Latest / Crime Night / The Rothschild ex-wife and the Vatican bank

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The Rothschild ex-wife and the Vatican bank · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Deep Dive. I'm so glad you're joining
0:02
Speaker 1: us today because we are opening up a massive stack
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Speaker 1: of sources for this one. We've got declassified Italian police reports,
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Speaker 1: some incredible investigative journalism from the Sunday Times, and a
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Speaker 1: bunch of historical true crime case files.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're looking at a completely baffling unsolved mystery
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Speaker 2: from nineteen.
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Speaker 1: Eighty right, And our mission for this deep dive is
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Speaker 1: to like really untangle this incredibly complex web of clues.
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Speaker 1: We want to help you navigate a story that starts
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Speaker 1: in this tiny mountain village but then somehow spirals out
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Speaker 1: to involve stolen art, mysterious telegrams, and even the Vatican Bank.
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Speaker 2: It is, honestly, it's a staggering labyrinth of a case.
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Speaker 2: We're going to break down the timeline, examine the physical evidence,
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Speaker 2: and most importantly, we want to look at why the
0:46
Speaker 2: initial explanations for this tragedy just completely fall apart when
0:49
Speaker 2: you actually scrutinize the details exactly.
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Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. I want you to picture
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Speaker 1: this picturesque medieval hilltop village in Italy. It's November thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty The town is called Sernana.
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Speaker 2: Right right at the base of the mountains, Yeah.
1:02
Speaker 1: The snow capped Sibillini Mountains. And usually it looks like
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Speaker 1: something straight out of a beautiful fairy tale. But on
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Speaker 1: this particular day, the sky is turning this bruised, really
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Speaker 1: ominous gray. A massive, violent snow storm is rolling in.
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Speaker 1: You can practically hear the wind starting to howl.
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Speaker 2: Oh, it's the kind of weather that just forces everyone inside.
1:24
Speaker 2: The locals there, they know that survival means staying put,
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Speaker 2: and that is exactly the environment. Are two central figures
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Speaker 2: find themselves.
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Speaker 1: In right at the very center of the storm are
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Speaker 1: two women. You have forty year old Jeanette Bishop May
1:37
Speaker 1: who is a Londoner and she was actually the ex
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Speaker 1: wife of Evelynd Rothschild, which is huge, huge, I mean
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Speaker 1: he was one of the wealthiest men in the world
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Speaker 1: at the time. And with her is her really close
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Speaker 1: friend and translator, thirty nine year old Gabriella Garren.
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Speaker 2: Right. And Jeanette was in town renovating a local house.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So the day before the blizzard really hits,
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Speaker 1: they meet with a local surveyor. His name is no
2:00
Speaker 1: Asino Venanzi during this meeting, they just casually mentioned this
2:03
Speaker 1: plan they have to drive up into the mountains.
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Speaker 2: That afternoon, and he tries to stop them.
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Speaker 1: He does, the surveyor gives them this strict, urgent warning.
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Speaker 1: He tells them absolutely do not drive up that mountain.
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Speaker 1: A historic storm is coming.
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Speaker 2: Which brings us to the really inciting incident of this
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Speaker 2: entire mystery, because despite that explicit warning from a local
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Speaker 2: who you know, knew the terrain perfectly, they vanished by
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Speaker 2: the next day.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's really unpack this timeline because the sequence
2:31
Speaker 1: of their last known movements is just incredibly confusing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, No, it doesn't.
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Speaker 1: We know they left the surveyor around one point zero
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Speaker 1: zero pm. Then someone spots them paying an invoice in
2:42
Speaker 1: town at four four one five pm, and notably, at
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Speaker 1: four four and five, Jeanette is wearing entirely different clothes
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Speaker 1: than she was just a few hours earlier.
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Speaker 2: Right she changed.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Then they are seen leaving their boarding house around
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Speaker 1: five or zero pm as the street lights are coming on.
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Speaker 1: And then here's the kicker. At seven twenty pm, their
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Speaker 1: car is allegedly seen driving down the mountain from the
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Speaker 1: town center.
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Speaker 2: That's seven to twenty pm siding is it's the crucial
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Speaker 2: anomaly here. I mean the storm is reaching its absolute
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Speaker 2: peak at that time. Visibility is just plummeting exactly.
