, the police were still less than helpful when the Orlandis went in to report Emanuela missing. One of the officers actually told her mother that he doubted anyone would have kidnapped Emanuela because she wasn't, quote, that pretty. Yeah, fun. So he said it was most likely that she'd just run away. Dozens of teens had disappeared from their homes that year in Rome. Many of them returned shortly after. And the police just assumed that Emanuela was no different, but they couldn't have been more wrong. The following day, Emanuela's photo was published in local newspapers, along with the Orlandi family's home phone number.

So again, this isn't the police doing it. They're not setting up some sort of tip line for this missing 15-year-old girl. The parents are sending people directly to themselves. And almost immediately, they were inundated with hundreds of crazy phone calls with fake tips and sightings and all sorts and again this is the importance of a police tip line because the police should be able to more accurately discern yeah who the crazies are not this untrained ordinary family they also sadly predictably got plenty of calls simply taunting them what kind of sick fuck do you have to be to do something like that?

It just makes you scared, doesn't it? That those people are out there. Yeah, it really does. But then on the 25th of June at 6pm, the family received a phone call that definitely got their attention. It was from a young Italian man who said that his name was Pierre Luigi. He told them that he'd met Emanuela on the day that she disappeared and that she just had her hair cut and had introduced herself as Barbarella. According to this Pierre Luigi, Emanuela had mentioned that she was running away from home and had decided to start selling Avon products. Now, the Orlandis didn't have any clue what to make of this. They were certain that Manuela hadn't run away.

But a report of a strange man talking about Avon was one of the last things she had said to her mother before she disappeared. Imagine getting that call and being like, there's no way this man could know anything about Avon because that's the phone call she makes right before she goes into her music lesson to her mum. It's weird. It's very specific. The following day, things stepped up a notch. The Orlandis received a visit from the Italian Secret Service. With the family's permission, they installed a recording device in their home phone. On the 28th of June, a man by the name of Mario rang the Orlandi home, claiming to run a bar next to Emanuela's music school.

According to him, a girl who looked like Emanuela but went by the name Barbarella had come into his bar selling Avon products and told him that she was running away from home. Again, this is weird. It's so specific, the Barbarella and the Avon products. And the family do not know what to make of it. It is the second time the name Barbarella and Avon had been mentioned.

Five days after her disappearance, on the morning of the 30th of June, Rome woke up to find thousands of posters of Emanuela Orlandi's face plastered on almost every wall in the city. Naturally, this got the Vatican's attention. When Pope John Paul II made his weekly appearance in St Peter's Square, he spoke of Emanuela. JP II said that he stood with the Orlandi family and that he hoped for Emanuela's safe return, suggesting that he believed that she had been kidnapped. We have absolutely no idea what he was basing that on, we just know he said it.

At the time, the police were only investigating the case as a teenage runaway. So did Pope John Paul II know something that nobody else did? He is the Pope. He's got a direct line to upstairs. You'd think he'd know some stuff. Well, one would hope. Let's put a pin in it and we'll come back to it. I'm Jake Warren. And in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me.

And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding. And this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul,

the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment,

charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. So a couple of days later, the family answered the first of what would be a series of anonymous phone calls

from a man speaking in Italian with a foreign accent. He told the Orlandis that he had Emanuela and that she wouldn't be released unless Mehmet Ali Agha was freed. Everyone in Italy knew the name Ali Agha because just two years before, in 1981, Ali had attempted to assassinate the Pope. That's a big, bold move. Yes, yes it is. Just because there's only 110 men dressed like clowns protecting him. That's a big move. Well, I think the Popemobile was invented after this assassination. Oh, really?

