Treasure hunters dig for gold and silver supposedly buried under the Alamo.

CASE DETAILS

“Remember the Alamo!” The famous battle cry was immortalized in history. But for some, the full story of the Alamo has yet to be told. Legend has it that in the shadow of the Alamo’s old mission, a treasure remains buried, a secret which dates back to 1836, the year of the famous battle. That January, a group of rugged frontiersmen made their way across southern Texas. By some accounts, they were loaded down with a fortune in silver and gold. It was called the “San Saba Treasure,” and it’s said to be worth millions of dollars.

The men, led by Colonel Jim Bowie, were headed for the Alamo. The treasure was intended to finance the Texas revolution for independence from Mexico. Two months later, Bowie and 188 other men, including Davy Crockett, made a courageous stand at the Alamo against 6,000 well-trained Mexican troops. Not one of the defenders survived to tell the tale, but the legend of the treasure lived on.

Professional fortune hunter and historical researcher Frank Buschbacher, along with a team of archaeologists and researchers, excavated the street in front of the Alamo. Frank first heard about the mysterious treasure at the Alamo during a trip to Mexico. There, he was introduced to Maria Gomez, a respected museum curator who also had a reputation as a psychic. Bushbacker says it was she who first informed him of the treasure:

“I’d never heard of any treasure surrounding the Battle of the Alamo. It was just a valiant battle that was lost. Then she went on to describe the treasure as gold coins, silver, religious artifacts is what she described them as.”

Frank was told that some of the treasure had been removed by Mexican soldiers, but that most of it still remained hidden at the Alamo. Maria would later draw him a map. The map claimed that the treasure would be found at the bottom of an old well. Even though Maria said she had never been to the Alamo, she had indicated the spot where a well was dug, just before the siege.

At the time, the chapel was located in the rear of the fort. The well was in the plaza, which was surrounded by 12-foot tall stone walls. It was within these walls that the Texans held out for a full thirteen days. The defenders valiantly put down one advance after another, but in the end, 189 men could not hold off 6,000 Mexican soldiers. Frank believes that in a final desperate act, Jim Bowie ordered that the treasure be hidden at the bottom of the well:

“The only way they preserved was to all stick together and fight the battle out to whatever outcome it has. This really is the first bank of Texas, the first cache of precious metals that would have bought them the arms and uniforms they needed. The reason it’s remained there is because everybody died.”

Frank believes that this treasure is located beneath the road in front of the chapel. But to many native Texans, his theory doesn’t hold up. Gail Loving Barnes of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas doesn’t believe in the treasure:

“The people of the Alamo, I don’t think they were guarding a treasure. When your life is on the line, like it was in the Battle with Juno Santiana, I don’t think you’re thinking about silver or gold bullion. I think you’re thinking about your life. And I don’t think you would be polluting your water well, because you don’t know how long your siege is going to be.”

Despite the controversy, Frank was determined to prove his point. He obtained permission to survey the area with ground penetrating radar, yielding some intriguing results. To their trained eyes, the radar display showed several irregularities beneath the surface. The largest, which Frank believed to be the site of the well, was in the exact location where Maria Gomez predicted the treasure would be found. Says Frank:

“It kind of brought all my research to fruition at that point, because I knew that with the map, her story, and then plugging it in to Texas history, that I was on a hot trail and any dissention that I had within my own mind about whether I should follow this any further was gone.”

Gail Barnes has other theories:

“The anomalies could be caused by many things. I think it could be debris, equipment left by the Texans, I think it could be something several years later that was deposited there. You know, as time marches on, dust and dirt accumulate and cover very gradually, so that could be part of what they’re picking up out there.”

It took Frank three and a half years to acquire the necessary permits and financing to excavate the site. The Archaeology Department at St. Mary’s University agreed to oversee the project. For project director Thomas Guderjan, anything that turns up during the excavation will have historical value:

“Whether it’s treasure, as in gold and silver and that sort of thing, or whether it is materials that were thrown into the well during the battle, materials that were thrown into the well during the clean-up after the battle, it doesn’t make any difference to us what we’re looking at in a historical perspective. Whatever it is, it’s a time capsule.”

The plans called for excavating a 15 x 15 foot area directly above the well. A work crew needed to first remove three feet of flagstone and roadbed to reach the top of the filled-in well. Four feet beneath the surface of the courtyard, the team began to find artifacts … fragments of Native American pottery, the bones of butchered animals, and primitive cooking utensils. Each relic had to be carefully unearthed and properly catalogued. Even without the San Saba treasure, Guderjan’s excitement was obvious:

“While we haven’t been able to move as quickly as we originally intended to, the reason is because we found something no one expected to find here, and that’s intact 18th century materials.”

