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Luciano Cobianchi was a boy who vanished while on a seminary trip in 1956.
Background[]
Luciano Cobianchi was born in Fiesso Umbertano, Italy, on 14 December 1942. His father, Giovanni, was a worker, and his mother, Maria, was a housewife.
Luciano was a deeply religious young boy. After speaking to the parish priest of Fiesso Umbertiano, Don Bisaglia, he realised that he wanted to join the clergy. After finishing his basic education, Luciano began studying in the seminary of the Sacrimentini in Casier Di Treviso in the autumn of 1955. According to the other seminarians and his supervisors, Luciano was an intelligent, lively young boy who seemed to enjoy life and was well-liked by everyone who knew him.
Case[]
On the afternoon of 10 July 1956, Luciano and thirty-five other seminarians left Casier di Treviso and headed to Domegge di Candore, Belluno, Italy. Four priests and one other member of staff supervised the boys. The plan was for the boys to stay with a local priest, Don Francesco, in Vallesella.
The day after arriving in Domegge, the boys left Don's house to visit the church. At around 11:45 A.M., Father Zaccaria, a superior from the seminary, decided to take the boys up to the refuge of Padova via the Piage by the Val di Toro road to give them something to do while their lunch was being made. However, a few meters into the hike, they were called back to the refuge because their lunch was ready. At this point, all the boys except Luciano decided to turn back. Luciano told his friends that he was going to conquer the last peak and then he'd be back, and he ran away. This didn't worry the boys much, so they returned without him. However, Father Zaccaria soon noticed that Luciano was missing and immediately began searching for him along with a few older seminarians.
Initially, the seminary's director didn't want to call the police because he thought they could find Luciano themselves. He didn't want to cause unnecessary panic. Still, after hours of searching and failing to find Luciano, the supervisors contacted municipal authorities at around 5:30 P.M. The municipal authorities then contacted the Carabinieri at the competent station and notified them of the situation at around 6:00 P.M. They immediately began searching for Luciano, along with six seminarians and the director. At 8:00 P.M., firefighters from Lozzo di Cadore and Pieve di Cadore were also called in, joining the searches along with an unspecified number of volunteers. The initial search continued until around 11:00 P.M., when it was called off due to insufficient lighting equipment to work in the darkness.
Twenty Alpini from the 7th "Belluno" Regiment, some officers, and more Carabinieri arrived in the area at around 3:00 A.M. the next morning with plans to aid in the search when it restarted the next morning. At 8:30 A.M., thirty more Alpini arrived, and at around 9:00 A.M., the searches began again. This time, the searchers worked their way from the forest's outskirts to the mountain's summit, then went over the area a second time on their way back. However, no trace of Luciano was found.
On 13 July, 45 Alpini and an unspecified number of Carabinieri carried out another search. This search focused on the shoreline of Lake Domegge and some rocky ridges. Boats were also used to search all the canals in the area and the lake's surface. Some divers even went into the lake to see if Luciano had drowned, but they didn't find anything. On 15 July, Carabinieri from the Lozzo di Cadore station and thirty civilians from Domegge searched other nearby areas with three police dogs.
After all initial efforts to find Luciano failed, people began to speculate that he might have left of his own accord. According to one of the other boys on the seminary trip, shortly before they left Casier di Treviso, Luciano and another boy got in trouble and were "severely punished" by Father Zaccaria.
In November 1956, the then Commander of the Carabinieri in Lozzo di Cadore reported that all searches for Luciano had come up empty. However, he also mentioned that they were aware of rumours that Luciano had been seen wandering around the Agordino area.
