Death of Jeanette Bishop and Gabriella Guerin

The two women failing to return, a search by helicopter from the carabinieri helicopter unit of Ancona was undertaken in December 1980. Some three weeks after their disappearance the aerial search located the car, parked―rather than abandoned—at the roadside near an unoccupied house. Footprints were found around the house and it was thought that Bishop and Guerin had used it as a refuge from the snowstorm. Inside, used dishes and the remains of a fire fueled with wooden furniture were found. The car was in complete working order and there were no signs of any struggle, assault or force.[4]

On January 14, 1982, Bishop's husband, Stephen May, offered a reward of 208,000 dollars for anyone who found Jeanette alive,[5] but on January 18, 1982, the carabinieri of Camerino, not finding any trace of the two women, hypothesized that they may have died from hypothermia; May did not believe this theory was likely. Only two weeks later, on 27 January, two hunters stumbled upon the personal belongings and largely decomposed bodies of the missing women in a forest, between Lago di Fiastra and the hermitage of San Liberato.[6] The bones had been damaged by wild boars and some of them were missing. The autopsy revealed that both Bishop and Guerin had died at the site.[7]

The Carabinieri find the remains of Bishop and Guerin

In December 1982, the case was taken by the Macerata prosecutor Alessandro Iacoboni, who investigated the case as a possible murder. At the same time, Scotland Yard was investigating the death of a Roman antique dealer, Sergio Vaccari, who was killed with fifteen stab wounds on 17 September 1982 in his apartment in Holland Park. This further complicated the case of the death of the two women, as it emerged that Bishop was one of the man's contacts; Bishop and Vaccari may have been connected with a theft from auction house Christie's, in Piazza Navona, which occurred the day after the two women were last seen.[8] Telegrams, some incomprehensible and apparently coded, were found in the possession of Bishop; they contained certain correspondences to telegrams which had been sent to Christie's, disclosing details of the theft.[2] On 25 September 1989, Iacoboni concluded that the case was attributable to a double homicide by unknown means and perpetrators.[9]

During the investigation, Bishop's name came up during the investigation of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR; "Vatican Bank's") then-President Paul Marcinkus,[10] and in the Orlandi case.[11] According to the testimony of Marco Fassone Accetti, one of the six people accused of the disappearance of Orlandi, he and his associates planned an operation against the IOR and other religious figures, in an attempt to stop the funding of John Paul II. For this plan, Bishop was one of the women allegedly recruited to accuse Marcinkus of sexual assault. She was purportedly chosen due to her social connections with the influential and highly placed; her death prevented the plan being enacted. Bishop was a friend of Archbishop Marcinkus. This circumstance, together with the evidence of the "super witness" Accetti, has given rise to highly speculative theories, involving some possible discovery of information by Bishop, to Marcinkus' discredit, thus resulting in the need for her to be "silenced"; none of these suppositions have been substantiated nor publicly given any credence by investigating authorities.[12]

In 2006, the professor of molecular forensic diagnostics Franco Maria Venanzi, of the University of Camerino, was able to confirm through DNA examination, the identity of the body of Gabriella Guerin.[9]