A dispute over Pirate Treasure, Arrrrrrg!

This story comes from our good buddy Homer who is always on the look out for treasure.

The story was originally posted on the web December 24, 2010 but as usual, I'm a little behind.

A FAMILY staking its claim on land in San Salvador where it is believed billions of dollars worth of pirate treasure is buried secured a consent order in court yesterday that will bring excavation efforts on the disputed property to a temporary halt.


Dennis Bethell and his family are contending that the land being excavated at Fortune Hill, San Salvador belonged to their ancestor Nimrod Newton by way of a Crown grant dated August 8, 1876.

The Newton tract encompasses 47 acres on Fortune Hill and includes an area of the 23 acres owned by Dorothy Black-Beal who has reportedly started excavation on the disputed tract of land.

Mr Bethell contends that Mrs Beal's property was erroneously mapped over a portion of his land to encompass the cave in which the treasure is believed to be buried.

Rumours of treasure buried on the land have been circulating in San Salvador for years.

Mrs Black's attorneys agreed during a closed court hearing before Justice Bernard Turner to a consent order to stop excavation on the land for 14 days as the claim by Mr Bethell and his family is investigated.

Mr Bethell said that he had initially come to court to seek an injunction to have the excavation works stopped and viewed yesterday's outcome as somewhat of a compromise.

"I am quite certain that when they do what they have to do they will realise that they were wrong," Mr Bethell told The Tribune.

100 once gold nugget found

This story was posted on a treasure forum I belong to so I am stealing it from there.

It comes from the web and was originally posted by a California newspaper.




By Carlos Alcala


Published: Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 - 12:00 am
Page 1A Last Modified: Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011 - 4:56 am

Imagine a gold nugget the size of a small fruitcake.

Fred Holabird, a mining geologist, doesn't have to imagine, because a gold prospector brought one into his Reno office in 2010.

Holabird remembers shouting, "Oh, my God!" or something similar, but unprintable in a family newspaper.

"I made some exclamation that was very, very loud," Holabird said Tuesday.

Holabird will auction what is now dubbed the Washington Nugget in March.

The stunning piece of gold was literally turned up from the ground near the town of Washington in Nevada County. It weighs nearly 100 ounces.

Current prices would make that gold worth about $135,000, but Holabird believes that the intact nugget is the biggest California nugget in existence and could be worth as much as $400,000.

That's a fruitcake that won't be regifted.

To understand how it was found requires a little background.

The gold in this lunker – as large nuggets are known – was formed in the same way as the little flakes that panners find. Gold was created as part of the underground processes that created the Sierra, and gradually was eroded out and washed downstream.

The Washington Nugget was part of an ancient riverbed with rocks that eventually cemented together, including the bones of prehistoric rhino- and hippo-like mammals, Holabird said.

Hydraulic miners took all the gold they could out of those deposits 150 years ago.

"This ended up being a little piece that got missed," said Holabird. "This was a chance thing."

Early last year, after storms eroded tailings off the cemented conglomerate, a property owner – his name is not being revealed – went out exploring.

"They got a huge reading on the metal detector," Holabird said.

It took heavy equipment to knock the nugget out of the ancient bed.

The nugget's discovery has been known in prospecting circles, but it hasn't produced any rush akin to that of the 1850s.

"It's like winning the lottery," said James Hutchings, president of the local chapter of Gold Prospectors' Association of America. "They (prospectors) realize they're probably not going to get the big one."

The rise in gold prices has prompted a few people to go out and try to find the bits of gold that are still out there.

"They don't realize looking for gold is hard work," said John Clinkenbeard, California's program manager for mineral resources.

The mining companies that do that hard work aren't going to spend huge amounts on the slight odds that they might find such a lunker.

"It truly is not one in a million," Holabird said. "It's one in a billion."

The Washington Nugget's finder brought the lunker to Holabird for his assessment. He researched the nugget's origin and that of others like it.

"I tried to find out if any of the big ones still existed, and they don't," he said.

