Speaker 1: On Sunday, December twentieth, two thousand and nine, a hiker
Speaker 1: came across a vacant white jeep parked up at a
Speaker 1: trailhead in the foothills of the Mystical Superstition Mountains, roughly
Speaker 1: sixty miles east of Phoenix, Arizona. Over the years, the
Speaker 1: other Worldly Superstitions and its two hundred and seventy square
Speaker 1: miles of rocky cactus covered hills, canyons, and boulder strewn
Speaker 1: of royos, have proved an increasingly popular destination for intrepid
Speaker 1: hikers looking for something a little more challenging away from
Speaker 1: the beaten track. As such, it isn't unusual to find
Speaker 1: the odd car left parked up for days on end
Speaker 1: at any one of the many trailheads dotted throughout the area,
Speaker 1: but something about the loneliness of this one particular jeep
Speaker 1: and the thick layer of dust that covered it gave
Speaker 1: the hiker pause for thought. Things only became more alarming
Speaker 1: when the hiker came across an eerily abandoned campsite a
Speaker 1: little further up the trail that looked like it hadn't
Speaker 1: been used in days, though it had been disturbed by
Speaker 1: a recent storm. A significant stash of food, water, and
Speaker 1: personal belongings suggested that whoever had set the camp up
Speaker 1: had not intended to be gone from it for too long.
Speaker 1: Cynthia Burnet was at home in Denver, Colorado, the following
Speaker 1: day when she received a call from the Maricopa County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office inquiring as to the whereabouts of her thirty
Speaker 1: five year old son, Jesse Capon. A check on the
Speaker 1: license plate of the jeep returned Jesse's name, and given
Speaker 1: the circumstances, the police had been surprised to find that
Speaker 1: he wasn't on a missing person's list. As a teenage,
Speaker 1: Capon had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had dropped
Speaker 1: out of high school despite routinely scoring near the top
Speaker 1: of his class in exams. For eleven years, he worked
Speaker 1: the same job as a bellhop at the Sheraton Hotel
Speaker 1: in downtown Denver. In the years leading up to his disappearance, Jesse,
Speaker 1: who had few friends and struggled socially, worked every hour
Speaker 1: available to rack up enough holiday time to take an
Speaker 1: extended four week break from work. He told his mother
Speaker 1: only that he was planning to go trekking through Arizona's
Speaker 1: Tonto National Forest. The name is a little misleading, since,
Speaker 1: despite the pine forests found to the north, large swathes
Speaker 1: of its two point nine million acres, in particular to
Speaker 1: the south, are in fact comprised of rugged flat lands
Speaker 1: and cactus covered desert. So quite why Jesse would be
Speaker 1: camping at the southern edge of it in the Superstition Mountains.
Speaker 1: His mother had no idea. Then, the officer on the
Speaker 1: phone asked her if she'd ever heard of the Lost
Speaker 1: Dutchman's Mine, but the phrase meant nothing to her. It
Speaker 1: was only when she went to search her son's room
Speaker 1: that things started to fall into place. You're listening to Unexplained,
Speaker 1: and I'm Richard McClean smith. On Jesse's bookshelves and strewn
Speaker 1: across a desk, Cynthia found an extensive collection of books
Speaker 1: and maps, all relating to the same thing, the mysterious
Speaker 1: whereabouts of a mythical lost gold mining claim known today
Speaker 1: as the Lost Dutchman's Mine. Even before rumors of the
Speaker 1: Lost Dutchmen first snaked their way out of the Superstition's
Speaker 1: ethereal Sun's scorched crags and vast towers of jagged red
Speaker 1: rock the project high up out of the desert brush,
Speaker 1: like desperate fingers reaching up from the earth. The area
Speaker 1: was known as a cursed place, where any who dared
Speaker 1: to venture there would be lucky to come out alive,
Speaker 1: Like many who'd come before him. Jesse Capan had been
Speaker 1: ensnared by the golden radiance of the Lost Dutchman enigma,
Speaker 1: unable to resist the temptation that he might just be
Speaker 1: able to do the one thing that nobody else had
Speaker 1: done and find it. But there is good reason why
Speaker 1: you're just as likely to hear it. Spoken of as
Speaker 1: the cursed Lost Dutchman's Mind, the story is said by
Speaker 1: some to have all begun in December eighteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: with the arrival of a stranger appearing one night in
Speaker 1: the Mexican community of Phoenix, Arizona, on the brink of death.
