Italy Vatican braced for exhumation in old kidnap case

By Nicole Winfield Associated Press ROME (AP) -- Forensic police swarmed the crypt of a Roman basilica on Monday to exhume the body of a reputed mobster as part of an investigation into one of the Vatican's enduring mysteries: the 1983 disappearance of the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee. Medical experts took samples from the remains of Enrico De Pedis for further testing and confirmed he was buried alone in the crypt of the Sant'Apollinare basilica, ruling out at least one hypothesis that Emanuela Orlandi was buried along with him. Orlandi was 15 when she disappeared in 1983 after leaving her family's Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See. De Pedis, a member of Rome's Magliana mob, was killed in 1990. His one-time girlfriend has reportedly told prosecutors that De Pedis kidnapped Orlandi, and an anonymous caller in 2005 told a call-in television show that the answer to Orlandi's disappearance lay in his tomb. Amid a new push to resolve the case, the Vatican said last month it had no objections to opening the tomb. The scene Monday outside the Sant'Apollinare basilica was hectic, with television cameras jostling for views inside the chapel and the adjacent courtyard of the Opus Dei-run Pontifical Holy Cross University, where forensic vans came and went. An overwhelming stench filled the air as medical personnel in white pantsuits and masks mingled with priests in black clerical garb and ducked into a blue tent where samples of De Pedis' remains were believed to have been brought. Orlandi's brother, Pietro, who was at the scene along with De Pedis' lawyers, said samples from the body had been taken for further tests and the tomb re-closed. He said the corpse was in relatively good condition, but there was only one body -- that of a male -- inside. There had initially been speculation that Emanuela Orlandi's kidnapping was linked in some way to an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, which had occurred two years earlier, and the jailing of the gunman, Ali Agca. Doubts have also been cast on whether the Vatican itself had cooperated fully with the investigation. Speculation has long swirled around the location of De Pedis' tomb, since it is buried in a prominent church alongside important Catholics -- an unusual final resting place for a reputed local mobster. Sant'Apollinare is right next to the elegant Piazza Navona in Rome's historic center. As the exhumation went on in the crypt a priest was solemnly celebrating Mass upstairs in Latin. Published: Tue, May 15, 2012