God’s Banker I 7. Discovery

Summary

Shadow Kingdom: God’s Banker I 7. Discovery – Detailed Summary

Introduction

In Episode 7, titled "Discovery," of the "Shadow Kingdom" series by Crooked Media and Campside Media, host Niccolo Minoni delves deeper into the mysterious death of Roberto Calvi, infamously known as "God’s Banker." This episode uncovers new layers of the investigation, challenging the initial conclusion of suicide and bringing forward compelling evidence that suggests foul play.

The Final Day of Roberto Calvi

The episode opens with firsthand accounts from Silvano Vitor, a former smuggler who played a crucial role in Calvi's last days.

• [00:24] Niccolo Minoni: "The last day of Roberto Calvi's life started with a shave. For the majority of his 63 years, he'd sported an ever-present dark mustache."

Calvi's attempt to alter his appearance was evident on the morning of June 17, 1982. Vitor recounts finding Calvi shaving his mustache in the hotel bathroom.

• [00:49] Silvano Vitor: "With the door open, he says, I'm shaving my mustache. This way I'm less recognizable."
• [01:09] Silvano Vitor: "And I remember him saying, in my entire life, this is the first time I ever shaved my mustache."

Vitor interprets Calvi's actions as a sign of deep fear and desperation to hide his identity.

• [01:20] Silvano Vitor: "That he just was so scared of being seen and he would do anything to hide his appearance."

Calvi’s Descent into Isolation

Throughout the day, Calvi remained confined to his cramped Chelsea hotel room. He entrusted Vitor with money to run errands, maintaining minimal contact through a special knock mannerism.

Meanwhile, back in Milan, the Banco Ambrosiano board ousted Calvi, stripping him of control. This public demotion, combined with the tragic suicide of his secretary, compounded Calvi’s despair.

• [02:22] Silvano Vitor: "Roberto Calvi, presidente del Banco Ambrosiano, learned..."
• [02:36] Silvano Vitor: "There he lost it completely with the news about his secretary."

Calvi’s fixer, Flavio Carboni, failed to support him emotionally, leading to a tense standoff in the hotel.

• [04:19] Silvano Vitor: "I told Flavio, aren't you coming? And he said, no, I'm not coming. I just don't want to meet Calvi."

Instead of aiding Calvi, Carboni and Vitor prioritized spending time with their girlfriends, leaving Calvi alone in his distress.

Calvi's Disappearance and Death

As evening turned into night, Vitor attempted to contact Calvi, only to find the room empty the next morning.

• [05:19] Silvano Vitor: "With the pause between. And nothing. No answer."

Vitor’s growing concern led him to leave for Austria, unaware of Calvi's tragic fate.

Discovery of the Body

At 7:30 am on June 18, a postal clerk discovered Calvi's body hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. The scene was puzzling: Calvi was found with his valuables intact, suggesting no robbery occurred.

• [12:07] News Reporter: "62 year old señor Calvi was found dangling from an orange rope here. But perhaps the key to Calvi's death is to be found here on the River Thames."

The British police swiftly concluded it was a suicide, citing the lack of signs of struggle or foul play.

• [12:56] News Reporter: "In my opinion, there was no suggestion of foul play. No marks of resistance. There were none."

Italian Investigation and Initial Skepticism

Upon learning of Calvi's death, Italian authorities, aware of his connections to the secret society P2 and potential Mafia ties, suspected murder. Niccolo Minoni travels to Rome to interview Antonio Kornakia, an Italian counterintelligence officer involved in the initial investigation.

• [15:43] Antonio Kornakia: "I was at counterespionage when the whole Calvi affair broke out..."

Kornakia expresses frustration with the British City of London police's inadequate investigation, highlighting procedural errors such as untying the rope knot, which could provide critical forensic evidence.

• [16:25] Antonio Kornakia: "This is not real police."

Despite providing detailed information about Calvi’s connections, Kornakia faced disbelief and dismissiveness from British counterparts.