Speaker 1: With his hands and feet torn up and his face
Speaker 1: bloodied and bruised. The man staggered forward, begging any one
Speaker 1: to help him. As he would later go on to explain,
Speaker 1: he and a friend had been prospecting for gold in
Speaker 1: the Superstitions when they came across a narrow gully, at
Speaker 1: the bottom of which was a small stretch of granite
Speaker 1: covered an inch thick in black sand. Looking down at it,
Speaker 1: they were amazed to see large flecks of gold glinting
Speaker 1: in the harsh sunlight. For years, rumors abounded among the
Speaker 1: Mexican community that the mountains, which only thirty years before
Speaker 1: were part of the nation of Mexico, were littered with gold.
Speaker 1: Believing they'd finally discovered the source of those tantalizing rumors,
Speaker 1: the men soon found themselves fishing out golden nuggets the
Speaker 1: size of beams from the sand as they raced to
Speaker 1: gather as much of it as they could. Then a
Speaker 1: strange look came over one of the men. As the
Speaker 1: other followed the direction of his stare, he looked up
Speaker 1: to see the silhouette of a woman staring down at
Speaker 1: them from high up on a ledge, who then swiftly disappeared.
Speaker 1: Moments later, she returned, flanked by over fifty men of
Speaker 1: the Native American Dinnat tribe also known as Apache. It
Speaker 1: is said that for the Dinnair, the superstitions are a
Speaker 1: deeply sacred place to be protected at all costs. As
Speaker 1: the men tried to make a break for it, they
Speaker 1: were quickly captured and taken off to a nearby cave, where,
Speaker 1: after hours of torture, the stranger's friend was killed. Driven
Speaker 1: by fear, the man had somehow managed to escape, then
Speaker 1: walked for what seemed like days and nights, stumbling through
Speaker 1: the treacherous landscape until he reached the safety of Phoenix
Speaker 1: or the gold they'd found he'd been forced to leave behind,
Speaker 1: and where he'd found it exactly. He could no longer remember.
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Speaker 1: In the wake of the California gold rush of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty eight to fifty five, thousands continued to prospect all
Speaker 1: over the United States and the hope of striking rich
Speaker 1: with its enormous uncultivated terrain newly up for grabs. Arizona
Speaker 1: in particular, the region encompassing the Superstitions, proved especially enticing.
Speaker 1: Though some fortunes were made, there is little mention of
Speaker 1: any lost gold claims on record until that is, September first,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety two, when a peculiar story appeared in the
Speaker 1: Arizona Weekly Gazette titled a Queer quest in search for Gold.
Speaker 1: It read missus Ew Thomas, formerly of Thomas Ice Cream Parlors,
Speaker 1: is now in the Superstition Mountains, engaged in work usually
Speaker 1: deemed strange to the woman's spear. She is prospecting for
Speaker 1: a lost mine, to the location of which she believes
Speaker 1: she holds the key. Missus E. W. Thomas, named as
Speaker 1: her husband, was, in fact Julia Thomas born Julia Kahn
Speaker 1: in December eighteen sixty two in Louisiana to German immigrant parents.
