# The Treasure Hunt that Broke America (Part 1)

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 7 Nov 2025, 38 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/06cdf078-65ea-4eb4-9301-b38c010e3715/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

Forrest Fenn never does things the regular way. Despite no formal training and little knowledge of art, he becomes a millionaire gallery owner. An outsider by nature, Fenn’s charm, audacity, and disregard for convention earns him both wealth and respect. When a streak of bad luck threatens to destroy his empire, Fenn dreams up an audacious final act. He'll mastermind the greatest treasure hunt America has ever known. As the legend spreads, and gold fever grips the nation, Fenn begins to lose control. The story of Forrest Fenn's treasure hunt will continue next week. Find "Who Can You Trust?" by Rachel Botsman (19:45), on Apple Books or where ever you get your audiobooks. This episode discusses death by suicide. If you are suffering emotional distress or having suicidal thoughts, support is available - for example, from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US, or the Samaritans in the UK on 116 123 Read more about Tim's work at http://timharford.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin a warning before we start. This cautionary tale discusses
[0:23] Speaker 1: death by suicide if you're suffering emotional distress or you're
[0:27] Speaker 1: having suicidal thoughts. Support is available, for example, from the
[0:31] Speaker 1: nine eight eight Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In the US
[0:39] Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, Major Forest Fenn is leading a group
[0:45] Speaker 1: of fighter planes over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Their
[0:48] Speaker 1: mission bomb the trail and the North Vietnamese troops traveling
[0:53] Speaker 1: along it from Laos. Inside his cramped cockpit, the smell
[0:59] Speaker 1: of hydraulic fluid mingles with sweat, mildew, and the stench
[1:05] Speaker 1: of burned wiring. Beneath the plane, a jongle blurs into
[1:10] Speaker 1: a sea of green. Major Fen is under fire as
[1:15] Speaker 1: bullets tear into his canopy. The plane starts burning around him.
[1:20] Speaker 1: He realizes, with a further jolt of horror that the
[1:23] Speaker 1: gunfire might have damaged the plane's ejection system. Will he
[1:28] Speaker 1: burn to a crisp with his aircraft. The plane holds
[1:32] Speaker 1: together just long enough for Major Fen to get clear
[1:36] Speaker 1: of the action. He steals himself and pulls the ejection lever.
[1:42] Speaker 1: The bullet riddled canopy tears away on the slipstream, and
[1:45] Speaker 1: the pilot punches high into the air. His spine is
[1:49] Speaker 1: being crushed. His vision blurs. Suddenly, his neck whips forward
[1:55] Speaker 1: and he slows, the harness biting into his body. His
[2:00] Speaker 1: parachute is deploying. As he hangs on the breeze. Major
[2:05] Speaker 1: Fen watches his now pilotless plane ooze into a cliff
[2:10] Speaker 1: face and explode. He keeps falling through the air, lurching
[2:17] Speaker 1: towards the tree tops and down to the humid jungle.
[2:21] Speaker 1: Eighteen inches from the ground. He finally comes to a halt,
[2:26] Speaker 1: suspended from creaking branches. Enormous orchids tower above him, climbing
[2:34] Speaker 1: the trunks of gargantuan trees. What's that sound? Major Fenn
[2:41] Speaker 1: can hear something scuttling and skulking on the forest floor.
[2:46] Speaker 1: He knows there are tigers and cobras in the jungle.
[2:51] Speaker 1: The North Vietnamese patrol will be looking for him too.
[2:54] Speaker 1: As they find him, he'll be tortured. Nightfalls drawing its
[3:02] Speaker 1: cloak of darkness around the stranded pilot. I'm Tim Harford,
[3:09] Speaker 1: and you're listening to cautionary tales. The crew from the
[3:38] Speaker 1: US Army Corps of Engineers found the man's body. He
[3:44] Speaker 1: had been out in the wilderness for so long that
[3:46] Speaker 1: his flesh had given way to bone, and his skeletal
[3:50] Speaker 1: remains were tangled in the undergrowth. The body was removed,
[3:55] Speaker 1: and dental records eventually confirmed what the authorities already suspected.
[4:02] Speaker 1: The dead man was a treasure hunter, and he had
[4:06] Speaker 1: been looking for a box of gold and jewel said
[4:10] Speaker 1: to be hidden somewhere in the wilds of the American West.
