Get Away Car for Sale

Would you like to own a real piece of American history? If you don't mind a few bullet holes and maybe some blood stains then here's your chance.

This really isn't a buried treasure but treasure exists in many forms. This particular treasure is in the form of a 1930 Ford Model A used by John Dillenger that is going on the auction block.

PRESS RELEASE

THE 1930 FORD "MODEL A" THAT CARRIED GANGSTER JOHN DILLINGER TO SAFETY WILL CROSS THE BARRETT-JACKSON BLOCK IN SCOTTSDALE

1930 Ford Model A that John Dillinger used in an escape to be sold at Barrett-Jackson at No Reserve

The car also starred in the recent blockbuster "Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp
The Model A (Lot #1309) includes meticulous documentation from the current owner

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Jan. 4, 2010 - The 1930's Ford Model A (Lot #1309) used by the notorious gangster John Dillinger and later in the blockbuster 2009 movie about his life, will be sold at No Reserve during the 39th Annual Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction in Scottsdale on Jan. 18-24, 2010 at WestWorld. The Ford, which carried "Public Enemy" number one to safety in 1934 while Dillinger sprayed pursing cops with his Tommy gun, will cross the block as the world watches on SPEED.1930's Ford Model A (Lot #1309)"While Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson were media celebrities, none were more famous than John Dillinger," said Barrett-Jackson Chairman/CEO Craig Jackson. "His daring robberies and hold ups fed the nation's hunger for sensationalist news. His ability to elude capture and escape by using fast, reliable cars with seeming impunity made him a folk hero."Dillinger and his gang raged throughout Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Kentucky, South Dakota, Iowa and Wisconsin during the Great Depression.

One of Dillinger's most memorable escapes took place at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wis. on April 22, 1934. Dillinger, Homer Van Meter and John "Red" Hamilton, his two top lieutenants, escaped in the 1930 Ford Model A coupe offered at Barrett-Jackson."This car is a piece of American gangster history and as much a part of Dillinger's legend as his Tommy guns and Colt automatics," stated Steve Davis, president of Barrett-Jackson. "Not only did this particular car get the famous gangster out of a fix with the cops in hot pursuit, it was used in the recent Johnny Depp movie about Dillinger.

So it's played an important role in history and cinema emulating history."After a series of robberies, Dillinger and his gang hid out at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters. The proprietors, Emil and Nan Wanatka, recognized them and managed to tip off the authorities to the gang's location.Upon arrival, the Feds perforated the Lodge with bullets until Dillinger, Van Meter and Hamilton bailed out of doors and windows, rushing through the woods until they found the Model T nearby.

The gangsters politely but firmly commandeered the Ford and its owner, Robert Johnson, to drive it.Johnson was let out near Park Falls, Wis. The trio of crooks eluded law enforcement and drove to Hastings, Minn., over 200 miles away from the Lodge. There, they were once again identified and fled in a high speed pursuit. Hamilton was fatally shot in the hail of gunfire. Dillinger, it is said, smashed the Ford's rear window with his Thompson and sprayed his pursuers with bullets as he escaped.

Heading for the anonymity of Chicago, they dumped the bullet-riddled Model A in favor of a stolen 1934 Ford V8. Just three months later, Dillinger was killed as he exited the Biograph Theater in Chicago.Bullet pocked and blood stained, the Ford was impounded by the police. Files from the Division of Investigation (now FBI) identified it as "1930 Ford coupe, 4 cylinder, Model A, Wisconsin license #92652, Motor #2980001.""The Model A was eventually returned to Johnson who determined that it wasn't worth repairing and parked it for nearly three decades," noted Davis. "The car ended up in the barn of Alfred Love's mother in-law, where Johnson rented a bungalow. Love bought it from Johnson and eventually passed it to his son, Mark, the current owner.

"The Ford was carefully restored in 2007 to appear in "Public Enemies", preserving the original bullet holes and dimples under body filler and carefully documenting the original appearance including the upholstery soaked with blood. This car is comprehensively documented with its transfer paperwork, articles, books, before-restoration photographs and a selection of documents copied from the federal files."This Ford was at the center of one of the most famous shootouts in gangster history," added Jackson. "It is, more than any automobile and even firearm, identified with Dillinger.

It's been owned by only two families since it played a crucial role in the Little Bohemia Lodge escape. The Dillinger Ford Model A coupe would be an incredible addition to a collection, museum or attraction that commemorates the history of Ford, the Model A or American history."About The Barrett-Jackson Auction CompanyThe Barrett-Jackson Auction Company was established in 1971 and headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz., Barrett-Jackson specializes in providing products and services to classic and collector car owners, astute collectors and automotive enthusiasts around the world. The company produces the "World's Greatest Collector Car Auctions™" in Scottsdale, Palm Beach, Fla., Las Vegas, and Orange County, Cali. Barrett-Jackson also endorses a one-of-a-kind collector car insurance offering for collector vehicles and other valued belongings. For more information about Barrett-Jackson, visit www.barrett-jackson.com or call (480) 421-6694.

