Listen in this episode to the tale of the Italian Banker linked with the Vatican and notorious P2 Masonic Lodge found hanging at London's Blackfriars Bridge. Was it suicide or was it murder?  The first inquest recorded a verdict of suicide, but when that was set aside, a second inquest returned an Open Verdict.  Was Roberto Calvi's death linked with the Vatican?  Or was it linked with the Sicilian Mafia?  
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From time to time I and a couple of court officials returned to the door of the jury room and listened for a while.

Voices were raised and strong feelings expressed. Plainly, this inquest jury was torn: it did not wish to return a verdict of suicide. Neither did it really want to return an open verdict – one that indicates it cannot resolve the cause of death.

What it really wanted to do was to return a verdict of murder, but Her Majesty’s Coroner had made it very clear in his summing-up that a verdict of unlawful killing was not open to the jury, and it was not one he was prepared to accept.

The Coroner directed the jury that in order to find that Calvi had been murdered they had to be sure beyond reasonable doubt, but that was not possible on the evidence, and he withdrew that verdict from them.

This was the second inquest. A year earlier, after a marathon one day hearing of 12 hours that stretched late into the evening, a different Coroner’s jury reached a verdict of suicide by a majority. But the family challenged that decision in the High Court on the grounds that the inquest had been unduly rushed, the verdict was set aside and a fresh inquest ordered before a different Coroner at a different court.

For this cause celebre the family had instructed George Carman QC to represent their interests. Another heavyweight, Richard Du Cann QC was to represent other interests.

This inquiry was to last for two weeks and was far more searching than the first.

A banker by profession, and Chairman of Bank Ambrosiano, the day before his death Calvi had been sacked and his secretary had jumped to her death from a fifth floor window at the bank’s headquarters.

The secretary left what was described as an angry note condemning the damage that Calvi had inflicted upon the bank and its employees. An Italian judicial inquiry found she had committed suicide.

Shortly afterwards the bank collapsed with debts of £800 million. And the creditors included the Sicilian Mafia.

A year earlier, following criminal investigations, Calvi was tried in connection with several billion lire that had been exported illegally. It resulted in his conviction and a four-year suspended prison sentence together with a fine that ran into many millions of dollars.

Released on bail pending appeal, Calvi attempted suicide.

Correspondence between Calvi and others from the bank, and the Vatican, confirmed that illegal transactions were common knowledge. Much money had been siphoned off through the Vatican Bank, the main shareholder of Banco Ambrosiano which had a holding of 10 per cent.

Until then, it seems that Roberto Calvi was invisible in London. Nobody the police interviewed remembered seeing him; nobody admitted to meeting him. There are no records of what he said and did in London. The police were forced to admit that they had no idea how he got from Chelsea Cloisters to Blackfriars Bridge, but the next time he was seen was hanging there. His clothing was stuffed with bricks and he was carrying around $15,000 cash in three different currencies.

Calvi was a member of Licio Gelli’s illegal masonic P2 lodge. They referred to themselves as frati neri or “black friars”. Some believe that Calvi was murdered as a masonic warning because of the symbolism associated with the word “Blackfriars”.

Professor Keith Simpson, an eminent Home Office pathologist, gave evidence at the inquest.

It was suggested by George Carman QC that it would have been possible for Roberto Calvi to have been disabled by the effect of chloroform and then curare-like drugs administered, sufficient to paralyse him, and then strangled. Or after he was paralysed, taken to Blackfriars by boat and hanged from the scaffolding until he died.

Confirming that the death was due, without any question, to asphyxia by hanging because evidence of drowning was entirely lacking, Professor Simpson said there was no evidence to suggest that the hanging was other than a self-suspension in the absence of marks of violence.

He added that the way the body was slumped in a kneeling posture was typical of suicide by hanging. There was no evidence to suggest that Calvi had been strangled or tied in any way. If he had been strangled and the body suspended, there would have been some other ligature marks.

Professor Simpson said: There were no marks of fingers or fingernails which one would find in cases of strangulation by hand. I am satisfied that possibility can be altogether excluded.

He added that because chloroform did not usually cause instant unconsciousness usually the victim struggled.

The theory advanced on behalf of the family was that the Mafia was concerned that Calvi would be able to avoid prison by becoming an informer. They therefore assisted his flight from Italy after telling him he had lost his appeal when, in truth, no final decision had been made.