[4:14] Speaker 1: For this was not Vietnam, but the Rocky Mountains. Yet
[4:20] Speaker 1: there was a connection between the stranded pilot and the
[4:24] Speaker 1: dead treasure hunter. It was Major Forest Fenn who'd hidden
[4:29] Speaker 1: the box of gold and jewels. This dead treasure hunter
[4:35] Speaker 1: was one of many thousands of people who hung on
[4:39] Speaker 1: fens every word, and who trusted him enough to head
[4:45] Speaker 1: into the wilderness on his promise of treasure and glory.
[4:56] Speaker 1: Forest Fenn was born in Texas in nineteen thirty. He
[5:01] Speaker 1: saw the devastation of the Great Depression, but his school
[5:04] Speaker 1: principal father kept steady employment and the family was shield
[5:09] Speaker 1: from the worst of it. The Fens were of modest means,
[5:13] Speaker 1: but they had enough money to go on vacation each year.
[5:16] Speaker 1: Every summer they would pile into their Chevy and drive
[5:20] Speaker 1: sixteen hundred miles to West Yellowstone, Montana, on the edge
[5:25] Speaker 1: of Yellowstone National Park. Forest relished these adventures and he
[5:30] Speaker 1: got to know the rocky mountains like the back of
[5:33] Speaker 1: his hand, hiking in high pine forests, swimming in warm
[5:38] Speaker 1: mountain springs, and fishing for brown trout in fast flowing streams.
[5:46] Speaker 1: At home in Texas, too, Forest felt the pull of adventure.
[5:51] Speaker 1: He loved collecting whatever treasures he could find. String, bottle caps,
[5:56] Speaker 1: and marbles all appealed to his magpie sensibilities. He and
[6:01] Speaker 1: his father, Marvin would scour the local creek beds for
[6:05] Speaker 1: trinkets like beads and old pieces of pottery. He found
[6:09] Speaker 1: his first arrowhead at the age of nine, and it
[6:13] Speaker 1: remained his most prized possession. Grab every banana, Marvin would
[6:20] Speaker 1: tell her rather confused young Forest on these excursions. One day,
[6:25] Speaker 1: he expanded on this maxim Son, the train doesn't go
[6:31] Speaker 1: by that banana tree but one time, so you reach
[6:35] Speaker 1: out as far as you can. Every banana you don't
[6:38] Speaker 1: grab is a banana you'll never have. Father and son
[6:46] Speaker 1: came together on these quests that most of the time
[6:50] Speaker 1: Forrest felt his poor grades were a disappointment to Marvin.
[6:56] Speaker 1: I didn't think I was very smart, but I didn't
[6:59] Speaker 1: have to be smart to figure out that my parents
[7:02] Speaker 1: weren't really proud of me, he said. Forrest graduated just
[7:15] Speaker 1: but the pipeline of high school to college to work
[7:19] Speaker 1: wasn't for him. For a while, he pretended to be
[7:23] Speaker 1: enrolled at Texas A and M University with his friends.
[7:27] Speaker 1: It took about four days for the registrar to catch
[7:30] Speaker 1: him in his life. Feeling lost and worthless, he fled
[7:35] Speaker 1: the university in tears. What he really wanted, he decided,
[7:43] Speaker 1: was to be a pilot in the Air Force. Forest
[7:47] Speaker 1: knew that this was the domain of academic high achievers,
[7:51] Speaker 1: but he also knew that when you set out on
[7:53] Speaker 1: a journey, there was usually more than one way to
[7:56] Speaker 1: reach your destination, and so Forrest enrolled at Radar Mechanics
[8:01] Speaker 1: School on an Air Force base in Mississippi. After learning
[8:06] Speaker 1: all about how to repair and maintain radar system, he
[8:10] Speaker 1: was eventually accepted into pilot training in December nineteen fifty three.
[8:15] Speaker 1: With his training complete, he married his high school sweetheart,
[8:20] Speaker 1: Peggy gene Proctor. They had two daughters of the life
[8:24] Speaker 1: was good, but domesticity did nothing to curb Forest's craving
[8:29] Speaker 1: for adventure. When the Air Force took him to Europe,
[8:33] Speaker 1: he grabbed every banana in Italy. Forest rode the train
[8:40] Speaker 1: from Naples to the ruins of Pompeii and secretly sifted
[8:44] Speaker 1: to volcanic cinders for archaeological treasure. He dove in the
[8:50] Speaker 1: turquoise waters off Sabratha and Libya, once a Phoenician trading post.
[8:56] Speaker 1: In the quiet and cool of the deep, he spotted
[9:00] Speaker 1: something intriguing and unwieldy. He dislodged the object a little,
[9:06] Speaker 1: then got out of the water, tied a rope to
[9:08] Speaker 1: his jeep, and hauled it up. Forest was astonished to
[9:15] Speaker 1: find that it was an ancient amphora filled with bronze coins.