Treasure found in a safe

This is a story about a modern day treasure that was found recently by a friend of mine and fellow treasure hunter. For this article I will call him “the sentinel” because he is a security minded individual and likes to spend his time watching the beaches near his home for things that look out of place. You know, things like bikinis that are too small!

The Sentinel owns some rental property in one of the best places in the world, Hawaii. Honolulu, Hawaii to be exact. Book ‘em Danno! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, several years ago a retired couple by the name of Doris and Henry Schnetz moved in to one of the Sentinel’s rental properties. They lived there for about two years before moving to a larger home where they were taken care of by Dan Dutko and Lindsay Roberson.

When the Schnetz’s moved out of the rental property they left behind a safe. It was locked and required a combination and key to get into. The safe was moved to the home of my friend so that it would be safe until the Schnetz’s returned for it. Unfortunately, both of the elder Schnetz’s passed on and they never came back for the safe. Being the busy man that the sentinel is (there are lots of bikinis to watch on those beaches) the safe sat at his home for over six years. The sentinel would occasionally wonder what might be in the safe, usually right after he tripped over it because he forgot it was there.

Curiosity, and apparently the lack of bikinis on the beach finally got the best of him so he decided to see if there was anything in the safe. He contacted the manufacturer of the safe and supplied them with all of the proper documentation and was rewarded with a combination and key. Upon opening the safe he found a list of items that should be in the safe along with almost all of the items on the list.

The items found in the safe included Masonic rings, as Mr. Schnetz was a Master Mason, Diamond encrusted Masonic Pins, a gold watch he received when retiring from a pharmacy he owned on Oahu, and a 92 Bush/Quayle lapel pin. Besides these items there were also several gold, silver, pearl and diamond rings, pendants, broaches, cuff links, bracelets, watches, tuxedo buttons and earrings. There were also several military ribbons that Mr. Schnetz had earned while serving his country.

That’s quite a haul for any treasure hunter to find, especially for never leaving your home!

Now you would think that is where this story would end but you would be wrong. The sentinel is trying to locate the rightful heirs to these items and is asking for your help so that the items can be returned to the family. The Schnetz’s went to live and be cared for by Lindsay Roberson and Dan Dutko in Honolulu, Hawaii. It appears that the Schnetz’s had a son and we are in the process of trying to find him.

If there is anyone out there that might know Lindsay Roberson, Dan Dutko or someone directly related to Doris and Henry Schnetz of Honolulu, HI then we would ask that you contact us and let us know. You can e-mail me directly at redrvr@aol.com or you can get in touch with James through is e-mail listed at the top of the blog and we will forward the information on to the sentinel.

Hopefully by the time some of you read this we will have already found the heirs to this treasure but don’t let that stop you from contacting us. You never know when a trail will dead end and more information is always better than less.

My friend would like to say; Mahalo! (Hawaiian for thank you!) for any help you can provide.

Civil War Treasure in Alabama

Towards the end of the Civil War the south was moving some money so that Confederate forces in Columbia, Tennessee could get paid and have supplies. The money, said to be $100,000 in gold and silver coins was being transported in two wooden crates. Each of the crates were supposed to be 2 feet x 3 feet x 4 feet in size and they were being transported in a wagon.

As the group of men transporting the money neared Athens, Alabama the wagon became stuck in the mud of a “bog hole” and they had to stop to try to free it. As they tried to get the wagon free they were warned that a group of Union soldiers were on the way through the area and being afraid the money may fall into the hands of the enemy, they did what they thought best which was to bury the boxes of gold and silver.

This cache of gold and silver coins has supposedly never been recovered. According to the stories the treasure was buried about a half mile west of an old stream crossing which was about four miles north of Athens, Alabama in Limestone County.

Keep in mind the stream and the crossing would have been in the 1860’s so you will have to find some of the older maps of the area if you go looking for this one.

Oh yea, for those “believers” out there, there was not any mention of the K.G.C. or any elaborate vaults being involved in this cache. Just regular old Confederate soldiers trying to keep the money they had safe.

You might want to do a little looking into the size of the crates that were supposed to have been used to haul this treasure. Those mentioned in the story seem to be pretty big to move just $100,000 in gold and silver. Of course you are talking about a treasure that should weigh in at more than 300 pounds but it's also something that would fit in a couple of much smaller boxes.

