00:01At 24, his name is Stefano Caraceni and he lives in Macerata. When he disappeared, suicide was suspected.
00:10for a disappointment in love. It's 1980. The Olympics are in Moscow, but the United States
00:18and other countries don't participate. It's the Cold War. Stefano loves to travel and knows the world very well.
00:27English. He is passionate about athletics and is a fan of Borzov, the Soviet sprinter.
00:35Before disappearing we discover that Stefano has removed his photographs from all the documents
00:42of identity. Strange for someone who wants to take his own life, but this is only the first of a series
00:49of anomalies. What happened to Stefano Caraceni? Is there perhaps a shadow behind his disappearance?
00:57of the CIA and the KGB, the secret services that in those years were competing for the world? Let's see
01:05what Claudio Parise discovered with Max Franceschelli.
01:14It's the Epiphany of 1980, 35 years ago. On the morning of January 6th in Macerata there is sun and
01:22Stefano
01:23Caraceni, a 24 year old boy with a great passion for travel, wants to inform his
01:29parents of his imminent departure. What they said to each other is still remembered by his mother, at the time
01:35a 53-year-old woman, now an elderly lady.
01:39The last time I saw him was on January 6, 1980 and that evening he told me
01:51and to his dad
01:52that he would be out longer than usual. And so I'd like something more in exchange for money.
02:03So parents don't worry, they are used to their child's way of doing things.
02:08He's been to France, the United States, Belgium, and he did it all by himself.
02:18Two days later, it's January 8th. We're in Padua. Emanuela, a 21-year-old girl, feels
02:25ringing the doorbell. It's Stefano. Emanuela is his ex-girlfriend and that visit is precisely
02:31he doesn't expect it, because she, Stefano, left him a few months earlier.
02:36He rang the doorbell of the house I was living in at the time and he had a flower in his mouth.
02:43and a red leather bag in his hand. I let him in, he told me he wanted to jump into the sea
02:54with a rock around his neck. From that moment on, Stefano disappeared. No one heard from him again.
03:00Listen to what a friend of hers remembers. I remember that Emanuela called me a few days later to find out...
03:07if I had had news of Stefano of whom there was no trace. The parents believed
03:14At first, I remember, they weren't that scared, because Stefano was quite
03:21It is usual to disappear for a few days.
03:26In the absence of further news, those words said to his girlfriend gain strength and begin
03:32really to think the worst. But why a young boy apparently without problems
03:39should he have taken his own life? We met Paolo Guzzanti who in 1989, during
03:48the first episode of Chi l'ha visto, together with Donatella Raffai, dealt with the case
03:53Caraceni. Stefano had been missing for nine years.
03:56Did Stefano Caraceni commit suicide? This is the question we always ask ourselves.
04:03In the case of someone who disappears, someone who saw him and then never reappears. Now he might even reappear.
04:12tomorrow, we hope so, but 35 years have passed now.
04:17Stefano's body was never found, and this is an important fact. Searching through
04:24Not even a farewell letter was found in his things. Why then think
04:30to a suicide? There is an important detail that one notices almost immediately, because
04:36Stefano did one thing before leaving.
04:40He tore out all the photographs from the documents, including the first page of the passport where
04:46There was the photograph. If it really was him, why remove it?
04:52the photos from the documents? And since they weren't found at home, in the trash, maybe
04:56torn, why take them away with you? The first thought is that this cannot be
05:03Certainly the concern of someone who wants to take his own life. So, what is it really?
05:09happened to Stefano Caraceni? Even though more than 30 years have passed, many people who
05:17they knew him and did not forget him. At the time they were young, today they have
05:2335 years older.
05:25He was a skinny boy, with small round glasses, very intelligent. And he was a
05:32boy passionate about athletics.
05:44Stefano and I met around 1900, late '76, early '77. We met because
05:51we had contacted his girlfriend, Emanuela Stacchietti, who was a very strong athlete.
05:56We met at the stadium and trained together, then we got together. So
06:03I left my coach, of course who is better than Stefano? But I was right,
06:11because there are no coaches better than Stefano.
06:16He was very knowledgeable and well-informed about athletics. Perhaps no one at that time was as knowledgeable as he was.
06:28we found out later.
06:30I know he was in contact with the University of Albuquerque in New Mexico. Then I remember
06:35he received at home the English-language athletics magazines, Track and Field News
06:40He called. He extracted training methods and news about athletics at the time.
06:46He read avidly, he had to know everything. If a topic interested him, he had to know.
06:55everything. He had a passion for the guitar, he wrote all the songs and played and I was
07:03enchanted. He loved Bob Dylan first and foremost, and I learned English from Bob's lyrics.
07:11Dylan, whom we both knew by heart. He loved writing so much.
07:26reading, studying. We spent hours studying English, because then we had to take the TOEFL
07:34tests to go to America, to win scholarships, to go to university in America.
07:44Stefano has a dream. One of Stefano's goals was to bring Emanuele to the
07:49Olympics. But something unexpected shatters that dream. Emanuela is forced to give up.
08:03A tragic event happened, which was my illness. I, as a probable Olympic athlete,
08:14I became diabetic, so this chronic disease shattered my dreams. Stefano didn't know
08:25react. It seemed to him that the world had collapsed forever and he surrendered.
08:35The illness affects Emanuela's athletic performance. Something in their relationship begins to strain.
08:41After some time Stefano and Emanuela began to have problems. Emanuela told me that she had
08:47She decided to leave Stefano. The disappointment in love she was experiencing, rather than leading to suicide,
08:54It seems to be the trigger for a decision that Stefano has perhaps been harbouring for some time. Stefano wants to leave,
09:01But not for a trip, as his mother said. Stefano wants to escape, go away, change his life.
09:07The period between 1977 and the early 1980s was a time of maximum ferocity in the Cold War.
09:16between the United States and the Soviet Union, a country that no longer exists today. Stefano was no ordinary man,
09:23He spoke good English and had contacts in several countries such as Mexico and the United States. In his
09:28The athletics environment was well-known and respected. There was a world of intelligence,
09:34in the sense of espionage, connected with sports, specifically athletics. Where there were
09:43athletes, there were security services, there were agents, spies. Stefano may have known someone
09:52who indulged his desire for escape and change? He invited him to leave,
09:57to go to some other country? Did he offer him a job? And this someone,
10:01Who was he really? And what did he propose or make him believe? Stefano got into something.
10:06bigger than him? Perhaps the key to the whole mystery surrounding his disappearance lies
10:15in those photos torn from his documents before he left. What purpose were they supposed to serve?
10:21And people could change their identity at that time. It was even possible to renounce
10:27to his own identity and disappear forever. Stefano wanted to change country, identity,
10:37work? Did he perhaps want to build a new life? If things had really gone this way
10:44Well, Stefano, where is he now? Is he alive or dead? What's his name?
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