Reopening the Case: Challenges and Developments

A significant development occurred when Britain's High Court overturned the initial suicide verdict, ordering a new hearing due to emerging evidence that contradicted the original findings.

• [21:27] News Reporter: "On the first day of the new inquest... the jury... returned an open verdict."

Niccolo Minoni visits Blackfriars Bridge to personally assess the scene, contemplating the logistical challenges surrounding Calvi's death.

• [21:37] Silvano Vitor: "He was a desperate man and he found some rope hanging along a dock in the Thames."

Angela Gallup’s Forensic Investigation

The episode introduces Angela Gallup, a forensic scientist brought in by Calvi’s family to re-examine the case. Gallup's meticulous analysis challenges the suicide narrative.

• [24:33] Angela Gallup: "So I remember saying, yes, absolutely, we'll have a look at it."

Gallup revisits the death scene and conducts a series of reenactments to determine the plausibility of Calvi's movements leading to his death. Through these experiments, Gallup uncovers inconsistencies:

• [28:53] Angela Gallup: "Even if you then subjected them to being submerged in swirling water, you still found this stuff."

The absence of paint flecks on Calvi's shoes, despite retracing his possible routes, suggests that he did not navigate the scaffolding himself.

• [29:03] Niccolo Minoni: "If Calvi had actually walked on the scaffolding on his own, he should have had microscopic flecks of paint in his shoes. But guess what? They weren't there."

Further investigation into Calvi's underwear revealed silty stains indicative of being seated in a boat, pointing towards a potential murder scenario involving transportation via water.

• [31:52] Angela Gallup: "It made me think about boats."

Conclusion and Future Directions

Gallup concludes that Calvi was almost certainly murdered, driven by the initial investigative oversights that dismissed vital evidence. Her findings reignite the quest for the truth behind Calvi’s death, setting the stage for future revelations.

• [34:23] Angela Gallup: "He said that Cerutti was not in Italy and he wouldn't be coming back."

As the episode wraps, Niccolo teases the next installment, hinting at the arrest of one of Italy’s most wanted fugitives connected to Calvi’s murder.

Notable Quotes

• Silvano Vitor [01:20]: "That he just was so scared of being seen and he would do anything to hide his appearance."
• Antonio Kornakia [16:25]: "This is not real police."
• Angela Gallup [29:25]: "Even if you then subjected them to being submerged in swirling water, you still found this stuff."
• Angela Gallup [32:09]: "It made me think about boats."

Key Insights and Implications

• Investigative Flaws: The initial British investigation lacked thoroughness, overlooking critical forensic evidence that could have revealed the true nature of Calvi’s death.

• Forensic Breakthroughs: Gallup’s meticulous re-examination provides a compelling argument against the suicide theory, pointing towards a calculated murder involving advanced planning and possible collusion.

• Ongoing Mystery: Despite decades passing, the mystery remains unresolved, with lingering questions about the true perpetrators and their motives.

Conclusion

Episode 7 of "Shadow Kingdom" masterfully intertwines personal testimonies, forensic analysis, and investigative shortcomings to reframe the narrative surrounding Roberto Calvi’s death. By challenging the established suicide verdict and presenting credible evidence of foul play, the episode heightens the intrigue and sets the foundation for an in-depth exploration of the shadowy forces at play in the continuing mystery of God’s Banker.

Transcript

[Niccolo Minoni]

Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join [e-mail] friends or on Apple Podcasts.

[Silvano Vitor]

Campsite Media.

[Niccolo Minoni]

The last day of Roberto Calvi's life started with a shave. For the majority of his 63 years, he'd sported an ever present dark mustache. Pretty much every picture you'll ever find of Calvi, there's a mustache. But on the morning of June 17, 1982, Silvano Vitor found Calvi in their shared hotel bathroom.

[Silvano Vitor]

With the door open, he says, I'm shaving my mustache. This way I'm less recognizable.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Vitor is the former smuggler we heard from in the last episode who told me about helping Calvi flee Italy and watching over him in his final days.