North Dakota Wagon Train

Back in the 1800’s wagon trains were extremely susceptible to being attacked, generally by Indians, and these attacks are where several legends of buried treasure begin.

This article takes us to spot along the Montana and North Dakota borders. In 1864 a man named James Fisk was leading 200 men in an eighty wagon train to the gold mines of Montana. They were able to con the Commander at Fort Rice into giving them a small military escort to protect them from the Indians as they traveled.

On September 2, 1864 the wagon train ran into some problems when one of the wagons turned over in the gully of Deep Creek, about one hundred and thirty miles west of Fort Rice. When the wagon train stopped to upright the wagon the one and only Sitting Bull and 100 Indians attacked. The fight raged on for days and in two different locations a few miles apart. During the first attack at the location where the wagon had overturned several of the men and soldiers were killed and Sitting Bull was wounded, taking a bullet in his hip. I can just imagine how mad Sitting Bull was from one of the soldiers shooting him in the ass!

As the battle went on the survivors managed to make there way to where the rest of the wagon train had circled the wagons, about a mile from the overturned wagon. The Indians did not follow and they thought the attack was over. Unfortunately for them, they were wrong. Once they were on the move again and had traveled just a few miles the Indians attacked again. This battle was worst than the first and in total, the men in the wagon train fought the Indians for eighteen days. During the fight the Indians manage to snag a couple of wagons that contained rifles, ammunition, liquor and cigars. Nothing but the essentials!

What remained of the wagon train was rescued by a group of 900 soldiers that had been dispatched to the scene from Fort Rice. A few of the men were able to sneak away from the attack one night and had gone to Fort Rice to enlist the help of the military. By the time the military had arrived to help the men of the wagon train the men had built several sod walls to protect them from the attack. The men of the wagon train called their sod walls Fort Dilts, after a scout who was killed in the initial attack named Jefferson Dilts.

When all was said and done there were several men from the wagon train and several soldiers that had been killed along with six of the Indians and the wounding of Sitting Bull.
Now to the treasure part of the story; it is said that when the first attack started several of the men in the wagon train buried their money for safe keeping. One of these buried treasures was supposed to be $40,000 in gold coins that a man was traveling with so he could open a store upon his arrival at their final destination. More than one of these treasures were left behind either because of the death of the owner or because the rescuing soldiers didn’t want to stick around long enough to let the men recover what they had hidden.

If you go looking for this one the site of the main battle should be easy to find. There is a small marker identifying the site. You should be able to find it off of Highway 12 a few miles west of Rhame, North Dakota.

Hunting in foriegn lands

I like to consider myself an adventurous soul but there are some things I just prefer not to do. These days, hunting for treasure in a foreign country is one of those things I don’t think I would do unless of course it was Canada!

For those of you that don’t mind getting chased by the banditos or jailed by a government once you find something, you might find this article interesting. I would like to thank our good friend Homer for sending me the initial information for this article.

About thirty-five miles northeast of Bogota, Columbia lies a circular lake thought to have been a crater from a meteor strike. The area surrounding the lake was, and parts still are, the sacred lands of the Muisca. The Muisca of South America are consider to be the source of the legend of El Dorado or “the golden man“.

The lake, Laguna De Guatavita, was considered to be sacred and the Chief of the Muiscas made a ritual offering to the Lake Goddess on an annual basis. “Zipa” as the chief was called, would cover his body with gold dust, get on a ceremonial raft and paddle out to the middle of the lake. Once there Zipa would dive into the water and wash off all of the gold dust. Once he was clean, other worshipers from the tribe would toss in gold trinkets and jewels to make the lake goddess happy. And lets face it, what woman wouldn’t be happy with golden trinkets, jewels and a bunch of gold dust?

Sounds kind of hokey, doesn’t it? Well as hokey as it sounds it is a true story. Back in 1545 the Spaniards decided they would drain the lake and collect the jewels and gold. Lázaro Fonte and Hernán Perez de Quesada set up a bucket brigade to try to drain the lake of it’s water. They spent three months dipping water form the lake and were able to drop the water level about nine feet. This allowed them to recover about forty pounds of golden trinkets but the rest was still unattainable. I don’t know that a bucket brigade would have been the way I would have gone but I guess if nothing else, the Spaniards were tenacious!

In 1580 the Spaniards tried again, this time by cutting a notch into the rim of the lake. This allowed the water levels to drop about 60 feet where the Spaniards recovered even more treasure. Apparently none of these Spaniards had any engineering experience because very shortly after dropping the water level the notch in the rim of the lake collapsed, killing several people and ending this attempt to get the gold.

