When the Nazi soldiers were done filling the bunker with stolen gold, Smiling Albert had them shot to protect the secret. But one soldier, named Willy Vogt, survived and played dead. After the war, back home in Austria, he told a few people what happened… Then he was murdered. The killer was never caught.
It’s a huge secret for this little Italian mountain town to hide. In fact, when I visited Sant ‘Oreste to scout it as an overseas retirement destination, there was a team of Italian historians in town using ground-penetrating radar to search for the gold. (Don’t worry, they didn’t find it.)
