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Emanuela vanished on June 22, 1983, on her way home from a music lesson. Investigations into her disappearance have taken numerous, sometimes improbable, turns, and conspiracy theories have flourished.

Her disappearance has been linked to the Sicilian Mafia, to a notorious Rome crime gang, to Bulgarian agents and to a 1981 plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Speculation has tied the case to the KGB, the CIA and a U.S. archbishop who was linked to a major Vatican banking scandal in the 1980s.

Some said Emanuela had moved to London, where she lived under a different name.

None of those theories have been borne out.

Photo by Handout / VATICAN MEDIA / AFP

The search turned to the Teutonic Cemetery’s tombs after people working in the Vatican suggested to Pietro Orlandi, Emanuela’s brother, that she could have been buried there. Last month, the Vatican approved the opening of both tombs in what Orlandi said was a concrete sign of cooperation.

In an article in Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, the Vatican’s communication director, Andrea Tornielli, said that the tombs had been opened as a sign of “human and Christian closeness” to the Orlandi family.

He added that it was “certainly not, as has been said, an admission on the part of the Vatican of a possible involvement in hiding a corpse.”

Portera said that the bones appeared to belong to people of various ages and that craniums belonging to adults, but also children, had been found. Using carbon-14 dating methods, the bones could be accurately dated, he said.

“Not down to one year, but we can test them to understand whether they are a few decades old or hundreds,” he said. He said the fact the bones had been stored in an underground ossuary “complicated the situation.”

Sgro said she would ask the Vatican to turn over what documentation they had on whose remains might have been placed in the ossuaries. “We want to understand how these bones ended up there,” she said.

Federica Orlandi, Emanuela’s sister, who was also present Saturday, said the family had little to say, “until we have the scientific results of the bones.”