WEBVTT - The Case of the Missing Colt .38 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:05.800 History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:11.719 Mental Flaws. One morning in early April, rangers at Sagamore 0:00:11.760 --> 0:00:14.560 Hill National Historic Site we're walking past a display at 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.800 the Old Orchard Museum when they noticed that something was amiss. 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.840 The display contained Theodore Roosevelt's uniform from his time with 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.280 the Rough Riders in the Spanish American War, as well 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:28.280 as his Coult Model thirty eight caliber double action revolver, 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:32.120 or at least the guns should have been there, but 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.920 it wasn't. At the time. It was relatively simple just 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.239 to lift the case up without setting any kind of 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:44.760 alarm and taking it. That's Jake Rosson's senior staff writer 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:49.680 at Mental Flaws. That's exactly what someone did. This particular 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:52.839 gun had a fascinating history even before it landed in 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:56.720 t R's hands. It was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut in 0:00:56.720 --> 0:01:00.280 March and was sold to the U. S. Government, after 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.120 which it ended up on the battleship Maine as ship property. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:07.520 It was still on board on February when the ship 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.400 exploded in Havana, Cuba. Hundreds of men lost their lives 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.920 in the blast, which was blamed on the Spanish and 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.560 helped to push America into the war. The gun may 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.240 have remained in a watery grave if not for Tier's 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.920 brother in law, William S. Cowles, who was one of 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.240 the commanding officers sent to Cuba after the explosion. As salvage. 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.640 Divers brought up what they could from the wreck, and 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.920 one of those items was a cold revolver. Knowing that 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:37.640 tr was weapons Officia Nado, he gave it to him 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.399 as a gift. When the Spanish American War broke out 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.800 in eight Tier quit his job as Assistant Secretary of 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:46.399 the Navy, signed up to fight, and shipped out to 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.120 Cuba with his volunteer regiment. With him was the blue 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.440 barreled Colt with a checkered wood handle. Roosevelt used the 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.960 weapon in the Battle of San Juan Heights. Apparently he 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.920 was able to take aim and shoot at at two enemies. 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:05.360 One he missed one, he later wrote, he hit the man, 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:10.800 fell over, and almost assuredly died. Well. Roosevelt, obviously, you know, 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.120 treasured the weapon prior to using it. After he used it, 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:21.760 undoubtedly he considered it probably even more signifts again. Eventually 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:24.919 the gun was inscribed on one side. It read from 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:29.519 the sunken Battleship Maine and on the other July one 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.359 San Juan carried and used by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Well 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:36.560 he kept it in his personal possession until his death, 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.640 and later on when his property as home became a 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:44.880 historic site and part of the National Park Service, it eventually, 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:49.600 like a lot of his possessions went on display, which 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.400 brings us back to where we started, the empty display 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.240 case at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. I'm your host, 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:59.160 Aaron McCarthy, and in this bonus episode of History Versus, 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.040 we're going to explore this strange story which I first 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.560 found out about when I visited Sagamore Hill for the podcast. 0:03:05.120 --> 0:03:07.200 I knew immediately that we had to write about it, 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:10.480 so I put Jake on the case. So when something 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:13.640 like this goes missing on National park lands, like, what's 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.120 the next step? What do they do? When a crime 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.320 takes place in a National park or on a National 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:24.079 park site, it's technically federal land, and so the government 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.840 usually gets in touch with park rangers UM and they 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.560 frequently pass it on to an investigative unit. And in 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:35.680 this case, the museum was able to reach out to 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:41.800 park rangers who conducted an initial investigation, and eventually it 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:45.240 made its way to the FBI. The gun had actually 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:48.560 been stolen once before, back in the nineteen sixties, and 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.920 fortunately whoever stole it uh seemed to get cold feet 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.720 once they had taken that The gun was found not 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.440 far from the museum, but had been discarded. But this 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.640 time it was a little bit different in the sense 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:06.400 that the museum really had no practical security features. There 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:11.120 were no surveillance cameras, the glass case wasn't locked. In fact, 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.120 as one National Park employee explained it to us, the 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:16.880 case could be lifted and the lock just popped open. 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.320 It wasn't going to be that difficult for someone determined 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:23.800 to take the gun if they really wanted to. So 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:27.919 once the FBI got involved, where did they even start 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:32.000 in the search for suspects. When the stuff like this happens, 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:36.040 investigators will often look at employees first, because a lot 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:39.080 of times this can be the result of an inside job. 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.080 The FBI eventually realized that no employee was at fault. 0:04:44.320 --> 0:04:47.520 With museum employees ruled out and a security system being 0:04:47.520 --> 0:04:50.600 installed in the museum, the FBI began going to gun 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:52.880 shows and approaching gun dealers to see if they had 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:55.960 cross paths with someone trying to sell the COLT, but 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.280 they weren't necessarily optimistic about finding the gun that way. 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.520 The gun one was really distinctive and therefore hard to sell. 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:05.760 I think they probably felt that whoever took it was 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:10.440 probably taking it for their own personal collection, and in 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:15.680 that case, obviously, uh. They really weren't many leads to follow, 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:18.720 which isn't to say that the FBI didn't get tips. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.800 They actually got a ton of them. In the time 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:24.880 before the Internet. They would get phone calls. When email 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:28.400 came about, they got emails, and sometimes the leads would 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.400 be worth looking into. There was a rumor it had 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:35.240 been seen in Europe, but really the only promising lead, 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:37.880 which turned out really not to be promising it at all, 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.080 was the idea that a gun with the same serial 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:44.960 number had turned up in a buyback program in Pennsylvania. 