Because it's bulletproof, yeah, I think. I see. Well, there you go. Legacies. So this is what went down when Ali tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II. He'd been blessing a crowd in the middle of St. Peter's Square when gunshots suddenly rang out and JP2 fell to the floor. He'd been shot four times. In the chaos, Ali Agha panicked and made a run for it

instead of setting off his bomb. Like, I'm not advocating that he do it, but you'd think that's the bit you practised for, isn't it? I mean, I'm not an expert on explosives, but I'm not an idiot. So he panics, he runs away. And just as he was about to cross from the Vatican into Italian territory, a nun, that is right, a nun rugby tackled Ali Agha to the floor and he was arrested. I'm obsessed with this idea that there's like an order of nuns that live in the Vatican that were all like trained in Krav Maga. Here she

fucking is. Take out assassins. So after this assassination attempt, Pope John Paul II actually had to have part of his lower intestine removed. Like Rasputin. Yes, exactly like Rasputin. But Jesus saved him, unlike Rasputin, and Pope John Paul II pulled through. Ali Aga was a 23-year-old native Turk, and he was a member of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves. He had just escaped from a Turkish prison, where he'd been serving time for the murder of a left-wing journalist. And now, suddenly, through seemingly no connection whatsoever, the Orlandi's anonymous caller was demanding this man's release. The caller was referred to as The American on account of his foreign accent and he soon phoned the Vatican press office

saying that unless Ali Agha was released by the 20th of July, Emanuela would be killed. The family received another call a few days later, this time with a recording. It appeared to be Emanuela's voice saying, I should be in the third year of high school next year. The man, the American as he's known, also mentioned the two other men, Pierre, Luigi and Mario, the two men who'd previously called the Orlandi family about Barbarella and Avon, he said that these two men were also part of his group. Which was odd, since the police weren't aware of any Italians associated with the fascist,

Islamic, Turkish, ultra-nationalist group, Grey Wolves. On the 6th of July, the American phoned ANSA, Italy's leading news agency, and the American told the news agency all about his demands. He told them that there was a package containing proof of Emanuela's capture in a bin in the public square near the Italian parliament. A basket was recovered there containing photocopies of Emanuela's music school card, a school tuition payment, and what looked like a handwritten note from Emanuela. It read, with much affection, Your Emanuela.

This case is so weird. It's just like, honestly, I know I'm like jumping the gun here, but it just jumps from one thing to another thing to another thing to another thing. It's like a story. It's like a story. It's like a book. It is like a book. It's like a book where I don't know what the genre is anymore. Political thriller, crime drama,

a religiously undertone thriller. I don't know. It's all of them. The Orlandis were certain that the handwriting was Emanuela's and they got excited. But the police weren't convinced by any of it. All it proved was that these anonymous callers had access to Emanuela's personal effects and school records. That was it, it didn't necessarily mean that they had her.

And the Italian police were certainly not about to start negotiating with terrorists. With 12 days left until the deadline for Ali Akka's release, one person piped up that no one was expecting. Ali Akka himself. He condemned the kidnapping of Emanuela and distanced himself from any involvement. He told the police that he hadn't shot the Pope for the grey wolves. He'd been hired to do it by the KGB through a Bulgarian contact.

Oh my God. It is crazy. I don't think the KGB are that bothered about the Pope. Apparently they are. Well, yes, apparently so, because Pope John Paul was a Pole and a vocal anti-communist, which is a problem for Russia. So he was actually seen as a threat to Poland, Russia and the entirety of the Eastern Bloc. We are in the 80s, remember. So with three days left until the deadline, ANSA received another package from the supposed kidnappers. It was another tape recording.

On one side of the cassette tape was a recording of the kidnappers demanding Ali Agha's release. And on the other is what sounded like a young girl having sex or possibly being raped. And then, when the day of the deadline finally came on the 20th of July, a church in Rome received a final call from the kidnappers saying, there are a few hours left before we kill Emanuela if Mehmet is not freed. But obviously, Vatican authorities were never going to free a man who literally shot the Pope. No. So the Orlandi family stood by helplessly as the clock

struck midnight and the deadline passed. But nothing happened. It was radio silence from the American and the kidnappers didn't deliver Emanuela's body like they had promised. And there was something else about the way the apparent kidnappers were handling things that didn't sit quite right with the detectives on the case. Hostage takers tend to follow quite a straightforward protocol. They kidnap the hostage, phone up, make their demands. These guys, who supposedly kidnapped Emanuela, waited days after her disappearance and only phoned in with demands after the Pope had mentioned her during his weekly sermon.