It's not that this one, at just over 6 pounds, is any kind of record. Nuggets with far greater weights – as much as 25 pounds – have been reported, though most are gold quartz rocks, not true nuggets, which have eroded out.

Nuggets bigger than 100 ounces exist from other countries, too, such as Australia.

However, any true nugget that big from California has been melted down to bullion or coins, Holabird believes.

Holabird considers it his job to preserve Western mining history.

To that end, he once helped the Sacramento Public Library's archives acquire a handwritten letter from John A. Sutter, owner of the land where gold discovery set off the big rush.

"Fred, when we talked, he said, 'I'd really rather have this go to an archive library,' " recalled Clare Ellis, then the librarian in the Sacramento Room.

Holabird gave the library enough time to raise the $7,500 to buy the rare document. And, shrewd businessman that he was, he sent it to Ellis to hold until the money was raised.

"Once I had it in my hot little hands, I had to have it," she said.

Anyone desiring to have the Washington Nugget in their hot little hands will have to wait until March 15, when it's auctioned. The auction site, when determined, will be announced on Holabird's website, holabirdamericana.com.

It is on display at a Florida coin show this week, and in Long Beach in February, Holabird said. If he can find a suitable place in Sacramento before March, he will display it here, as well.

Thinking out loud on Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper or "D.B. Cooper" as he is better known has been an enigma since the hijacking of the Northwest Airline jet in 1971.

I will be the first to tell you that I know less than I should about this mystery and for this article I am truly just thinking out loud. With that said, what if Dan Cooper never really left the plane when he was supposed to have jumped out? No one was in the back of the plane when this was supposed to have occurred. The man known as Dan Cooper did have a lot of knowledge about the plane and flying and apparently a few different airports including a military base not far from where the jet landed to refuel.

Is it possible Cooper knew enough about the jet (maybe an airline employee) that he could have stowed away in a space that the F.B.I. wouldn't have looked in? Is it possible the F.B.I. didn't really search the plane all that much because they assumed he jumped? This latter scenario seems extremely possible to me based on the art of misdirection and the possibility of it turning into a cluster ---- once the plane landed.

Maybe the man known as Dan Cooper never left the plane until after it had landed and after the F.B.I. finished collecting their evidence. We know from experience that investigative techniques and the collection of evidence changes over time as criminals get smarter and/or more daring.

To this date I think there is only one individual that has been named that could even be considered a possible suspect and that is a man named Kenneth Christiansen. You will here more about him tonight on Brad Meltzer's Decoded but based on what I have read, he is the only one that seems to have the right kind of background and who, from interviews of friends, had some pretty suspicious activities going on before and after the hijacking. I am told there was a man here in Oklahoma that could have been Cooper but that's another story for someone else to write. :~)

If this story interests you I would suggest doing a little more research into Mr. Christiansen. There was a book written about him and his possible connection to the hijacking which is bound to have more information than you will get from a one hour show on the History Channel.

Besides solving a mystery, there is still a little less than 200 grand that has never been accounted for. Could someone have spent the money without the F.B.I. ever knowing it?

The history of D.B. Cooper

There has been a lot said over the years about who D.B. Cooper was and if he survived the jump from the plane with the cash in hand. The F.B.I. has updated their own theories and have even found some new evidence but as of this date, they still don’t have a real suspect or any clue as to what happened to the money.

As almost everyone knows, a small portion of the cash was found several years after the hijacking and parachute jump but since then nothing else has turned up. There have been a couple of men come forward in the past claiming to have been D.B. Cooper but they have been ruled out by the F.B.I. The new evidence the F.B.I. has been working with is DNA. They were able to remove some from the tie D.B. Cooper was wearing at the time and left behind on the plane before he jumped.


