Body of banker found hanged off London bridge with rocks stuffed in his pockets – has his killer FINALLY been unmasked?

WHEN the body of a disgraced financier dubbed God’s Banker was found hanging from scaffolding under London’s Blackfriars Bridge, cops initially thought it was suicide. Roberto Calvi, former head of Vatican-owned Banco Ambrosiano, was 61 when he died in 1982 – the pockets of his handmade, immaculate suit stuffed with bricks, rocks and more than £10,000 in banknotes. The body of Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in 1982 Credit: Shutterstock Editorial Despite appearing like a suicide, murder was soon suspected Credit: EPA Soon a murder investigation was opened as clues pointed to Cosa Nostra involvement, but the killer’s identity has remained a mystery as sleuths repeatedly failed to snare the culprit. More than four decades later, London’s most infamous mafia hit has finally been solved, The Sun can reveal. An Italian law enforcement official who questioned Cosa Nostra supergrass Francesco Di Carlo, nicknamed “Frankie the Strangler”, explained the hitman confessed to the murder before his death in 2020. A former chief inspector of Palermo’s flying squad told The Sun: “In the end, he admitted it was him who killed Calvi.” In June 1991, both Italian and British detectives pointed to Frankie – who had lived in England since 1977 – as the prime suspect in the case. They believed the hit was originally commissioned by Cosa Nostra’s Pippo Calò, dubbed “the cashier of Cosa Nostra” in reference to his money laundering prowess. But the case against Frankie was dropped as soon as he turned police informant following his extradition to an Italian jail after he was handed a 25-year sentence for drug smuggling at the Old Bailey. He had been found guilty of plotting to traffic £60million worth of heroin from Southampton to Canada in 1985. The Italian witness protection scheme gives mafia informants, or “pentiti”, a new life and on occasion freedom from incarceration in exchange for breaking their code of silence on their former associates. Another police source, who cannot be named, told The Sun that Frankie – Cosa Nostra’s “man in London” – worked for the Sicilian crime syndicate for years after the murder. He said: “At the time, Cosa Nostra’s heroin refineries were all in Palermo. “That’s why the UK was also a crucial hub; because they were smuggling heroin from Italy to the UK, and then to Canada and the US. “Frankie spent many years in the UK before being eventually caught. He was in hiding, and carrying out his duties at the same time. “He is not the only one who did it.” New revelations on the notorious Cosa Nostra hit in London came after a group of 88 hardened criminals were sent to a new high security wing between September 5 and 6 at Sardinia’s Uta prison, with the British holiday spot now dubbed as “Devil’s Island”. Speaking to The Sun, the former chief inspector of Palermo’s flying squad said: “The vast majority of these very nasty killers have been caught by our elite unit called the ‘Catturandi Squad’. When he was found hanging under the bridge in central London, his pockets were stuffed with rocks and cash Credit: Getty Francesco di Carlo – the Mafia hitman known as Frankie the Strangler – confessed to the murder before his death Credit: Rex “Many of the ones we caught had previously spent several years in hiding in the UK and in other countries abroad. “Frankie was in London, but many others were hiding in British towns across the country. “It’s still very common for Italian mobsters to be on the loose abroad, including in the UK. “They already have their networks, they can change identity more easily, and go under the radar.” A trusted aide of Sicily’s most famous mafia family, the Corleonese clan, Frankie was first sent to London on September 26, 1977. He stayed in Viney Bank, Croydon with another Sicilian Mafioso, Girolamo Vaud, a specialist in cannabis smuggling, who was married to an English woman. According to drugs intelligence reports, Vaud and his cronies were regularly handling consignments of 300 kilos of cannabis and 10 kilos of cocaine. They linked up with professional London criminals and distributed drugs within the UK as well as abroad as money poured in. Their mansions featured swimming pools, saunas, landscaped gardens and paddocks, while gardeners, handymen and cooks saw to their needs. In 1985, Palermo’s flying squad tried to extradite Frankie to Italy in connection with an earlier case. Within weeks of the request, the chief of Palermo’s Catturandi Squad Giuseppe Montana, and the deputy chief of the flying squad Ninni Cassarà had both been shot dead. Just a few days before being cut down by several rounds from a Kalashnikov AK-47, Cassarà met British customs officers in London, to exchange intelligence on an international investigation aimed at smoking the Sicilian mafia out of London. In the 1990s detectives suspected Pippo Calò of the Cosa Nostra of ordering the hit Credit: EPA Calvi had extensive ties to the Vatican’s bank Credit: Getty After Frankie was eventually caught smuggling £60million worth of cocaine from Southampton to Montreal, Canada, in June 1985, he was treated like a boss in HMP Full Sutton, Yorkshire. Until today, the narrative spun by Frankie was that he “was asked to kill Calvi, but someone else did it before me”. In 2012, he told The Observer: “I was in Rome and received a phone call from a friend in Sicily telling me that a certain high-ranking mafia member had just been killed. “I will never forget the date because of this: it was 16 June 1982 – two days before Calvi was murdered. “The friend told me that Pippo Calò [known as the “mafia’s cashier”] was trying to get hold of me because he needed me to do something for him. “In the hierarchy of Cosa Nostra, he was a general, I was a colonel, so he was a little higher up, my superior. “While I finally spoke to Pippo, he told me not to worry, that the problem had been taken care of. That’s a code we use in the Cosa Nostra. We never talk about killing someone. We say they have been taken care of.” But Frankie was lying. There were no convictions for the murder of Roberto Calvi. Calvi fled Italy as a marked man after his banking empire collapsed and he had made powerful enemies. He was the head of Vatican-based Banco Ambrosiano, established in 1869. Cosa Nostra was rumoured to have invested in the bank shortly before it collapsed in 1982. Businessman Flavio Carboni helped to orchestrate Roberto Calvi’s escape from Italy shortly before his murder Credit: Shutterstock Editorial The body was discovered when an office worker taking a shortcut noticed the body hanging from scaffolding Credit: Shutterstock Editorial The same year, on June 18, an office worker taking a shortcut to work discovered the body of a man hanging from scaffolding under the bridge. His suit trousers and jacket’s pockets were stuffed with bricks and stones, alongside around £10,000 in various currencies. Authorities immediately assumed it was suicide. But Calvi’s family believed he had been murdered and brought in forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop to prove it. In his interview with The Observer, Frankie explained why Calvi had fallen foul of Cosa Nostra. He said: “Calvi was naming names. No one had any trust in him any more. He owed a lot of money. “His friends had all distanced themselves. Everyone wanted to get rid of him. “He had been arrested and he had started to talk. Then he had tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists. “He was released, but knew he could be rearrested at any time. He was weak, he was a broken man.”