Plus, they never once actually claimed to be part of any group. Not the Grey Wolves, not the KGB or the Bulgarians. One thing's for sure, if it had been the KGB, chances are by some analysts at the time, they probably would have played it better. They are many things. Disorganised is not one of them. No, I would say reckless. Obviously, the poisonings we've seen in the time, they probably would have played it better. They are many things. Disorganised is not one of them. No. I would say reckless. Obviously, the poisonings we've seen in the UK, things like that. But that's the thing. Even if you think that the Russians necessarily wouldn't have been more competent, one thing we can say about the Russians is they don't really try to hide it when it's

there, if nothing else. So the other thing, the Bside of the tape, the cassette tape that had been sent, the one with the sex noises on, this was determined to have been ripped from a porn film. So if it had been included to try and make some sort of veiled threat that Emanuela was being sexually abused during her capture, it was kind of shown to be quite a generic cut from a film. So the Secret Service decided that the terror plot idea was most likely fabricated to serve as a distraction from something that had taken place inside the Vatican. On Christmas Eve that year, Pope John Paul II paid the Orlandi family a visit. He gave them all a hug, shared his sympathies, and even posed for photos in their home. And contrary to what the authorities believed, he also decided to weigh in with his own thoughts on the conspiracy. He said that he believed that Emanuela's disappearance was probably to do with international terrorism

and reassured them that the Vatican would do everything it could to find her. But they just can't have been doing that much, because after 1983, the calls from the Americans stopped, and the case of Emanuela Orlandi went cold for two decades. And sadly, Emanuela's father died in 2004. Apparently, he muttered, I was betrayed by those I served, just before he died. Pope John Paul II died the following year. Understandably, the Orlandis had mostly given up hope that they'd ever find out what had happened to Emanuela.

But they were wrong. Because, more than 20 years after she vanished, an anonymous caller contacted the popular Italian TV show. Oh, God. Oh, no. C'è la la vista? Sure. Yeah.

Nailed it. I honestly have literally zero. I have less Italian than I have fucking French, for God's sake. Anyway. So this TV show investigates missing persons cases. The caller left a cryptic message. They said that if they wanted to find out what had happened to Emanuela Orlandi, which obviously everyone does,

they should investigate who's buried in the crypt of the Santa Polinare Basilica. I can't, like, I can't get enough. I can't cope. I can't cope. Imagine, basically this is like fucking Unsolved Mysteries have done like a TV show on it after 20 years and somebody calls in and be like, have you checked the crypts under that basilica? Fuck. And it gets so much crazier. And then the caller pressed investigators to find out what favour Renatino did for someone called

Cardinal Pelletti. Of all of the anonymous tip-offs concerning Eamon Weller's case, this one was by far the strangest. Not an Avon lady in sight. So the TV producers, knowing where their bread's buttered one would imagine, just couldn't ignore this tip-off. And one of the show's journalists immediately made her way to Santa Polinare. Surprise, surprise. A Vatican-owned church in Rome. And she went to check out the crypts. Sure enough, she was shocked by what she found. The name Enrico de Pedis was sprawled across one of the marble sarcophagi. Enrico de Vedis, known as Renatino, was the head of the Banda della Magliana, one of Rome's most feared crime syndicates. Renatino had been one of the most powerful gangsters in Rome. He was even known as the King of Rome or the King of the Underworld until he was gunned

down in 1990. The crypts of Vatican-owned churches are, as I'm sure you can imagine, quite exclusive places and usually reserved only for cardinals or high-up figures within the church. So how was somebody like Depedis, a murderous gangster, allowed to be buried in a Vatican church? Did it maybe have something to do with the anonymous caller's other hint? A favour done by Renatino De Pedis for one Cardinal Pelletti? Oh my God. Props, like props. Probably, probably. That would be the easiest dots to connect.

So let's have a little look, shall we? Firstly, we've got to understand who is this mysterious Cardinal Pelletti? Had Renatino de Pettis actually done something for him in exchange for receiving such a sacred resting place? These are the questions. The other question is also, what was the link between the Vatican, Renatino, a criminal mafia man, and a 15-year-old girl like Emanuela. To find some answers, the journalist from what we're going to call Unsolved Mysteries Italia

decided to track down De Pedis' former lover, a woman named Sabrina Minardi, who lived just outside of Rome. And Sabrina revealed that one day in the summer of 1983, she had been sitting in a car with Depedis by a lake, when a driver pulled up alongside them in another car with a young girl in the back seat. Depedis then apparently told Sabrina that she needed to hide this girl at her house for a little while. Now Sabrina did admit that she was heavily addicted to cocaine at the time and just agreed to do this without asking any real questions since she hadn't recognised the girl. So they kept this girl locked up in a back room of Sabrina's apartment.