[9:21] Speaker 1: He ventured to the Sahara, too, where he unearthed eight
[9:25] Speaker 1: thousand year old spear points amid the remnants of hand
[9:29] Speaker 1: grenades and burned out tanks. Back in the United States,
[9:35] Speaker 1: Forest's hunger for beautiful, storied objects became, in his own words, insatiable.
[9:44] Speaker 1: Teaching on an Air Force base in Arizona, he learned
[9:47] Speaker 1: how to read the patterns of cacti in the desert
[9:50] Speaker 1: for possible ruins underneath. He traversed canyons in search of
[9:56] Speaker 1: hidden caves where Native American jewelry and art might be stockpiled,
[10:02] Speaker 1: and he traded his artifacts, converting a bracelet into six rings,
[10:07] Speaker 1: and those rings into a necklace and an bracelet, and
[10:10] Speaker 1: so on. It was on December twentieth, near the end
[10:22] Speaker 1: of his tour, that Forest was shot down and spent
[10:26] Speaker 1: the night in the jungle. As he listened to the
[10:30] Speaker 1: rhythmic croak of the tree frogs and waited to be rescued,
[10:34] Speaker 1: he began to reflect on his time in Vietnam and
[10:38] Speaker 1: on what had been doing there. At dawn, his forward
[10:43] Speaker 1: air controller found him, and a jolly green Giant helicopter
[10:47] Speaker 1: lifted him up and away to a US Air Force
[10:50] Speaker 1: base in Thailand, where he had a cup of coffee
[10:53] Speaker 1: and some scrambled eggs. He also called Peggy and told
[10:57] Speaker 1: her not to worry about the telegram she had just
[10:59] Speaker 1: received declaring him missing. Later, it wasn't the threat of
[11:05] Speaker 1: capture that stayed with Forest, but the peace of the
[11:08] Speaker 1: jungle and the imperative to hold his nerve in the
[11:12] Speaker 1: face of the unknown. Forrest was awarded both a purple
[11:18] Speaker 1: heart and a silver Star for his bravery. But something
[11:22] Speaker 1: shifted in him after Vietnam, or perhaps something that had
[11:26] Speaker 1: always been inside him pushed to the surface. He started
[11:32] Speaker 1: having nightmares about how many people he had killed in Vietnam.
[11:36] Speaker 1: When the Air Force offered him a promotion, he knew
[11:39] Speaker 1: it was time to leave. I wanted the world to
[11:43] Speaker 1: stop and let me out, he reflected. Driving away from
[11:48] Speaker 1: base for the last time, he said, he pulled up
[11:51] Speaker 1: beside a field, climbed over the fence, and threw his
[11:55] Speaker 1: wristwatch as far as he could into the open brush.
[11:59] Speaker 1: It was a rejection of the regimented world he had
[12:02] Speaker 1: inhabited for the last twenty years, and he never wore
[12:06] Speaker 1: a watch again. Forrest decided he wanted to go somewhere
[12:14] Speaker 1: he could wear hush puppies and blue jeans and still
[12:18] Speaker 1: make a living. It was nineteen seventy two and he'd
[12:22] Speaker 1: heard about a bohemian city with a burgeoning art scene.
[12:28] Speaker 1: So he and Peggy packed their daughters into the car
[12:32] Speaker 1: and headed west as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although he
[12:39] Speaker 1: had never bought a piece of art before and had
[12:42] Speaker 1: no education in the art world, he decided to start
[12:45] Speaker 1: a gallery. Before long, Forest Fenn was a millionaire. Cautionary
[12:53] Speaker 1: tales will return in Santa Fe. Forest used his retirement
[13:08] Speaker 1: pay to buy an all Adobe house, and the family
[13:11] Speaker 1: slept on the floor while he renovated and added to
[13:14] Speaker 1: the building. This was to be his gallery, as Forrest
[13:20] Speaker 1: saw it. The fact that he hadn't been educated at
[13:22] Speaker 1: a prestigious liberal arts college or worked for a big
[13:25] Speaker 1: auction house set him apart and gave him an edge.
[13:30] Speaker 1: The art world considered cash to be crude, dirty, but
[13:35] Speaker 1: making money, and lots of it, was Forest's chief objective.
[13:41] Speaker 1: Art is a business to me, not a religion, he declared.
