Laura Casagrande, now 57, may have been the last person to see Emanuela Orlandi before she vanished in 1983, aged 15, on her way to a music class.<\/p>\n
Ms Casagrande, also a former student of the Tommaso Ludovico da Victoria music school, was among the first to give statements when the inquiry into the disappearance reopened in 2023.<\/p>\n
She had a hazy recollection of being called in the days after the disappearance by someone demanding the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman jailed for shooting Pope John Paul II in 1981.<\/p>\n
Ms Orlandi\u2019s disappearance spawned many elaborate theories, including one that she was being held hostage in exchange for Agca\u2019s release. But investigations never yielded concrete leads and witnesses have proven unreliable.<\/p>\n
Now prosecutors have said that Ms Casagrande\u2019s latest testimony had \u201cappeared very contradictory\u201d, in their decision to put her under investigation.<\/p>\n
Andrea De Priamo, president of the bicameral commission, said it was \u201cas if the person being heard wanted to withdraw from the scene\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ms Casagrande apologised for gaps in her recollection of events during her testimony.<\/p>\n
Laura Sgr\u00f2, a lawyer for the Orlandi family, welcomed the decision to quiz her on her recollection of events.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cYou can tell she is being reticent. Is she covering for someone?<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is there so much fear so many years later?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela\u2019s brother, told Italian media: \u201cThis is important news, and I\u2019m happy that the prosecutor\u2019s office is investigating confidentially, it means they\u2019re doing it with complete seriousness.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disappearance is among Italy\u2019s biggest unsolved cases and inspired a hit Netflix documentary before investigators reopened the case.<\/p>\n
Carabinieri in Rome are now sifting through old documents and piecing together the missing girl\u2019s last movements in collaboration with Vatican magistrates.<\/p>\n
An initial review of evidence carried out in 2023 drew out leads \u201cworthy of further investigation\u201d, Vatican chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said at the time.<\/p>\n
It remains unclear how or why Ms Orlandi vanished that evening, on June 22, 1983. Theories have ranged from a supposed KGB plot to a Mafia operation orchestrated by senior staff at the Vatican.<\/p>\n
Emanuela\u2019s father Ercole Orlandi worked as a messenger for the Vatican and the family lived in Vatican City State.<\/p>\n
Another theory held that she had been taken to London and lived in a youth hostel owned by a Catholic congregation, funded by the Vatican. (\u00a9 The Independent)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura Casagrande, now 57, may have been the last person to see Emanuela Orlandi before she vanished in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,371,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-251963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-italy","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115784657519919689","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}