Speaker 1: Julia married Emil Thomas in December eighteen eighty three and
Speaker 1: moved to Phoenix two years later, where the couple ran
Speaker 1: a bakery and ice cream parlor. In eighteen ninety, however,
Speaker 1: Emil walked out on his wife, leaving her with a
Speaker 1: hefty mortgage and considerable debts to pay in relation to
Speaker 1: the business. Against all the odds, Julia, only twenty eight
Speaker 1: at the time, managed to sustain the business and over
Speaker 1: time began to rid herself of debt. When Emil was
Speaker 1: finally tracked down eighteen ninety one, Julia was granted a divorce,
Speaker 1: along with all the land, the store, and personal property
Speaker 1: she'd once owned with her husband. It is certainly strange, then,
Speaker 1: that only a year later she sold it all to
Speaker 1: venture into the mountains in search of untold riches, with
Speaker 1: seemingly little knowledge and zero experience in the field. As
Speaker 1: many have suggested, it all comes back to Thomas Waltz
Speaker 1: for reasons not entirely known. The year before her sudden
Speaker 1: foray into the mountains, Julia took in an elderly man
Speaker 1: named Thomas Waltz who'd lost his home in the Great
Speaker 1: Salt River flood. The river, which runs through Phoenix and
Speaker 1: to the north of the Superstitions, was the scene of
Speaker 1: a disastrous flash flood in February eighteen ninety one, destroying
Speaker 1: much of the small towns and communities that had grown
Speaker 1: up in its vicinity. After losing his home, the more
Speaker 1: or less destitute Waltz was then struck down with pneumonia
Speaker 1: and appears to have turned to Julia for help. The
Speaker 1: relationship would be short lived, however, when on the twenty
Speaker 1: fifth of October eighteen ninety one, the then eighty three
Speaker 1: year old Waltz succumbed to the infection and died in
Speaker 1: Julia's home. Within a year, Julia had sold up everything
Speaker 1: and struck out for the Superstitions. Julia Thomas would ultimately
Speaker 1: fail in her quest to find what she was looking
Speaker 1: for after spending three weeks in the mountains, assisted by
Speaker 1: two brothers, Reinhardt and Hermann Patrasche, but slowly over time,
Speaker 1: the strange story of what compelled her to go there
Speaker 1: eventually eked out from the three of them, as they
Speaker 1: each claimed. Despite Waltz's financial predicament at the end of
Speaker 1: his life, in one way, he wasn't quite as destitute
Speaker 1: as he seemed, as he apparently explained to Julia late
Speaker 1: one night in her home as he lay on his bed,
Speaker 1: only moments from death. It is said his tale began
Speaker 1: back when he was a younger man living in Sonora, Mexico,
Speaker 1: just south of Arizona, when he was introduced to someone
Speaker 1: named Miguel Parolta back in the early eighteen hundreds. The
Speaker 1: Parolta family are said to have established a number of
Speaker 1: mines in the Superstition Mountains, but when war broke out
Speaker 1: between Mexico and the United States in eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: the family faced the prospect of losing all of it.
Speaker 1: Fearing the imminent seeding of the territory to the States,
Speaker 1: the Paroltas gathered as many people, wagons and mules they
Speaker 1: could muster and swiftly headed into the mountains. However, after
Speaker 1: salvaging everything they could and sealing the mines behind them,
Speaker 1: shortly after setting off for home, the expedition team was
Speaker 1: attacked and killed by a tribe of Dinnare. Since the
Speaker 1: Dinare had no material use for the gold, it was
Speaker 1: simply left to lie where it fell. This story was
Speaker 1: apparently told to Thomas Waltz, who was also said to
Speaker 1: have been given a map by Miguel Parolta to help
Speaker 1: him recover the mines and their lost treasure. Sometime later,
Speaker 1: Waltz is said to have traveled to Tucson, Arizona, where
Speaker 1: he shared the story with a man named Jacob Weisser. Then, together,
Speaker 1: the two men ventured into the superstitions, equipped with Parolta's
Speaker 1: map and directions, and struck out towards Sombrero Butte more
Speaker 1: commonly known as Weaver's Needle, at the foot of which
Speaker 1: the entrance to the main mine was said to be
Speaker 1: low kated. After slogging their way through endless clusters of
Speaker 1: cacti and yuca under the baking sun, the men apparently
Speaker 1: came across three other men breaking rocks at the foot
Speaker 1: of a narrow canyon at the precise spot they'd been
Speaker 1: searching for, believing them to be Native American, Waltz and Weisser,
Speaker 1: who'd come prepared for just such a scenario, promptly opened fire,
Speaker 1: killing all three of them instantly. As one version of
Speaker 1: the story has it, the men in fact turned out
Speaker 1: to be Mexican and former employees of Miguel Parolta who'd
Speaker 1: come back to the mountains secretly to find the gold
Speaker 1: for themselves. As for the two Jacobs, after discovering one
Speaker 1: of Parolta's abandoned mines along with a significant stash of gold,
Speaker 1: they themselves were then ambushed by a group of Dinair.