Sabrina recalled how Pettis would keep feeding the girls with pills to keep her spaced out and how she'd constantly hear the girl moaning day and night. It was only after Sabrina saw the posters of Emanuela plastered all around Rome that she realised it was the same girl in her basement. Not that she said anything at the time. After 10 days, Sabrina said that De Pedis moved Emanuela to a different house with a huge basement. Then he handed her the keys to a green BMW, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, call back, and instructed her to drive Emanuela to the Vatican's one and only petrol station.

He told her that there would be a man waiting there to collect Emanuela, in a car with Vatican license plates. And sure enough, when Sabrina got there, a man climbed out of a black Mercedes with Vatican license plates, dressed in a priest's black tunic and wide-brimmed hat. Like in the fucking Omen. I know, I know. He then took the barely conscious 15-year-old Emanuela, forced her into the back of his car and drove off. And that was the last that Sabrina Minardi saw of the girl. And when Sabrina asked a pedest what he'd been doing with Emanuela, he simply responded, it's all a game of power. This break in the case, although it took 20 years to show up, was huge. And the police decided that they had no choice

but to reopen their investigation. They tracked down the house where Emanuela was supposedly kept. That house was now in the name of a woman called Daniela, who was affiliated with the Banda de la Magliana. And this house did have a massive basement, just like Sabrina said it did. And in that massive basement, the police discovered a secret room behind a false wall. It looked like an underground medieval prison cell. It had shackles on the wall and everything.

So far, Sabrina's story was checking out. But the police needed more. Luckily, they had a guy on the inside. As it turned out, the year Emanuela disappeared, the Banda de la Magliana split into two separate factions. When has that ever gone wrong? One led by De Pedis and another led by a man called Maurizio Abatino. Abatino was arrested in 1992 and broke the number one Homer Simpson's rules of the playground, no squealing, and he became a police informant.

And according to Abatino, while he was in prison, he was visited by a member of the banda who filled him in on what was going on on the outside. And he told police that he knew exactly what had happened to Emanuela. The tale involved a ransom, the Sicilian mafia, Pope John Paul II, the Vatican Bank, and a man known as God's Banker. But to tell that story, we have to whiz back to 1981, the year that Aliaka attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II. During the Pope's recovery in hospital, he became obsessed with the three secrets of Fatima, a series of apocalyptic visions and prophecies apparently given to three young Portuguese shepherds during visits from the Virgin Mary in 1917.

You know, famously a very peaceful time in Europe where not much stress was happening. So why was he so obsessed with these shepherd stories? Well, apparently it's because the Pope was shot on the same date and at the same time as the apparition of the Virgin Mary was said to have occurred, the 13th of May at 1717. And you all know how much I love talking about prophecies. These ones are really complicated and boring, so we'll just paraphrase it for you. This is what you need to know. Yes, please. These prophecies have been heavily, heavily, heavily interpreted in lots of different ways

and using some industrial strength creative license. Essentially, these sheep stories have been taken to mean that unless Russia returned to Catholicism, then the Pope would die. Big stakes. Big stakes for the Virgin Mary. Why does she care? It's her son's gang. She's just bored. She's just bored. It's the version of Christianity that loves her more, so she's like...

Oh, yeah, she gets no fucking time in Protestantism. Exactly, that's why, like, Russia... There's only so many times... Come on. I think in Orthodox Christianity, I think she is made a bit of a deal of. Sure, sure. But she's obviously got her favourite. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So John Paul II already felt that it was all up to him to bring down the Soviet Union. And he decided to start with his home country, Poland. Together with the head of the Vatican Bank, the Pope decided to send over 200 million euros in today's money to the Polish anti-communist group Solidarnosc. But he knew he had to do it secretly, because if the Russians found out, it would be seen as a declaration of war.