[Silvano Vitor]

And I remember him saying, in my entire life, this is the first time I ever shaved my mustache.

[Niccolo Minoni]

And so what do you think? What do you feel in that moment?

[Silvano Vitor]

That he just was so scared of being seen and he would do anything to hide his appearance.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Calvi spent the rest of his morning in the cramped Chelsea hotel, which was more like a hostel. His room was just 10ft by 16ft, with one small window. Early in the day, Calvi handed Vitor cash to run some errands, and when Vitor returned, he used a special knock he had to identify himself, and Calvi let him in for lunch. At the very same time, back in Milan, the Ambrosianos board members gathered at the bank. With Calvi on the run, they voted him out. He was no longer in control of the bank he'd led for seven years, and that soon became global news.

[Silvano Vitor]

Roberto Calvill, presidente del Banco Ambrosiano, learned.

[News Reporter]

On the telephone that his powers with the Banco Ambrosiano had been removed.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Any hope that Calvi may have had to go back to the Banco Ambrosiano was now extinguished. And then, more bad news. Calvi received word that his secretary had died by suicide.

[Silvano Vitor]

There he lost it completely with the news about his secretary. He said, something happened to me that I never thought my. My secretary. He was just 100% depressed.

[Niccolo Minoni]

The Secretary had drafted a suicide note saying, having been exhausted for a long time, I wholeheartedly apologize to everyone for the trauma I have caused and ask for forgiveness from my superiors and all those who love me at Banco Ambrosiano. But she also added a pointed message to Calvi, May you be twice damned for what you've done. Calvi was so down that when his fixer, Flavio Carboni, arrived at the hotel, he refused to go down to the lobby to meet him. Calvi simply couldn't or wouldn't budge. Carboni had arranged this whole trip, the whole escape from Italy. But then, strangely, the fixer also refused to come up to see Calvi. So the two men were locked in this bizarre standoff that evening, with Vitor shuttling back and forth between them. It'd almost be funny if it didn't feel so. I don't know, sad, maybe a little ominous. Calvi a nervous wreck, and Carboni so close but refusing to go to him. Did Carboni not want to face Calvi for some reason?

[Silvano Vitor]

I told Flavio, aren't you coming? And he said, no, I'm not coming. I just don't want to meet Calvi. It seems to me like he just really didn't want to meet him.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Instead, Carboni and Vitor went to a nearby pub to meet their girlfriends, who traveled with them from Austria. They left Calvi in the hotel to fend for himself. The whole thing struck me as utterly bizarre, that Carboni and Vitor would go and chivalrously tend to their girlfriends while their protectee, God's banker, the most wanted man in Europe, freaked out in his hostel alone. Were they taking an innocent, if badly timed break here, or was there a more sinister design at play? I'm not sure. In any event, the two men were gone a few hours. Vitor told me he went back to the Chelsea Hotel a bit after midnight.

[Silvano Vitor]

I take the elevator and I go up. I walk to the door and I go for a usual signal. Two knocks, boom, boom. One knocks, boom. With the pause between. And nothing. No answer. I tried to do it again. So I knocked again, nothing. And I don't have the key because when I left, I left Dan inside because I knew he'd be there. So I go down to the lobby and I speak to some guy, and he comes with me upstairs, all the way up into the room with a spare set of keys. He opened the door, we got in, and there was no Calvin, just a suitcase. At the moment, I think he's probably coming to look for me. So I immediately also go down and go looking for Calvin in the vicinity. I went back down to the lobby where there was a restaurant. I looked everywhere, he wasn't there. I went back into the room and.

[Niccolo Minoni]

So what are you thinking at this point?

