Nicolo reviews trial transcripts in Rome and listens to Calvi's son, Carlo, finally making sense of a long-ignored interview. The investigation leads to the Bologna train station bombing, where the Mafia, the Vatican, and a fascist secret society intersect. The chilling truth behind Calvi’s murder emerges. Friends of the Pod get early access to the entire first season of Shadow Kingdom: God's Banker before it drops for everyone else—ads included. Hear this episode in Italian by subscribing to Il Banchiere di Dio wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What led to the investigation of Roberto Calvi's murder?
Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts. Over two decades after Calvi's death, the Italian state was finally ready to prove who killed Roberto Calvi. Forensic expert Angela Gallup had put together a stunning report. Calvi hadn't killed himself, he was murdered.
Gallup's report made its way very slowly into the Italian halls of justice, where eventually, five years later, a young prosecutor grabbed it. Gallup's report showed how Calvi had died, and the prosecutor was now ready to ask who had killed him. And so, once again...
The world turned its attention to one of the most confounding cold cases on the planet, as the Italian state charged five people with the murder of Roberto Calvi.
The questions remain. What exactly did happen here at Blackfriars Bridge on that June night in 1982?
Almost exactly 25 years on from Roberto Calvi's body being found hanging from this bridge.
The examination of his body only confirmed what his family had suspected all along, that the original verdict of suicide returned by a London inquest was probably wrong.
When I first heard the prosecutor's theory of the case, I thought it sounded ridiculous, like a 70s pulp novel. But I have to say now, two years into the story, it actually sounds far less ludicrous. Prosecutors alleged that the mafia and the P2 masons teamed up to organize Calvi's killing because the banker had lost money that he was supposed to launder.
Among the five defendants were Silvano Vitor, the smuggler, and Flavio Carboni, the fixer. Prosecutors said they were hired by the mafia to gain Calvi's trust and divert him to London. There, a hitman drugged God's banker and hanged him to make it look like a suicide.
The other defendants were Carboni's girlfriend, who was with the men in London, and finally a mafioso and a gangster who were alleged to be involved with the planning. Early in my reporting, I used the trial mainly as a map, a way to suss out what names and events to research.
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Chapter 2: What evidence was presented in Calvi's murder trial?
Behindology, which is the theory of what's behind something. And you don't have proofs. You can only use your imagination. And your imagination can carry you very far in thinking, what's behind that? Why did they do that? Was there a conspiracy of people that decided to kill Calvi. This was the perfect example.
I mean, you know, nobody knew why he was killed or why he was dead, but there were all these dealings with the Vatican and with the Pitou and Calvi and the Pope and Solidarnosc. And, you know, there was a whole thing that, you know, so people had to be imaginative and, you know, they didn't come to an answer. You said Dieter Loggia gives you an answer when you can't have one. I like that.
It tries to give you an answer, yes. Tries to give you an answer, and many people believe it.
I doubt that the 2005 defendants were actually Calvi's murderers. I do believe in the Bologna theory. I believe that there was some kind of neo-fascist plot to kill Calvi. But like Mario said, we don't know for certain. There's only enough evidence to get imaginative. What I realized as we talked was that this story, Calvi's story, had filled me with a surprising amount of compassion.
A little bit for Roberto Calvi, who was caught up by forces far greater than himself. But mostly, it gives me compassion for the average Italians that lived through the heyday of dietrologia. People like my parents, who came of age in the 60s and 70s. During that time, the mafia, the Vatican spies, Da Vinci Code-style masons, they all did exist in Italy.
Sure, they may have sounded like conspiracies, but they were real. Italy was a surprisingly violent place, where the mafia regularly kidnapped people for ransom, where the fight for and against communism wasn't abstract. It was bloody and in the streets. where maybe you knew secret societies existed, but not which of your friends or neighbors had signed up.
And remember, the state controlled much of the Italian economy. That was true all the way into the 90s. So there often was some hidden backstory, some reason why that executive friendly with that politician got that job. Given that context, Mario told me, in a way, teatrologia made sense.
So there were many things that happened in Italian history that created a situation that was a little bit opaque, if you see what I mean. And therefore people like to, you know, to conject, you know, to make assumptions or hypotheses. And that is what is an actual science of dietrologia. But then it sort of took a life of its own, so it was applied to everything and everywhere.
Yeah, but it helps me understand Italians a little better today, I guess is what I'm saying, if that makes sense. Not so much that I validate the process of dietrologia now, but it helps me understand people of my, let's say, my father's generation. Because they grew up in a world where, you know, like 40% of dietrologia was not dietrologia. It was just davantiologia. It was true.
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