ROME — In June 1983, Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, vanished on her way home from a music lesson. In the intervening 35 years, Emanuela’s disappearance has been one of Italy’s most intriguing cold cases.

So much so that the mere discovery on Monday of human bones in a building in Rome belonging to the Vatican sparked a media frenzy, with front-page speculation that her remains had finally been found. The bones had not even been analyzed to determine whether they were those of a male or female.

The Vatican released a short statement late Tuesday saying only that bones had been found during the renovation of a building next to the Holy See’s Embassy to Italy, and that Rome’s chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, had asked police experts to determine the “age, sex, and date of death” of the bones.

Image Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared in 1983. Credit... Associated Press

Clues in the case are tantalizing but scanty. Shortly after Emanuela vanished, Vatican officials received an anonymous call from ostensible kidnappers who promised to free her upon the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981. (After nearly three decades in Italian and Turkish prisons, Mr. Agca was released in 2010). Over the years, investigators have examined possible links to Bulgarian agents, the Sicilian Mafia, the K.G.B. and even the C.I.A.