[Silvano Vitor]

As the hours went on, one became two, three. I was thinking about everything. It was maybe he left to speak with someone, or maybe he's coming back in 30 minutes, or maybe in an hour, basically. I don't know, maybe he went with somebody, but he'd be back later. But I set the part that I didn't know anymore, and I had no answer until the morning.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Calvi was gone. And I know that this time he was gone for good. But what I don't know is what happened to him in those last few hours. The last time Silvano Vitor remembered seeing Calvi was around 8pm on June 17. Eventually, Vitor told me that he went to bed in the hotel suite, alone, waiting, hoping that Roberto Calvi would magically reappear. But when Calvi hadn't returned by the morning of June 18, Vitor did something else that seemed strange to me. Vitor told me he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that Calvi's disappearance was incredibly suspicious, and he didn't want to just be sitting around when shit hit the fan.

[Silvano Vitor]

I mean, at the moment, I just didn't know anything. So at 11, I just decided, look, I'm not hearing anything. There is no Calvi, there is no Carboni. So anyway, I decided, I don't know, maybe I did a bad thing, but I decided to go back to Austria.

[Niccolo Minoni]

And while Vitor was boarding a plane, Calvi was eventually found. From Crooked Media and Campside Media this is Shadow Kingdom, God's banker. I'm Niccolo Minoni, and this is episode seven, Discovery.

[Angela Gallup]

That would have been a really frightening place. Dark, wet, dangerous.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Whether it was murder or suicide, no one knows. Shadow Kingdom is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know that when your metabolism is working properly, you end up feeling the benefits in pretty much every other aspect of your life? I found a pretty valuable tool that gives me insights into how to create a healthy metabolism for myself, and it goes by the name of Lumen. Lumen is a handheld tracker that reads your metabolism through your breath. And keep in mind, your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how you turn food into fuel. All you do is you blow into the device, then check the app, and it tells you whether you're burning carbs or fat at that moment. Now, at first, I had absolutely no idea why that mattered. But then I saw patterns. The days I woke up burning fat, I had steady energy. I was more focused. I didn't have afternoon crashes. The days I woke up burning carbs, on the other hand, I was foggy, I was sluggish, I was reaching for snacks. And here's the part that ultimately really matters. Lumen doesn't just tell you what's happening. It helps you change it. It gives you a personalized plan. What to eat, how to adjust your workouts, even sleep. So you're not just guessing, but you're operating with a plan. The warmer months are coming, so spring back into your health and fitness and go to Lumen Me kingdom to get 15% off your lumen. That's L U M E N dot me kingdom for 15% off your purchase. Thank you to our friends at Lumen for sponsoring this episode. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway, give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] At 7:30am on June 18, 1982, a postal clerk was walking along Blackfriars Bridge in London. Something caught his eye. He saw a head and then a body dangling underneath the bridge. He rushed to his office to share what he found. The police arrived on the scene by car and by boat. There they found a middle aged John Doe in a gray suit hanging from a rope around his neck. He was dangling off of temporary construction scaffolding under one of the bridge's arches. His ankles were just covered by the river. The turbulent water made reaching the body by boat difficult and it would take police 11 hours to figure out that their John Doe was the world's most famous fugitive banker.

[News Reporter]

62 year old senor Calvi was found dangling from an orange rope here. But perhaps the key to Calvi's death is to be found here on the River Thames.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Whether it was murder or suicide, no one knows. His suit was packed with 12 pounds of bricks, four pairs of glasses, a fake passport and two wallets filled with thousands in various currencies. But his briefcase? Nowhere to be found. Now London police weren't sure there was much cause for concern. This was no robbery. He had all of his valuables. It seemed like a suicide. England's ITV newscaster recounted a pathologist's testimony.

[News Reporter]

In my opinion, there was no suggestion of foul play. No fracar, no struggle. Had there been, I would have expected to have found some marks of resistance. There were none.