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Speaker 1: It makes zero sense to put it in perspective. For
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Speaker 1: you leaving the safety of the town at seven point
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Speaker 1: twenty pm in that weather, It's like jumping out of
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Speaker 1: a perfectly safe airplane without a parachute, right after the
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Speaker 1: pilot told you to buckle up for landing.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, suicide.
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Speaker 1: Why would they drive back out into a freezing white
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Speaker 1: out when they had a warm boarding house and were
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Speaker 1: already worn to stay put?
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Speaker 2: It completely defies basic human instinct, which is why we
3:37
Speaker 2: really have to look closely at the physical evidence they
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Speaker 2: left behind. So almost three weeks pass, that's now December eighteenth, Okay,
3:45
Speaker 2: search teams in helicopters finally spot their vehicle. It's this
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Speaker 2: dark hatchback with Siena license plates and is totally buried
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Speaker 2: under a mountain of snow.
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Speaker 1: But the condition of the car is weird, right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, The actual condition of the car is vital to
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Speaker 2: understand because it's parked perfectly on clear asphalt.
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Speaker 1: Hey, clear asphalt, So like the snow hadn't piled up
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Speaker 1: underneath it at.
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Speaker 2: All, precisely, and that tells investigators exactly when the car
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Speaker 2: was parked. It had to have been parked before the
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Speaker 2: heavy snow accumulated on the road. Oh what, because if
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Speaker 2: they had driven up during the peak of the blizzard,
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Speaker 2: they would have parked on top of a heavy snowpack.
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Speaker 1: That makes total sense. And here is the craziest part
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Speaker 1: about the car. It wasn't broken down. When the police
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Speaker 1: finally dig it out, the car is left in neutral,
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Speaker 1: the handbrake is firmly pulled, the doors are locked, the
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Speaker 1: keys are still inside along with all their valuables, and
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Speaker 1: the engine is fully functional.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how these really specific mechanical details
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Speaker 2: severely undermined the initial police theory. Right because the authorities,
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Speaker 2: they initially assumed the women just got disoriented in the
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Speaker 2: whiteout conditions, pulled over and succumbed to the elements.
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Speaker 1: But that doesn't fit the evidence at all.
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Speaker 2: No, think about the logic of a driver in a
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Speaker 2: blind panic. You don't carefully put your fully functional car
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Speaker 2: in neutral, pull the handbrake and lock the doors on
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Speaker 2: a clear road with the keys inside. If you're simply
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Speaker 2: taking emergency shelter, right, and you certainly don't wander off
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Speaker 2: into a deadly blizzard without your coats or your valuables.
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Speaker 1: No, you absolutely do, and they did wander or well,
5:15
Speaker 1: we're taken somewhere because just a short walk from that
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Speaker 1: parked car, searchers find this summer shepherd's cabin. Now, this
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Speaker 1: is a rustic, barebones kind of place. It is usually
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Speaker 1: completely abandoned in the winter, but inside searchers find these
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Speaker 1: chilling signs of recent.
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Speaker 2: Life, like the ashes.
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Speaker 1: Yes, there are ashes in the fireplace. There's burnt wood
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Speaker 1: out on the balcony, and it's arranged exactly like someone
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Speaker 1: was desperately trying to light a signal fire to be
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Speaker 1: seen from the air or the road.
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Speaker 2: Wow.
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Speaker 1: They find hair inside that matches the women and use silverware,
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Speaker 1: including this one very specific fork.
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Speaker 2: So when you synthesize the timeline, you take the pristine
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Speaker 2: condition of the intentionally parked car and then the sustained
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Speaker 2: activity in that remote cabin. The narrative shifts dramatically completely.
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Speaker 2: It looks less and less like a tragic accident caused
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Speaker 2: by a wrong turn. The mechanics of the scene suggest
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Speaker 2: a planned rendezvous or honestly worse, a forced holding location.
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Speaker 1: Right. They were either waiting for someone or someone was
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Speaker 1: keeping them there.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, which naturally shifts the focus to who Janette actually was,
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Speaker 2: and that brings her high profile husband Stephen into the fray.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and when he arrives in Italy, the media is
6:27
Speaker 1: already in an absolute frenzy. The immediate assumption across the
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Speaker 1: entire country is kidnapping.