Speaker 1: Both managed somehow to escape, who got separated in the process.
Speaker 1: Waltz managed to return safely back to Phoenix, but Thomas
Speaker 1: Fiser was not so lucky, having been mortally wounded. He
Speaker 1: made it only as far as a nearby village of
Speaker 1: the Native American Pima tribe. There, it is said he
Speaker 1: was taken in by former cavalryman and successful minor in
Speaker 1: his own right, John D. Walker, who owned a ranch nearby.
Speaker 1: A week later, Fiser died from his injuries. It isn't
Speaker 1: known if Waltz managed to bring any gold back from
Speaker 1: the Superstitions, or if he ever returned to try again.
Speaker 1: What is known is that in August eighteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: sometime later, Jacob Waltz effectively declared himself bankrupt and struck
Speaker 1: up a deal to sell all his possessions, including his home,
Speaker 1: for the modern equivalent of fifteen hundred U s. Dollars
Speaker 1: to a man named Andrew Stura. Part of the deal
Speaker 1: also required Sturah to look after Waltz should he ever
Speaker 1: become too old and infirm to look after himself. As such,
Speaker 1: it seems unlikely that Waltz had brought any gold back
Speaker 1: after the first attempt, being by then a tired and
Speaker 1: jaded sixty eight years old. It seems equally unlikely that
Speaker 1: he ever made it back there, if the mine had
Speaker 1: even existed at all before his death in eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: As rumors of the mine began to spread following Julia
Speaker 1: Thomas's failed attempts to find it, many began to question
Speaker 1: if it wasn't all one big hoax, or perhaps whether
Speaker 1: it wasn't a mine at all up there, but simply
Speaker 1: a stash of looted and abandoned gold also known as
Speaker 1: massacre gold, that Waltz and Weisser had discovered. Julia Thomas, however,
Speaker 1: remained convinced that the mine was there, despite being burned
Speaker 1: by her first attempt to find the mine, Julia Thomas
Speaker 1: continued to raise money and support for a second bite
Speaker 1: at the cherry, but was ultimately unable to return to
Speaker 1: the mountains. Then, in eighteen ninety four, perhaps wounded by
Speaker 1: accusations that she'd been sucked in by nothing but a
Speaker 1: tall tale from a dying deluded old man, Thomas took
Speaker 1: the extraordinary move to publish the exact details that Waltz
Speaker 1: had told her. Explaining all to the editor of Phoenix's
Speaker 1: Saturday Evening Review, she revealed where the mine could be found.
Speaker 1: It was, she claimed, located near a two room house
Speaker 1: that lay in the mouth of a cave on the
Speaker 1: side of a slope, near a particular gulch in the superstitions,
Speaker 1: just across the gulch, she continued, about two hundred yards
Speaker 1: opposite the house in the cave was a tunnel, well
Speaker 1: covered and concealed by bushes. This mine was the richest
Speaker 1: in the world, according to Dutch Jacob. Confusingly, Jacob Waltz,
Speaker 1: who was of German heritage, was called Dutch Jacob, owing
Speaker 1: to the fact that Dutch was an Anglicized version of
Speaker 1: the word Deutsch, meaning German in English. Hence the phrase
Speaker 1: lost Dutchman's Mine, as it would come to be known.
