A former top prosecutor in Rome has claimed that Vatican officials approached him in 2012, seeking to negotiate a deal in which the Vatican would provide information about the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the teenage daughter of a Vatican employee.

The mystery surrounding the girl’s disappearance has never been solved. But Giancarlo Capaldo, the former prosecutor, said that two senior Vatican officials proposed to offer some information. He did not identify the Vatican officials.

Further complicating the story, Capaldo said that he had made a tentative deal with the Vatican, but that arrangement was set aside by his successor as prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone—who is now the president of a Vatican tribunal hearing the notorious London real-estate case.