[Niccolo Minoni]

This was a pretty reasonable analysis. Suicide attempts were very common on the Thames. Plus, Calby had already attempted suicide just a year before. Add to that, he'd just been fired and his beloved bank was on the brink of collapse. The Ambrosiano stock price was plummeting, and with it, his fortune. When my friend Mario from episode one set me on a journey to find out what happened to Calvi, he thought the more likely explanation was murder. And that's the way I've come at this whole investigation. Calvi worked with so many powerful, so many shadowy figures. P2 and its grandmaster, Alicio, Jelli, the Mafia, even the Pope. And now he was worthless to all of them. Worse than worthless. He was a liability. A man desperate to stay out of jail. A man seemingly willing to use the secrets he kept to save himself. But on the other hand, my conversation with Vitor, reading transcripts from Calvi's wife, his kids, his co workers and reporters from around the world, it all painted a clear picture of Calvi in this moment. Depressed, afraid and alone. It's been my mission to figure out who killed Calvi. But was it really Roberto Calvi himself all along? This is a question that Calvi's family, law enforcement and private investigators have debated for decades. The first people to investigate Calvi's death were police in the city of London right after he died in 1982. From the beginning, it was clear that Roberto Calvi's cause of death was asphyxiation. There were no signs of physical struggle and no known poisons in Calvi's body. So London police were quick to suspect suicide. But once word got back to Italy that Calvi was dead, Italian law enforcement immediately suspected foul play. They knew all about Calvi, his P2 involvement and his suspected Mafia ties. I flew to Rome to meet with Antonio Cornacia, an Italian counterintelligence officer who investigated Calvi's death. He told me that Calvi had been on his radar even before his body was found.

[Antonio Kornakia]

I was at counterespionage when the whole Calvi affair broke out. And a colleague of mine grabbed me and said, have you heard what's happening? Have you heard about Roberto Calvi? My boss then said, would you be willing to take a walk? Meaning, take a look at this.

[Niccolo Minoni]

I spoke to Kornakia in Italian, so we asked an actor to record his responses in English. When Kornakia's boss asked him to look into Calvi's death, he quickly booked a flight to London. The way he talked about the whole investigation was really vivid. I could viscerally see and feel the Italian legal system. Which I know well, clashing with the British legal system.

[Antonio Kornakia]

Okay, so I go to London, and the first thing we have to deal with is the police. And this is the police that operates on the right side of the River Thames. This is not real police.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Not the real police. Kornakia's voice was full of his casual disdain. Here he said the police he had to work with were from the City of London, which is, confusingly, a distinct municipality within Greater London. It's like if Wall street was a separate little city inside New York with its own tiny police force, a police force a lot less equipped than Scotland Yard. Quick example of the rookiness of their investigation. The City of London police untied the knot on the rope Calvi had around his neck. Instead of cutting the rope and preserving how the knot was tied, apparently that's like policing 101. You don't untie the knot, because the kind of knot and how it was tied, tied can tell you a lot about the person who tied it. So when Kornakia got to London, it was immediately clear to him that this. This is not the A team, shall we say? But he held back his contempt, and he started filling the British cops in on everything he knew about Calvi, his associates, how Calvi was a member of the secret society P2, how he was a fugitive, and how, actually, Italian intelligence officers had been trying to piece together the timeline of Calvi on the run.

[Antonio Kornakia]

We know that while on the move, he's in contact with this character, a fixer. His name is Carboni. This guy Carboni made him take a plane in Trieste or somewhere around there. Then we know that Calvi went to Vienna with two possible people. We know some of them to be women who may be friends of Carboni. So I just left them everything. Names, last names. And then I said, look, the boss is Jelly. Jelly is the boss. You want to know what happened to Roberto Calvi? Look at Jelly.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Konakia said the local cops just stared at him blankly.

[Antonio Kornakia]

So I told my colleague, hey, tell them I'm not crazy, okay? And I remember everybody started laughing. The British, they just. They didn't believe me.

[Niccolo Minoni]

The City of London police continue to investigate Calvi's death. A month later, they held a coroner's inquest, where a coroner presents the evidence to a jury and they decide if a crime has been committed in this case. Did Calvi die by suicide or was it murder? But before Kornakia could do anything else.