Jump forward a few hundred years to 1898 when an English company that was formed explicitly for the purpose of recovering the gold in the bottom of the lake decided they would try to drain the lake of all of it‘s water. This company dug a tunnel under the lake and to the center which allowed all of the water to drain out. This turned out to be a mistake back then because once the water was gone they were left with mud and slime more than four feet deep. They couldn’t explore the lake bed until this dried up.

Once the lake bed dried up they were left with another problem. It seems that the mixture of slime and mud was just the right consistency that when it dried, it was as hard as concrete! The company did manage to recover a small amount of gold and jewels but it was valued at only around $800.00. The company filed for bankruptcy and never returned to the lake.

So you see, treasures do exist, they just aren’t easy to find!!

The lake is once more full of water and the Columbian government refuses to let anyone else try to drain the lake. It would seem that if you were a skilled scuba diver with the right equipment a fortune may sit at the bottom of this lake if you don’t mind risking your life to get it. I have never been to Columbia but from what I have read it doesn’t seem like it is too American friendly right now. I can’t imagine what it would be like if you came back to shore with a boat load of gold, you might just join the gold dust at the bottom of the lake!

Context

Photo courtesy of James

The definition:
“surrounding conditions: the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place”

As treasure hunters or those just interested in treasure hunting, we all have seen or even taken photos and videos of different symbols and markers and have wondered; what do they mean? We have people from all over the country, actually from several different countries, that send us photos of different things wanting our opinion of what they mean. We try to give an honest interpretation of what we see but there are things that can’t be properly interpreted without knowing the context surrounding the symbols or markers.

Interpreting symbols and markers, no matter who left them behind, is about looking at them within the context that they were made. I may have tried to make this point before but I’m getting old and old people tend to repeat themselves a lot.

Did I mention that old people tend to repeat themselves a lot?

Looking at a symbol in context to me has two different meanings. First, the true definition as listed above means you have to look at the who and why of the symbols/markers. Having a good idea of who left the symbols will almost always give you the why they left the symbols/markers. This would give you a very good head start on what to do.

This means research. It’s rare that you can go onto a site with no prior knowledge of what you are looking for or who was there and work a site. It’s also poor judgment in my opinion to go to a site with a preconceived idea of who was there because this will no doubt cloud your judgment and your interpretation of any symbols or markers.

Different groups did things different ways and for different reasons. Although a lot of things can be like something else, such as symbols used by the military during the Civil War and symbols used by outlaws, other things will be completely different. What the Spanish did and why will be different from what the French did. Pirates, arggggg!, will do things differently than outlaws did, etc.

Once you have determined the who and why, it may be that the symbols/markers aren’t treasure related so you can discount that area and move on to something else. It could also be that there is something historical tied to the symbols/markers that you still may want to pursue, depending on what you are looking for. There are several reasons for symbols and markers to be left behind that aren’t related to treasure. You have to try to keep from jumping to any conclusions without doing your research first. After that, jumping to conclusions is part of the hunt, it’s just that a lot of the conclusions will be wrong and require you to rethink theories and interpretations until you hit upon the correct one.

If the symbols/markers are determined to be treasure related then you have to go to the (my) second meaning of context and look at the symbols and markers within the context of the area surrounding them. For the most part, carved symbols will be topographical or informational in nature. The symbols will be telling you to do this or go that way and look for this or that. This is why knowing the terrain around the area where the carvings were left is crucial. It’s all about context.

Even though the Spanish, outlaws, pirates, arrgggg! and the French, etc. all did things differently and for different reasons a lot of how they used the symbols will be the same. Carved symbols for the most part are…….. that’s right, I’m repeating myself again, but they will be topographical in nature. Most of the topography depicted in carvings will be small, especially with outlaw and Civil War stuff. By small I mean you are looking at “steps” or “moves” of 30-100 feet at a time.
Spanish “moves” will be bigger until you get close to the hole. Pirates, arrggggg! are a strange lot and each had some of their own “code” to give them the information they needed to find the booty they left behind. They had some great maps and carvings but some of them can be really strange and therefore difficult to interpret.

Things can change drastically when you are dealing with a carry around type map. The “moves” can be bigger and the context in which you look at the map may be different. By this I mean a carry around map can, and most likely will encompass a lot more area, maybe a mile or more of terrain. This changes the context of how you look at the map in that you are still looking at an area but the area is much bigger than with a carving. It’s still about the terrain, the who and the why but the terrain has gotten bigger and so will some of the “steps” or “moves”.
Treasure hunting can be difficult and confusing on a good day. Making it harder by not being prepared with the right information or looking at something in the wrong context will just make it even worse.

It’s not what you look at but what you see!

Happy New Year!!!!