A 16 year old schoolgirl in a drab working class town in southern Italy walks into a busy church near her home shortly after Sunday mass and is never seen alive again. Seventeen years later her decomposed skeletal remains are found high up in the attic of the church. And while the discovery of the remains of Elisa Claps would lead to her killer’s conviction it also served to deepen the mystery as to why her body had not been discovered earlier and who might have been involved in the cover up of her murder.
Per Elisa - Il Caso Claps is a 6 part television series made in 2023 that falls into the category of docudrama because of its fidelity to the actual events as well as being made with the full cooperation of the Claps family. The series is based on the 2013 book ‘Blood on the Altar’ by Tobias Jones, an English writer with a deep understanding of Italy who lives in Parma.
The Elisa Claps story captivated and horrified Italy on four separate occasions spanning 30 years - first in 1993 when she went missing, again in 2010 when her remains were discovered, a further time in 2011 when her killer was found guilty and then finally in 2023 when this series was released on Rai and watched by a combined audience in Italy of almost 8 million people on television and subsequently on RaiPlay online.
The omertà of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza is the powerful undercurrent of this story with many unresolved issues that remain even today, long after the actual serial killer was convicted. There are striking similarities here with regard to the Catholic Church’s decades long obfuscation in the case of the missing Vatican Girl but in the Elisa Claps story there is an actual body that ties the young girl directly to the church. Chief among the troubling questions and inconsistencies in the Elisa Claps case that remain unanswered are the following:
1. Why did Don Mimi Sabia (the parish priest at the time of Elisa’s disappearance) deny knowing Danilo Restivo, who was the last person to see Elisa alive, when there was a photograph of him attending Restivo’s 18th birthday party and it was subsequently discovered that there was in fact a close relationship between the priest and Danilo’s father?
2. Why was a vestment button found next to Elisa's remains? A button that was very similar to the missing button on Don Mimi's cassock in a grainy photograph (right) taken after her disappearance?
3. Why was the church not searched thoroughly by the police given that it was the last place where Elisa was seen and why was her brother not allowed to access the locked stairway to the attic on the afternoon of her disappearance?
4. When Elisa’s mother, Filomena Claps, confronted Don Mimi a few days afterwards why did the priest use different tenses when replying by saying “I don’t know Restivo and I didn’t know Elisa”. The significance of the past tense when referring to her daughter was not lost on Filomena.
5. Why did Don Mimi lock up the church soon after Elisa’s disappearance and leave Potenza for a few days claiming a prior engagement ? Where did he actually go and who did he talk to?
6. Given that forensic analysis confirmed that Elisa was killed in the attic and not taken up there after death, who opened the locked door to allow her and Restivo to go up or did Restivo himself have a key?
7. Why did Don Mimi continue to obstruct all the investigations after his return and why did his parishioners, who included many influential local and national politicians, not persuade him to cooperate given the national attention on this case? And why was Don Mimi’s church the only one in Potenza to not ring its bells to commemorate the anniversary of Elisa’s disappearance?
8. Why was the police investigation into Danilo Restivo so lackadaisical when he had both bloodstained clothes and a wound on his hand for which he had provided an unconvincing explanation? A competent investigation made by a police force unhampered by powerful opposing forces would have had Restivo arrested, charged and awaiting trial in a matter of days and yet he was allowed to slip away quietly to Naples with his incriminating clothing left undiscovered.
9. Was it really a coincidence that the ‘discovery’ of Elisa’s remains did not take place until after the death of Don Mimi in 2008?
10. And why were Elisa’s skeletal remains and neatly folded glasses found in an exposed area of the attic making them quite easy to spot when there had been many previous visits to the attic over the years by workmen, cleaners etc and no-one had noticed anything before? Witnesses remarked that it appeared as if tiles and rubble had been removed to deliberately expose her remains for the first time.
The founder of Cosmopolitan Pictures, Ben Donald, bought the rights to Tobias Jones’ book in 2014 and over the years that followed became close to the Claps family. After making this Italian language series for Rai he commented about the production difficulties in Potenza in a interview, saying that:
“Filming a true story in the very city where it took place is truthful and authentic but also a challenging undertaking, for the story and the lies and secrecy that surrounded the Elisa Claps case then are alive and divide the city even now”.
Furthermore he added “many locations were denied to us, while others were initially granted and then mysteriously withdrawn. Nowhere was this truer than the funeral scene”.
The production was denied access to the church and denied access also to most of the piazza next to the church with the church claiming ownership of it. Even 30 years later the church in Potenza was obviously being ordered to continue their decades long policy of obstruction and non-cooperation.
Not surprising therefore that Filomena Claps insisted in 2010 that her daughter’s belated funeral should not take place in the church itself but instead in the open air outside. Although a very religious person, Filomena severed all relations with the Catholic church, no longer entering places of worship or going to mass. Furthermore, she and her son Gildo objected to the reopening of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza.
It was closed for 13 years not long after the discovery of Elisa’s remains in 2010 and, before restoration work began on the church in 2021, a petition of 17,000 local signatures was sent to Pope Francis requesting that prior to starting any work on the church the Archbishop of Potenza should disclose more facts about the events leading up to the discovery of Elisa’s remains.
Notwithstanding a personal letter from Pope Francis, that was clearly designed to appease the signatories rather confront the issues, the petition obviously fell on deaf ears and today in her late 80s Filomena is as defiant as ever that the truth has still not emerged. In an interview she gave in September 2023 in an 8 episode podcast by Pablo Trincia and Sky Italia she stated the following:
“Il corpo di Elisa è stato ritrovato dopo tante peripezie, però ci sono persone che sanno, che sapevano e sanno. Hanno coperto se stessi e hanno coperto il loro circolo. E prima o poi farò i nomi, uno per uno”
Translation: "Elisa’s body was found after many vicissitudes, but there are people who know, who knew and know still. They protected themselves and they protected others within their circle. And sooner or later I will name their names, one by one".
Elisa’s father died a broken man four years after Elisa’s remains were discovered and so he missed the final insult to the long suffering Filomena and her sons in the shape of a plaque in Latin on the wall of the newly opened Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza that commemorates the life not of Elisa but in fact of Don Mimi Sabia. A reward perhaps for his omertà over the years and as well as being a defiant statement of power by the church that, in southern Italy at least, still remains a law unto itself.
This well crafted 6 part series and also the podcast are moving portrayals of the Claps family’s long struggle as well as the crimes of Danilo Restivo that included a similar murder in England, where he now resides in jail serving a 40 year sentence. However, the series does not delve further into the long list of unresolved questions above, perhaps because of libel laws in Italy or perhaps because Rai is a state-owned broadcasting company and the Catholic church remains a powerful quasi-state organization. I haven’t yet read the book by Tobias Jones but given his choice of title, ‘Blood on the Altar’, he probably had less inhibitions about questioning the malign influence of the church in this story than the Italian State broadcaster had.
For those who understand the Italian language I can also recommend the podcast by Pablo Trincia that I referenced above.