The items are a valuable treasure in themselves, rare artifacts that help piece together a history of the Alamo from the 1750’s right up to the final battle nearly a century later. One of the finds that most excited Guderjan was some ammunition used in canons, called grapeshot:

“We think it’s from the actual battle. We also have what looks like the headpiece to a Mexican soldier’s hat. This would signify his unit. And we found what may well be part of a saber from the battle.”

As the archaeologists inched closer and closer to the irregularities picked up by radar, the discoveries they‘d already made gave them hope. But optimism soon turned to disappointment: they found no sign of the treasure. Yet some remain convinced that the gold and silver still exists somewhere deep beneath the Alamo. And for them, the search will continue.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season six with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Is gold hidden in the rugged Superstition Mountains of Arizona?

CASE DETAILS

The Superstition Mountains in Arizona cover 160,000 acres of desolate, rugged terrain. According to legend, somewhere hidden in these mountains lie the richest deposits of gold in America—the Lost Dutchmen’s Gold Mine. The exact location of the Lost Dutchmen’s Mine remains a mystery. It was supposedly discovered by a German prospector named Jacob Waltz in 1876. Today, the lost gold would be worth over 200 million dollars.

According to historian Tom Kollenborn, the Superstition Mountains were an unlikely place to strike it rich:

“Jacob Waltz was a student of mining and he knew what he was doing. The old timers were very, very astute to the fact of geology. They knew what they were looking for. If you’re going to go out in these mountains anywhere and look for gold, you really want to go places where it has been found. Superstitions would be an exception. You wouldn’t go in there.”

But Waltz did prospect in those rugged mountains and apparently he was rewarded. When Waltz was 80 years old, he decided to hide his mine to protect it. He dug a hole six feet deep at its entrance. He then laid in two rows of logs and topped them with dirt and stones. Waltz, who was nicknamed “The Dutchman”, bragged that you could drive a pack train over the entrance to the mine and never know it was there.

Several months after Waltz closed up the mine, he got pneumonia and was taken to the home of his friend, Julia Thomas. According to Clay Worst, a member of the Superstition Mountain Historical Society, it was on his deathbed that Waltz revealed he had gold from the mine stashed under his bed:

“And he said, that’s what I’ve been living on all these years. They took out the box, they opened it and their comment was my god that’s rich. He said, it’s a vein. He said there’s enough in sight to make millionaires out of 20 men.”

As his end drew near, The Dutchman gave Julia and a local miner, Rhinehart Petrasch, clues to the mine’s location. But Waltz died before he could give them a map that showed exactly where the mine lay. According to Clay Worst, the only directions Julia and Petrasch had when they ventured into the mountains were the verbal clues Waltz had given them on his death bed:

“He said the setting sun shines into the entrance to my mind and glitters on the gold, so it must have faced to the west. He said you take the first gorge on the south side from the west end of the range. He said that you can see Weaver’s Needle to the south, from above my mine. Julia and Petrasch were so anxious to get in the mountains, they actually went in mid-summer when the mountains were hotter… And it must have been a real ordeal for them.”

Julia invested everything she owned into the expedition, but she returned penniless and never attempted to return to the Superstition Mountains. Rhinehart Petrasch continued to search for the mine for the next 50 years. But when he realized he would never find it, he took his own life.

Almost 100 years later, a modern-day treasure hunter claimed that he had found the mine. His name was Walt Gassler. Using clues handed down from Jacob’s death-bed description, Gassler had spent most of his free time looking for the legendary mine. But when his health began to fail, Walt contacted two other prospectors. One was Bob Corbin, who was then the Attorney General of Arizona:

“He wanted to get together with me so that we could perhaps go with him and continue looking for the mine and with his directions after he had died. And he gave me his notes as well as a map as to where his camp was and where he believes the mine to be.”

Two months later, Gassler called Bob’s partner, Tom Kollenborn, a local historian. According to Kollenborn, Gassler claimed that he had finally located the Dutchman’s mine:

“Walt Gassler was convinced that the mine existed from the clues that he had. Some of those clues he would not reveal. And the next morning, his wife took him out to the trail head and dropped him off.”

Walt hiked alone into the Superstitions, never to be seen alive again. Three days later, his body was found by a ranch-hand, Don Shade. An autopsy proved he had died of a heart attack.

Then, one month after Walt’s death, Tom Kollenborn had a surprising visitor:

“He said he was Roland Gassler, Walt Gassler’s son. And he says, well you know my dad found the Lost Dutchman in the Superstitions and he got out this gold and showed it too me. It looked very similar to the gold that allegedly came out of the Lost Dutchman mine.”

Roland wanted to use the map and notes in Tom’s possession to retrace his father’s steps. Tom obliged Roland and gave him the manuscripts. Two months passed and Tom never heard whether Roland’s search was successful. Then one night while giving a lecture, Tom was approached by a different stranger who claimed he was Roland Gassler:

“And my jaw dropped 10 foot to the ground, because it wasn’t the same guy. I said I ought to ask you for a driver’s license or something. I said you’re the second Roland Gassler I’ve run into in the last couple months.”