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Speaker 2: Right. And to give you the historical context of why
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Speaker 2: the press jumps straight to that conclusion, you have to
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Speaker 2: understand that between the nineteen sixties and the nineteen nineties,
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Speaker 2: Italy was practically defined by this highly organized ransom industry.
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Speaker 2: It was rampant, it was syndicates often referred to as
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Speaker 2: anonymous equestry. They abducted over seven hundred people for ransom
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Speaker 2: during this era.
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Speaker 1: That is wild.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, if criminals caught win that a former member of
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Speaker 2: the Rothschild family was just wandering aroun around a remote
7:00
Speaker 2: ski village, she wouldn't just be a target. She would
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Speaker 2: be viewed as an absolute gold mine.
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Speaker 1: But Stephen isn't entirely buying it at first. He points
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Speaker 1: out to the police that sure they live comfortably but
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Speaker 1: not like billionaires. But then shortly after the women vanish,
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Speaker 1: this incredibly ominous piece of evidence.
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Speaker 2: Drops the telegram.
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Speaker 1: Yes, a telegram arrives at the women's boarding house in Sarnano,
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Speaker 1: but it's addressed to Jeanine May, which is a name
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Speaker 1: nobody actually called.
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Speaker 2: Jeanette, right, super weird, and.
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Speaker 1: The telegram simply reads I am waiting for you. It's
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Speaker 1: signed by someone named Roland, and it lists a specific
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Speaker 1: street address in Rome.
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Speaker 2: So creepy.
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Speaker 1: And as if that's not creepy enough, Stephen goes through
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Speaker 1: Jeanette's room and he finds this handwritten note. It lists
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Speaker 1: a few phone numbers with a chilling, vague instruction that
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Speaker 1: just says, please do not hesitate.
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Speaker 2: I mean, the psychology of that note is terrifying. Hesitate
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Speaker 2: to do what exactly? Hey, a ransom meets someone. Yeah,
7:58
Speaker 2: but if we connect this telegram to the bigger picture, Yeah,
8:01
Speaker 2: that Rome address is the absolute lynch pan of the investigation.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yes it is, because that exact same address was just
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Speaker 2: tied to another massive crime.
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Speaker 1: I still can't get over this part.
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Speaker 2: It's crazy. The very night after Jeanette and Gabriella disappeared,
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Speaker 2: a highly coordinated art heist took place at the Christie's
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Speaker 2: Auction House headquarters.
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Speaker 1: In Rome the next night.
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Speaker 2: The next night, an investigators soon realized the telegrams pointing
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Speaker 2: to this exact same Rome address were also sent to
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Speaker 2: a Christie's director.
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Speaker 1: Wait, it actually gets worse because similar telegrams directing people
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Speaker 1: to that address were also sent to the families of
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Speaker 1: prominent kidnapping victims in Rome. Jeez, it is literally a
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Speaker 1: blinking red neon sign connecting these crimes. So the police
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Speaker 1: actually go investigate this Rome address and what do they find.
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Speaker 1: They find a known, previously charged kidnapper living there.
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Speaker 2: I mean that is a massive break right, And.
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Speaker 1: Then they do a sweep of the street and they
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Speaker 1: discover that a director for Christie's Auction House lives on
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Speaker 1: that exact same street. They search his girlfriend's apartment and
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Speaker 1: they find a hand drawn diagram of the Christie's alarm system, which.
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Speaker 2: Is basically the smoking gun for an inside job at
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Speaker 2: the auction.
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Speaker 1: Out exactly, you have a kidnapped heiress, a stolen art ring,
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Speaker 1: a known kidnapper, and literal maps of alarm systems all
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Speaker 1: pointing to one street in Rome. And after finding all
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Speaker 1: of this, the police, they just write the telegrams off
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Speaker 1: as a hoax.
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Speaker 2: It is a staggering oversight by law enforcement, truly staggering.
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Speaker 1: It's like finding the smoking gun, the bullet, and a
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Speaker 1: signed confession and deciding it's just a prank. How do
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Speaker 1: you ignore coincidences that loud.
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Speaker 2: Well, they operated on a totally flawed assumption. They assumed
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Speaker 2: some local criminal was just trying to stir the pot
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Speaker 2: by referencing big news stories, you know, the missing rothschild
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Speaker 2: and the Christie's heist. Yeah, so they dismissed the telegrams entirely.
