Rome (CNN) After 36 years of looking for his missing sister, Pietro Orlandi had hoped to finally get an answer on Thursday when the Vatican exhumed two tombs nestled in the shadow of Saint Peter's Basilica.

Instead, it took just a few hours for his hopes to be dashed.

The tombs were empty. There were no human remains, no funeral urns, and certainly no clue as to how his 15-year-old sister Emanuela Orlandi disappeared on her way home from a music lesson one summer's evening in 1983.

The operation to open the tombs in the Teutonic Cemetery involved over a dozen Vatican workers, and came after an anonymous tip-off to the family to "look where the angel is pointing" -- apparently referring to an angel sculpture in the small graveyard that is reserved for German-speaking Catholic burials.

Emanuela's brother Pietro Orlandi arrives at the Vatican ahead of the exhumation.

The first tomb -- which belonged to Princess Sophie Von Hohenlohe -- was "completely empty," according to Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti.

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