Speaker 1: Julia then offered also that some distance above the tunnel,
Speaker 1: a little further up the mountain, was a small shaft
Speaker 1: that led directly into the mine, from which you could
Speaker 1: easily reach the rich gold ledge inside. Once there, it
Speaker 1: was possible to simply pick flakes off the ridge of
Speaker 1: almost pure gold. In the years following Julia's incredible proclamation,
Speaker 1: many more attempts to find the mine were made, but
Speaker 1: despite some believing they'd got close, no one was able
Speaker 1: to claim it. Then, more than thirty years later, in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, one man finally did. Possibly. One lesser
Speaker 1: known fact about Unexplained is that it actually started life
Speaker 1: as a website built through square Space, which I heard
Speaker 1: about from an advert on one of my favorite podcasts.
Speaker 1: Having no idea where to even begin with publishing my own,
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Speaker 1: In many ways. Adolph Ruth's story is the archetype or
Speaker 1: tale of the American dream. Born in eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: Ruth is thought to have emigrated to the US from
Speaker 1: Germany around eighteen eighty in search of a better life
Speaker 1: for himself. In eighteen eighty eight, Ruth and his second wife,
Speaker 1: with whom he had two children, moved out to Kansas
Speaker 1: to become farmers. When this venture failed, he set up
Speaker 1: a barber shop and used his spare time to attend
Speaker 1: veterinary college, which in turn led eventually to a solid
Speaker 1: job working for the US Department of Agriculture Bureau of
Speaker 1: Animal Industry. But what really excited Ruth was the idea
Speaker 1: of lost treasure, in particular lost gold mines. In nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 1: he received a letter that would change his life for ever,
Speaker 1: sent by his then twenty six year old son, Erwin.
Speaker 1: It detailed an unbelievable story. Erwin, who despite having trained
Speaker 1: as a vet like his father, was working in far
Speaker 1: Texas managing a car dealership and had somehow befriended an
Speaker 1: officer of the Mexican Rebel Army, who were embroiled in
Speaker 1: an attempted revolution at the time. Having discovered that Erwin
Speaker 1: was a vet, the officer offered him a job trying
Speaker 1: to cure Texas tick fever in the livestock that his
Speaker 1: army were capturing during their various military excursions. With the
Speaker 1: fever eradicated, the livestock could then be sold to buy weapons.
Speaker 1: Irwin agreed to take the job. A few months later,
Speaker 1: while working in the rebel army's camp, he was apparently
Speaker 1: recognized by a prisoner who the army had recently captured
Speaker 1: who claimed to have once taught Spanish to Irwin at
Speaker 1: his high school. The man named Gonzalez, who was due
Speaker 1: to be executed, pleaded with Irwin to help him get
Speaker 1: his family back safely to Mexico. For payment, he was
Speaker 1: to ask Gonzales's wife to hand over a set of
Speaker 1: maps revealing a series of long abandoned minds that had
Speaker 1: once belonged to the Gonzalez family. Taking pity on the man,
Speaker 1: Irwin accepted the offer and Julie carried out the task.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, the man's wife gave him the maps in return.