The man showed Tom an ID that confirmed he was indeed the real Roland Gassler. It became clear that the first Roland Gassler was an imposter who only wanted Walt’s map. But where did he get the gold ore sample? When Walt died, the Sheriff’s report listed a backpack among his belongings. But the real Roland Gassler never received it. Don Shade, the man who found Walt’s body, also remembered seeing the backpack, and he noticed a stranger in the area that day:

“There was another man in the area at the time. When Tom Kollenborn later gave us a description of the man that came to him and showed him some gold, it jibbed up with the man that we saw in here.”

When Jacob Waltz died, he left a trunk of ore, a list of clues, and a legend of lost treasure which has captured the dreams of three generations. The Superstition Mountains have been reclassified as a federally owned wilderness area. Some believed that the fake Roland Gassler may have been in the mountains when Walt died and stole the backpack with its precious ore. If the mine were found today, by the fake Roland Gassler or anyone else, all the gold would belong to the government. But this does not prevent modern prospectors from still searching for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season three with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Is the legendary treasure of Dutch Schultz buried in upstate New York?

CASE DETAILS

Dutch Schultz was an infamous crime boss in New York’s underworld. While on his deathbed in 1935, Schultz rambled incoherently about a $7 million dollar fortune he had buried in upstate New York. Today, Dutch Schultz’s treasure is said to be worth more than $50 million dollars.

It all started when Prohibition was passed in 1919. Gangsters like “Lucky” Luciano, Al Capone, and Dutch Schultz made millions illegally manufacturing and distributing bootleg liquor.

Dutch Schultz was something of a criminal prodigy. Born Arthur Flegenheimer, in 1902, he was already a force to be reckoned with by the time he was 25.

Jack French was a Special Agent for the FBI:

“Dutch Schultz was a very successful and widespread bootlegger, owned a string of speakeasies and then quickly branched out into narcotics, the numbers racket and the protection racket. Schultz was an extremely dangerous gangster. He was reported to have had 136 people killed and that’s over a criminal career of less than ten years.”

At the end of the roaring 1920s, Dutch Schultz’s criminal empire was making more than $20 million dollars a year. But like Al Capone before him, Schultz was highly vulnerable to the newly enacted federal income tax law. When he was indicted by a Grand Jury for income tax evasion, Schultz immediately took steps to protect his money.

Thomas Terry is an author of several books on buried treasure:

“At the time, Dutch Schultz was facing a long prison sentence and he decided that he needed a nest egg to fall back on in case he was sent to prison. So he had his top lieutenants clean out his safety deposit boxes and gather together whatever cash they could from his available bank accounts.”

At a hideaway in Connecticut, Dutch and his henchmen, including “Lulu” Rosencrantz, and a man named Marty Krompier, rendezvoused. They packed bundles of thousand dollar bills, negotiable Liberty Bonds, gold coins, diamonds, and other gems into a steel plated strongbox. Dutch Schultz had the only key.

That night, Dutch and “Lulu” traveled to Phoenicia, New York, a town Dutch knew from his bootlegging days. Dutch swore “Lulu” to secrecy and then supposedly marked the site by carving an “X” into the trunk of a nearby tree. But “Lulu” couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He told his friend Marty Krompier where the treasure was buried. Some say “Lulu” even drew a map for Marty.

Rumors of the secret treasure filtered through New York. But Dutch had other problems. Manhattan D.A. Thomas E. Dewey was determined to further his political career by destroying Dutch Schultz and his illegal empire.

With the pressure building, Schultz finally surrendered to authorities in Albany, New York. His first trial ended with a hung jury. At his second trial, he was acquitted of all charges for “lack of evidence”. Some suspected jury tampering.

After the acquittal, Dutch Schultz moved his headquarters to a tavern he owned in Newark, New Jersey, called The Palace Chop House. Determined to regain control of his empire, Schultz went on a bloody killing spree. According to former FBI Special Agent Jack French, that angered the powerful New York Crime Syndicate:

“The syndicate was a confederation of… New York City mobsters who controlled virtually all the crime in the Manhattan area. And they were very afraid that he was bringing additional heat upon them with these killings.”

The Syndicate took measures to turn down the heat. On the night of October 23, 1935, Schultz headed for the men’s room of The Palace Chop House. There he was met by two Syndicate hitmen, who proceeded to open fire on Dutch and his henchman.

Dutch Schultz died at 8:35 pm on October 24, 1935, almost 22 hours after he had been shot. He was just 33 years old. His bodyguard, “Lulu” Rosencrantz, had died hours earlier. That left only one man who knew where the treasure was buried … Marty Krompier. But according to Thomas Terry, Krompier never recovered Dutch’s treasure:

“On the night of the Chop House murders two henchmen caught up with Marty at a barber shop in New York City, gunned him down and took the map. Krompier survived the attack but he was never able to locate the treasure without the map… I personally believe the treasure of Dutch Schultz was buried and there’s a good possibility that it still exists today.”

