Even more intriguing among the European delegations at Asuncion was the presence of Elio Massagrande. As Pino Rauti's deputy chief in Ordine Nuovo, Massagrande had ignored the 1973 ban of his organization by the Italian government and had gone on to leave his mark on France and Italy through robbery and murder.
On August 4, 1974, the Italicus express train from Rome to Munich was passing through a long tunnel south of Bologna when a bomb ripped one of its cars apart. Twelve bodies were found amid the twisted metal, along with forty-eight injured. An Italian magistrate, Vittorio Occorsio, conducted a two-year investigation into the atrocity, finally bringing charges against a lieutenant within Massagrande's Ordine Nuovo.
Apparently Occorsio also uncovered the links of Ordine Nuovo to other terrorist formations in Spain and Greece. On June 14, 1976, as he was driving his old Fiat sedan through the congested streets of Rome, Occorsio was murdered with thirteen bullets from an Ingram M10 machine pistol.
After that, things got hot for Massagrande. One of Occorsio's murderers turned informant and disclosed details of the inner workings of Ordine Nuovo. Police discovered Massagrande's bank deposit box in Spain, containing currency and gold bars from a 1976 twenty-five-million-dollar bank robbery in Nice, France. It was time for Massagrande to run; he ran to the safety of General Stroessner's Paraguay. At the time he attended the 1979 League conference, he was high on Interpol's list of wanted fugitives.