ROME -- The uncle of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi confirmed today that at least part of the tape recorded message of a woman wailing in pain is the voice of the kidnapped teenager.
In part of the tape recording found Sunday after an anonymous caller telephoned the Italian news agency ANSA, a young girl can be heard saying, 'Please let me sleep.'
'I have no doubts, that is the voice of Emanuela,' Mario Meneguzzi, the girl's uncle, told police. 'Those were the only clear words that I could hear.'
Meneguzzi said that was the only part of the tape he could be certain contained Miss Orlandi's voice.
'The words 'I feel terrible, My god, you're hurting me,' interspersed with wailing and asking for help were said with too high of a tonality to be clearly understood,' Meneguzzi said.
'These last words could have been inserted to frighten us relatives and induce people outside our immediate family to undertake the demands of the kidnappers,' Meneguzzi said.
The tape recorded message also contained a long section read out by a 'mature' man who repeated the demands for a 'hotline' to the Vatican and the release of Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist who shot Pope John Paul II.
Police said the man was definitely not Italian and could say only Agca's name without difficulty.
Although police said the wailing sounds could mean Emanuela was being tortured by her kidnappers, they said only the one sentence confirmed by Emanuela's uncle is being considered the true voice of the girl.
An anonymous caller told the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero Sunday that the girl would be killed if convicted papal attacker Mehmet Ali Agca was not freed by Wednesday.
'Liberate the Turk,' Il Messaggero journalists quoted the caller as telling a switchboard operator. 'This announcement goes on television -- or we will kill Emanuela the 20th (of July).'
Emanuela disappeared June 22 from a central Rome street while waiting for a bus. She lived with her family in an apartment at the Vatican, where her father, Ercole Orlandi, is a messenger.
Miss Orlandi's kidnappers have previously set a July 20 deadline for Agca's release, but the call to Il Messagerro contained the first explicit death threat reported since her disappearence.
A second anonymous call Sunday, received by the Italian news agency ANSA, led reporters to the recording of a young woman moaning and crying for a few minutes, police said.
The moans, which police said sound as if they could be the result of torture, last for just a few minutes. Authorities who heard the tape, found on the steps leading to Rome's Quirinale presidential palace, said an almost unintelligible message was read by a 'mature' man who had trouble pronouncing Italian words.
'We are hoping for an official response from the Vatican secretary of state,' police quoted the recording as saying. 'We will deal exclusively with Cardinal (Agostino) Casaroli ... for the release of Agca.'
Casaroli is the Vatican's secretary of state.
The message said no proof that Miss Orlandi is still alive would be offered until negotiations start over the release of Agca, who is serving a life sentence for the shooting May 1981 and says he does not want to be exchanged.
The two phone calls, which came the same day Pope John Paul II made his third consecutive plea for Emanuela's release, gave investigators a few more clues in the case, which has captured Italian headlines for nearly a month.
Police said the reader of the 'manifesto' contained on the recording coughed frequently and appeared to be rustling pages as he read. They said his message occupied nearly a half hour of the 60-minute tape.
The moans were punctuated by pauses, which may indicate the wailing was recorded at different times, police said.
Investigating magistrate Ferdinando Imposimato, Italy's leading kidnap expert, said in an interview published Sunday he believes the girl was probably abducted by people wanting ransom money from the Vatican.