[13:46] Speaker 1: Whether art was just business for Forest is debatable. He
[13:50] Speaker 1: craved rare and fascinating objects, but he certainly kept a
[13:55] Speaker 1: close eye on his profit margins, and he reveled in
[13:58] Speaker 1: doing things his own way. He displayed please touch signs
[14:03] Speaker 1: in the gallery, and when students visited on field trips,
[14:07] Speaker 1: he let them feel the old paint on a portrait
[14:10] Speaker 1: of George Washington, valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
[14:15] Speaker 1: He owned everything in the gallery, nothing was there on commission.
[14:20] Speaker 1: In this way, I have complete control of the work,
[14:24] Speaker 1: he told the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper. Of course,
[14:29] Speaker 1: Forest encountered critics, people who were cynical about his dearth
[14:34] Speaker 1: of traditional credentials. He met them with unassailable confidence. It
[14:39] Speaker 1: doesn't matter who you are. It only matters who they
[14:42] Speaker 1: think you are. It's true in Hollywood, in politics, and
[14:47] Speaker 1: it's true with a painting. Forest spun yarns about his
[14:51] Speaker 1: outrageous treasure hunting exploits in Europe, Africa, and the American West,
[14:57] Speaker 1: and he kept a pair of pet alligators in the
[14:59] Speaker 1: pond next to the gallery. He named them Beowulf and Elvis,
[15:05] Speaker 1: and locals chuckled that the gators bore a striking resemblance
[15:09] Speaker 1: to their owner. In short, Forest styled himself as an eccentric,
[15:15] Speaker 1: but he also made sure to tell the press about
[15:18] Speaker 1: his time in the Air Force and the three hundred
[15:21] Speaker 1: plus missions he had flown in Vietnam. People admire veterans,
[15:26] Speaker 1: and they appreciate their sense of honor. His gallery inventory
[15:33] Speaker 1: included some of the artifacts he had gathered over the years,
[15:36] Speaker 1: but he acquired paintings and bronzes too. Here Forest thought big.
[15:43] Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy five, he hustled his way into the
[15:46] Speaker 1: Soviet Union and negotiated with the Ministry of Culture to
[15:50] Speaker 1: collect paintings for a celebrated show of Soviet and American art.
[15:55] Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy six, just four years after his arrival
[15:58] Speaker 1: in Santa Fe, Forest Fenn had one of the most
[16:01] Speaker 1: successful galleries in the city, and he employed fifteen people.
[16:07] Speaker 1: There were guesthouses at the gallery. Celebrities were invited to
[16:10] Speaker 1: stay free of charge. Steve Martin and Cher came to visit,
[16:15] Speaker 1: and soon Robert Redford was a customer. Stephen Spielberg brought
[16:19] Speaker 1: a Charles Russell Broms from Forrest. Ethel Kennedy, widow of Bobby,
[16:25] Speaker 1: was in raptures to singer Andy Williams about Fenn galleries,
[16:30] Speaker 1: so much so that Williams also paid Forrest a visit.
[16:35] Speaker 1: Forrest didn't belong to the elite, but he recognized that
[16:38] Speaker 1: he could borrow their credibility, and he took that credibility
[16:43] Speaker 1: all the way to the bank. Soon the gallery was
[16:47] Speaker 1: grossing around six million dollars each year. Along the way,
[16:52] Speaker 1: Forrest also ruffled some feathers. In nineteen eighty one, an
[16:58] Speaker 1: advert appeared in newspapers all over the world. A collection
[17:02] Speaker 1: of paintings by Elmeer de Hory was for sale. De Hoy,
[17:07] Speaker 1: who died in nineteen sive seventy six, had been one
[17:10] Speaker 1: of the most successful art fraudsters of all time. He
[17:15] Speaker 1: had a flare for the modern masters and had forged
[17:19] Speaker 1: over a thousand pieces, including Picassos, Matisis and Moduliani's, and
[17:25] Speaker 1: inserted them into the art market. This gave Forest an idea.
[17:31] Speaker 1: A fake Picasso is only fraudulent if you sell it
[17:34] Speaker 1: as a Picasso, but if you're upfront about its provenance,
[17:38] Speaker 1: it's both a faithful copy of a beloved masterpiece and
[17:42] Speaker 1: a beautiful piece of dark history. The Unorthodox Art Dealer Club,
[17:47] Speaker 1: together with former Texas Governor John Connolly, and bought up
[17:52] Speaker 1: the cash of Dehores. Some prospective customers were outraged when
[17:59] Speaker 1: they learned the paintings were counterfeit. If you like it
[18:03] Speaker 1: less because it's a fake, who's the fraud now, Forest
[18:07] Speaker 1: parried gleefully. It was a strategy that worked, and he
[18:11] Speaker 1: sold the Dehories on for a huge sum. It wasn't
[18:17] Speaker 1: all plain sailing. Over the years, Forest was raided twice.