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Speaker 2: They shelved what might have been the crucial link connecting
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Speaker 2: a highly organized kidnapping ring, stolen art, and these two
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Speaker 2: missing women.
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Speaker 1: And because law enforcement essentially puts blood, the investigation just
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Speaker 1: hits a brick wall. So we jump ahead over a
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Speaker 1: year to January nineteen eighty two. Stephen is desperate, understandably,
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Speaker 1: he realizes the police aren't going to solve this, so
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Speaker 1: he liquidates his personal assets. He puts everything he has
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Speaker 1: on the line to offer a one hundred million lira
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Speaker 1: reward for information leading to.
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Speaker 2: The women, which is a lot of money.
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Speaker 1: Oh, for context factoring and inflation, that's roughly a quarter
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Speaker 1: of a million dollars today.
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Speaker 2: And money has a very funny way of miraculously guiding
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Speaker 2: people's footsteps, doesn't it. It really does, because just two
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Speaker 2: weeks after this massive reward is publicized, two local hunters
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Speaker 2: just happen to quote unquote stumble upon the skeletal remains
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Speaker 2: of Jeannette and Gabriella.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they find them in this densely wooded, snowy ravine.
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Speaker 1: But this ravine is a full eight miles away from
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Speaker 1: that shepherd's cabin, eight miles. When investigators arrive, the scene
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Speaker 1: is deeply unsettling, and it completely contradicts a standard robbery
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Speaker 1: or exposure case. First of all, nothing was stolen from
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Speaker 1: their purses. Second, they find a four work lying in
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Speaker 1: the dirt near the bodies that is completely identical to
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Speaker 1: the US silverware found in the shepherd's cabin.
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Speaker 2: Which physically links the two scenes exactly. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: But the absolute most disturbing detail their watches.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. The watches are the ultimate anomaly in this case. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: because they provide a mechanical timeline that just shatters the
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Speaker 2: police theory.
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Speaker 1: Jeannette was wearing a manual wind watch. It stopped on
11:21
Speaker 1: December twelfth at seven to twenty am. Gabriella was wearing
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Speaker 1: a battery powered watch. Hers stopped exactly one week later,
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Speaker 1: on December nineteenth at seven thirty am.
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Speaker 2: Right, So, the medical examiner looks at the remains and
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Speaker 2: notes there is no physical trauma on the bones, no
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Speaker 2: bullet wounds, no blunt force trauma. Okay, And because of
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Speaker 2: this he rules in an accidental death due to exposure
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Speaker 2: to the snow. He assumes they wandered out of the cabin,
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Speaker 2: got lost in the blizzard, and basically just froze to
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Speaker 2: death that first night. Right, But this raises an incredibly
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Speaker 2: important question about the mechanisms of those watches.
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Speaker 1: Yes, let's completely deconstruct this exposure theory because it makes
11:59
Speaker 1: no sense.
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Speaker 2: No, let's think about how a manual wind watch actually works.
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Speaker 2: It stores energy in a coiled mainspring. You have to
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Speaker 2: physically turn the crown every twenty four or roughly forty
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Speaker 2: eight hours, or the tension runs out and the hand
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Speaker 2: simply stopped moving.
12:13
Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: If Jeannette disappeared into a blizzard on November thirtieth and
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Speaker 2: died of exposure that same night, her watch would have
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Speaker 2: stopped by December second, at the absolute latest.
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Speaker 1: But it stopped on December twelfth, which means someone either
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Speaker 1: Jeanette or the people holding her captive, was routinely physically
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Speaker 1: winding that watch for nearly two weeks after the blizzard precisely.
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Speaker 2: And then there's the physical impossibility of the terrain. Gabriella
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Speaker 2: was wearing a skirt. Oh wow. The idea that she
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Speaker 2: treked eight miles through a blinding blizzard in deep mountain
12:43
Speaker 2: snow drifts in a skirt is nearly physically impossible. Remember,
12:47
Speaker 2: earlier search teams and helicopters couldn't even reach that specific
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Speaker 2: ravine on foot without using skis.
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Speaker 1: That is insane. And let's talk about the bodies being
12:56
Speaker 1: found neatly together. If you die of exposure in a
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Speaker 1: blizz you know, you are desperate, you are moving, you
13:02
Speaker 1: are falling. It is chaotic.
13:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not peaceful.
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Speaker 1: But their bodies are found right next to each other. Now,
13:07
Speaker 1: factor the watches back in if they froze to death
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Speaker 1: together in the storm on night one. How on Earth
13:14
Speaker 1: does a manual watch stop a full week before a
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Speaker 1: battery powered one.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't.
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Speaker 1: It strongly suggests they did not simply wander out and
13:21
Speaker 1: die at the exact same time. It suggests time past.
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Speaker 1: It implies they were kept alive somewhere else, and their
13:27
Speaker 1: bodies were placed in that ravine later.
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Speaker 2: Furthermore, consider the people who found them.
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Speaker 1: Ugh, the hunters.
13:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, the hunters who miraculously stumbled upon the bodies. They
13:37
Speaker 2: immediately demanded the one hundred million lira reward. Now, legally
13:42
Speaker 2: and ethically, reporting human remains you find in the woods
13:46
Speaker 2: is a civic duty, right right. It's not a contracted
13:48
Speaker 2: search and rescue service you get paid for. But when
13:52
Speaker 2: Stephen hesitated to pay, they aggressively sued the grieving husband
13:57
Speaker 2: in court. That is so low, and they won. They
14:00
Speaker 2: actually took his reward money with interest. It raises massive,
14:04
Speaker 2: glaring red flags about how those bodies were actually discovered
14:07
Speaker 2: and whether those hunters knew exactly where to look because
14:10
Speaker 2: someone told them to.
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Speaker 1: It just makes your skin crawl. You have a grieving
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Speaker 1: husband who gives up everything getting sued by the guys
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Speaker 1: who magically find the body is two weeks after the
14:18
Speaker 1: check is written.
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Speaker 2: It's awful.
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Speaker 1: But because the medical examiner officially ruled it accidental exposure,
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Speaker 1: the authorities try to close the book Stephen. However, he
14:26
Speaker 1: refuses to let it go. He reaches out to investigative
14:29
Speaker 1: journalists at the Sunday Times and this sparks.
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Speaker 2: A massive deep dive by the press in late nineteen
14:34
Speaker 2: eighty two, which uncovers a new terrifying theory.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is where it gets really dark.
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Speaker 2: Jeanette wasn't just a former rothschild. She was actively working
14:43
Speaker 2: as an interior designer and an antique dealer. Okay, so
14:47
Speaker 2: the journalist theorized she was lured up to the mountains
14:50
Speaker 2: under the guise of a lucrative, high end antique sale,
14:54
Speaker 2: but the buyers were actually part of a Sardinian abduction ring.
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Speaker 1: Oh my god.
15:00
Speaker 2: Theory posits that the kidnapping went wrong. Perhaps the women
15:03
Speaker 2: saw something they shouldn't have, or recognize someone from the
15:06
Speaker 2: Christie's heist, and they were killed to silence them.
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Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the investigation.
15:11
Speaker 2: Well, because of the massive media pressure, the police are
15:14
Speaker 2: basically forced to reopen the case, and as they pull
15:17
Speaker 2: on these threads, they stumble onto a man named Sergio Vicari.
15:22
Speaker 2: Sergio was an Italian antique dealer who was violently murdered
15:26
Speaker 2: in his London apartment in September nineteen eighty two.
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Speaker 1: And this is where the Christie's art heist comes roaring
15:32
Speaker 1: back into focus, proving that ignoring those telegrams was a
15:35
Speaker 1: catastrophic mistake.
15:36
Speaker 2: How did the Italian police connect a murdered man in
15:38
Speaker 2: London to our victims. Well, London police open the murdered
15:43
Speaker 2: Sergio Vicari's safe deposit box and inside they find photographs
15:49
Speaker 2: of the stolen art from the Rome Christie's heist.
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Speaker 1: It's just unbelievable.
15:53
Speaker 2: Even more damning, a witness comes forward claiming they saw
15:56
Speaker 2: Sergio's personal diary before he was killed. Written clearly in
16:01
Speaker 2: that diary was Jeanette's name and a phone number.
