Speaker 1: History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Mental Flaws. One morning in early April, rangers at Sagamore
Speaker 1: Hill National Historic Site we're walking past a display at
Speaker 1: the Old Orchard Museum when they noticed that something was amiss.
Speaker 1: The display contained Theodore Roosevelt's uniform from his time with
Speaker 1: the Rough Riders in the Spanish American War, as well
Speaker 1: as his Coult Model thirty eight caliber double action revolver,
Speaker 1: or at least the guns should have been there, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't. At the time. It was relatively simple just
Speaker 1: to lift the case up without setting any kind of
Speaker 1: alarm and taking it. That's Jake Rosson's senior staff writer
Speaker 1: at Mental Flaws. That's exactly what someone did. This particular
Speaker 1: gun had a fascinating history even before it landed in
Speaker 1: t R's hands. It was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut in
Speaker 1: March and was sold to the U. S. Government, after
Speaker 1: which it ended up on the battleship Maine as ship property.
Speaker 1: It was still on board on February when the ship
Speaker 1: exploded in Havana, Cuba. Hundreds of men lost their lives
Speaker 1: in the blast, which was blamed on the Spanish and
Speaker 1: helped to push America into the war. The gun may
Speaker 1: have remained in a watery grave if not for Tier's
Speaker 1: brother in law, William S. Cowles, who was one of
Speaker 1: the commanding officers sent to Cuba after the explosion. As salvage.
Speaker 1: Divers brought up what they could from the wreck, and
Speaker 1: one of those items was a cold revolver. Knowing that
Speaker 1: tr was weapons Officia Nado, he gave it to him
Speaker 1: as a gift. When the Spanish American War broke out
Speaker 1: in eight Tier quit his job as Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 1: the Navy, signed up to fight, and shipped out to
Speaker 1: Cuba with his volunteer regiment. With him was the blue
Speaker 1: barreled Colt with a checkered wood handle. Roosevelt used the
Speaker 1: weapon in the Battle of San Juan Heights. Apparently he
Speaker 1: was able to take aim and shoot at at two enemies.
Speaker 1: One he missed one, he later wrote, he hit the man,
Speaker 1: fell over, and almost assuredly died. Well. Roosevelt, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: treasured the weapon prior to using it. After he used it,
Speaker 1: undoubtedly he considered it probably even more signifts again. Eventually
Speaker 1: the gun was inscribed on one side. It read from
Speaker 1: the sunken Battleship Maine and on the other July one
Speaker 1: San Juan carried and used by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Well
Speaker 1: he kept it in his personal possession until his death,
Speaker 1: and later on when his property as home became a
Speaker 1: historic site and part of the National Park Service, it eventually,
Speaker 1: like a lot of his possessions went on display, which
Speaker 1: brings us back to where we started, the empty display
Speaker 1: case at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Aaron McCarthy, and in this bonus episode of History Versus,
Speaker 1: we're going to explore this strange story which I first
Speaker 1: found out about when I visited Sagamore Hill for the podcast.
Speaker 1: I knew immediately that we had to write about it,
Speaker 1: so I put Jake on the case. So when something
Speaker 1: like this goes missing on National park lands, like, what's
Speaker 1: the next step? What do they do? When a crime
Speaker 1: takes place in a National park or on a National
Speaker 1: park site, it's technically federal land, and so the government
Speaker 1: usually gets in touch with park rangers UM and they
Speaker 1: frequently pass it on to an investigative unit. And in
Speaker 1: this case, the museum was able to reach out to
Speaker 1: park rangers who conducted an initial investigation, and eventually it
Speaker 1: made its way to the FBI. The gun had actually
Speaker 1: been stolen once before, back in the nineteen sixties, and
Speaker 1: fortunately whoever stole it uh seemed to get cold feet
Speaker 1: once they had taken that The gun was found not
Speaker 1: far from the museum, but had been discarded. But this
Speaker 1: time it was a little bit different in the sense
Speaker 1: that the museum really had no practical security features. There
Speaker 1: were no surveillance cameras, the glass case wasn't locked. In fact,
Speaker 1: as one National Park employee explained it to us, the
Speaker 1: case could be lifted and the lock just popped open.
Speaker 1: It wasn't going to be that difficult for someone determined
Speaker 1: to take the gun if they really wanted to. So
Speaker 1: once the FBI got involved, where did they even start
Speaker 1: in the search for suspects. When the stuff like this happens,
Speaker 1: investigators will often look at employees first, because a lot
Speaker 1: of times this can be the result of an inside job.
Speaker 1: The FBI eventually realized that no employee was at fault.
Speaker 1: With museum employees ruled out and a security system being
Speaker 1: installed in the museum, the FBI began going to gun
Speaker 1: shows and approaching gun dealers to see if they had
Speaker 1: cross paths with someone trying to sell the COLT, but
Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily optimistic about finding the gun that way.
Speaker 1: The gun one was really distinctive and therefore hard to sell.
Speaker 1: I think they probably felt that whoever took it was
Speaker 1: probably taking it for their own personal collection, and in
Speaker 1: that case, obviously, uh. They really weren't many leads to follow,
Speaker 1: which isn't to say that the FBI didn't get tips.
