Emanuela Orlandi’s former music class partner is registered under investigation for having provided false information to the public prosecutor. The contradictions that emerged between the 1983 statements and those of 2024 are just one of the many oddities in a case that has been unsolved for over 40 years.
Over forty years have passed since the passing of Emanuela Orlandi. Decades of theories, wild rumors and conspiracy theories that have never led to a definitive answer as to what happened on June 22, 1983. Not even the testimonies of those who knew the girl at the time were of help. One of these comes from Laura Casagrandeformer music lesson partner of the fifteen-year-old who disappeared into thin air, who the Rome Prosecutor’s Office has decided to include in the register of suspects for false information to the public prosecutor.
The investigators found contradictions between the declarations of 1983 and those made to the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the disappearance of Orlandi in 2024, concerning the last day of Emanuela and on the phone call received from the alleged kidnappers. His reconstruction is characterized by «I don’t remember» and «total voids» which raise more than a few doubts.
Laura Casagrande and “l’Amerikano”
Laura Casagrande she was 15 years old when her peer with whom she attended the Tommaso Ludovico da Victoria Institute in Rome disappeared: she was studying piano, Emanuela transverse flute. She appeared to be the last known person who saw her friend on the day of her disappearance, but was formally interviewed by investigators onJuly 8, 1983after he received a phone call at home from a man with a foreign accent.
“The Amerikano“, as he was renamed, dictated to her and her mother a message to convey toHandle: Emanuelaa Vatican citizen, had been kidnapped to use her as an object of exchange with Mehmet Ali Ağcathe attacker of Pope John Paul II. It is not the only phone call from the strange stranger: there are others addressed to the Vatican City press office, directly to the editorial staff ofHandle and to the Orlandi family, but it is the one to Casagrande which raises the greatest doubts.
In fact, one of the first contradictions emerges between what the then teenager declared in 1983 and what was reported to the Commission in June 2024. In the minutes of the 1980s he claimed that “the interlocutor spoke correct Italian”, while in 2024 that “he could have been Arab, Turkish, Afghan”.
Emanuela’s last day
That’s not the only inconsistency in the words of Casagrande: his version of the last time he saw her Emanuela changes over the years. In 1983, shortly after her disappearance, he declared that he had seen her leaving the institute’s music lessons, “from afar, while she was hastily walking towards the bus”. Before the bicameral commission in 2024 the account changes: «He didn’t come to the choir lesson. I didn’t see her arrive or arrive very late, after class has started. Then, I didn’t see the exit.” And again: «I have no memories of an image of Emanuela walking on the sidewalk», even to the point of having a «total void» Amnesia and contradictions that have pushed the Rome Prosecutor’s Office to hypothesize that Casagrande may have provided false information to investigators, hindering the investigation.
The countless leads and oddities
Emanuela Orlandi she was a fifteen-year-old Vatican citizen, daughter of a clerk in the Prefecture of the Papal Household. She disappeared in the late afternoon of June 22, 1983 and has never been found since. The case immediately became an international sensation with leads ranging from blackmail of the “Amerikano” at the Vatican to connections with the Pope’s attacker Ali Ağcaup to the relationships with the Magliana band to which the recent excavations of the Home of Jazz.
The villa, initially managed by the Vicariate, was sold at suspicious prices to Enrico Nicolettithe gang’s “cashier”, shortly after Orlandi’s disappearance. In 2025 it was the subject of excavations to search for the judge’s remains Paolo Adinolfi passed away in 1994, but second Pietro OrlandiEmanuela’s brother, there could be his sister’s body in the tunnels under the villa. His belief stems from a meeting with a man linked to the ‘Ndrangheta, who told him that Enrico De Pedisa member of the Roman mafia gang, showed him a wall behind which there would be Emanuela’s remains, in a tunnel similar to those of the Casa del Jazz.
It’s not the only coincidence or oddity linked to the Vatican and others Emanuela Orlandia labyrinthine story over forty years long, full of dead ends and total voids, like those left in Laura Casagrande.