It is said that he was accompanied by Silvano Vittor, acting as minder, assisted by Flavio Carboni, a confidant and wealthy Sicilian businessman. Armed with fake Venezuelan passports, Calvi and Carboni ended up in the United Kingdom. The Mafia arranged for Calvi to stay at a furnished flat at Chelsea Cloisters on Sloane Avenue. London was supposed to be a stopover before travelling to South America to be joined by his family.

Flavio Carboni and Silvano Vittor were brought to London and cross-examined at some length by George Carman who suggested that they had flown from London back to Italy only hours after Calvi’s body had been found and that they were involved in the death. Carboni responded that he knew nothing about Calvi’s flight from Italy or his death until he read about it later, and so did Vittor.

But he added that it was sheer speculation to say that Roberto had left Italy and jumped bail because he was doubtful or unhappy about the possible outcome of his appeal or because he was on some hit list of one of the terrorist organisations.

Add Professor Simpson’s evidence and the limited options offered by the Coroner, and it was perhaps unsurprising that the second inquest jury, albeit reluctantly, returned an open verdict.

Afterwards I spoke with Clara Calvi, Roberto’s widow, and although she was relieved to some degree that at least the family had an open verdict to work with, she was convinced her husband had been murdered and the Vatican was behind it; others, perhaps more compellingly regarded the perpetrators as the Mafia. What was clear to me, however, was the Calvi family would not leave it there. Nor did they.

It is interesting that in later years the Vatican has been recognised internationally in a list of states that are deemed to be vulnerable to money laundering operations. Perhaps a case of plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

The money laundering went on in a huge way. Marcinkus had provided Calvi with letters of patronage on behalf of the Vatican Bank which amounted to a type of guarantee. Calvi used these to establish other banks and shell companies in Panama, the Bahamas, Luxembourg, Leichtenstein and South America. Calvi was handling huge sums of dirty money on behalf of the Mafia and P2.

This not only casts doubt on the way Calvi died, but also on the way his secretary expired. Not so many people believe now that she committed suicide.

Holiness, a possible collapse of the Ambrosiano Bank would provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage. It must be avoided at all costs.

It was me, following the mandate of your authoritative representatives, who arranged significant financing of several countries and politico-religious associations in the East and West. It was me, in agreement with Vatican authorities, who coordinated across the whole of South America the establishment of numerous banking entities, mainly aimed at countering the penetration and expansion of neo-Marxist ideologies.

It was me, finally, who is betrayed today by the very same authority for which I have always shown the utmost respect and obedience.

The typewritten letter clearly bore Calvi’s signature.

Calvi was the main conduit through which Vatican money went. But he was also involved in other people’s dirty money and although he made gains, he also incurred huge losses and powerful and evil people sought revenge.

They undertook a reconstruction of the scaffold. Calvi was 62 when he died. He was overweight. He suffered from chronic vertigo. In the pitch darkness he would have had to spot the scaffolding under the bridge (which was practically submerged in the high tide), stuff his pockets and trouser flies with bricks, clamber over a stone parapet and down a twelve foot long vertical ladder, then edge his way eight feet along the scaffolding. At that stage he would have had to lower himself gingerly on to another scaffolding before putting his neck in a noose and throwing himself off.

Each time the exercise was carried out, microscopic examination of shoes by a forensic chemist picked up traces of yellow paint with which the yellow scaffolding poles were stained. But the shoes Calvi was wearing at the time of death showed no such traces. This led to the conclusion that someone else had to have tied him to the scaffolding and killed him.

By October 2005 five individuals had been charged with the murder of Roberto Calvi and stood trial in Rome. They included Carboni and Vittor.

The trial faced the difficulties that all historic prosecutions face: it was hard to produce convincing evidence after 25 years; key witnesses were unwilling to testify, were untraceable or dead.

It may well be also that people in the Italian hierarchy who ordered Calvi’s death were not in the dock.

This gruesome case still holds many puzzles. Was there a masonic element to Calvi’s death? Was there something symbolic about the way he died? Was there something theatrical about it all? Or were the Mafia determined to make it plain to everyone that if people gambled with their money and lost, there would be grizzly consequences?

Undoubtedly, Calvi’s death saved the Vatican from embarrassing and perhaps devastating revelations for, when he met his death in London, his secrets died with him.