[News Reporter]

The Calvi inquest ruled that Signor Calvi hanged himself beneath Blackfriars Bridge.

[Niccolo Minoni]

The jury ruled that Calvi's death was a suicide.

[News Reporter]

Professor Simpson, who carried out a post mortem examination on Signor Calvi, said he found no marks of violence on the body to suggest the Italian banker had been manhandled, lifted or held in any way.

[Niccolo Minoni]

So the English legal system had spoken. Case closed. It was a suicide. Calvi was a desperate man and he found some rope hanging along a dock in the Thames. Police sent Kornakia and his colleagues back home. And that's where the case seemed to end. With Calvi's Ambrosiano taken over by the bank of Italy and his family left to fend for themselves until a few months later when there was breaking news. There was a surprise development today in the case of the death of fugitive Italian banker Roberto Calvi. Today, Britain's highest court rejected the earlier suicide verdict and ordered a new hearing. In Touchalvi's death, there was new evidence that would tell a very different story. That's after the break. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. And here in London today, the High Court has reopened the case of a dead man known to some as God's banker. The court overturned a suicide verdict on last summer's death of the fugitive Italian banker Roberto Calvi. After the initial suicide verdict, Calvi's family fought tooth and nail to appeal. They noted all the inconsistencies, the sloppy police work, the dirt on Calvi's clothes, the list of possible suspects. And around the first anniversary of Calvi's death, they got a redo.

[News Reporter]

On the first day of the new inquest, the jury of six men and three women were brought here to Blackfoot Friars Bridge, where Signor Calvi's body was found hanging almost a year ago.

[Niccolo Minoni]

This time, the court returned what's called an open verdict, which meant that the jury wasn't sure if it was murder or suicide. So they were keeping the case open if more evidence came through. I am here at Blackfriars Bridge, looking over the side of the bridge. As I was starting to wrap up my reporting for the show, I went to London. I wanted to see the bridge for myself. I think it's helpful to see this place with all the uncertainty about Calvi's death. I thought visiting the bridge might help me understand the mechanics and forensics of how Calvi died. The current seems very fast. I'm looking at objects moving in the Thames, which is dirty as hell, just gloomy and spooky, and it's. You know, there's basically. Essentially a highway that runs along the side of this. What a lonely place for this guy's demise. Standing alongside the bridge, I could see that it has five enormous arches that sit on top of these five massive granite piers. Calvi was found hanging from temporary scaffolding that rose up out of the water under one of the bridge's arches. As I walked over the bridge, I tried to imagine how Calvi got to the place where he died. A lot of people have tried to figure this out because it wouldn't have been easy to get to whether he was murdered or died by suicide.

[Angela Gallup]

It was quite a tough. A tough environment. And when I was there at night, I thought it was a frightening place.

[Niccolo Minoni]

This is Angela Gallup, a forensic scientist and a person who altered the course of the Calvi mystery over the course of a decade. The Calvi family tried everything they could to solve the banker's death. They appealed to British authorities, Italian authorities, criminal court, civil court. And in the early 90s, the family decided to do their own investigation. The Calvis assembled a team of the best private investigators money could buy, including Gallup. Full disclosure. We compensated Gallup for her time preparing for this interview because her research was so important to this case.

[Angela Gallup]

So I remember saying, yes, absolutely, we'll have a look at it. And then I remember very shortly afterwards, when I started to have a look through some of the papers, I thought, well, you know, there's hardly anything to look at. All there is is the suit that Roberto Calvi was wearing, and there was his shoes, and there was the rope that was taken from around his neck. And that was pretty much it. And I thought, this is a huge question. Was he murdered or did he commit suicide? And I only have this stuff.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Gallup had been working on cold cases for years. But she says this case was especially tricky because the initial investigators didn't treat Calvi's death like a crime. So they missed a lot of evidence.