[18:23] Speaker 1: The Bureau of Land Management and the FBI both believed
[18:26] Speaker 1: that he had illegally looted precious items from protected lands,
[18:32] Speaker 1: but no charges were filed against Forest, and he roundly
[18:36] Speaker 1: criticized the authorities for these investigations. In a few short years,
[18:43] Speaker 1: Forest Fenn had gone from Air Force retiree to wildly
[18:48] Speaker 1: successful art and antiquities mogul. What was his secret? I've
[18:54] Speaker 1: always thought of myself as one who plays monopoly, Forest
[18:59] Speaker 1: told the Celebrity Weekly People. It was true that Forest
[19:03] Speaker 1: had rolled the dice and worked his way up from scratch,
[19:07] Speaker 1: but there was more to his success than willingness to
[19:09] Speaker 1: take a risk. Forest understood how to win the trust
[19:14] Speaker 1: of those around him, and how to spin that trust
[19:19] Speaker 1: into gold. Trust is the condition that enables all of
[19:27] Speaker 1: us to face uncertainty. As the author of Who Can
[19:31] Speaker 1: You Trust? Rachel Botsman has noted, it's a confident relationship
[19:36] Speaker 1: with the unknown that makes trust a kind of social glue.
[19:42] Speaker 1: It enables acts of exchange and cooperation, both big and small,
[19:46] Speaker 1: and it keeps economies and societies moving. All businesses draw
[19:52] Speaker 1: on trust, But Forrest had understood something key about his own.
[19:58] Speaker 1: In asking people to believe in the authenticity and value
[20:03] Speaker 1: of his wares, he was asking them to trust him.
[20:08] Speaker 1: What forest' fenn was selling first and foremost was Forest Fenn.
[20:15] Speaker 1: It is curious, though, that people did trust Forest. He
[20:19] Speaker 1: wasn't an archaeologist, he didn't hold a degree in art history.
[20:24] Speaker 1: He liked a joke, but it wasn't always obvious that
[20:27] Speaker 1: his jokes were totally benign. He'd been known to bend
[20:31] Speaker 1: the truth, was a self declared hustler, and his relationship
[20:36] Speaker 1: to the law was a little hard to pin down.
[20:42] Speaker 1: And yet people invested in his artifacts and paintings. They
[20:47] Speaker 1: trusted him with transferring cultural treasures between enemy nations, and
[20:53] Speaker 1: they went into business with him. Why. Perhaps the answer
[20:59] Speaker 1: lies in the wider landscape of trust. After his tour
[21:04] Speaker 1: in Vietnam, Forest wasn't alone in his loss of faith
[21:08] Speaker 1: in the military. Trust in the United States government and
[21:11] Speaker 1: the armed forces slumped in the nineteen seventies, and since
[21:16] Speaker 1: then it's kept falling. Confidence in institutions like Congress, public schools,
[21:23] Speaker 1: and banks as tumbled too. When trust in a system declines,
[21:29] Speaker 1: people look for alternatives. Outliers become more appealing. Those who
[21:35] Speaker 1: break the rules vocally challenged the old guard of experts
[21:39] Speaker 1: and elites and criticized the authorities. May suddenly seem more dependable.
[21:47] Speaker 1: Forrest Fenn was a gifted raconteur. His was a tale
[21:52] Speaker 1: of going against the grain, of starting with nothing and
[21:56] Speaker 1: beating the odds. It was a story that people liked,
[22:01] Speaker 1: and they were prepared to buy into it quite literally.
[22:08] Speaker 1: The gallery business might have been thriving, but Forest met
[22:12] Speaker 1: with his share of grief and pain too. In the
[22:16] Speaker 1: mid nineteen eighties, his father, Marvin was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
[22:22] Speaker 1: After a grim illness, he told his son that he
[22:26] Speaker 1: planned to take his own life. Forest begged his father
[22:30] Speaker 1: to wait. He wanted to see him one last time,
[22:34] Speaker 1: said he had fled to him in his own plane
[22:36] Speaker 1: the next morning. But Marvin was adamant it was time
[22:42] Speaker 1: for him to go, and when Forest reached him, he
[22:46] Speaker 1: was too late. Forest was still grieving his father when
[22:52] Speaker 1: he received another blow. His doctors had found an aggressive
[22:57] Speaker 1: tumor nestled beneath his kidneys. Treatment had just a twenty
[23:02] Speaker 1: percent chance of success. When the news finally sank in,
[23:07] Speaker 1: Forest was angry. He was fifty eight years old and
[23:11] Speaker 1: in the midst of an exhilarating, adventure filled life. He
[23:15] Speaker 1: didn't want to go anywhere. He decided to roll the
[23:18] Speaker 1: dice and try treatment. A short time later, his friend
[23:27] Speaker 1: Ralph Lauren, the famous fashion designer, came to visit. They
[23:32] Speaker 1: sat together in Forrest's study, a room filled top to
[23:36] Speaker 1: bottom with wondrous curiosities. Ralph eyed a Native American bonnet
[23:42] Speaker 1: with carved antelope horns and offered to buy it. Forest
[23:47] Speaker 1: told him it wasn't for sale. Why not. The fashion
[23:52] Speaker 1: designer was baffled. He can't take it with you, But
[23:56] Speaker 1: Forest knew that he couldn't take money with him either.
