Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, The
Speaker 1: Longest Road, we wound our way through the strange and
Speaker 1: mysterious tale of the Lost Dutchman's Mind. The story has
Speaker 1: grown more and more convoluted over the years and has
Speaker 1: captured many a colorful character in its web. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: it was impossible to include everything in such a short
Speaker 1: space of time, So I'd like to take this opportunity
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to sometime opera singer and
Speaker 1: full time Lost Dutchman enthusiast celest Marie Jones. Starting in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties, Jones spent over thirty years stalking
Speaker 1: the mountains, rarely seen without her trustee sorn Off rifle
Speaker 1: and pistol strapped to her waist, battling many a foe,
Speaker 1: both real and imagined in her epic quest to find
Speaker 1: the treasure. But sadly, just like everyone else, she too
Speaker 1: was eventually forced to concede defeat. It is also worth
Speaker 1: mentioning the Parolta Stones, a set of sandstone tablets engraved
Speaker 1: with what is purported to be a map leading to
Speaker 1: the location of the infamous mine, apparently discovered sometime in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. Though most believed the stones to be fake,
Speaker 1: some maintained they are genuine artifacts dating back to eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven that were created by a member of the
Speaker 1: famed Parolta family, upon whose apparent old abandoned mine the
Speaker 1: entire myth is founded. We should perhaps add two that
Speaker 1: this major aspect of the story is also heavily contested,
Speaker 1: since there is no concrete evidence to confirm the family
Speaker 1: had ever even mind in the Superstition Mountains. Jesse Capon,
Speaker 1: who tragic he died in two thousand and nine while
Speaker 1: looking for the treasure, was not even the last person
Speaker 1: to lose their life in the process. The year after
Speaker 1: his attempt, three men from Utah, forty nine year old
Speaker 1: Curtis Merwith, sixty six year old Arden Charles, and forty
Speaker 1: one year old Malcolm Meeks, also died after planning to
Speaker 1: spend three days in the Superstitions as they hunted for
Speaker 1: the gold. Their remains were found six months later, after
Speaker 1: all three of them failed to return home. Though there
Speaker 1: are numerous stories of lost gold and famed treasure hunts,
Speaker 1: with perhaps the Oak Island mystery being the closest. Certainly
Speaker 1: with regard to the cost of lives, none can really
Speaker 1: hold a candle to this most shaggy and enigmatic of tales.
Speaker 1: It does, however, give me an excuse to talk about
Speaker 1: one of my favorite lost treasure locations, a curious mystical
Speaker 1: place called Rein les Chateau. A narrow, dusty road leads
Speaker 1: to Rein les Chateau, a quintessential southern French village perched
Speaker 1: high on a hill roughly fifty kilometers from the border
Speaker 1: with Spain, surrounded by rich, verdant fields and rolling tree
Speaker 1: covered hills. This small commune that dates back to medieval
Speaker 1: times should, under normal circumstances be a place of relative obscurity,
Speaker 1: but Rein les Chateau is no ordinary place. For thousands
Speaker 1: of visitors each year, this quaint, humbled village has become
Speaker 1: a site of intense pilgrimage thanks to the emergence of
Speaker 1: tantalizing rumors connecting it to everything from supposed secret society
Speaker 1: the priory of Scion, to the ark of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: and even the Holy Grail itself. And at the center
Speaker 1: of it all, perched high up on a cliff at
Speaker 1: the northern edge of the village, lies the strange and
Speaker 1: beguiling Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. At its peak, over
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty thousand visitors were pouring into the
Speaker 1: village each year, despite having less than a hundred full
Speaker 1: time residents, as well as over seven hundred books or
Speaker 1: dedicated to unraveling its secrets. It has also inspired one
Speaker 1: of the world's best selling books of all time, in
Speaker 1: Dan Browne's The Da Vinci Code. Over decades, many lured
Speaker 1: in by Dan Brown's book as much as anything else,
Speaker 1: have gone to increasingly extreme measures, tunneling through the church walls,
Speaker 1: digging up basements and graves, and even resorting to explosives
Speaker 1: in their frenzied attempts to find whatever treasure it is
Speaker 1: they believed to be located there. So how did this
Speaker 1: simple settlement come to inspire such hysteria? The answer lies
Speaker 1: in one name. Baron Jay Sognier baronchet Sonnier was a
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic priest who worked at Reine le Chateau from
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five to nineteen oh five. When he initially
Speaker 1: moved there, he lived a fairly hand to mouth existence
Speaker 1: on a salary of seven hundred and twenty francs a year,
Speaker 1: worth something in the region of fifteen thousand US dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money. However, with each passing year, Sournier's spending
Speaker 1: began to increase dramatically, as noted in his accounts, going
Speaker 1: far beyond the reach of his meager salary. Reveling in
Speaker 1: this mysterious newfound wealth, the priest began to spend frivolous
Speaker 1: amounts renovating the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, which dates
Speaker 1: back to the eighth century and had been in poor
Speaker 1: condition for years. Lavish details and embellishments were added, such
Speaker 1: as ornate stained glass windows and extensions to the building's
Speaker 1: foot including a private residential villa just for the priest.
