Disappearance of Mirella Gregori

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Mirella Gregori was born on 7 October 1967 in Rome, Italy. She disappeared on 7 May 1983, at age 15, from Rome. Her case remains unsolved after more than 40 years.

On the day she vanished, Mirella left home around 3:30 pm after an apparent phone call from a former middle-school classmate named “Alessandro.” She told her mother she would meet him outside and would be back in 10 minutes. Mirella then went to a bar just below her home to meet Sonia De Vito, the bar owner’s daughter and Mirella’s best friend. The two girls talked privately in the bathroom for about 10 minutes, and then Mirella left the bar and was never seen again.

In the first hours after the disappearance, police looked into Alessandro, but found he was somewhere else at the time and had not seen Mirella for months.

In August 1983, Mirella’s disappearance was linked to that of Emanuela Orlandi, a Vatican citizen who vanished on 22 June, about 40 days later. Some claimed a terrorist group kidnapped the girls to demand the release of Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, but there was never proof of this.

A mysterious phone call in October 1983, said to come from “the American,” claimed Mirella was dead and promised her body would be returned before Christmas, but nothing happened. In 1997, the first investigation into the Orlandi–Gregori cases was closed for lack of new evidence, and linking the two cases was rejected by judges.

In 1985, Mirella’s mother identified a man in the pope’s escort as someone who often spent time with Mirella at the bar. The man, Raoul Bonarelli, was a Vatican official. He was questioned in 1993 but later dismissed for lack of evidence.

In the 2000s, some researchers suggested a serial killer could be behind several missing girls in Rome, including Mirella and Orlandi, due to their similarities and because their bodies were never found.

In 2016, a document leaked from a SISDE file suggested Sonia De Vito might have known who took Mirella, based on a bar conversation.

In November 2023, the Italian Senate voted to start a new parliamentary investigation into the four-decade-old disappearances of Mirella Gregori and Emanuela Orlandi. Both cases remain unsolved, with ongoing investigations and various theories.