ROME -- A second deadline for killing Emanuela Orlandi - disregarded by police as a hoax -- passed with no word on the girl who purportedly is being held by kidnappers demanding freedom for the man who shot Pope John Paul II.
An anonymous caller claiming to represent Emanuela's abductors said the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican messenger would be killed if papal assailant Mehmet Ali Agca were not released from an Italian prison by midnight Sunday.
But police said the call last Tuesday -- the second such death threat since Emanuela vanished June 22 -- likely was a hoax because the man gave no indication he was speaking for a kidnap gang.
A similar deadline for killing Emanuela on July 20 also passed with no trace of the missing girl.
An assistant in the Rome office of attorney Gennaro Egidio, appointed by the Orlandi family to handle any contact with the kidnappers, said late Sunday there were no new developments in the case.
'The work is going ahead in full rhythm,' Egidio said through his assistant. 'We listen, we evaluate, we analyze. Nothing is left to chance. As soon as there is any news that I am authorized to transmit, we will contact you.'
Police also called off a search for Emanuela at the lake close to Pope John Paul II's summer palace at Castelgandolfo. Squads of paramilitary officers searched the shores of Lake AlbanoSunday but found nothing.
A male caller, speaking Italian with a foreign accent, told nuns Saturday at the Vatican-run Propaganda Fide College at Castelgandolfo, 15 miles southeast of Rome, that Emanuela would be brought to the lake, police said.
The caller did not say whether she would be brought there dead or alive, police said.
Agca, 24, has said he does not want to be exchanged for the girl. The Turkish native is serving a life term in an Italian prison for the May 13, 1981, shooting of John Paul in St. Peter's Square.
In comments to reporters last month, Agca implicated the Bulgarian secret service and the Soviet KGB in a plot to kill the pontiff. Both the Soviet Union and Bulgaria denied they were involved.
For the first time since July 3, the pope failed to mention Emanuela's plight during his weekly Sunday blessing from the balcony of his 17th century Castelgandolfo retreat.
John Paul has prayed or appealed for the release of the young music student seven times since she disappeared. He last mentioned the baffling case at his Vatican audience Wednesday.
Less than 24 hours before the deadline for releasing Agca ran out Sunday, the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero asked Egidio if he thought Emanuela were still alive.
'I think she could still be living,' he said.
Asked whether this was based just on hope or on fact, Egidio replied: 'Yes, on facts ... it is tied to facts.'