Speaker 1: After conducting a preliminary scout of the area detailed in
Speaker 1: the maps, Irwin then wrote to his father, telling him
Speaker 1: that the landscape and natural way points of the place,
Speaker 1: an area located in the Brego Desert in California, correlated
Speaker 1: perfectly with the maps. On Wednesday, December seventeenth, nineteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: Adolf and Irwin struck out for the Brego Desert equipped
Speaker 1: with little more than their Model T Forward car. After
Speaker 1: getting caught up one too many times in the deep sand,
Speaker 1: Adolf growled the maps from the dashboard and jumped out
Speaker 1: of the car. Vowing to walk the rest of the way,
Speaker 1: after all, as he said, it didn't look that far
Speaker 1: away on the map. Despite his son's protestations, Adolf promptly
Speaker 1: disappeared over the horizon. The following day, he was discovered
Speaker 1: at the bottom of a canyon, having fallen badly and
Speaker 1: broken his thigh bone. The injury was so bad it
Speaker 1: required having his legs shortened to fix it, leaving him
Speaker 1: with a permanent limp. Five years later, he was forced
Speaker 1: to retire from his job due to the injury, all
Speaker 1: of which gave him more time to devote to his
Speaker 1: true passion, hunting for the lost minds. However, despite numerous
Speaker 1: visits to the Berego Desert, he and his son were
Speaker 1: unable to find the old Gonzales claims. It was sometime
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen twenties, while looking once more through
Speaker 1: all the maps they'd been given, that Adolf noticed a
Speaker 1: much smaller map that neither he or Erwin had paid
Speaker 1: much attention to before. After asking Gonzalis's widow about it,
Speaker 1: she explained that the map was in fact related to
Speaker 1: an entirely different set of minds that once belonged to
Speaker 1: her husband's cousins. The Paroltas. These minds, she said, were
Speaker 1: located somewhere in the Superstition Mountains. Back at his home
Speaker 1: close to Washington, DC, with a flush of excitement, Adolf
Speaker 1: consulted the scrapbook of notes and articles that he'd collected
Speaker 1: over the years concerning all the lost mining claims he'd
Speaker 1: come across and pulled out one of the articles written
Speaker 1: back in eighteen ninety four in the Phoenix Saturday Evening Review.
Speaker 1: It purported to detail the precise location of the Lost
Speaker 1: Dutchman's mine. According to one Julia Thomas, Adolf sat back
Speaker 1: completely dumb struck. His map and the article appeared to
Speaker 1: be describing the exact same spot. In mid May nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, despite protests from his wife and children, but
Speaker 1: then sixty seven year old Adolf Ruth set off in
Speaker 1: search of the great Lost Dutchman. After nine days of driving,
Speaker 1: he eventually pulled in to tex Berkeley's Quarter Circle You ranch,
Speaker 1: close to Bark's Canyon at the northern edge of the
Speaker 1: Superstition Mountains. The numerous ranch hands stared on quizzically from
Speaker 1: under the brim of their hats as Adolf limped clumsily
Speaker 1: from the stylish two door Essex he'd purchased for the journey,
Speaker 1: dressed in a full pinstriped suit with a steel brace
Speaker 1: clasped about his waist that ran all the way down
Speaker 1: to the heel of his injured leg. It was all
Speaker 1: Texts could do to stifle a laugh when the five
Speaker 1: foot five Adolf and now that he'd come seeking the
Speaker 1: lost Dutchman's Treasure and was looking for some one to
Speaker 1: escort him into the mountains from there, he said he
Speaker 1: would make the rest of the journey alone on foot.
Speaker 1: After realizing just how serious Ruth was, however, Techs reluctantly
Speaker 1: agreed to help. After fobbing him off for the best
Speaker 1: part of a month, Techs finally promised to take him
Speaker 1: up when he returned from a cattle drive he was
Speaker 1: due to participate in. No sooner had he left the ranch, however,
Speaker 1: Adolf drove to another of Berkeley's ranches, where he convinced
Speaker 1: two of his employees, Leroy Purnell and Jack Keenan, to
Speaker 1: escort him into the mountains instead in return for payment
Speaker 1: and the free use of his stylish car while he
Speaker 1: was gone. And so it was that early in the
Speaker 1: morning of June thirteenth, the three men mounted horses and
Speaker 1: trekked up into the mountains, where at Willow Spring in
Speaker 1: West Boulder Canyon, roughly two miles from Weaver's Needle. Pernell
Speaker 1: and Keenan left Ruth to set up his camp, agreeing
Speaker 1: to come back in a few days to check on
Speaker 1: his progress. It was four days later that TEXS. Berkeley
Speaker 1: returned to the ranch, horrified to find that Adolf had
Speaker 1: gone into the mountains without him. Scared for his safety,
Speaker 1: he demanded Pernell and Keenan go back immediately and pull
Speaker 1: him out, but when they arrived at his camp a
Speaker 1: few hours later, though most of Adolf's things were there,
Speaker 1: it was clear that the man himself had not been
Speaker 1: for some time. Over the next few days, Berkeley, Pernell,
Speaker 1: and Keenan searched endlessly for Ruth, but were eventually forced
Speaker 1: to alert local sheriff Chester Magee when they couldn't find him.
