Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And girl, the story I have for you today is wild. It's like Agatha Christie meets Italian mafia kind of wild. Like it has art world, like heist drama. It has mysterious telegrams, a snowstorm, ransom plots. and somehow almost no one outside Europe

has heard of this story.

So, if anyone out there listening

is the type of person

who loves a good string board,

you're going to want to clear the wall

because we are going all the way in on this one.

This is the story of Jeanette Bishop May

and Gabriella Guarine. On the morning of Sunday, November 30th, 1980, snow is falling in Sarnano, Italy.

It's this medieval hilltop village turned ski resort tucked into the base of a mountain range.

The kind of place that looks like something out of a fairy tale almost.

I think my daughter would call it Arundale, essentially.

But this isn't a picturesque blanket of snow that we're talking about.

Right now, there is a full-on snowstorm, one that is worrying a local surveyor.

This guy named Nazareno Vianzzi.

And he's worried because just the day before, so that would have been Saturday, November 29th,

two women walked into his office to hire him for a project.

And in conversation and over snacks as they like went about their stuff and talked about what they were doing,

it came up that they were planning to take a drive up into the mountains later that afternoon,

which he was like absolutely not a good idea because of the impending snowstorm. But he was afraid that maybe

they hadn't listened because after they left, he expected to hear from them again. But it was now

24 hours later, full storm here now, and he hasn't heard from them.

...