Perhaps Dutch Schultz’s treasure is still buried somewhere in upstate New York. If so, someone who finds a tree with an “X” carved in it just might hit the jackpot.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season six with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

A Mexican businessman buries 16 tons of gold in the New Mexico desert and then dies before telling anyone where it is.

CASE DETAILS

Farmington, New Mexico, 1933. In the heat of the summer, a pilot named Red Moiser landed several mysterious flights in the desert. There, he was met by a Mexican millionaire named Leon Trabuco.

It’s believed that Trabuco and four other men were quietly buying up much of Mexico’s gold reserves to resell in the United States when the price went up. Trabuco was convinced that because of the Great Depression, the United States would soon devalue the dollar, and that gold prices would skyrocket. But the chance to make huge profits carried huge risks. The gold had to be smuggled into the United States. If the men were caught, they faced long prison terms.

At a makeshift Mexican foundry, gold coins and jewelry were melted down and cast into ingots. In less than three months, the partners had collected almost 16 tons of solid gold.
Trabuco searched the US for a safe place to hide the illegal treasure. When he couldn’t find a suitable spot, he decided it would be smarter to bury the gold.

Legend has it that Trabuco chose a sparsely populated region of New Mexico, near the Ute and Navajo Indian Reservations. Red Moiser allegedly made 16 flights, carrying one ton of gold each time. Pick up trucks then transported it to a secret burial site. Trabuco never revealed the location to his co-conspirators. And he never made a map.

Records indicate that the final shipment was delivered on July 14, 1933. Six months later, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 became law. The price of gold soared. Overnight, the men’s potential profit increased by seven million dollars.

The group decided not to sell the gold, hoping the price would go even higher. But they were not aware of an executive order related to the Gold Act. It declared that after January 1934, private ownership of gold within the US was illegal. According to treasure hunter Ed Foster, the partners had missed their chance to strike it rich:

“FDR put into effect the gold embargo that takes gold off of the market and makes it illegal, and so, consequently, these five men from Mexico City, they had 20 ton of junk. It was not worth a dime because they couldn’t sell it for anything.”

The gold seemed to bring bad luck. Within five years, three of the partners had died untimely deaths. Over the next two decades, Trabuco was unable to sell the now illegal gold. When he died, he apparently took the secret location to his grave.

For 35 years, Ed Foster searched for Trabuco’s treasure in the desert around Farmington, New Mexico. He’s convinced that he found the 1933 landing strip used by Red Moiser on a plateau called Conger Mesa:

“I believe that Conger Mesa is where the plane would adjust and come in and land. I met this Indian lady that couldn’t speak English so I got an interpreter. She said she had watched that plane land there many, many times.”

Ed interviewed another Navajo woman who was six years old in 1933. Ed said she remembered several Mexican men who lived on the Reservation:

“This would be very unusual for a Mexican to move out here. For a Spanish or a White man to move out here and live would be unheard of.”

Twenty miles west of the mesa, near an old Navajo home, stands a building unlike any other on the reservation. Ed believes it was built by men Trabuco hired to guard the gold:

“This house has windows, a front door, and a back door. And it had a veranda. To me, this house would look good in Tijuana, Mexico, but not on the Navajo reservation.”

Ed also found another intriguing clue: a date and some words etched in the face of a stone outcropping. He calls it Shrine Rock, and believes it may be the key to finding Trabuco’s treasure. It reads: “1933 sixteen ton.”

Ed is sure that the gold is buried somewhere within this triangle formed by Conger Mesa, Shrine Rock and the Mexican-style home. Ed asked renowned treasure hunter Norman Scott to make a detailed survey of the area:

“I get an awful lot of stories coming to us after thirty years in the business and probably about 80 or 90 percent of them you have to chalk up to some fictional writer who is writing a book or a magazine. But this one has a ring of authenticity to it.”

Ed Foster had a plan:

“I have looked with my eyes and metal detectors for many years. And now they have technology, and that’s why I think it’s going to be found, with technology. It’s not gonna be found with dumb luck, because I’ve spent all of that.”

Is Ed Foster just chasing a legend? Or does the desert of New Mexico hold the secret to Leon Trabuco’s long lost fortune?

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season four with Robert Stack and in season four with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Is a sunken fortune hidden in the bottom of Lake Michigan?

CASE DETAILS

It is only a speck of rocky land just east of Wisconsin, surrounded by the chilly waters of Lake Michigan. It is called Poverty Island, an apt name, especially when treacherous storms sweep in across the lake without warning. Furious winds and lightning-swift currents have spawned a graveyard of sunken ships and over the years, intriguing tales of lost treasure.