Speaker 1: On June twenty fifth, the sheriff led a posse into
Speaker 1: the mountains to continue the search, but they too left
Speaker 1: empty handed. A few days later, Adolf's son, Erwin, arrived
Speaker 1: to help, but despite everyone's best efforts, including the use
Speaker 1: of a spot a plane, and photographer donated by the
Speaker 1: Arizona Republic newspaper. Adolf Ruth was nowhere to be found.
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Speaker 1: six months later in December, when a team of archaeologists
Speaker 1: led by Odd Halsyth undertook a research trip into the
Speaker 1: Superstitions looking for evidence of early Native American civilizations. As
Speaker 1: a heavy rain began to fall, one of the team's dogs,
Speaker 1: who they'd brought to ward off mountain lions, darted off
Speaker 1: in the direction of a lone pala Verde tree at
Speaker 1: the top of a slight ridge. As it scrabbled about
Speaker 1: in the dirt, Hulesyth walked over to investigate. Smelling a
Speaker 1: sudden stench of something rotten in the air, he looked
Speaker 1: down in horror at the sight of a human skull
Speaker 1: half buried in the sand, with flecks of meat still
Speaker 1: clinging to the bone. When he pulled it out, he
Speaker 1: was even more horrified to find what looked like two
Speaker 1: huge bullet wounds on either side of the cranium. Though
Speaker 1: Halsyth had little doubt it was the skull of Adolph Ruth,
Speaker 1: he had it sent off to the Smithsonian Institute in
Speaker 1: the hope that someone there could provide a positive identification.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, Head Curator of Physical anthropology, doctor Alex Heard Litzka,
Speaker 1: confirmed not only that the skull was that of Roots,
Speaker 1: but also that the holes in it were indeed the
Speaker 1: result of a bullet related trauma used under A month later,
Speaker 1: on January eighth, Tex Berkeley and former sheriff Jeff Adams
Speaker 1: were conducting a final search for Ruth's remains when they
Speaker 1: came across a scattering of bones in loose, torn clothing
Speaker 1: about three quarters of a mile from where the skull
Speaker 1: had been found. Though the hands and feet were missing,
Speaker 1: most likely taken by scavenging animals, they were able to
Speaker 1: identify Ruth from his wallet, watch, and gun which had
Speaker 1: not been fired, that were also found at the scene.
Speaker 1: Along with the remains and personal possessions, they also found
Speaker 1: two documents, one being a topographic chart of the surrounding
Speaker 1: region and the other away bill on which a few
Speaker 1: notes had been written describing apparent directions to the lost mine.
Speaker 1: Along with those notes was also scrawled in Adolf's handwriting
Speaker 1: the phrase venni fiddi vici, which of course translates tantalizingly
Speaker 1: to I came, I saw I conquered one thing that
Speaker 1: was not found among Ruth's possessions or with his remains
Speaker 1: was the Gonzales Paroltar map, as it came to be
Speaker 1: known that he'd taken into the mountains with him to
Speaker 1: help locate the lost Dutchman's mine. This, along with the
Speaker 1: enigmatic line he'd written on the waybill, quite possibly the
Speaker 1: last thing he ever wrote, has led some to speculate
Speaker 1: that Ruth actually succeeded in finding the gold mine, but
Speaker 1: was then murdered as a result and had the map
Speaker 1: stolen from him. Some suspected Leroy Pernell and Jack Keenan,
Speaker 1: who in the end were forced to flee the region
Speaker 1: due to the stress, with Pernell moving back to Utah
Speaker 1: and Keenan heading back home to Oklahoma. Thirty five years later,
Speaker 1: Keenan's widow appeared to confirm the suspicion to private detective
Speaker 1: Glenn mc gill, who undertook his own unsuccessful odyssey in
Speaker 1: search of the mine in the sixties and seventies, telling
Speaker 1: him that, you know, my husband and his partner were
Speaker 1: never able to find the mine even with mister Ruth's maps.