[24:01] Speaker 1: Later on, when he was alone, he looked round at
[24:05] Speaker 1: his glittering trove, a gold wagon bracelet with ruby eyes,
[24:12] Speaker 1: jade figurines, two gold frogs. He thought about his father,
[24:19] Speaker 1: and he hatched a plan to take control of his ending.
[24:25] Speaker 1: Forrest decided he would fill a chest with treasure, an
[24:30] Speaker 1: intricate Romanesque lock box dating from the twelfth century, and
[24:35] Speaker 1: bring it with him to a secret location. Here he
[24:39] Speaker 1: would follow in his father's footsteps and take his own
[24:43] Speaker 1: life out in the wilderness. These riches wouldn't be trackable
[24:49] Speaker 1: or traceable by any bank, and he could invite ordinary
[24:53] Speaker 1: people to come and find the chest and claim its contents.
[24:57] Speaker 1: His legacy would be the greatest treasure hunt America had
[25:02] Speaker 1: ever known. The plan was perfect nearly There was one
[25:09] Speaker 1: thing that Forest Fen didn't count on. We'll find out
[25:14] Speaker 1: what that was after this short break. Two decades passed.
[25:27] Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, the investment bank Layman Brothers
[25:31] Speaker 1: crumbled into bankruptcy. Its collapse triggered a seismic wave that
[25:37] Speaker 1: smashed through global markets. Trading floors went dark. Bank has
[25:43] Speaker 1: packed their belongings into boxes against the odds, Seventy eight
[25:49] Speaker 1: year old Forest Fenn was still alive and watching on
[25:53] Speaker 1: with interest. He'd lived through another economic crisis as a child,
[25:58] Speaker 1: the Great Depression, and he knew the pain and suffering
[26:02] Speaker 1: that mismanagement by the banks could bring to ordinary people.
[26:07] Speaker 1: Forest's dream of leaving an epic treasure hunt as his legacy,
[26:12] Speaker 1: had been derailed by something quite unexpected. He had recovered
[26:17] Speaker 1: from his cancer, it sold his gallery, and was now
[26:21] Speaker 1: enjoying semi retirement, But he hadn't forgotten his treasure hunt idea.
[26:28] Speaker 1: Over the years, he had added to his trove, waiting
[26:32] Speaker 1: for the perfect opportunity to plant it out in the wild.
[26:37] Speaker 1: It now held at least a million dollars worth of
[26:40] Speaker 1: precious items maybe two million, a Mayan bracelet, salon sapphires,
[26:47] Speaker 1: Alaskan gold nuggets, the size of chicken eggs, a copy
[26:52] Speaker 1: of his unpublished memoir crammed into an olive jar. Now,
[26:57] Speaker 1: as the after shocks of the crash rippled out across
[27:01] Speaker 1: America and beyond, Forrest realized that his moment had finally arrived.
[27:09] Speaker 1: Millions of jobs had vanished, unemployment had surged, wages were stagnating,
[27:15] Speaker 1: and families had lost homes and life savings. But the
[27:18] Speaker 1: treasure chest could promise financial security to the lucky finder.
[27:25] Speaker 1: Forrest decided to launch his treasure hunt. It would be,
[27:29] Speaker 1: in his words, for every redneck in Texas who lost
[27:34] Speaker 1: his job with a pickup truck and twelve kids and
[27:37] Speaker 1: a wife to support. There was nostalgia in his offering too.
[27:45] Speaker 1: Perhaps he remembered those happy missions for trinkets with his father,
[27:50] Speaker 1: because he said that he hoped the hunt would be
[27:52] Speaker 1: a morale booster in dark and difficult times, getting families
[27:56] Speaker 1: outdoors to solve a puzzle together. One afternoon in twenty ten,
[28:04] Speaker 1: around his eightieth birthday, Forest Fenn slipped away in his car.