Speaker 1: They actually got a ton of them. In the time
Speaker 1: before the Internet. They would get phone calls. When email
Speaker 1: came about, they got emails, and sometimes the leads would
Speaker 1: be worth looking into. There was a rumor it had
Speaker 1: been seen in Europe, but really the only promising lead,
Speaker 1: which turned out really not to be promising it at all,
Speaker 1: was the idea that a gun with the same serial
Speaker 1: number had turned up in a buyback program in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: But when they looked into it more more thoroughly, they
Speaker 1: realized even though that done had the same serial number,
Speaker 1: it was a different model gun, and so they were
Speaker 1: essentially back to square one. As the reward kept creeping up,
Speaker 1: and eventually I think it it reached them. We're around
Speaker 1: eight and there's still no concrete leads. There's no one
Speaker 1: being enticed by a monetary compensation. And once you get
Speaker 1: ten or twelve years into the gun being missing again,
Speaker 1: this was back in you know. I imagine the FBI
Speaker 1: eventually felt like it was time to maybe put this
Speaker 1: on the back burner. But fifteen years after the gun
Speaker 1: went missing, there was finally a break in the case,
Speaker 1: one that may have been made possible by a divorce.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. More than fifteen years after Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt's Colt Revolver went missing from the Old Orchard Museum
Speaker 1: at Sagamore Hill, one of the park rangers began receiving
Speaker 1: phone calls from a man who said he knew where
Speaker 1: the gun was. That wasn't necessarily unusual, They had gotten
Speaker 1: many similar calls before. What was unusual was that the
Speaker 1: man kept calling. He wouldn't give his name, but he
Speaker 1: said he knew where the gun was, that he had
Speaker 1: seen it wrapped in a sweatshirt. He was able to
Speaker 1: disc ribe it's engravings. He said that he wanted it
Speaker 1: returned to the museum, but he didn't want to get
Speaker 1: anyone in trouble. The park ranger who tried to plead
Speaker 1: with him and even told him, look, just put it
Speaker 1: in a box and drop it in the mail and
Speaker 1: that will be that. But he couldn't really get through
Speaker 1: to the guy. Eventually, though, I think the man realized
Speaker 1: that he had to do something with the gun and
Speaker 1: he agreed to make contact with the FBI. The man
Speaker 1: who had been calling was named Andy, and he lived
Speaker 1: in Florida. It turns out he had been seeing a woman,
Speaker 1: and the woman, who knew that Andy was a history buff,
Speaker 1: approached him one day and said, look, I've got this gun.
Speaker 1: I belonged to Teddy Roosevelt, and you know, you might
Speaker 1: want to take a look at it. And essentially Andy
Speaker 1: came to realize it was stolen, came to realize that
Speaker 1: actually didn't belong to his girlfriend, but her ex husband
Speaker 1: and her husband had essentially kept it around the house,
Speaker 1: sometimes wrapped up in a sweatshirt, sometimes I tucked under
Speaker 1: the seat of a car. So basically, if that woman
Speaker 1: and her husband had not gotten divorced, the gun might
Speaker 1: still be missing. He's very possible. Yeah, The FBI approached
Speaker 1: Andy and asked him to retrieve the gun from his girlfriend. Again,
Speaker 1: he wanted to drag his seat a little bit and
Speaker 1: was reluctant about revealing the identity of his girlfriend, but
Speaker 1: being the FBI, they were rather persuasive with him. The
Speaker 1: gun was retrieved and authenticated, and in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: sixteen years after it disappeared, it was returned to Sagamore Hill.
Speaker 1: Eventually it took its place back in a case in
Speaker 1: the museum, one that was now much more secure. As
Speaker 1: for the man who took the gun, we'll call him
Speaker 1: Anthony T. He was charged with misdemeanor theft, which perhaps
Speaker 1: feels like a light sentence for someone who took something
Speaker 1: that belonged to a former president. Well, it's interesting because
Speaker 1: if you look at high involving valuable items, rare items, paintings,
Speaker 1: things of that nature, the punishment can be pretty severe.
Speaker 1: But with something like Roosevelt's gun, even though there has
Speaker 1: been evaluations placed on it that reached into the hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands, I don't know that there's any definitive way
Speaker 1: of placing a price on it. And additionally, the federal
Speaker 1: government doesn't really ensure, uh these kinds of things. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like the prosecutors looked at Anthony t. T
Speaker 1: situation and realized that he was not, by any means
Speaker 1: a professional thief, a career criminal um and decided to
Speaker 1: uh really let him off rather easily. He got a probation,
Speaker 1: he had to pay a sign and he had to
Speaker 1: perform a fair amount of community service. So the gun
Speaker 1: is back where it belongs. Questions still linger. No one
Speaker 1: seems to know why Anthony took the gun, although investigators
Speaker 1: have paused at it that it was an impulsive act.
Speaker 1: So Anthony t was at the museum and saw the gun,
Speaker 1: saw that there really probably wasn't any employee around, saw
Speaker 1: that the case could be easily manipulated, and uh, it
Speaker 1: was a crime of opportunity. Actually, one of the investigators
Speaker 1: essentially described it as a kind of artifact shoplifting. Was
Speaker 1: something done on impulse, and obviously something he came to regret.
Speaker 1: I think the irony really is the fact that Anthony,
Speaker 1: when he was charged with a crime, was charged with
Speaker 1: violating the American Antiquities Act in nineteen o six, which
Speaker 1: is basically a law stating that, hey, you know, he
Speaker 1: can't steal government property items of this sort artifacts. The
Speaker 1: president who signed the American Antiquities Act until law, Theodore Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another
Speaker 1: bonus episode of History Versus History Versus is hosted by
Speaker 1: Me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by me, with
Speaker 1: fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowe Berlante.
Speaker 1: If you want to find out more about this episode
Speaker 1: and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flaws dot com. Slash History
Speaker 1: Versus History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
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