The F.B.I.’s current theory is that D.B. Cooper was not an experienced jumper and never survived the jump from the plane. I personally am not so sure about that. It would be my opinion that if his chute opened and he didn’t survive the jump then they would have found him and/or the chute long ago. The only viable explanation if he didn’t survive the jump is that his chute did not open and he drilled himself into the ground. If this is the case then the spot where he “landed” would be very difficult to find. I would also think that if this was the case the paper money that was in the cloth duffel bag would have decayed and faded away over the last 30 years. There still might be a few remnants of the cash since it was bundled but for the most part, there would be no money to be found.

Does that mean it’s not worth finding? Absolutely not! Finding D.B. Cooper would be an amazing feat, all be it one that would get your name and face plastered all over the news.

The F.B.I. has given their own synopsis over the years, twice actually. I have reprinted the two F.B.I. articles here for our readers along with posting two of the photos available from the F.B.I.


Article number 1:

On the afternoon of November 24—35 years ago Friday—a non-descript man calling himself Dan Cooper approached the counter of Northwest Orient Airlines in Portland, Oregon. He used cash to buy a one-way ticket on Flight #305, bound for Seattle, Washington. Thus began one of the great unsolved mysteries in FBI history.


Cooper was a quiet man who appeared to be in his mid-forties, wearing a business suit with a black tie and white shirt. He ordered a drink—bourbon and soda—while the flight was waiting to take off. A short time after 3:00 p.m., he handed the stewardess a note indicating that he had a bomb in his briefcase and wanted her to sit with him.


The stunned stewardess did as she was told. Opening a cheap attaché case, Cooper showed her a glimpse of a mass of wires and red colored sticks and demanded that she write down what he told her. Soon, she was walking a new note to the captain of the plane that demanded four parachutes and $200,000 in twenty dollar bills.


When the flight landed in Seattle, the hijacker exchanged the flight’s 36 passengers for the money and parachutes. Cooper kept several crewmembers, and the plane took off again, ordered to set a course for Mexico City.


Somewhere between Seattle and Reno, a little after 8:00 p.m., the hijacker did the incredible: he jumped out of the back of the plane with a parachute and the ransom money. The pilots landed safely, but Cooper had disappeared into the night and his ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day.


The FBI learned of the crime in flight and immediately opened an extensive investigation that lasted many years. Calling it NORJAK, for Northwest hijacking, we interviewed hundreds of people, tracked leads across the nation, and scoured the aircraft for evidence. By the five-year anniversary of the hijacking, we’d considered more than 800 suspects and eliminated all but two dozen from consideration.


One person left on our list, Richard Floyd McCoy is still a favorite suspect among many. We tracked down and arrested McCoy for a similar airplane hijacking and escape by parachute less than five months after Cooper’s flight. But McCoy was later ruled out because he didn’t match the nearly identical physical descriptions of Cooper provided by two flight attendants and for other reasons.


Or perhaps Cooper didn’t survive his jump from the plane. After all, the parachute he used couldn’t be steered, his clothing and footwear were unsuitable for a rough landing, and he had jumped into a wooded area at night, a dangerous proposition for a seasoned pro—which evidence suggests Cooper was not. This theory was given an added boost in 1980 when a young boy found a rotting package full of $20 bills ($5,800 in all) that matched the ransom money serial numbers.


Where did “D.B.” come from? It was apparently a myth created by the press. We did question a man with the initials “D. B.” but he wasn’t the hijacker.


The daring hijack and disappearance remain an intriguing mystery—for law enforcement and amateur sleuths alike. To read more about the NORJAK investigation, see the files on our Freedom of Information Act website. Fair warning: you might get hooked on the case!

Article number 2:

On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.


Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?


It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.


Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely. And we have reignited the case—thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing.


You can help. We’re providing here, for the first time, a series of pictures and information on the case. Please look it all over carefully to see if it triggers a memory or if you can provide any useful information.


A few things to keep in mind, according to Special Agent Carr:


Cooper was no expert skydiver. “We originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper,” says Special Agent Carr. “We concluded after a few years this was simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve chute was only for training and had been sewn shut—something a skilled skydiver would have checked.”


