In the end of May 1978, a number of German expatriates convened at "Hotel Tyll" in the small Brazil town Itaita to celebrate the birthday of Adolf Hitler. During the festivities, police was called in by someone mistaking the event for a communist rally and the people gathered were arrested. A photo of them appeared in a major Brazil newspaper. In Austria, "Nazi hunter" Simon Wiesenthal got hold of this newspaper and "identified" a man in the photo as Gustav Wagner. Followingly, Brazilian newspapers published articles on the "Gustav Wagner" identified by Wiesenthal.
On May 30, 1978, the real Wagner left his home in Atibaia and contacted an acquaintance with "Dops" contacts, asking for the secret service to pick him up on a certain Sao Paulo street corner. Wagner was taken to a police station and questioned. According to a longer article published in the German magazine "Der Spiegel" (no. 24/1978), Wagner immediately told the officers that he indeed was the real Wagner and that he had been at Sobibor, but that no Jews had been killed there, whether by himself or by others. After Wagner's identitity was verified, he was taken into custody.
In custody the same day, Wagner was confronted by Stanislav Szmajzner, a "Sobibor survivor" living in Brazil.Szmajner lived in Brazil until his death a few years ago. He was a close friend of Goiânia Senator Pedro Ludovico, who wrote the foreword to Szmajzner's book "Inferno em Sobibor. A tragédia de um adolescente judeu", published in 1968.
At this time the press also showed up, and photos published in "Der Spiegel" shows that Wagner was interviewed by them.
Later, Wagner was for unknown reasons transferred to a mental hospital in Brasilia.
On June 22, 1979, the Rio Supreme Court dismissed the Israeli, Polish and Austrian extradition claims and Wagner was set free.
On October 30 1980 Wagner was found dead on the farm in Atibaia where he worked, stabbed in the chest. Reportedly Wagner's lawyer told the press that it was suicide, but a photo of Wagner's corpse viewable on Sobibor "survivor" Thomas Blatt's website shows that it was possibly murder. A possible suspect would be Sobibor "survivor", Stanislav Szmajzner.