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Speaker 1: Okay, but it actually gets crazier. It's like starting a
16:06
Speaker 1: five hundred piece puzzle of a snowy mountain and realizing
16:10
Speaker 1: halfway through that the pieces actually form a picture of
16:12
Speaker 1: a mafia hit. Yeah. Sergio Vicari was also linked by
16:15
Speaker 1: a police informant to the death of a man named
16:17
Speaker 1: Roberto Calvi. Now, if you know your history, Roberto Calvi
16:21
Speaker 1: was famously known as God's Banker. Oh that case, he
16:24
Speaker 1: was the chairman of a massive Vatican backed bank that
16:27
Speaker 1: was involved in astronomical financial fraud and mafia money laundering.
16:31
Speaker 1: Calvi had fled to London and was found hanging under
16:33
Speaker 1: Blackfriar's Bridge, and Sergio Vicari allegedly bragged to an informant
16:37
Speaker 1: that he was involved in Calvi's death. The informant even
16:40
Speaker 1: claimed to have seen photos of Roberto Calvi and a
16:43
Speaker 1: photo of Jeanette falling out of Sergio's personal bag.
16:46
Speaker 2: It is just a dizzying escalation. I mean, we've gone
16:48
Speaker 2: from a wrong turn in a snowstorm to a stolen
16:50
Speaker 2: art ring and now we are dealing with Vatican bank
16:53
Speaker 2: fraud and international mafia assassination from the movie. The scale
16:58
Speaker 2: of the conspiracies expanding so rapid. Yeah, and yet the
17:01
Speaker 2: bizarre leads just keep coming. Consider the Austrian tip Oh, this.
17:05
Speaker 1: One is completely baffling to me. About two months after
17:07
Speaker 1: the women disappear, an anonymous tipster uses a hotel's telex
17:11
Speaker 1: machine in Austria to message a newspaper in Rome. Okay, now,
17:15
Speaker 1: for context, a telex machine is basically an early facts machine,
17:19
Speaker 1: and it leaves a very specific trace back to the
17:21
Speaker 1: originating machine. This tipster messages the newspaper with highly specific
17:25
Speaker 1: unreleased details about the Rome telegrams stuff the public absolutely
17:29
Speaker 1: did not know yet.
17:30
Speaker 2: Wow.
17:30
Speaker 1: Okay, So the police trace the teles back to the
17:34
Speaker 1: specific Austrian hotel and they find a man named Ian
17:37
Speaker 1: Surr staying there. And what does Ian Surr do for
17:40
Speaker 1: a living? He runs a massive logistics company that counts
17:43
Speaker 1: Christie's auction House among its premier clients.
17:46
Speaker 2: Of course he does. So the police interrogate Ian Sir,
17:49
Speaker 2: but he completely denies knowing anything about the missing women,
17:52
Speaker 2: the telegrams or the tip shocker. And because they can't
17:56
Speaker 2: definitively prove he was the actual one standing at the machine,
18:00
Speaker 2: the thread just goes completely cold. The telics proves the
18:03
Speaker 2: message came from that specific hotel, meaning someone there had
18:07
Speaker 2: intimate inside knowledge of the crime, but the police can't
18:11
Speaker 2: close the loop.
18:12
Speaker 1: Hey, hold on, how does an Austrian logistics CEO just
18:14
Speaker 1: happen to be at the exact hotel where a secret
18:17
Speaker 1: tip about a Rome art heist and a mountain kidnapping
18:19
Speaker 1: is sent? Did the police investigate the specific shipments his
18:22
Speaker 1: company was making for Christie's.
18:24
Speaker 2: They tried, but international jurisdiction in nineteen eighty was an
18:27
Speaker 2: absolute nightmare. And the evidence was entirely circumstantial. And the
18:31
Speaker 2: conspiracies don't stop there.
18:32
Speaker 1: There's more.
18:33
Speaker 2: Decades later, in twenty thirteen, a man named Marco Acchetti
18:37
Speaker 2: steps into the spotlight. Now, this guy is already infamous
18:41
Speaker 2: for falsely confessing to the kidnapping of EMMANUELA or Landy,
18:44
Speaker 2: which is this highly publicized case involving a fifteen year
18:48
Speaker 2: old Vatican City resident.
18:49
Speaker 1: Oh, I've heard of that.
18:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Acheti suddenly claims that back in the eighties
18:53
Speaker 2: he was part of a secret group trying to recruit
18:55
Speaker 2: Jeannette to falsely accuse the president of the Vatican Bank
18:59
Speaker 2: of sexual assault as part of this grand blackmail plot.