One legend in particular has claimed that, just offshore of Poverty Island, there are five chests stuffed with gold bullion and coins, which would today be worth more than $400 million. Richard Bennett, a professional diver and author, has spent more than 20 years and $100,000 of his own money searching for the sunken fortune:

“Any story that survives 100 years has to have some validity to it. If they survive 100 years, they probably have an 80, 85% chance of being true.”

But how could $400 million in gold end up on the bottom of Lake Michigan? The treasure story reaches back to 1863, when the tide of the Civil War was turning in favor of the Union. The beleaguered South, strapped for capital, put out a desperate call for relief to France. According to the legend, the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte III, secretly dispatched a shipment of gold across the Atlantic to Canada. It was then spirited down the St. Lawrence River and into Lake Michigan. But some believed that, while traveling inland to Chicago, the ship was attacked and sank. Others believed it was shipwrecked in a storm. In either event, the chests of gold never arrived.

Steve Harrington, a maritime historian, is convinced the treasure is still located off the coast of Poverty Island:

“I think that’s one of the most intriguing things about this legend is that it’s consistent in that the loss is always at Poverty Island. There are always five chests, and it’s always the same scenario.”

However, historian Chuck Feltner disagrees. He has spent many years in the Great Lakes searching for shipwrecks. Feltner believes that the legend of the treasure is a good story, but holds no truth:

“Records of shipwrecks on the great lakes in the year 1863 are extremely good. We’ve not been able to find any evidence that any of these vessels that were recorded to have been lost were sunk in the vicinity of Poverty Island or that they were French vessels, as the legend would have it to be.”

Despite the lack of a paper trail, the legend of the secret shipment has persisted. In 1929, a group of sailors were said to have snagged the five chests with their anchor. Up it came, just seconds away, a fortune in gold, when suddenly the chains broke. The treasure plummeted back to its watery grave.

A few years later, a group of investors in Chicago raised $50,000 to try their luck at Poverty Island. According to Richard Bennett, a young boy named Karly Jesson, whose father was the local lighthouse keeper, was said to have watched the salvage operation for three consecutive summers:

“One day, he was sitting on the rocks watching this operation, and there was a lot of rejoicing, revelry—obviously a real… congratulatory party that was going on, on the ship.”

According to the boy, a storm hit that night, and the salvage ship sank with all the men on board. The heartless tides of Lake Michigan had once again reclaimed the Poverty Island treasure.

Today, Richard Bennett feels confident that he will succeed where others have failed. Bennett has devised an ingenious underwater sled to comb the murky depths of Lake Michigan.

“The only way to really find this treasure is to have human beings on the sled visually looking at the bottom. It’s cold. It’s deep. The area is very treacherous. But I’m a dreamer, and I’m a gambler. As long as I have those things working for me, I’ll probably continue to do it.”

Will Richard Bennett ever find the Poverty Island treasure? Only time will tell. Until that day, Lake Michigan will keep its grip on the five wooden treasure chests hidden far beneath its surface.

Photos by Richard T. Bennett

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season seven with Robert Stack and in season five with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Is treasure buried inside Victorio’s Peak?

CASE DETAILS

White Sands, New Mexico, is an inhospitable environment, home only to rattlesnakes and sagebrush, vultures and mule deer. In November of 1937, a man named Doc Noss was deer hunting there. He hiked to the top of a hill known as Victorio Peak. As thirst and fatigue set in, Doc searched for fresh spring water. Instead, he discovered a mysterious hole in the ground—the hidden entrance to a tunnel. There was a ladder in the opening and Doc climbed inside. A maze of tunnels led into a large cavern. In one chamber of the cavern, Doc found an old chest. On the lid were the words “Sealed Silver,” written in Old English inscription script. The chest was only a small part of the treasure that Doc Noss claimed he found. There was gold, silver, jewels, and gold bars that today, would be worth and estimated $1.7 billion dollars. Even now it may still be hidden beneath the craggy slopes of Victorio Peak.

Doc Noss had been a traveling medicine-show man. In 1933, he married Ova Beckwith, whom he nicknamed Babe. They settled down and opened a foot clinic in Hot Springs, New Mexico. Doc’s grandson, Terry Delonas, heard incredible stories of his grandfather his entire life:

“He loved adventure and was fascinated with history. Babe was very strong-willed, ardent might be a word to describe her.”

After Doc discovered the treasure at Victorio Peak, he and Babe spent every free moment exploring the tunnels that led deep inside the mountain. Doc found that the passageways in the mountain led to several caverns. In one of them he found 79 human skeletons stacked in a small enclosure. In a deeper cavern, Doc found what appeared to be a stack of worthless iron bars. He brought the bars home for his wife Babe to inspect:

“I said, well Doc, this is yellow, look at it. And he looked at that and the sun was right at the right hour to shine right down on it. And he rubbed his head and he said, well Babe, if that’s gold, and all that other is gold like it, we can call John D. Rockefeller a tramp.”

