Rome and its secrets Italian police are searching for missing public prosecutor Adinolfi
A plan to grow mushrooms underground could solve the long-standing mystery surrounding the disappearance of Italian prosecutor Paolo Adinolfi. Investigators are digging in Rome to uncover crucial evidence and criminal involvement – even at the highest levels.
This is a story that should be created if it doesn’t already exist: It’s about a missing public prosecutor, a villa from the 1930s, the treasurer of the most dangerous criminal organization in Rome, a 25 meter long tunnel under the villa and the garden, an investigator who didn’t find peace for 30 years and – about mushroom cultivation.
It was Saturday, July 2, 1994, a hot Roman summer day, when public prosecutor Paolo Adinolfi said goodbye to his wife and children and left for work.
52-year-old Adinolfi, a prosecutor assigned to the High Court; the last one but only recently. Previously, he worked in the bankruptcy department for more than ten years. A task that is not without danger, as it often involves money laundering and other unfair transactions. He also had a reputation as a very thorough official.
It was one of these dangerous cases that made him decide in 1992 to apply for a transfer. The files concern the financial company Fiscom, which also appears to be involved in alleged criminal transactions. Adinolfi has ordered bankruptcy proceedings at Fiscom. However, while on vacation, a colleague decided to revoke the decision on his own initiative. Adinolfi was very angry with this and was transferred.
Fatal insider knowledge
But the Fiscom case still doesn’t seem to let him go. A few days before he disappeared, he called his colleague Carlo Nocerino in Milan to tell him that he had an interesting lead in the Ambra Insurance case, which Nocerino was currently working on. Ambra belongs to Fiscom, therefore probably Adinolfi’s information. “I asked him to send it to me in writing,” recalled Nocerino, “but he answered that he wanted to give it to me as an ordinary citizen and not as a judge, and that is why he came to Milan.”
Nocerino has ordered several arrests in the Ambra case, including the arrest of Enrico Nicoletti. A very dubious figure that Adinolfi has ever met in the Fiscom case. Nicoletti was also the treasurer of the Banda della Magliana, a criminal organization that was at the forefront of organized crime in Rome between 1977 and 1983 and maintained good contacts with politicians, the secret service, Cosa Nostra, and high-ranking Vatican officials. The novel “Romanzo Criminale” (published in German by Folio Verlag) by the former public prosecutor and now highly respected author, Giancarlo De Cataldo, provides deep insight into this.
Former public prosecutor Otello Lupacchini believes there is likely a link between the gang and Adinolfi’s disappearance. He investigated the gang for years. It is true that when Adinolfi disappeared, many of its members were imprisoned or died. However, the money they collected and invested over the years was managed by Nicoletti. And since Adinolfi certainly had a lot of deep knowledge, the idea that he was silenced is not completely unreasonable.
The investigation into the Adinolfi case was opened twice and both times was postponed quite quickly. The first time was a year after the disappearance, as there was not the slightest hint or clue that pointed to a violent death or suicide.
Brick tunnel under the villa
However, the investigation continued when Francesco Elmo gave testimony. Elmo is a “pentito”, an inmate who cooperates with investigators and can serve with inside knowledge of the secret service.
It was he who gave prosecutor Guglielmo Muntoni the clue to dig under Villa Osio, whose owner was the treasurer of the Nicoletti gang. He bought it in the 1980s from a religious association under the auspices of the Roman Vicariate and led by Vicar Cardinal Ugo Poletti. Elmo further stated that Adinolfi was killed by Banda della Magliana’s henchmen on the orders of the secret service.
“Everyone is interested in finding out what is under this part of the property,” Muntoni recently told daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. “And according to our research, there is most likely a hiding place there.” But then part of the tunnel collapsed and excavations were stopped due to lack of financial resources.
Muntoni is now retired and serves as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s financial crime monitoring department. Adinolfi’s case regarding the tunnel and the Magliana gang never really left him. One reason is that the gang is said to really like underground facilities.
In 1981, police discovered a cache of weapons in the basement of the Ministry of Health. Enrico De Pedis, one of the bosses of the Banda della Magliana, is buried in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare. The approval came from Cardinal Vicar Ugo Poletti.
You can also find bones
But back to Muntoni and his initial idea to restart excavations. Officially, the question is no longer about finding out whether and, if so, what is hidden in the underground tunnels, but rather what large-scale fungal culture to grow there.
This also sounds strange to the author De Cataldo. In an interview with the daily newspaper “La Repubblica” he said that it was just a hoax for the press. “Muntoni was a very worthy prosecutor,” he stressed, “who had long maintained that there was a walled gallery beneath Nicoletti’s villa.”
Gallery where everything can be hidden. “We suspect weapons, jewelry and even bones were not ruled out,” Muntoni said. The latter could be the remains of Adinolfi, or the remains of Emanuela Orlandi, as the media has speculated in recent days. Orlandi was the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee who disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1983.
Excavations continued at the end of last week. The villa itself was confiscated as mafia property in the early 2000s and later returned to the Romans as the Casa del Jazz, an internationally renowned jazz venue. But more than the music, it’s the alleged secret that draws audiences to it today. And it is hoped that Paolo Adinolfi’s fate will finally be revealed.