Speaker 1: Over the ten years of his residency, he is thought
Speaker 1: to have spent well into the tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: francs on the project, with some even claiming his expenditure
Speaker 1: ran up into the millions by today's standards. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just luxury adornments that the priest added to this
Speaker 1: peculiar place of worship. At its entrance, Sournier installed the
Speaker 1: chilling figure of Asmodius, a demon, its face contorted as
Speaker 1: if ready to inflict agony on any unsuspecting foe. This
Speaker 1: unusual choice for a church is also accompanied by the
Speaker 1: foreboding inscription terribilis est locus estate, which translates to this
Speaker 1: place is terrible in English. These ominous garnishes have led
Speaker 1: some to believe that the many symbols and details placed
Speaker 1: in the church by Sournier might actually contain hidden coats
Speaker 1: and naturally, as the priest continued to entertain lavishly with
Speaker 1: fine wines and finer food, but with no visible source
Speaker 1: of income, speculation about where it was all coming from
Speaker 1: exactly soon began to grow, and so it was that
Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, the Bishoprick investigated and held Soornier to trial. Sornier, however,
Speaker 1: refused to attend, claiming suddenly that the money had simply
Speaker 1: been gifted to him by unknown benefactors, though he failed
Speaker 1: to produce any evidence attesting to this. The rumors continued
Speaker 1: to spread, however, and soon some began to speculate that
Speaker 1: he'd actually found a long lost, buried treasure hidden somewhere
Speaker 1: in the depths of the church. It was also claimed
Speaker 1: that Soornier and his dutiful housekeeper Marie de Narnaud were
Speaker 1: witnessed digging in the church's cemetery at night, leading to
Speaker 1: allegations that they were in fact grave Robert and stealing
Speaker 1: from the dead. However, if the answers were to be found,
Speaker 1: they would not come from the man himself, who took
Speaker 1: his secrets to the grave when he died in nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: What makes a Murderer's Mind tick? Killer Psyche is a
Speaker 1: true crime podcast from Wandry that explores these types of
Speaker 1: questions about the crimes that killers and criminals commit. Killer
Speaker 1: Psyche covers high profile cases that shocked the world, and
Speaker 1: host Candice DeLong uses her five decades of experience as
Speaker 1: a clinical psychiatric nurse and FBI criminal profiler to dissect
Speaker 1: the motivations and behaviors of the most terrifying felons in history.
Speaker 1: And you'll definitely want to listen to a recent episode
Speaker 1: of Killer Psyche where Candice looks into the mysterious murder
Speaker 1: of Ted Ammon, a wealthy Wall Street financier. Ted had
Speaker 1: been going through a divorce with his wife of thirteen years,
Speaker 1: Generosa and child custody and millions in assets were at stake.
Speaker 1: Generosa and her new boyfriend Danny Pelosi were the prime suspects,
Speaker 1: but Generosa died of cancer before police could prove her involvement.
Speaker 1: In twenty oh four, Danny was convicted of second degree murder,
Speaker 1: but still maintains his innocence. How does hatred drive a
Speaker 1: person to murder the father of their children? Listen to
Speaker 1: Kill a Psyche on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you
Speaker 1: can listen to one Week and Free by joining Wandry
Speaker 1: Plus in the Wandry app Few had heard of the
Speaker 1: Sonier mystery outside the region until the nineteen fifties, when
Speaker 1: a man named Noel Corbou bought the church estate from
Speaker 1: Sournier's housekeeper, Marie Denarnaud, who'd inherited it when he died.
