CARSON CITY, NEV. Walter Samaszko Jr. was a loner whose death went largely unnoticed. That all changed when a crew sent to clean out his house found a fortune stashed away in the garage of his modest ranch-style home.
There were ammunition boxes stuffed with thousands of gold coins, from Austria, Mexico and the United States. There was enough gold to fill up two wheelbarrows ? more than $7.4 million worth.
?There was every kind of coin you could think of,? said Alan Glover, the Carson City clerk and the public administrator of the estate who borrowed a neighbour?s wheelbarrow to haul the treasure out.
City officials searched through records to find an heir: a substitute teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who a judge declared Tuesday was Samaszko?s lone surviving first cousin.
The decision means Arlene Magdanz of San Rafael, Calif., is a millionaire. She didn?t attend the hearing and, so far, has not said anything publicly about her new-found fortune.
Samaszko?s body was found in June after neighbours called authorities, though it was not clear what prompted them to do so. He had been dead of heart problems for at least a month, according to the coroner.
His bank account stood at $1,200.
There were more than 2,900 Austrian coins, many from 1915; 4,500 from Mexico; 500 from Britain; 300 U.S. gold pieces, some dating to 1880; and more than 100 U.S. gold pieces as old as the 1890s. They were stored mostly in ammo boxes stacked on top of each other.
The Associated Press
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