Because that's what it is, JP2. That's what you're doing. They're not going to like that. They invaded Ukraine because they said that they didn't like the UN being too close to them. And you're sending 200 million euros to a Polish anti-communist group that I can't say the name of properly. So yes, declaration of war is how it would be seen because declaration of war is what it be. Enter Roberto Calvi.

In 1981, Roberto Calvi was the CEO of Banco Ambrosiano, the largest private bank in Italy, which the Vatican, surprise surprise, owned shares of. And it was a kind of open secret that Calvi was heavily involved in laundering enormous amounts of money for none other than the Sicilian mafia. Calvi also had a very close relationship with the Vatican, which earned him the name God's Banker. So Calvi would launder the Mafia's money by moving it into the Vatican Bank, then through various shell companies, and then back to the Vatican to distribute to the Mafia and other private investors. So naturally, when the Vatican

Bank wanted to get the Pope's 200 million euros to the Polish rebels undetected, they knew that Calvi was the man for the job. But the timing couldn't have been worse. Calvi and the Banco Ambrosiano were already in deep trouble. A few years earlier, the Bank of Italy produced a report detailing the discovery of billions of lira being illegally exported out of Italy. Calvi was tried for this in 1981 and actually handed a four-year sentence, but he was released on bail and allowed to keep his position at the bank as well. Now cut to June 1982, when Roberto Calvi sent a letter to Pope John Paul II, warning him that Banco Ambrosiana was close to ruin. He said, quote, Such an event would provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the church will suffer the gravest damage.

Sounds like a bit of a threat. And like Rasputin. He basically said the same thing about World War I. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn

when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them.

Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness.

And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Less than two weeks later, it was discovered that the bank had debts of almost $1.5 billion. And the whole house of cards came tumbling down. Because what the world now knew was that a lot of money had been siphoned off through the Vatican Bank.

In the midst of the chaos, Calvi disappeared. And you can't really blame him. He'd just lost hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Sicilian mafia. Yeah. That'll do it. That will do it. You know, that's not a bad presentation with too many words on each slide. It's not an insignificant amount of money or an insignificant group to be fucking with.

Off he fucks, as I would, I would fuck off extremely far. But he didn't fuck off for very long. At 7am on the 18th of June, a postal clerk was walking along Blackfriars Bridge in London at 7am when he discovered a body hanging by the neck over the River Thames. It was God's banker, his very self, Roberto Calvi. Bet it was definitely, definitely a suicide. Police found heavy bricks and around $16,000 in various currencies just sticking out of his chute pockets.

And God's banker's death was initially ruled a suicide, but after considerable efforts by his family to have the case reinvestigated in 2002, it was finally determined that he had been murdered. And they came to that conclusion because the forensics just didn't match up with someone who had hung themselves. His hands hadn't touched the bricks in his pockets, nor did his shoes have any rust or dirt on them from the scaffolding from which he would have needed to jump to get to the point of the bridge. Instead, it was widely believed that Calvi had been taken to Blackfriars Bridge by boat. Is this the road to perdition? Like, it's astonishing.

It truly is. Because all the ways in which these crazy stories, right, about God's banker, this man who gets, like, hanged off a fucking bridge in London, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, and the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl. It's like when you watch a really shit season of Asylum Witness. And you're just like, give me a fucking break.

Once again, the most boring protagonist in all of TV history, Nikki solves these three amazing cases, and they all just so happen to be connected to each other. That's what's going on here, though. And God's all over it. Let's talk about Blackfriars Bridge for a moment. Not my favourite, but it's not a bad bridge. Calvi happened to be a member of an illegal Masonic lodge called Propaganda Dew or P2.

So now the Masons are involved. This is like the studio cut of the film where they were like, we just need a bit more action. Can we get some Masonic signs in there? And these, well, are they Masons if it's an illegal lodge? I mean, potato, tomato, I don't know. Mason of Jace, maybe? Mason of Jace. Anyway.

Let's start a secret club and call it that. Mason of Jace. Mason of Jace. So these fake masons, illegal masons, secret masons, propaganda do also refer to themselves as fratineri or black friars. Where's the soundboard? I know!

