Search For Missing Teen Girl Leads To The Discovery Of Thousands Of Bones At Vatican

Thousands of bones have been discovered in an underground space near a Vatican cemetery, as part of an investigation into the 1983 disappearance of a teenage girl.

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was 15-years-old when she went missing after leaving a music lesson in Rome, CNN reports.

For the past three decades, the family had been searching for answers surrounding Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance and last summer, they received an anonymous tip that gave them hope.

According to CNN, the Orlandi family was sent a picture of a sculpture and cryptic message, which read “look where the angel is pointing.” The decoding of this information led them to prompt search inside the tombs of Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe and Princess Charlotte Federica of Mecklenburg at the Teutonic Cemetery for Emanuela’s remains.

The Vatican allowed a forensics team to open the tombs earlier this month and no coffins or neither of the princesses’ remains were inside. In fact, another shocking discovery was made. Two chambers, with thousands of bones, were hidden underneath the floor of the Teutonic College.

Alessandro Gisotti, a spokesman for the Vatican said that a DNA analysis will be done on all of the bones to determine who they belong to and evaluation should be completed by the end of this month.

“It must be considered that many of the bones being dated are shattered and therefore this increases the number present, many of which are small,” Gisotti told CNN. “This means that there may be more fragments of the same bone structure.”

For the brother of the missing teen, Pietro Orlandi, finding Emanuela’s remains during an investigation of the ossuaries would be “devastating” for their family, but it could also ensue problems for the Vatican. He claims that none of the remains are supposed to be from recent deaths and the family has hired a forensic expert of their own, to ensure the validity in findings.

“To think if she was buried in the ossuary all these years, just 200 meters from our house, it would be devastating,” he told CNN. “The Vatican doesn’t want this out and doesn’t want to be seen in this way, but finally I feel like they have taken a step back and we have moved a step forward,” he added.

According to Reuters, the Vatican has made a statement explaining their willingness to support the examining of tombs at the Teutonic Cemetery. They believe that they have shown “openness” toward the Orlandi family, despite the entire investigation being based off of an anonymous report.