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:49.240 But when they looked into it more more thoroughly, they 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:52.160 realized even though that done had the same serial number, 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:54.360 it was a different model gun, and so they were 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:58.640 essentially back to square one. As the reward kept creeping up, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.520 and eventually I think it it reached them. We're around 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.120 eight and there's still no concrete leads. There's no one 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:08.840 being enticed by a monetary compensation. And once you get 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.559 ten or twelve years into the gun being missing again, 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.919 this was back in you know. I imagine the FBI 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:20.320 eventually felt like it was time to maybe put this 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:23.520 on the back burner. But fifteen years after the gun 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:25.799 went missing, there was finally a break in the case, 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.760 one that may have been made possible by a divorce. 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:35.480 We'll be right back. More than fifteen years after Theodore 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:38.440 Roosevelt's Colt Revolver went missing from the Old Orchard Museum 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.320 at Sagamore Hill, one of the park rangers began receiving 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:43.480 phone calls from a man who said he knew where 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:47.760 the gun was. That wasn't necessarily unusual, They had gotten 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.479 many similar calls before. What was unusual was that the 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:54.520 man kept calling. He wouldn't give his name, but he 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:56.640 said he knew where the gun was, that he had 0:06:56.640 --> 0:06:59.680 seen it wrapped in a sweatshirt. He was able to 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.920 disc ribe it's engravings. He said that he wanted it 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:05.160 returned to the museum, but he didn't want to get 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.239 anyone in trouble. The park ranger who tried to plead 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.680 with him and even told him, look, just put it 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:13.240 in a box and drop it in the mail and 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.160 that will be that. But he couldn't really get through 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:20.720 to the guy. Eventually, though, I think the man realized 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.240 that he had to do something with the gun and 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:26.400 he agreed to make contact with the FBI. The man 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:28.960 who had been calling was named Andy, and he lived 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.440 in Florida. It turns out he had been seeing a woman, 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.000 and the woman, who knew that Andy was a history buff, 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:40.360 approached him one day and said, look, I've got this gun. 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:45.560 I belonged to Teddy Roosevelt, and you know, you might 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:49.880 want to take a look at it. And essentially Andy 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.480 came to realize it was stolen, came to realize that 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:57.280 actually didn't belong to his girlfriend, but her ex husband 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.880 and her husband had essentially kept it around the house, 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.800 sometimes wrapped up in a sweatshirt, sometimes I tucked under 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:10.040 the seat of a car. So basically, if that woman 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.440 and her husband had not gotten divorced, the gun might 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:17.560 still be missing. He's very possible. Yeah, The FBI approached 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.840 Andy and asked him to retrieve the gun from his girlfriend. Again, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:23.000 he wanted to drag his seat a little bit and 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:27.320 was reluctant about revealing the identity of his girlfriend, but 0:08:27.960 --> 0:08:31.400 being the FBI, they were rather persuasive with him. The 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.720 gun was retrieved and authenticated, and in two thousand and six, 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.240 sixteen years after it disappeared, it was returned to Sagamore Hill. 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.120 Eventually it took its place back in a case in 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.840 the museum, one that was now much more secure. As 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.000 for the man who took the gun, we'll call him 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.440 Anthony T. He was charged with misdemeanor theft, which perhaps 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:54.600 feels like a light sentence for someone who took something 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:57.880 that belonged to a former president. Well, it's interesting because 0:08:57.920 --> 0:09:03.840 if you look at high involving valuable items, rare items, paintings, 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:07.600 things of that nature, the punishment can be pretty severe. 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.280 But with something like Roosevelt's gun, even though there has 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.240 been evaluations placed on it that reached into the hundreds 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.000 of thousands, I don't know that there's any definitive way 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:22.840 of placing a price on it. And additionally, the federal 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.960 government doesn't really ensure, uh these kinds of things. So, uh, 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:31.599 it seems like the prosecutors looked at Anthony t. T 0:09:31.840 --> 0:09:36.040 situation and realized that he was not, by any means 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:41.120 a professional thief, a career criminal um and decided to 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:45.840 uh really let him off rather easily. He got a probation, 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:47.920 he had to pay a sign and he had to 0:09:48.760 --> 0:09:52.520 perform a fair amount of community service. So the gun 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:56.280 is back where it belongs. Questions still linger. No one 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.600 seems to know why Anthony took the gun, although investigators 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:01.640 have paused at it that it was an impulsive act. 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:06.600 So Anthony t was at the museum and saw the gun, 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:12.120 saw that there really probably wasn't any employee around, saw 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:17.400 that the case could be easily manipulated, and uh, it 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.040 was a crime of opportunity. Actually, one of the investigators 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:26.839 essentially described it as a kind of artifact shoplifting. Was 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.760 something done on impulse, and obviously something he came to regret. 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.360 I think the irony really is the fact that Anthony, 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.320 when he was charged with a crime, was charged with 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:46.280 violating the American Antiquities Act in nineteen o six, which 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.000 is basically a law stating that, hey, you know, he 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:56.560 can't steal government property items of this sort artifacts. The 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:01.240 president who signed the American Antiquities Act until law, Theodore Roosevelt. 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:07.240 We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:11.880 bonus episode of History Versus History Versus is hosted by 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.640 Me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by me, with 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:18.920 fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.840 Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.920 The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowe Berlante. 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:28.240 If you want to find out more about this episode 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.680 and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flaws dot com. Slash History 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.360 Versus History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:45.800 and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.840 visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:50.440 you listen to your favorite shows.