Now let's move on to the next thing. The significance of the bricks and the money in his pockets. The bricks I understand. If you're hanging someone, quick snappy snap. The money is obviously symbolic. And apparently, so are the bricks, which is, and here is the message from the mafia, pay us our money or else we will brick you, presumably. Or throw you off a bridge. I love that. It's the new TV show after Phenom. We need to workshop it, but it's basically

you playing the lead role of a person who interprets crime scenes and you just walk in and they're like oh my god thank god you're here hannah mcguire because we're going to keep the name the same and then be like oh he's got loads of bricks in his pockets and sixteen thousand dollars in various different currencies what do you think it could possibly mean clearly clearly boys what we're looking at here is a warning from the mafia. They're saying, pay up or we'll brick you. She's here to solve crimes by analysing the crime scene. It needs a better ring to it. Yeah, I'll think of a name.

Hannah explains it all. Hannah explains it all. And occasionally doesn't know a lot of stuff. Brilliant. Anyway, right. I could hear you. You're bored. Don't worry. We're moving on to the next pertinent point. I can hear you saying cool story, cool stuff. But what does this have to do with Emanuela Orlandi? Tell me, Hannah Maguire. Well, I'm good at telling stuff, so I will. As we know, the Mafia lost hundreds of millions of dollary dues in the collapse of Banco Ambriossiano. And they knew that a lot of their money had been moved

to the Vatican Bank by God's banker. And many people started to believe that the Mafia may have kidnapped Emanuela because she lived in the Vatican, one of the very few young people who did, and they wanted to hold her ransom because all of their money is in the Vatican, one of the very few young people who did, and they wanted to hold her ransom, because all of their money is in the Vatican Bank. It also is particularly pertinent that Immanuela disappeared during Pope John Paul II's trip to Poland. So could it have been a message to the Pope directly?

One saying, we know you used our money, mafia money, to fund the anti-communist Polish group Solidarnosc. Maybe it's just a little Polish sausage in his back pocket as well. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to brick you for it. So perhaps they're making the threat, we have this Vatican girl, give us our money back. And if this theory is true, the Vatican were never going to be able to give the Sicilian mafia their money back because it would be evidence of them funding anti-communism in Poland, which they're not really allowed to do.

Because that means war with Russia. So once again, the case of the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi went cold. In 2013, our current Pope, Pope Francis, took over. There was a rat singer in between. He's the one who moved around all those priests that molested all those children and had to step down. And then Pope Francis, better guy. Yeah, the one before, the one who did all the pedo diddling. Yeah, he was also a Nazi. Oh, well, there you go. Fun times. So yeah, very, very like business consultant. Business management consultant. We just come in.

Swing the ax, leave. Who were the ones causing the problems? Okay, well, I just suggest just move them around. No one else see this as a solution? So yes, 2013, current Pope, Pope Francis takes over. And Francis has been seen as somewhat of a reformer who really wants to make changes to the way that the Vatican handles things. Fun fact, before becoming the figurehead of the Catholic Church, Francis worked as a bouncer and a janitor. He is the people's poppy princess.

The people's poppy princess. He's also very funny. Because, you know, when they elect a new pope, they all lock themselves away and then they do the white smoke when they've selected. So he was voted in by all of the other cardinals or whatever. And he said, when they decided it should be him, he said, my God, forgive you for what you have done. Loves laughing at himself. I'm, you know, obviously not an enormous fan of the Catholic Church, but as popes go, he's not a particularly bad one. So Pope Francis said to be a bit more open-minded about things

like homosexuality. And he also calls for reforms in how priests are trained so that, quote, they don't become little monsters. Slight understatement, but it is a start. Yes. So just before Francis took up the papacy, Emanuela's brother, Pietro, queued up to shake his hand when he was holding mass in Sant'Anna, Emanuela's parish. And according to Pietro, his blood turned cold when Francis spoke. Because now, in 2013, Pope Francis said simply, Emanuela is in heaven. Pietro felt certain that the Pope knew something. How else could he be so definitive that his sister Emanuela was dead? Now, of course, it's been 30 years since her disappearance. So for anyone, Pope or not Pope,

to be sort of making assumptions that she's probably no longer alive is not wildly outrageous. You know, nobody really probably thinks that Madeleine McCann's still alive, for example. And yeah, I think we all know the stats on time elapsed versus likelihood of being alive. But still, Emanuela's brother Pietro had more reason than most to be suspicious of the Vatican. We all know, to be suspicious of the Vatican. We all know, for example, that the Vatican's no stranger to a scandal. But one of the biggest in recent history started in 2012. And we are, of course, talking about VatiLeaks.