[Angela Gallup]

And so, you know, there were so many disadvantages to this case that I do remember wondering to myself what I'd taken on.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Gallup, like me, knew that she needed to revisit the scene of Calvi's death. So on a cool June night In the early 90s, she made her way onto a boat in the River Thames.

[Angela Gallup]

There's quite a lot to manage in this atmosphere of, you know, water moving up and down, vast volumes of water, a strong current underneath you. It's quite a lot to think about. That would have been a really frightening place. Dark, wet, noisy, dangerous. Obviously dangerous.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Once she was at the bridge, Gallup figured that there were only four ways Calvi could have died.

[Angela Gallup]

Four main routes by which Calvi could have got to the scaffolding. Well, two suicide routes, two murder routes, I should say.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Calvi died hanging from temporary construction scaffolding that was set up directly under the bridge's first arch, closest to the riverbank.

[Angela Gallup]

He walked along the embankment.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Gallop gave me a very detailed walkthrough. But basically, if Calvi had died by suicide, he had two options. If he started on top of the bridge, he could have climbed over the edge, made his way down a rickety ladder, then jumped onto the scaffolding under the archway. Or he could have started under the bridge by swimming across the river and climbing up out of the water onto the scaffolding. Two options for suicide. Now, if Calvi had been murdered, the routes would actually be very similar.

[Angela Gallup]

One of the murder routes was someone else to help him, goodness knows.

[Niccolo Minoni]

But someone would either have to carry Calvi down the same riggedy ladder and balance him on the temporary scaffolding, or the killers would have brought Calvi to the scaffolding via the water. This probably meant by boat. They would have lifted Calvi off the boat and hung him on the scaffolding. So, all in all, four ways, Calvi could have died two ways from the top of the bridge, two ways from the water. Put that way, it almost seems simple.

[Angela Gallup]

We can say some things, some routes are so deeply unlikely, and actually, there's absolutely no evidence of the type that you would expect that we can basically rule them out.

[Niccolo Minoni]

It was quickly clear to Gallup that Calvi didn't swim to the bridge himself because his suit didn't have evidence of being soaked. So that's one theory down, three to go. What about the idea that a distraught Calvi climbed down the ladder himself onto the scaffolding? For this, Gallop had a man about Calvi's size retrace his steps.

[Angela Gallup]

This particular chap that I got to climb down the ladder did happen to be my husband. He was a forensic scientist, too. I remember he complained bitterly, and he claimed to have vertigo because I think it was quite tricky. You know, these very thin little metal bars on a very sort of tight frame. You know, it was near vertical and the rungs were very narrow and just tricky to climb down that. Really tricky.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Calvi had poor eyesight and vertigo, so as Gallop watched her husband struggle to climb down the bridge, she found it hard to imagine Calvi doing the same. To further test this route, Gallop actually built a replica scaffolding and had volunteers wear the same clothes, the same shoes, even put the same heavy bricks in their pockets. The results continued to get weirder. For example, Gallup's actors got bruises and scratches, none of which seemed to match Calvi's. But what really stood out to her was the footwear.

[Angela Gallup]

Looking at the shoes made us think, well, what would you expect if he had, for example, on the suicide routes, walked along the scaffolding poles? What could we expect to find in.

[Niccolo Minoni]

The replica scaffolding she built? Gallup had been careful to match the exact type of metal and the same type of paint as the scaffolding where Calvi had been found. Now she had her volunteers walk up and down the scaffolding with the same shoe model that Calvi wore, and she noticed small flecks of paint lodged in the soles.

[Angela Gallup]

Even if you then subjected them to being submerged in swirling water, you still found this stuff. And even if you then scrub at the soles a bit, they were still there after all this treatment. And so you would have expected to have found something like that had he walked across these poles.

[Niccolo Minoni]

In other words, if Calvi had actually walked on the scaffolding on his own, he should have had microscopic flecks of paint in his shoes. But guess what? They weren't there. There was nothing. Which meant if Calvi had hanged himself below the bridge, he. He'd magically flown there.