Doc told Babe that inside the cavern, there were as many as 16,000 bars of gold. How had this enormous treasure come to be deep inside the caverns of Victorio Peak? There are four theories. The treasure could have belonged to Juan de Onate, the man who founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. Reportedly, Onate had amassed an Aztec treasure of gold, silver, and jewels. Another theory is that a Catholic missionary named Father LaRue, who operated gold mines in the late 18th century, stored his gold in a cavern there. It could have belonged to Maximillian, the Emperor of Mexico, who tried to remove wealth out of Mexico when he learned of an assassination plot. Finally, it may have belonged to an Apache tribe that raided stagecoaches filled with gold mined in California.

But Doc was unconcerned as to how the gold arrived there. And in the spring of 1938, six months after his discovery, he and Babe went to Santa Fe to establish legal ownership of their claim. According to their grandson Terry, Doc and Babe filed a lease with the state of New Mexico for the entire section of land surrounding Victorio Peak:

“They filed a treasure trove claim, which has become the historic Noss family claim to the treasure in Victorio Peak.”

Over a period of two years, Doc mined the peak. Witnesses say he took out more than 200 gold bars, and then hid them from everyone, even his family. Back then, it was illegal to own gold that was not in the form of jewelry. According to Terry, Doc hid the gold bars in a variety of locations all across the desert:

“Some were hidden right by the county roads… Some were dropped in horse tanks at the nearby ranches. Some were just buried in the sand and Doc would put a different colored rock over the top of it than was natural to that surrounding.”

Finally, in the fall of 1939, Doc decided to try opening a larger passageway into Victorio Peak. He hired a mining engineer named Montgomery to assist him. Together, the two men used dynamite to blast through a large boulder that was blocking the lower portion of the shaft. The blast caused a massive cave-in, which collapsed the fragile shaft. Doc had permanently shut himself out of his own mine. According to his grandson, Terry, even worse was the fact that now Doc only had a few gold bars to draw from:

“He only had those few dozen or hundred or so that he’d brought to the surface and he became very protective of those bars.”

For nine years, Doc Noss attempted to sell his gold bars on the black market. Then in 1948, he met a man named Charlie Ryan and struck a deal to sell him 51 of the bars.
But at the last minute Doc feared that Charlie Ryan would double cross him. He asked an acquaintance named Tony Jolly to help him re-bury the gold in a new hiding place:

“We went out across the desert, a little ways, we started digging and we dug 20 bars of gold out of the ground. It turned out to be 90 more and we buried those bars of gold. I handled and saw 110 bars of gold.

The next day, Doc and Charlie Ryan got into an argument. According to Terry, Ryan pulled out a gun:

“Ryan accosted him and said if you don’t tell me where the bars are, you won’t leave this room alive.”

Doc tried to escape but it was already too late. He was shot by Charlie Ryan and died instantly. The date was March 5, 1949. But the saga of the treasure at Victorio Peak did not die with Doc Noss. As the legend grew, other treasure hunters tried to cash in on Doc and Babe’s claim.

When Doc Noss was killed in 1949, he allegedly left behind a treasure of 15,000 gold bars, buried inside the caverns of Victorio Peak. For three years, Babe Noss and her children struggled to clear the passageway to the treasure. In 1952, when they were less than 12 yards from the opening to the central cavern, disaster struck again. The State of New Mexico was forced to relinquish Victorio Peak and the land surrounding it, so the United States Army could expand the White Sands Missile Range. Babe and her family were forced off their claim by the Army. Victorio Peak was now off limits to everyone by order of the military. But that didn’t stop former Airman 1st Class Thomas Berlett and a group of off-duty soldiers from clearing the blocked entrance and exploring the caverns. According to Berlett, it wasn’t long before they found what Babe was after:

“They were bars of something. And as we scratched it, we knew right away that it was actually gold. We marked and identified one of the bricks inside with my initials on it and we stood it on end on the large piles.”

Eventually, the airmen informed their superiors about the gold they had found at Victorio Peak. They were denied permission to explore further. According to Thomas Berlett, they took steps to insure that no one else could salvage the treasure:

“The following weekend, we returned to the entrance and we dynamited it in four different places and blasted the whole thing shut.”

Over a year later, the Secretary of the Army created a “Top Secret” classified military operation at Victorio Peak. In 1961, Babe Noss, along with the State of New Mexico, filed an injunction against the Army to stop excavating at Victorio Peak. In 1963, the Army petitioned the state of New Mexico for mineral rights. But their request was denied. Even so, aerial surveillance photo showed that extensive work had already taken place.