A large number of confidential documents from the Vatican were leaked to the press, revealing corruption, financial mismanagement, blackmail, infighting and abuse. Two of the investigative journalists responsible for publishing the leaked documents and writing books on them found themselves facing sentences of eight years' imprisonment each. Fortunately, both of them were acquitted in 2016. And one name stood out over everything else at that trial. Emanuela Orlandi. One of the witnesses called to the stand during the trial was a priest who served as a secretary

for the Prefecture of Economic Affairs in the Vatican, which, should that exist? This whole world is just purposefully so confusing to keep all of us out. Yes, right. And this secretary revealed that in 2014 somebody had entered the building in the dead of night broken into a large safe using a blow torch and stolen some documents the details of this had never been made public before because it had only

been investigated by vatican police but some of the stolen documents were returned in their original form and one of them was a dossier. And on that dossier was a name. And that name was Emanuela Orlandi. Fucking hell. One of the investigative journalists standing trial that day, Emiliano Fittipaldi, immediately got to work contracting every source he had inside the Vatican, asking if they knew anything about this dossier. And after weeks of digging, during a secret meeting in a bar in Rome, he was handed five photocopied pages, supposedly from the Orlandi dossier. The dossier itself was supposed to have been 200 pages long and dated the 28th of March, 1998. The title was Expenses Sustained by the Vatican State for Activities

Relating to the Citizen Emanuela Orlandi. This discovery was monumental. If these papers were genuine, then it would mean that somebody within the Vatican had known for decades the truth behind what had happened to Emanuela Orlandi. The dossier had been written by Cardinal Lorenzo Antonetti. Antonetti just so happened to be the head of the APSA, the body that governs the entirety of the Vatican's extensive economic assets.

On the first page, Antonetti explained that the dossier would list the required expenses to support the domestic removal of the citizen Emanuele Orlandi. The list of expenses included fees for food, accommodation, healthcare and travel. But not in Italy. In former Roman settlement, London, England. And these expenses were dated from 1983 to 1997, meaning that Emanuela had lived for at least 14 years after her disappearance. And the boarding and lodging expenses totaled 8 million lira, which is about 3,650 quid. And what's more, these expenses included an address, 176 Chapman Road. So Fittipaldi dug further.

He found that there were only three Chapman Roads in London, and none of them went up to number 176. After a few hours, he realised, though, that there had been a typo and found 176 Clapham Road, which was a youth hostel for girls. And it was owned by... Dun-dun-dun! The Scalabrini Fathers,

a Catholic congregation with very, very close ties to the Vatican. And also explains how somebody lived in London for 14 years for £3,650 worth of lodgings. So journalist Fittipaldi jumped on a flight to London and went straight to this hostel. But when he got there, there was no record of an Emanuela Orlandi having stayed there for 14 years. Now, of course, they wouldn't have used her real name to register her, or more likely, she wouldn't have been registered at all. But again, all of this fitted with De Pedis' former girlfriend, Sabrina Mendari's story. Because remember, she said after she dropped Emanuela off at the Vatican petrol station and the priest in the black Mercedes had picked her up, could he have

taken her straight to the airport and flown her out to London? Because she was never seen again in the Vatican, or in Italy. Either way, the trail had gone cold once again, and things weren't looking good. Especially because on the final pages of the expenses report, Fittipaldi found one damning final number, 21 million lira. And this was for, quote, general activity and transfer to the Vatican state with reactive handling of the final paperwork. This, to Fittipaldi, sounded a lot like Emanuela had died

and that her body had been flown back to the Vatican to be buried. Is that what Pope Francis meant when he said that Emanuela was in heaven? And, like, could this document be trusted anyway? If so, it would be the Vatican's biggest, most explosive scandal in recent history. I'm not sure what in that with general activity and transfer to the Vatican state with reactive handling of the final paperwork implies she died. Final paperwork.