Speaker 1: Courbeu claims that Denarnaud teased him with numerous tales about
Speaker 1: the estate eight and Sonier's time there, even once telling
Speaker 1: him that she alone held the key secret to the
Speaker 1: vast treasure and promised to tell him all when the
Speaker 1: time was right, But then she suffered a seizure, rendering her,
Speaker 1: unable to communicate before she eventually died, taking her secrets
Speaker 1: to the grave too, and so Courbeu started to sow
Speaker 1: his own seats, telling stories to anyone who'd listened about
Speaker 1: the wealth of Rein Le Chateau, hoping to generate interest
Speaker 1: in a new restaurant that he'd opened on the estate.
Speaker 1: He claimed that in eighteen ninety two, Sonier found a
Speaker 1: collection of parchments and other riches during a refurbishment of
Speaker 1: the church, which were in fact part of Blanche de
Speaker 1: Castile's treasure of the French crown. De Castile was once
Speaker 1: Queen Consort of France by marriage to Louis the eighth,
Speaker 1: and his bounty was said to have been concealed at
Speaker 1: Rein les Otto. When King Louis was captured during the Crusades.
Speaker 1: Coorbou insisted that the parchments contained coded secrets that would
Speaker 1: cause unimaginable damage to the Catholic Church. Over the next
Speaker 1: ten years, Corbu's tales began to take root, evolving and
Speaker 1: growing with every new utterance, before eventually reaching a man
Speaker 1: named Pierre Plantart, renowned for his claims to be a
Speaker 1: direct descendant of the ancient French Merovingian dynasty, believed by
Speaker 1: some to be the true heirs of France. Plantart founded
Speaker 1: the Priory of Scion in nineteen fifty six, claiming his
Speaker 1: male led religious order was just the latest evolution of
Speaker 1: a secret society formed on Mount Zion in Jerusalem in
Speaker 1: ten ninety nine. The organization has claimed to have once
Speaker 1: counted Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton among its members,
Speaker 1: and was also intertwined with myths relating to the Knights
Speaker 1: temp All the while, as the story began to gain
Speaker 1: media attention, Plantart, along with select friends, continued to interweave
Speaker 1: stories of Rein le Chateau's loot with the mythology of
Speaker 1: his own Priory of Scion, hoping to further his fanciful
Speaker 1: claim that, as an apparent mere of Indian descendant, he
Speaker 1: was in fact heir to the French throne. Plantart even
Speaker 1: succeeded in forging the parchments that Sonnier is said to
Speaker 1: have found and had them placed in the French National Library,
Speaker 1: before the hoax was eventually discovered and the parchments removed
Speaker 1: when his accomplice admitted to assisting in the forgery. Despite
Speaker 1: being generally debunked in later years, the idea of the
Speaker 1: Priory of Scion and its convoluted tales of pure bloodlines
Speaker 1: continues to generate great excitement, also inevitably fueling a string
Speaker 1: of elaborate conspiracy theories. Over time, the story of the
Speaker 1: merrow Vingian dynasty became confused to even blending with a
Speaker 1: supposed lineage that goes all the way back to Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: and soon came the idea that the Holy Grail and
Speaker 1: the Ark of the Covenant were also part of the
Speaker 1: treasure hall at Reine le Chateau. As Dante once famously said,
Speaker 1: from a little spark may burst a mighty flame. If
Speaker 1: you recognize the priest's name at the heart of this story,
Speaker 1: it's likely you two are one of the millions of
Speaker 1: people who've read the Da Vinci Code. Indeed, this real
Speaker 1: life priest inspired the fictional character Jacques Sonier found in
Speaker 1: Dan Brown's story, a dark figure who works as the
Speaker 1: curator of the Louver and his head of the secret
Speaker 1: Priory of Scion. Today, it is almost impossible to deduce
Speaker 1: the real truth about Rein le Chateau, with many claiming
Speaker 1: it to be a place of great mystical energy, regardless
Speaker 1: of what you believe either way. Over a short period
Speaker 1: of time, this tale has transformed a sleepy village into
Speaker 1: a heartland of genealogical secrets and prophesized wealth. And with
Speaker 1: the story becoming so twisted and confused, its simple reality
Speaker 1: will never satisfy the ardent fortune seekers and conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: who want it to be so much more. Ultimately, what
Speaker 1: rein Le Chateau shows us is even the world's biggest
Speaker 1: hoaxes cannot shake the thrill of the chase. This episode
Speaker 1: was written by myself and Donna McKay smith. If you
Speaker 1: enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you
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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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Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
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