19:03
Speaker 1: Let me guess he didn't have any actual proof exactly.
19:06
Speaker 2: Etchetti eventually backtracked on the claim. Given his history of
19:10
Speaker 2: inserting himself into high profile Vatican related crimes, most experts
19:14
Speaker 2: view his confession as entirely fabricated just for attention. However,
19:18
Speaker 2: it perfectly illustrates how this case acts as a magnet
19:21
Speaker 2: for massive conspiracies.
19:23
Speaker 1: It really is overwhelming. You pull one thread and you're
19:25
Speaker 1: in a snowy wilderness survival story. You pull another, it's
19:28
Speaker 1: a high society archist. You pull a third and you
19:31
Speaker 1: are straight into a Vatican mafia thriller.
19:33
Speaker 2: It is. And the tragic reality of this case is
19:37
Speaker 2: that despite these massive, glaring criminal connections, you know, stolen art,
19:43
Speaker 2: the Rome address, the known kidnappers, the mechanically impossible stopped watches. Yeah,
19:48
Speaker 2: the Italian authorities officially closed the case again in nineteen
19:51
Speaker 2: eighty nine. They simply couldn't pinpoint the who or the
19:55
Speaker 2: why with enough concrete, prosecutable evidence to charge anyone with murder.
20:00
Speaker 1: We actually have a breaking update for you. In November
20:02
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, literally decades after the files were boxed up,
20:06
Speaker 1: authorities officially reopened the case as a double murder investigation.
20:10
Speaker 2: It's a monumental shift for the families. Authorities stated the
20:13
Speaker 2: case was reopened based on newly discovered inconsistencies in original
20:17
Speaker 2: witness statements. Do we know, they haven't released exactly which
20:20
Speaker 2: witnesses or what the inconsistencies are, but they are finally
20:24
Speaker 2: officially treating it not as a tragic exposure accident, but
20:27
Speaker 2: as a calculated murder.
20:28
Speaker 1: And you know, as we navigate all these wild theories
20:31
Speaker 1: about Rothschild's antique smugglers and Vatican banks. We have to
20:35
Speaker 1: bring it back to the reality of the human toll.
20:37
Speaker 1: Gabriella's daughter, Joya was just four years old when her
20:40
Speaker 1: mother vanished into that storm. She had already lost her
20:43
Speaker 1: father in a car crash. Joya has lived with this crushing,
20:46
Speaker 1: agonizing uncertainty for over forty years.
20:49
Speaker 2: That is heartbreaking.
20:50
Speaker 1: She has spoken about how hope is an incredibly hard
20:53
Speaker 1: thing to hold on to when you've been let down
20:54
Speaker 1: by the justice system this many times. It proves that
20:57
Speaker 1: behind every true crime conspiracy theory, there are real people,
21:01
Speaker 1: real families, just waiting for the truth.
21:04
Speaker 2: That is the anchor of this entire story. It's so
21:07
Speaker 2: easy to get lost in the sensationalism of art heists
21:10
Speaker 2: and international assassins, but at its core, this is about
21:14
Speaker 2: two women whose lives were violently interrupted and the loved
21:18
Speaker 2: ones left to pick up the pieces in the dark.
21:21
Speaker 1: Which leaves us with one final lingering question to ponder
21:24
Speaker 1: as we wrap up this deep dive into the sources.
21:27
Speaker 1: Consider the snowstorm.
21:28
Speaker 2: Itself the blizzard.
21:29
Speaker 1: Yes, for decades, investigators and the medical examiner blamed that
21:33
Speaker 1: massive blizzard for killing Jeanette and Gabriella. But look at
21:37
Speaker 1: the physical evidence left behind. What if that blizzard wasn't
21:40
Speaker 1: the murder weapon at all?
21:41
Speaker 2: Oh wow?
21:42
Speaker 1: What if instead it was actually nature's way of flash
21:44
Speaker 1: freezing a crime scene, preserving just enough impossible clues like
21:49
Speaker 1: the pristine locked car and the manual watch kept ticking
21:52
Speaker 1: for two weeks, so that, decades later, a modern investigation
21:55
Speaker 1: could finally melt away the lies.