Final paperwork, got it. Okay. Would be my guess. Pietro Orlandi decided that if he was going to take on the Vatican to get answers about his sister, he was going to need a lawyer. So he hired the same one who fought for Tappaldi's trial, Laura Scrumoge.

Laura spent six months reading through all of the police's files regarding the investigation into Emanuela's disappearance. And what stood out to her the most was the Vatican's complete lack of cooperation. They'd refused to provide any answers or allow any of their people to be questioned throughout the entire 30-plus years' investigation. And it seems that the case had finally reached its end. Until one day, in 2018, when Lauer received an anonymous envelope. It contained a photo, and because we are literally in a Dan Brown novel, a cryptic sentence.

It read, If you want to find Emanuela, search for where the angel is watching, which in the Vatican is fucking everywhere. Yeah, that's not going to narrow it down. But the photo showed a tomb with a statue of a white angel. Less cryptic. Less cryptic, more obvious, yeah. Laura knew that there were only two burial sites in the Vatican, and the picture was likely taken at the Teutonic Cemetery. So her and Pietro made their way there. It was just a few hundred metres from the Orlandi family home.

The pair of them found the tomb that was in the photograph, and Laura made a request to the State Secretary to have it opened. She wasn't expecting a response, but two months later, the Holy See, in their infinite wisdom, did respond. Not only that, they agreed to exhume both the tomb with the angel and the one opposite. But when the day came, both tombs were completely empty. No wonder they were so keen to be open to opening them. That's so Scooby-Doo.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can open those tombs. Whatever, sure. Yeah, absolutely, no problem. Those ones, fine. Not that one. Even the remains of the 19th century German princess, who was supposed to be buried in the tomb, were gone as well. So had somebody removed them in the two-month period between Laura sending the request and having the tombs opened,

I mean, stranger things have happened. So what was happening? Well, unfortunately, no one has ever got a definitive answer. But when Netflix released their four-part series on this case titled The Vatican Girl, they ended it with one last piece of testimony. It was a story that hadn't been heard before. One of Emanuela's childhood school friends revealed that just a few days before her disappearance, Emanuela had shared a secret with her. Emanuela apparently said that she was walking along the Vatican gardens alone one day when she was approached

by a man, one who was very close to Pope John Paul II, and that this man had molested her. And this actually would provide a much better explanation for why Emanuela may have been kidnapped. If it were only to do with financial scandals and the Banda della Magliana, why wouldn't they just have kidnapped a cardinal or a priest to hold ransom instead of a 15-year-old girl? And the same applies to the theory to do with Mehmet Ali Aghi. The only consistent thing in all of these theories is the Vatican knows more than they are letting on, much more. They know what happened to Emanuela Orlandi, or at least that's how it seems. So that's all we know. And maybe that's all we'll ever know for sure about this case, because it's been a hell of a long time now

since she disappeared yeah and i think it does make more sense obviously the vatican have a lot of priestly hands and a lot of very rancid pies and they have a lot of small children and a lot of small children and uh lots of bajillions and squillions of pounds but i think because it all does fit together quite nicely it's very easy to like confirmation bias your way through it because it's a good story. But I think it is much more likely that she was molested and they wanted to get rid of her because she lived in the Vatican. Yeah. And she's not like a seven-year-old choir boy. She's a 15-year-old girl who was probably more likely to say something. And yeah, she's a citizen of Vatican City, of which there are not many,

especially not any young ones. So yeah, I think maybe they just felt like, hey, we can't go through this right now. We can't deal with this situation. And maybe it wasn't an institutional decision. Maybe it was this one person, if they were close to Pope John Paul II, they're brazen enough to sexually molest

a 15-year-old girl while she's walking alone in the fucking gardens. Perhaps it's somebody who was high enough power to organize this themselves and maybe they did use someone like to pedis a known criminal you know oh you would gangster to deal with it yeah we're cleaning all your money buddy please get rid of this problem for me precisely so maybe they did move her to london and maybe she did die eventually or maybe they did kill her and the whole London hostel is just a thing. I mean, if she did die of natural causes, she died at like 31. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is very young. Exactly. So it does stink a bit, doesn't it? It does indeed. So yeah, bad times, fascinating case. Such an interesting story. Yeah.

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