Emanuela Orlandi in Exchange for a Motorcycle: Confession of Vatican Girl’s Kidnapper

A Suzuki 1100 motorcycle. Is that all it would take to convince you to kidnap a young girl? For Marco Sarnataro, the answer was yes.

 

Transcripts from a 2008 testimony released last summer revealed that Sarnataro, a member of the Italian mafia, confessed to participating in the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15 year-old Vatican citizen who disappeared almost 40 years ago. To this day, we still don’t know where Orlandi is or if she is dead or alive.

 

With the recent reopening of the Orlandi case and its heightened international exposure driven by the 2022 Netflix documentary, “Vatican Girl,” the public is joining investigators in identifying and reviewing every possible clue. Sarnataro’s confession is another lead that could help solve the mystery of Orlandi’s disappearance.

 

In 2008, the police questioned Salvatore Sarnataro, Marco’s father, after Orlandi’s friends identified the younger Sarnataro in police photos as the man who had followed them obsessively. Before he died in 2007, Sarnataro told his father that he, along with two others in the Banda della Magliana, followed Orlandi for several days under the orders of Renato De Pedis, the boss of the criminal group.

 

De Pedis instructed the men to take the girl, and they transported Orlandi to another trusted member of the mafia. Sarnataro told his father that in return for kidnapping Orlandi, he was gifted a Suzuki 1100 motorcycle.

 

But why did Salvatore’s testimony take 14 years to surface?

 

For decades, the Orlandi family and audiences around the world followed incorrect leads and conspiracy theories. The family, particularly Orlandi’s brother Pietro, has relentlessly requested the Vatican to launch a full investigation and release any information they have. The reopening of the case last month is the first official Vatican investigation into the case, coming 40 years later than it should have.

 

The release of Salvatore’s testimony clearly indicates that the Vatican has records of information pertaining to Orlandi’s disappearance that they are withholding, continuing to deny closure to her family and prolonging their suffering. In fact, this is not the first instance that implied the Vatican knows much more about Orlandi’s disappearance than they are sharing.

 

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who spent most of his career working in the Vatican, said in a 2019 interview that someone claiming to be Orlandi’s kidnappers contacted the Vatican press office, probably the night after her disappearance. The call and fax received contained the conditions for Orlandi’s release.

 

Laura Sgrò, Pietro Orlandi’s lawyer, knew about this call and fax from her interview with Viganò in 2018. Viganò said that due to ordinary procedures, this call and fax must still be in the archives of the Secretary of State. Sgrò followed up with the Vatican about looking into the archives, but received no answer.

 

There is another question that can’t be ignored: if the Vatican truly has nothing to do with Orlandi’s disappearance, why not conduct a thorough investigation from the start? Surely all the media attention and civilian protests can’t be great for the Vatican image and they would want to prove their innocence from the various theories of money laundering, working with the mafia, pedophilia and funding the anticommunist movement in Poland.

 

This question is certainly not a basis for accusing the Vatican of being involved, but with the new clues that resurface over the years despite the Vatican’s attempt to keep them secret, one can’t help but feel a little suspicious.

 

It seems like the government believes it is in their best interest to not release information that might implicate their involvement. Yet Andrea Purgatori, a journalist who has investigated and reported on the Orlandi case extensively, makes a strong point in the Netflix documentary: “The truth always comes out in the end.”

 

No matter if the Vatican was or wasn’t the reason for Orlandi’s disappearance, it is crucial to continue putting pressure on the state to demand answers, if not to finally put an end to this mystery, then to provide the Orlandi family with the truth they deserve.