Finally, the Army succumbed to pressure and allowed some private claimants, including Babe Noss and former military personnel, to undertake a highly publicized, 10 day expedition at Victorio Peak. The excavation was an extensive, large-scale operation. But after 10 days, no treasure had been found. Lambert Dolphin, a scientist from the Stanford Research Institute who worked on the dig, thought the treasure may have actually been there, but just out of reach:

“I noticed on the radar screen, some echoes quite frequently at a very great depth, 300, 400 feet deep. And that led me to the conclusion that there was indeed a large cavern at the base of the mountain, about where Doc Noss had said.”

Deep in the heart of Victorio Peak there may still be jewels, artifacts, and piles of gold worth a billion dollars. Tony Jolly, the man who helped hide some of the gold, went back years later, and retrieved ten bars. But Doc’s heirs have recovered nothing. For Terry Delonas and the rest of Doc’s family, the fate of the treasure is still, quite literally, a billion-dollar question:

“We have decided that we will finish the work that Doc Noss started, that Babe Noss tried to finish. We will eventually get Victorio Peak open so that the mystery of what’s inside the peak can be solved.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season one with Robert Stack and season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Is a cache of looted gold and silver worth millions buried in Arizona’s Skeleton Canyon?

CASE DETAILS

Along Arizona’s eastern border is a jagged ravine called Skeleton Canyon. More than a 100 years ago, a gang of Mexican smugglers were ambushed and robbed within its steep, canyon walls. Some say the take from that robbery was buried in this area, an undiscovered treasure worth millions.

Treasure hunters have searched for years in Skeleton Canyon. They’ve turned up bleached bones and old Mexican coins, but no treasure. Is the treasure real? It depends on who you ask. Treasure hunter Fern Hamill said he has no doubts:

“It’s a known fact that it’s a real treasure. This is one of the treasures that’s absolutely ‘real’ real.”

But Robert Palmquist, an Arizona Historian, has voiced a different view:

“No, I don’t believe that there is a Skeleton Canyon treasure waiting out there to be found.”

The legend of the Skeleton Canyon treasure starts in a small Mexican village. Jim Hughes, a member of Arizona’s infamous Curly Bill Brocious Gang, learned that Mexican bandits had looted the town of Monterey, Mexico. They were planning to smuggle the fortune into the United States through Skeleton Canyon.

Hunter Pritchard, director of a treasure hunting museum, speculated on the booty’s worth:

“The reports that I read, in the myriad of books and treasure magazines as far back as 1964, reported the treasure to be worth anywhere from 2.5 million dollars all the way, and I’ve seen reports of it being worth up to 8 million dollars.”

According to Hunter, Hughes rode back to Arizona and made plans with Curley Bill Brocius to ambush the Mexican gang:

“The Estrada gang had come out of Mexico, through Sonora, and were going through, what was later to become known as Skeleton Canyon. The outlaws shot the Mexicans off their mounts, and that resulted in the contraband being scattered all over the canyon. And in order to stop the mules from scatterin and taking the loot with them, the Curly Bill Brocius gang were shooting the mules.”

The outlaws now had their treasure, but without mules, they had no way of moving it out of the canyon. So part of the loot was divided up on the spot. The rest was buried, to be picked up later. But two members of the gang had other plans, according to Hunter Pritchard:

“Zwing Hunt and Billy Grounds were friends and they decided that while the rest of the gang was out in the local bars spending their money, they would double-cross the gang and come back into the canyon. According to legend, they were able to find a Mexican teamster, talked him into bringing his team and his horses into Skeleton Canyon and removing the treasure, and, of course, he was later killed because they wanted to keep the new hiding places a secret. It’s very likely that the treasure is still buried within the vicinity of Skeleton Canyon, probably no more than thirty miles away.”

Zwing Hunt and Billy Grounds hid in a desert cave where they lived for close to four months. During this period, Billy Grounds wrote a number of letters to his sister, Maggie, in San Antonio. Billy wanted her to know where the treasure was hidden in case anything happened to him. Billy would venture out once a week to give the letters to a passing stagecoach. Treasure hunter Fern Hamill claims he’s seen the nine letters:

“One of the letters he was writing to his sister, he said there’s a cave at the mouth of the canyon. I found that cave, and it goes back 80 feet and we even dug in the cave and found old ropes that were buried in there. And one of the things in the letter, it said, from our lookout you can see the turf growing back over where we buried the treasure at, down in the valley. I have found all the clues in the letters, every one of them. When I once found the right place to look, why everything fit, and everything is there, so I know the treasure is, I’m near where it’s at. It’s there.”

Historian Robert Palmquist doubts the letters were legitimate:

“Billy Grounds, who was supposed to have written the letters, was a 19-year old Texas cowboy rustler type. It’s unlikely to me that he would have been writing home detailed letters about ‘Hey, we robbed these Mexicans and buried this huge treasure. Here’s how to find it.’”

