40 years ago the disappearance in Rome of 15-year-old Mirella Gregori. 45 days later Emanuela Orlandi disappeared

A dense mystery that, after 40 years, still remains unsolved.

On May 7, 1983, 15-year-old Mirella Gregori left her home in Rome never to return. Gregori's name is closely linked to that of Emanuela Orlandi, who also disappeared into thin air just 46 days later, but received much higher media attention than that dedicated to Mirella.

Spotlights, books, talk shows, even a documentary on Netflix for the Vatican town, where Mirella was often considered "only an appendix of Emanuela" as pointed out by her sister Marie Antoinette who, only a month ago, was a guest of the Rai Uno program 'Today is another day' in which the story was retraced.

"Mom, I'll go down, I'll be back shortly", were Mirella's last words. After leaving, she never returned to her home in Via Nomentana, in Rome. Described by everyone as a normal girl, she was a student in a technical institute, that day she was called on the intercom by a person who said his name was Alessandro but whom she did not know.

After a moment of hesitation - "If you don't tell me who you are, I won't go down", she would say - Mirella then decided to meet this person at 15 pm. At that time the young woman told her mother that she had an appointment at the monument to the bersagliere of Porta Pia with an old classmate. The boy will then be interviewed by the investigators and will declare that that afternoon he had another commitment elsewhere. Since then, the family has had no news. For weeks Mirella's story passed almost quietly in the newspapers. But then, a month and a half later, on June 22, 1983, Orlandi, a Vatican citizen, disappeared. It is since then that the stories of the two girls intertwine.

(ANSA)

The posters that were posted throughout Rome after the death of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori

The hypotheses on the disappearance and the various tracks followed

Emanuela and Mirella did not know each other but, despite this, the stories of their disappearance have several points of contact. To corroborate the hypothesis of a correlation was also a phone call received by the Gregori family in which a foreign man - later nicknamed 'the Amerikano' - claimed to be able to provide news about Mirella in exchange for intercession with the then President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini, to free Ali Agca, the assassin of Pope Wojtyla.

The same 'Amerikano' then, called the Orlandi family and, even in that case, promised the release of Emanuela in exchange for the release of the Turkish terrorist. There were several investigative tracks followed in those years. There has been talk of a settling of scores against the illegal management of IOR funds by Monsignor Marcinkus who in those years was at the center of a financial instability.

It was then hypothesized the involvement of members of the Magliana band, Monsignor Pietro Vergari and the Roman photographer Marco Accetti. All archived. But while for Emanuela - a Vatican citizen and daughter of a pontifical clerk - the reference to religious circles is more immediate, for Mirella everything is more uncertain, feeble.

Who was the person who convinced her to go out? For a period one of the guards of the Vatican gendarmerie, Raoul Bonarelli, was identified as having fun with the girl. The investigation - a proceeding against unknown persons - was closed and Bonarelli declared extraneous to the affair. In October 2015 the investigating magistrate, for lack of consistent evidence, ordered the closure of the investigation into the disappearances of both Mirella and Emanuela, launched in 2006 following the statements of Sabrina Minardi, former companion of the boss of the Banda della Magliana Enrico De Pedis.

Then again silence, until the ok of the Chamber to the establishment of a commission of inquiry to shed light on the fate of both girls. Now we will return to investigate her too. The Gregori family hopes that the two cases will finally split because, even if they have elements in common, perhaps the truth about the end of the two girls could be different.

Earlier this year, Vatican justice promoter Alessandro Diddi and the Gendarmerie decided to reopen investigations into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi and last April her brother Pietro was heard at the Vatican.