The hijacker had no help on the ground, either. To have utilized an accomplice, Cooper would’ve needed to coordinate closely with the flight crew so he could jump at just the right moment and hit the right drop zone. But Cooper simply said, "Fly to Mexico," and he had no idea where he was when he jumped. There was also no visibility of the ground due to cloud cover at 5,000 feet.


We have a solid physical description of Cooper. “The two flight attendants who spent the most time with him on the plane were interviewed separately the same night in separate cities and gave nearly identical descriptions,” says Carr. “They both said he was about 5'10" to 6', 170 to 180 pounds, in his mid-40s, with brown eyes. People on the ground who came into contact with him also gave very similar descriptions.”
And what of some of the names pegged as Cooper? None have panned out. Duane Weber, who claimed to be Cooper on his deathbed, was ruled out by DNA testing (we lifted a DNA sample from Cooper’s tie in 2001). Kenneth Christiansen, named in a recent magazine article, didn’t match the physical description and was a skilled paratrooper. Richard McCoy, who died in 1974, also didn’t match the description and was at home the day after the hijacking having Thanksgiving dinner with his family in Utah, an unlikely scenario unless he had help.

 As many agents before him, Carr thinks it highly unlikely that Cooper survived the jump. “Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible conditions, he probably never even got his chute open.”


Still, we’d all like to know for sure, and Carr thinks you can help.


“Maybe a hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980 to where Cooper landed upstream. Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle.”


If you have any information: please e-mail our Seattle field office at fbise@leo.gov.



Oklahoma Sunset

Not all Oklahoma treasures are gold or silver. Our state has some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world.

Clues to a Spanish Mine

I was going through my files the other day and came across several things I have been holding on to in the hopes I might have the chance to work them myself. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I have so much stuff that I want to work myself that I will never have time to get it all done.

This description is said to have come from "an old Spanish document" and the story was originally published in 1950. This is the description and directions to a large Spanish mine. Pay close attention to the description of how deep the tunnels are.

“Follow straight ahead through the pass of Los Janos to the south about three leagues from the Guadalupe mine, which is one league from the big gate of the Tumacacori mission to the south, to another gateway or pass called The Gateway to Agua Hondo (Deep Water). To the south from this pass runs a creek that empties onto the desert near the old town of Santa Cruz.


The mine is to the east of the pass. Below the pass on the bank of the creek there are twelve arrastres and twelve patios. At the mine there is a tunnel 300 varas (835 feet) long that runs to the north. About 200 varas from the portal of this tunnel a crosscut is yellow and is one half-silver and one-fifth gold. Fifty varas from the mouth of the mine in a southerly direction will be found planchas de plata (slabs or balls of silver) weighing from 25 to 250 pounds each. In the rock above the tunnel is the name La Purisima Concepcion, cut with a chisel. The mouth of the tunnel is covered by a copper door and fastened with a large iron lock”
 
Hmmm, a copper door fastened with a large lock, this sounds familiar doesn't it?

A different kind of treasure

This one comes from another one of our readers, Thank you Rob!

I'm a little late in getting it on the blog and the story is a few weeks old. They may have to design a detector that will only find clay!

Bellagio casino in Las Vegas robbed of $1.5m in chips

An armed man stole at least 1.5 million dollars in casino chips from a craps table at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas before escaping on a motorcycle, police have said.

The suspect entered the casino at 0350 local time wearing a motorcycle helmet and walked directly to the table.

The man may have robbed the Las Vegas Suncoast Casino last week, police said.

Strict controls over Las Vegas casinos may make it difficult to cash in the chips anywhere other than the Bellagio.

Chips are generally unique to specific casinos and are typically not interchangeable.

"Casino chips are not like cash - at some point they must be redeemed," MGM spokeswoman Yvette Monet told Reuters news agency.

MGM Resorts, which owns the Bellagio, captured video footage of the suspect.

Police said that if the same culprit was responsible for the Las Vegas Suncoast Casino robbery, he may have netted less than $20,000 in chips during that heist.

The incident at the Bellagio was the 10th casino robbery in Las Vegas this year.