But Fern said he found evidence in the cave that proves the letters are real:

“Maggie was Billy Grounds’ sister, and she and a man had spent two years living in a cave out there, looking for this treasure. And we found this vase in a cave, it says ‘Maggie’ on it, ‘1885, World’s Fair.’ So I know that was Billy Grounds’ sister that was there looking for this treasure.”

A Sheriff’s posse finally cornered Billy Grounds and Zwing Hunt. During the shootout, Billy was killed and Zwing was seriously injured. As the story goes, after his capture, Zwing revealed the secret location of the treasure to his uncle. His uncle then drew up a detailed map.

Robert Palmquist doesn’t buy it:

“It seems to me that it’s another typical treasure hunting yarn. We never get to see the map, we never get to examine it for its genuineness or see if it matches up with any handwriting samples we might have.”

Fern Hamill said that he’s seen the map that was made by Zwing Hunt’s uncle:

“The map shows the canyon and it shows where the cave is, everything matches. But on account of the earthquake in 1886, I think the treasure is around twenty feet deep. Part of the mountain caved off on it.”

Is there really a treasure buried in Skeleton Canyon? Or is it just another tall tale from the days of the Old West?

According to Hunter Pritchard, the story is at least plausible:

“I think the Skeleton Canyon treasure is a very plausible story from the standpoint that every time it would rain somebody’s skull would show up or another coin would become evident. And compared to a lot of other stories, it’s got a lot more plausibility than, I would say, the Lost Dutchman Mine, for instance.”

Historian Robert Palmquist has voiced his doubts:

“It is possible that there’s a Skeleton Canyon treasure out there to be found somewhere. But the initial report given in the local press indicates that there was a very small amount of money taken, which would have been spent very, very quickly. I don’t think there was a treasure, given historical sources, to find.”

As for Fern Hamill:

“When I find the treasure I’ll stop looking for it. Because I know it’s real. This treasure is real and I know I found the right place, where it’s at.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season three with Robert Stack and in season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

Did a crooked sheriff hide a treasure of stolen gold near Bannack, Montana?

CASE DETAILS

When gold was discovered in Alder Gulch, Montana, in 1863, hundreds of prospectors descended on the boomtown of Bannack. Among them were outlaws, eager to collect their share of the spoils

In the spring of that year, a group of such outlaws called the Road Agent Gang nearly wiped out the prospectors. It’s been said they stole more than a thousand pounds of gold in nuggets, coins, and gold dust.

Henry Plummer, the town sheriff, was an ex-convict and secret leader of the gang. According to author and historian Dick Pace, Plummer had been released just four years earlier from a brand new California prison called San Quentin:

“Henry Plummer was a very pleasant looking individual. He was the only man in Bannack, practically, that always tipped his hat to a lady when he saw her on the street. Well, you could call him the consummate conman of his day, so he was able to con people into thinking he was a competent man to be the sheriff. And, of course, he knew that being a sheriff would give him a perfect cover.”

Plummer and his gang targeted miners trying to transport their gold to a major railhead.
It’s estimated that in four months, Henry Plummer and the Road Agents killed more than 120 miners and stole what today would be $6 million in gold.

Finally, in December of 1863, the gang went too far. A well-liked young man was cruelly murdered by the Road Agent Gang. One of the local ranchers found the body and brought it into town. Dick Pace said it was the final straw:

“They formed a posse and during the next six weeks the vigilantes were picking people up, giving them a trial. And we know they hanged about 22 men, at least.”

When the outlaws were caught, they started pointing fingers. One Road Agent about to be hanged identified Henry Plummer as the gang’s leader. The vigilante posse raced to Plummer’s house.

Only seven months after the Road Agents had begun their reign of terror, Henry Plummer marched to a scaffold he himself had built in his role as sheriff. But before he was hanged, he made an unusual request; if given two hours on a horse, he would return with his weight in gold. The vigilantes had already heard enough. Henry Plummer hanged without telling anyone where his treasure was buried.

Immediately after his death, prospectors started searching for Plummer’s booty. According to local historian Jim Edwards, two mysterious gold hunters may have found it in the early 1900s:

“They went into the local store that had a vault and asked if they could leave this box in there all night. And one of the men stayed there riding shotgun on the vault. The next morning they disappeared. Nobody knew who they were or where they went or what they dug up.”

Even if one box of Plummer’s gold was found, there’s probably a lot more out there. Two local men have been hunting for the treasure for years. Bill Jappe said he and his partner are confident that Plummer’s gold still lies buried somewhere in the area:

“Nobody would bury their eggs in one basket. He was the sheriff of both counties at the same time, so it’s understandable that he has someplace where he has access to it. I bet there’s a thousand pounds or better in different places, maybe from Virginia City to Bannack.”

Perhaps the location of Plummer’s buried gold will never be found – if it was ever there in the first place.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season two with Robert Stack and season two with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.