The Father Superiors of the Seminary continued to search for Luciano, and a few days after he vanished, they learned that a boy who resembled him had been seen in the town of Forni di Sopra, about 25 kilometres from Domegge. A butcher from Fornia di Sopra said he saw a boy, whom he identified as Luciano, from a photograph pass his shop twice on 13 July. The man said the boy stood out because he was very young, and when a group of children and priests arrived, the boy left the main road and took a side road into the countryside. A second man also claimed to have seen Luciano in Forni di Sopra on the afternoon of 13 July. He saw the body walking past the sawmill he worked at for the first time at 2:00 P.M. Then again at 4:00 P.M. The man had been told about Luciano's disappearance by his daughter, so he immediately went to the Carabinieri and told them he thought he had seen a missing child. However, it's unclear what, if anything, the Carabinieri did in response to this information.
The next possible sighting of Luciano occurred approximately 10 days after his disappearance. Two men spotted a boy in the square in Domegge di Candore, whom they identified as Luciano from a photograph. The men didn't report the sighting until around the one-month anniversary of Luciano's disappearance.
At around 2:30 P.M. on 4 September, months after his last official sighting, two women saw a boy they believed to be Luciano in Alleghe. They approached the boy and tried to speak to him, but he just told them he had "no understanding". This was a phrase that Luciano was known to use during his time at the seminary. The same boy was also seen in Allehe by another woman on the same day and by two women on the second day. The woman who saw the boy on the fifth said he stopped to talk to them, but when they spotted a seminary car driving towards them, he hid behind a nearby fountain. This information came to a priest who had spoken to these women, not the women themselves, and he gave it to the Father Superiors of the Seminary, not the police. And these women may have never actually spoken to law enforcement.
Don Mario Bisaglia, Luciano's former priest, vanished decades later. At around dusk on 13 August 1992, Don left the Casa del Clero in Rovigo after receiving a phone call from an unknown person. Then, at 8:00 P.M. on 17 August 1992, Don was found dead in Lake Centro Cadore. His cause of death was initially deemed to be drowning, but it was unclear if the manner of death was an accident or suicide. However, when his case was reopened ten years later, drowning was ruled out as a cause of death, as the algae usually present in the bodies of drowning victims was not found in any of his tissues.
The day after Don's body was found, a man anonymously called the Rai headquarters in Venice. He claimed that the night before Don was found, he had been at Lake Cadore with his fiancée, and they had seen two people drive up to the shore, take something large out of the trunk and throw it in the water. However, it is unknown if this was related to Don's death.
According to Luciano's sister, Don had been very close to the Cobianchi family and frequently reassured everyone that someday Luciano would come home.
After Don's death, one of Luciano's nephews claimed that he had letters that several priests had sent to the Cobianchi family, in which they reassured them that Luciano was fine and allegedly even explained what had happened to him. Furthermore, some of the letters appeared to have been signed by Luciano himself, including at least one explicitly dated after his disappearance. Luciano's nephew, also named Luciano, said he felt these letters showed that his uncle was still alive, something he had already suspected before finding them. He also alleges that Luciano had told.
There has been some speculation that Luciano may have run away because a staff member at the seminary was sexually abusing him. This is based on one of the letters Luciano's nephew uncovered. The letter was written by a man named Alberto, and it claimed that Luciano had travelled between Padua and Treviso for about three years after he vanished, but that he eventually changed his name so he couldn't be found, got a job and started a family. In the same letter, Alberto, whose actual identity is unknown, also indicated that he had known Luciano during his time at the seminary and that they had both been sexually abused by some of their superiors. It is unclear whether law enforcement has confirmed the existence of these letters.
Days before Luciano left for the seminary trip, he had returned home from a separate holiday with his family, and his nephew alleges that he had made a comment that they were "leading him to his death" sometime between his return and his disappearance. However, like the letters, this appears to be unconfirmed, and it is disputed by other relatives, who state there was no evidence that Luciano was unhappy at the seminary and do not believe he would have been able to hide for so many years if he had run away.
Characteristics[]
- Straight, blond hair.
- Brown eyes.
Sources[]
- Luciano Cobianchi at the Doe Network
- Chi l'ha visto (Italian)
- Vipiù (Italian)
- YESLIFE Magazine (Italian)
- La Tribuna di Treviso (Italian)