[28:09] Speaker 1: He didn't tell his wife or daughters where he was
[28:12] Speaker 1: going or what he was doing. The treasure now weighed
[28:16] Speaker 1: about forty two pounds or nineteen kilograms, So when he
[28:21] Speaker 1: reached his destination, a secret spot amid towering pine trees,
[28:26] Speaker 1: he had to make two trips from his sedan, first
[28:30] Speaker 1: with the box and then with the loot. When he
[28:34] Speaker 1: was satisfied that the little chest was secure, he drove away.
[28:41] Speaker 1: Forest delivered a thousand copies of his self published memoir,
[28:46] Speaker 1: The Thrill of the Chase, to a small bookstore in
[28:50] Speaker 1: Santa Fe called Collected Works. Any profits from the sale
[28:55] Speaker 1: of the books would go to the store and to
[28:58] Speaker 1: a cancer charity. Forrest wanted people to be able to
[29:01] Speaker 1: trust that this project wasn't about personal gain. Anyone who
[29:07] Speaker 1: bought the book would learn of his day in the
[29:09] Speaker 1: Air Force and his adventures in the art world, of
[29:12] Speaker 1: his love for his wife, Peggy, and their two daughters.
[29:16] Speaker 1: They'd find something else in its pages two a six
[29:21] Speaker 1: stands a poem containing nine cryptic clues to the whereabouts
[29:26] Speaker 1: of the million dollar treasure chest. The memoir itself was
[29:31] Speaker 1: also peppered with subtle hints to help decode the poem.
[29:37] Speaker 1: It took a while for word of the treasure hunt
[29:39] Speaker 1: to spread. The story appeared in a southwestern newspaper, and
[29:44] Speaker 1: it was mentioned on some area television stations too. It
[29:48] Speaker 1: was a quirky local tale, a whimsical curiosity. An eccentric,
[29:54] Speaker 1: elderly art dealer had hidden an ancient box of treasure
[29:58] Speaker 1: somewhere north of Santa Fe in the thousand miles stretch
[30:02] Speaker 1: of mountains known as the Rockies. A few blogs devot
[30:09] Speaker 1: to the quest appeared online. It peaked the interest of
[30:13] Speaker 1: practiced treasure hunters, people who habitually went looking for lost
[30:19] Speaker 1: artifacts or liked solving puzzles. Some people thought the whole
[30:23] Speaker 1: thing was a hoax. How could they be sure the
[30:26] Speaker 1: box was really out there and Forest Fenn was eighty?
[30:30] Speaker 1: What if he was senile? What if the whole thing
[30:33] Speaker 1: was a fabrication. Others poured over the memoir and the poem,
[30:39] Speaker 1: trading their solutions, which they called solves. Begin it where
[30:45] Speaker 1: warm waters halt, and take it in the canyon down,
[30:49] Speaker 1: not far but too far to walk. Put in below
[30:54] Speaker 1: the home of Brown, where warm water's halt was that
[31:01] Speaker 1: near a hot spring of some kind, which canyon and
[31:06] Speaker 1: Brown was capitalized. Was that a person? Perhaps it was
[31:10] Speaker 1: a brown Bear. Forrest had included his email address in
[31:16] Speaker 1: the book so that searchers could get in touch with
[31:18] Speaker 1: him and tell him about their adventures. He would reply
[31:22] Speaker 1: to their questions about the clues with mysterious half answers,
[31:27] Speaker 1: evasive but also gently pulling strings from afar. In twenty thirteen,
[31:35] Speaker 1: the Today Show on NBC covered the story, and overnight
[31:41] Speaker 1: the hunt exploded. There was a run on copies of
[31:46] Speaker 1: the Thrill of the Chase, and the Collected Works bookstore
[31:50] Speaker 1: printed more to meet demand. International media outlets followed up
[31:55] Speaker 1: with their own coverage of the story, and before long
[31:58] Speaker 1: there were countless documentaries too. The consummate salesman, Forrest flashed
[32:04] Speaker 1: his alligator smile and spun his gripping yarns, though he
[32:10] Speaker 1: also admitted a tendency to embellish the truth just a little.
