Was This Teen Kidnapped 40 Years Ago for a Suzuki Motorbike?
ROME—There is perhaps no more mysterious and hotly debated cold case in Italy than the 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi.
Was the daughter of a Vatican employee nabbed as a sex slave for priests? Was she taken by Turkish terrorists in exchange for the man who shot Pope John Paul II? Was she buried in a mobster’s tomb or a Vatican cemetery? Or was she taken by the son of a gangster in exchange for a Suzuki 1100 motorbike, as the latest “confession” in the case would have conspiracy theorists believe.
Salvatore Sarnataro, a convicted gang member tied to the Band of Magliana of whom the mobster Enrico De Pedis in the Opus Dei church was a one-time leader, says his son Marco kidnapped Orlandi in exchange for the bike. Sarnataro made the astonishing confession in 2008, though it has only now been made public for reasons not entirely clear. Upon hearing from Sarnataro, police corroborated the few photos from the area on the day Orlandi disappeared, and say several could be the gangster’s son.
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