[Angela Gallup]

So all of these experiments with spare shoes that Kelby had and his suits and things all fed into this conclusion that we finally came to, which was that both the suicide routes were, you know, seemed to be really unlikely.

[Niccolo Minoni]

If Calvi didn't swim to the bridge and he didn't climb down from the top, then Gallup felt very confident that he didn't kill himself. But also her tests and reenactments convinced her that it would have been impossible for someone to carry Calvi over the side of the bridge onto the scaffolding. So that left one solitary route, one where Calvi was knocked out and led to his final resting place via boat. But there's one big hurdle here, and that is that back in 1982, detectives couldn't find any physical marks of violence or traces of poison. Or sedation on Calvi. So was even this route a no go? Would Gallup eliminate all four options? Not so fast.

[Angela Gallup]

I began to see that because the police had almost immediately come to the conclusion that it was suicide, they didn't bother to look at the scene in as much detail as you might like.

[Niccolo Minoni]

It's not that they didn't find any sedation. It's that they didn't really look. There was no thorough sweep that might have caught traces of chloroform, for example. And as Gallup continued examining the clues, a final piece of evidence really caught her eye. Calvi's underwear.

[Angela Gallup]

When I looked at the underpants, you could see the curve of the bottom of the shirt, and then you could see all the stripes in this silty kind of material on the underpants. And it made it look as if he'd been sitting down in something that was quite silty.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Previously, the hasty coroner had basically concluded, his underwear's dirty. That's probably just from the river. But Gallop made her own way through the evidence. And yet again, something stuck out to her. The shape of the dirt stains on Calvi's body. These were no simple water stains. The way the silt had settled convinced Gallup that Roberto Calvi, in the last moments of his life, had sat in something.

[Angela Gallup]

And if he'd had his legs stretched out in front of him, then that was maybe what. Why the backs of the calves had the same sort of material on them. And so then that made me think about. It made me think about boats.

[Niccolo Minoni]

And it made her think that Calvi had sat on the wet floor of a boat with his legs out straight in front of him. Whether Calvi had been sedated and rode to the scaffold, or if you've been held at gunpoint or tricked into getting on a boat and then strangled and at the last moment hung, Gallop couldn't say. But she could say this. God's banker had almost certainly been murdered. She shared her evidence with Calvi's son. And then waited and waited. A year went by, then five. Then 20 years passed. Calvi's death, his story, and the mysteries around it all faded. He became an unsolved puzzle and conspiracy fodder. My sources, my parents, even my friend Mario from episode one, thought this would never get solved. And then one day, Gallup got a call. Because of her evidence, someone had finally been arrested for the murder of Roberto Calvi. That's next time on Shadow Kingdom. One of Italy's most wanted fugitives has been arrested in Switzerland.

[Angela Gallup]

He said that Cerutti was not in Italy and he wouldn't be coming back.

[Niccolo Minoni]

Shadow Kingdom is a production of Crooked Media and Campside Media. It's hosted and reported by ME Nicolomaini with additional reporting by Simona Zecchi and Joe Hawthorne. The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Ashley Ann Krigbaum and me. Joe Hawthorne is our lead producer and Ashley Ann Krigbaum is our managing producer. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Sound design, mix and mastering by Mark McAdam. Our theme song and original score are composed by me and Mark McAdam. Our studio engineer is Ewan Lai Tremuin. Voice acting by Bonnie Biagini, Andrea Bianchi, Ferrante Cosma, Luca de Gennaro, Michele Teodori and Mustafa Zalan. Field recording by Justin Trigger, Jonathan Zenti, Pete Scheve, Jonathan Gruber and Joanna Broder. Fact checking by Zoe Sullivan. Our executive producers are Me Nicolomini along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long and Allison Falsetta from Crooked Media. Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Sher and Vanessa Gregoriadis are the executive producers at Campside Media. One last thing before we go. You can also listen to Shadow Kingdom in Italian. Look up Il Banchiere di Dio wherever you get your podcasts.