[32:18] Speaker 1: The quest escaped the fringe world of routine treasure hunters
[32:23] Speaker 1: and people connected to Fenn and drew in others with
[32:27] Speaker 1: no previous experience of treasure hunting at all, people like
[32:32] Speaker 1: Randy Billu, a fifty three year old grandfather who moved
[32:37] Speaker 1: to Colorado to be closer to the Rockies in hope
[32:41] Speaker 1: of finding the gold visitors flooded into Santa Fe, and
[32:47] Speaker 1: the mayor announced a thrill of the chase down to
[32:50] Speaker 1: thank forest for the boost in tourism. The national parks
[32:55] Speaker 1: were also inundated. Bold treasure hunters marched through protected wildlife zones,
[33:02] Speaker 1: digging up the land in search of the home of Brown.
[33:06] Speaker 1: The park authorities scrambled to keep up, issuing cautions and
[33:11] Speaker 1: special new rules. There were tales too, of people remortgaging
[33:18] Speaker 1: their homes to fund their searches and burning through their savings.
[33:25] Speaker 1: Some of them broke into Forest Fend's property, convinced that
[33:29] Speaker 1: the poem instructed them to do so. And then in
[33:33] Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, a call came in a treasure hunter had
[33:38] Speaker 1: gone missing in deepest January. Grandfather Randy Billeu and his
[33:46] Speaker 1: little dog, Leo had ventured alone into the snow capped wilderness,
[33:51] Speaker 1: carrying a GPS device, a wetsuit, waders, and an eighty
[33:56] Speaker 1: nine dollar raft. Randy had planned to float along the
[34:01] Speaker 1: Rio Grande River to the place where he believed the
[34:05] Speaker 1: gold and jewels were stashed. When he hadn't been h
[34:09] Speaker 1: heard from for over a week, his ex wife filed
[34:12] Speaker 1: a missing person's report on January fifteenth, the police found
[34:19] Speaker 1: his parked car and his raft. They also found Leo
[34:24] Speaker 1: the dog alive, but there was no sign of Randy Billeu.
[34:31] Speaker 1: The treasure hunting community sprang into action, arriving from Colorado
[34:36] Speaker 1: and all over New Mexico and splitting into teams to
[34:39] Speaker 1: find the missing man. Forrest joined in too, renting a
[34:45] Speaker 1: helicopter and scanning the area from the skies, but he
[34:50] Speaker 1: denied any responsibility for the disappearance. Randy bill Yeu was
[34:55] Speaker 1: an adult who made his own decisions. People went missing
[34:59] Speaker 1: in the wilderness every year, with or without the prospect
[35:03] Speaker 1: of finding treasure. Forest Fenn's treasure Hunt held an emotional appeal.
[35:14] Speaker 1: People were seduced by the nostalgia and romance of the quest,
[35:19] Speaker 1: and they trusted in his status as an outsider. But
[35:24] Speaker 1: trusting outsiderus can still be perilous, and romance and nostalgia
[35:30] Speaker 1: can blind us all to danger. Six months later, Randy
[35:36] Speaker 1: Billeu's skeletal remains were found by the Rio Grande River.
[35:42] Speaker 1: He may have succumbed to hypothermia or dehydration, but his
[35:47] Speaker 1: actual cause of death remained unknown. It was hoped that
[35:53] Speaker 1: the horrible incident was a one off, a mistake made
[35:57] Speaker 1: by someone foolish enough to head out in the bitter midwinter,
[36:01] Speaker 1: wholly unprepared for the conditions. It wasn't a one off.
[36:09] Speaker 1: The Treasure Hunt had metastasized from a whimsical curiosity into
[36:15] Speaker 1: something more sinister. Forrest Fenn, the master monopoly player, had
[36:21] Speaker 1: lost control of the game, and it was about to
[36:25] Speaker 1: get far grimmer and darker than he had ever imagined.
[36:32] Speaker 1: Next time on Cautionary Tales, the quest continues, a grave
[36:38] Speaker 1: is exhumed, a stalker haunts the Fenn family, and death
[36:43] Speaker 1: comes again to the Treasure Hunt. For a full list
[36:56] Speaker 1: of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.
[37:05] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright,
[37:09] Speaker 1: Alice Fines, and Ryan Billy. It's produced by Georgia Mills
[37:13] Speaker 1: and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are
[37:17] Speaker 1: the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by
[37:20] Speaker 1: Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio. Bend A Dafhaffrey edited
[37:25] Speaker 1: the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
[37:29] Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler,
[37:34] Speaker 1: Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. You can support
[37:38] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales by joining My Cautionary Club at Patreon dot
[37:43] Speaker 1: com slash Cautionary Club for exclusive bonus episodes, newsletters, ad
[37:49] Speaker 1: free listening, and other exciting perks. Alternatively, you can join
[37:53] Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus on our Apple show page for continued benefits
[37:57] Speaker 1: from our show and others across the Pushkin network.

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