Emanuela Orlandi case/Gabriella Boggiani included in investigation following 1983 phone call

The investigation reopened by the Rome Prosecutor’s Office into the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi has taken a new turn, with a third name now added to the case file.

After Laura Casagrande and Marco Fassoni Accetti, authorities are also investigating Gabriella Boggiani, Accetti’s former friend, who had previously been mentioned in several versions of the story surrounding the disappearance.

The information was made public during a hearing of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the cases of Emanuela Orlandi and Mirella Gregori. Boggiani said she learned only during the hearing that she was under investigation.

During her testimony, which was held behind closed doors, she reportedly said: “I didn’t know I was under investigation.”

Sources close to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office said that Boggiani is part of a separate case file from the one involving Accetti. The proceedings are believed to possibly involve other people from the photographer’s circle of acquaintances at the time.

During her appearance before the commission, Boggiani admitted that she had made a phone call in 1983 in which Emanuela Orlandi’s name was mentioned. According to her account, Accetti had asked her to make the call as a “joke.”

“One day Accetti said to me: ‘Come on, play this joke, make this phone call.’ I did. We were in a telephone booth in Rome’s Africano neighborhood,” she recounted.

She said the only instruction she had received from Accetti was to say: “We know where Emanuela Orlandi is.”

Boggiani said that at the time she did not know Emanuela Orlandi and had no knowledge of any criminal plan that might have been connected to the phone call.

She also denied ever seeing a communiqué calling for Emanuela Orlandi to be exchanged for Turkish extremist Ali Ağca, who was imprisoned for the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.

“I confirm that I made a phone call, not that I read a communiqué,” Boggiani declared.

In her testimony, she sought to distance herself from Accetti, describing him as “eccentric” and “a little crazy.” Boggiani said that she had met him by chance more than 40 years ago and that they had had no further contact after that period.

Emanuela Orlandi disappeared in Rome on June 22, 1983. Her case continues to be regarded as one of the greatest mysteries in modern Italian history, and over the years it has been accompanied by numerous theories and conflicting testimonies.

The official inclusion of Gabriella Boggiani in the new investigation gives Italian authorities another element to verify as efforts continue to clarify her role and that of other people in the events of 1983.