Got an extra 2.6 Million Dollars?

What? Doesn’t everybody have an extra couple of million lying around the house?

If you do and you like property up north, specifically in Couderay, Wisconsin, you might want to get your checkbook out. Al Capone’s “summer getaway/hide-out” retreat is going up on the auction block on October 8th. It seems that the economy has struck hard and the property has been foreclosed on.

The property, all 407 wooded acres of it, includes the main house which has eighteen inch thick walls (hmmmm, I wonder why?), a “massive” fireplace, a 37 acre lake, an eight car garage, a caretaker’s residence, several out-buildings and a guard tower. Just the kind of place a successful treasure hunter needs to keep the masses away.

The house and other buildings are located in the center of a piece of land that used to be owned by Al Capone. The original property owned by Capone was five hundred acres in size.

What does this have to do with treasure, you say? Al Capone was rumored to have several things that went missing that were never found, including a lot of money. You remember the live TV debacle of the opening of Al Capone’s vault don’t you? Poor Geraldo Rivera, he just couldn’t seem to get anything right! The vault was empty so where is the stuff that should have been in that vault? Is it hidden somewhere else? Did Capone spend all of his money before he died? Could there be a stash or two of guns or prohibition era liquor from the 1920’s hidden on the property?

Maybe it’s just a nice piece of land with a couple of houses but since Capone spent up to a month each year there in the summers between 1925 and 1931 it begs the question, did he use the property for anything besides a get-away/hide-out? Keep in mind that The Lexington hotel in Chicago where Capone lived and ran his operation was later found to have a hidden shooting range, the hidden vault and several secret tunnels that could be used as escape routes leading to different places. One of the tunnels was found hidden behind a medicine cabinet in Capone’s room. Even though Capone was convicted of crimes and jailed in 1931 the shooting range, the vault and the secret tunnels weren’t found until the 1980’s. Has someone already gone through the Wisconsin property looking for things like that? Possibly, maybe even likely but just how thorough were they? We all know that treasure can be hidden for centuries even when the clues are in plain sight!

If you do a little research you will quickly come to the conclusion that just about everyplace that was connected with Al Capone, property that he owned, places that he stayed at repeatedly and businesses that he operated all (or most) had hidden tunnels. Some of the tunnels were made to connect a series of illegal business such as brothels and “speak easies” and other tunnels were for smuggling contraband in or escaping from the coppers. You'll never take me alive you dirty copper! Come on, admit it, you were thinking the same thing just now. Where's my violin case?

If Capone was that adamant about having tunnels for escape then what are the chances of a building with 18 inch thick walls owned by Al Capone on 500 acres not having any tunnels connected to it? I’m just saying……… maybe this could be a place to check out with a ground resistance machine after the sale. And about that fireplace, a "massive" fireplace? Is it bigger than it needs to be around the firebox? Hmmmmm. Maybe the new owner will be curious too.

I might mention that the 2.6 million dollars is the opening bid for the auction, just in case anybody has plans to make a trip.