[MUSIC] The case of the Italian banker, Roberto Calvi, is a very interesting case. It was forensic science that made it possible in this case to distinguish between murder and suicide. Now, Roberto Calvi used to run an Italian bank called the Banco Ambrosiano, based in Milan, and he was nicknamed "God's banker". And the reason for this nickname is because a lot of cash from the Vatican would flow through his bank. Now there were some strange goings-on within the Banco Ambrosiano, and it culminated with about $1.2 billion missing. Now these days, we're quite used to banks losing much bigger quantities of money than that, but back in the 1980s, $1.2 billion was a very serious amount of money indeed. So what is known is that Roberto Calvi disappeared from Milan on June 11, 1982, and he was found just over a week later in London. He was hanging by his neck from underneath Blackfriars Bridge, which is shown on the right here. [BLANK_AUDIO] And what he had done is to get a false passport, shave off his moustache, adopt a false name, and escape from his problems in Italy to London. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now, to first appearances it looks like a suicide. Here's a man in a lot of trouble. $1.2 billion is missing, the Italian police want to talk to him, the mafia are involved and they might want to talk to him, and also in most probability, the Pope is pretty mad at him as well. So clearly it's a man trying to get away from his problems, cannot escape and so, makes the ultimate exit. However, not everyone was convinced, and Roberto Calvi's son was convinced that his father had not committed suicide. Now an inquest had been held and a verdict of suicide had been returned, but Roberto Calvi's son campaigned so vigorously that the very unusual step of a second inquest was taken. Now let's look at some of the evidence here. What did the police find when they investigated? Well, Roberto Calvi was hanging from the bridge, but he had bricks in his suit pocket. This doesn't make sense. If you're going to hang yourself, you don't need bricks, the weight of your body is sufficient. Bricks is what you'd put in your suit if you're going to drown yourself in the river, which he didn't do. In his wallet, he had a very very large amount of money in various currencies. If you're going to hang yourself, if you're going to kill yourself, why do you need so much cash? Because after all, you can't take the stuff with you. He had a false passport, so he had the opportunity to travel. And when they checked his hotel in London, they found that his bags had been packed, just as if he was going to travel. [BLANK_AUDIO] Let's look at the pathology. His neck was not broken. Well, that is consistent with a hanging, a non-judicial hanging. There were no drugs in his blood, there was no signs of a struggle, the marks around his neck are consistent with hanging. There was no water in his lungs, so he hadn't been drowned. He was wet quite a way up his body, but that is because the River Thames at that point is tidal, and the river level goes up and down. His watch, he was wearing a very expensive Philippe Patek watch, and that had stopped at 1:52, because even though it was expensive, it wasn't waterproof. So this gives an indication of the time when he was hanging from the bridge. [BLANK_AUDIO] A very important point was made by the investigator hired by Calvi's son. At this time, Blackfriars Bridge had been undergoing maintenance and it was surrounded by scaffolding. Calvi was hanging from the scaffolding. This was yellow painted scaffolding, and what the investigator did was to go to the company that had supplied the scaffolding. He got the same scaffolding, he reassembled it, and he got someone to climb up and down that scaffolding. And he found that whenever you climbed up and down that scaffolding, you would always get flakes of yellow paint and rust marks from the scaffolding on your clothes or on your body, and what was very interesting is that there were no such marks or flakes on Roberto Calvi. So possibly, he didn't actually climb down the scaffolding to hang himself. There is the possibility that he was raised up to the scaffolding from a boat on the river. [BLANK_AUDIO] From all this evidence, we can ask all sorts of questions. Why a rope and the bricks? One is for hanging, one is for drowning. Where did he get the rope? Police investigations were never able to determine where the rope came from. How did he climb down the scaffolding without getting paint flakes on him? And then there's a very basic question - why commit suicide in a rather cold, dirty river, when you could do it in a nice comfortable hotel? It has been established that suicides tend to try and make themselves comfortable in their final moments. And then there's a very big question - how did Calvi get from the hotel to the bridge? This is a map of London. His hotel was down in Chelsea, in West London. The bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, is over on the east side, by the city of London. There are plenty of bridges down in Chelsea, why Blackfriars Bridge? And how did he get across the city? Inquiries amongst taxi drivers and bus drivers, nobody had seen him travel across the city that night. [BLANK_AUDIO] All of these questions raised up convinced the second inquest that it was not a nice, simple suicide. It was a much more complex case, and the likelihood was that Roberto Calvi had been murdered, presumably to keep him quiet. Well, establishing that a case is a murder and proving who did the murder are quite different things. And while the questions raised established that it was probably a murder, there was not sufficient evidence to convict anyone of the murder. And when the Italian authorities charged some of Calvi's associates with the murder, those people were acquitted, found not guilty, at the subsequent trial. So the question of who killed Roberto Calvi is still an open question. [BLANK_AUDIO]