Speaker 1: Mc gill took this as an admission that the men
Speaker 1: had murdered Ruth. Others, however, believed they simply stole the
Speaker 1: map when they found Ruth's campsite deserted. Doctor heard Litzger's
Speaker 1: assessment that Ruth was shot in the head has also
Speaker 1: been questioned, with some suggesting the injuries were in fact
Speaker 1: far more consistent with general weathering and more likely the
Speaker 1: result of the skull being buffeted against rocks as it
Speaker 1: was dragged about by rain, water and animals, especially since
Speaker 1: it had already most likely become separated from the rest
Speaker 1: of the skeleton after being scavenged by mountain lions. Though
Speaker 1: the absolute truth will remain a mystery, both the Maricopa
Speaker 1: and Pinal County Sheriff's Office concluded Ruth had died from
Speaker 1: natural causes. As for whether he found the mine or not,
Speaker 1: that two remains a mystery. One thing's for sure. He
Speaker 1: was certainly not the last person to try and find it,
Speaker 1: nor the last to lose his life in the process.
Speaker 1: Despite Adolph Ruth's death, his story seemed only to generate
Speaker 1: further interest in the lost Dutchman, and one after another,
Speaker 1: the people came in search of fame and fortune, hoping
Speaker 1: beyond hope to be the first to crack the mystery,
Speaker 1: and time and time again, many of them failed to
Speaker 1: make it out alive. All in all, it's rumored that
Speaker 1: as many as six hundred people have died searching for it,
Speaker 1: but still they keep coming. One day, in late November
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, three years after Jesse Capon's disappearance, members of
Speaker 1: the Superstition Search and Rescue Team, scouring an area of
Speaker 1: Tortier Mountain in the Superstitions, about half a mile from
Speaker 1: where Capon's white jeep and abandoned camp had been found,
Speaker 1: spotted a boot sticking out of a crevice about thirty
Speaker 1: five feet upper cliff face. Inside the crevice, attached to
Speaker 1: the boot, the rescue team discovered Capon's remains. It has
Speaker 1: been suggested that he simply slipped off the cliff after
Speaker 1: getting lost on the way back to his campsite in
Speaker 1: the dark. It has thought that Jacob Waltz, if he'd
Speaker 1: even been given the location of any such mine in
Speaker 1: the first place, most likely first discovered it sometime in
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties or seventies, then, for whatever reason, never
Speaker 1: went back. If so, Waltz's apparently intricately drawn out directions
Speaker 1: of how to find the treasure will also have been
Speaker 1: conceived around the same time. Some years later, in May
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven, only a few years before his death
Speaker 1: and Julia Thomas's unsuccessful efforts that appeared to have started
Speaker 1: the whole treasure hunt off, the Superstition Mountains were rocked
Speaker 1: by an almighty earthquake that shook the ground with tremendous violence.
Speaker 1: Anyone nearby at the time would have looked up in
Speaker 1: shock at the sight of huge slabs of rock falling
Speaker 1: from the jagged tops of the surrounding peaks, and any
Speaker 1: who ventured in soon after, particularly close to Weaver's Needle,
Speaker 1: near to where the mine was supposed to be located,
Speaker 1: would have found a landscape significantly changed from the time
Speaker 1: before the earthquake struck, the time in which Waltz is
Speaker 1: said to have so carefully laid out his instructions on
Speaker 1: where exactly the gold mine could be found. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy Unexplained and would like to help supporters, you can
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Speaker 1: featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on
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Speaker 1: All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the
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