Before long journalists began proffering alternative explanations for Wilma Montesi's demise. The most shocking claims of all came from reporter Silvano Muto, who wrote in the Italian magazine "Attua-Litta," that Montesi had gotten embroiled in a dark underworld of drugs and sex parties that ultimately led to her death.
According to Stephen Gundle, in his book "Death and the Dolce Vita," Muto was originally tracking the source of Rome's booming drug trade when he followed various leads to the coast around Ostia. Several bodies tenuously connected to the drug trade, had already turned up in the area long before Montesi died. During the course of his investigation, he met an informant who claimed she had met Montesi at a sex party in the area.
Muto claimed that Montesi had been involved in the drug ring operating on the coast, that she was one of many girls responsible for transporting the product on behalf of the dealers, and that one night, she had died by accident, having taken too much opium. Although in the original piece, Muto did not name his sources or the criminals involved, it was later revealed that the alleged ring revolved around the mysterious Capocotta hunting lodge on the coast near Rome, a place connected to many members of Italy's elite. The pope himself and a host of other dignitaries were members of the St. Hugo's club that ran out of the lodge, and rumors spread that it was the site of shady activities and wild sex parties. The mysterious Alfa Romeo 1900, Muto alleged, took Montesi out there regularly.
