General Shinkle finally had enough and ordered everyone out. Just 12 years after discovering the treasure, Doc Noss died with just $2.16 in his pocket. He also told his wife that there were enough gold and silver coins to load 60 to 80 mules.. The horde of an Apache chief? According to a close relative interviewed by Freedom, Shriver was murdered. The relative said that Shriver was beaten up in California, beaten about the kidneys and the head and subsequently died from his injuries. In 1797, when the work of the Spanish missionaries had almost come to an end, there was an old Spanish soldier who was at his death bed. All told, he reportedly found 27 human skeletons in the caverns of the mountain. Mr. Bailey, who represents 50 unidentified claimants, says that with a helicopter and a half an hour he can lead officials to 292 gold bars, for openers. They insisted they were photographed, finger printed, harassed and not al lowed to go near the search area. Fearing a Federal swindle at the time, Noss returned to Victoria Peak, carrying out gold bars and hiding them, Mrs. Guthrie said. The cave was covering a small tunnel, originally thought to be an abandoned mineshaft. In effect, no one could mine the treasure, and that included the Army and Babe Noss. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. The charges concerning LBJs involvement included the following: According to this same source, Victorio Peak was just like a private vault to certain high-ranking people. They would go in periodically and get what they wanted. His wife and his two school-age children had also abruptly left. The three men had been on a hunting party when McDonald, who reportedly had imbibed several cans of beer, began talking freely about a huge stash of gold. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved). He remained steadfast in his belief that the treasure remained, according to family members. Ova Noss, her two sons, Harold and Marvin, and her two daughters, Letha and Dorothy, helped Doc in the strenuous task of removing the bars, one at a time, from the depths of the peak. Letha told Freedom that she herself handled 12 to 15 of the bars, and I even put one up and hid it for four days.. The room had been undisturbed for so long that the dust, according to Berlett, lay several inches thick. Acquitted on grounds of selfdefense, Mr. Ryan testified that Doc had promised him 51 bars of gold in return for his $27,000 investment. However, Terry Delonas, her grandson, continued the family tradition and formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. In 1981, a construction worker discovered the gold bar, weighing 4.25 lbs. CNN Almost four decades ago, a gold bar was found on land that used to be Aztec ruins in Mexico. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. Montgomery, the two went into the mountain to blast out the shaft. A four-pound gold bar found on a building site in downtown Mexico City last month is believed to be part of the treasure seized from the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II by the Spanish. We took 90 bars stacked by a mine shaft at Victorio Peak and reburied them 10 in a pile scattered throughout the basin with the exception of 30 bars that we buried in a grassy flat near the road we came out on.. Mr. Noss, a traveling doctor who was known for a hot temper and an appetite for liquor, claimed that the cache consisted of Spanish artifacts and Wells Fargo chests, along with the gold. Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. But the expedition soon went broke, and the Army declared that it would allow no more searches. In 1933, he married Ova Babe Beckworth, and the two settled down in Hot Springs, New Mexico, which later changed its name to Truth or Consequences. A jury ruled that Mr. Ryan had acted in self-defense. Although a suitable path fit for wagons couldn't be found, traces of gold were found somewhere close to Silver City to the north. For the next few years, Mr. Noss sought partners to help him find the gold. [3] Noss was ultimately killed by an associate, Charley Ryan, in 1949 after Ryan accused Noss of fraud and Noss threatened to kill Ryan and his family. Decades of Searching. [5] During the 1970s, lawyer F. Lee Bailey represented clients who claimed to know where the treasure was located. In a special act of Congress passed in 1989, the Hembrillo Basin was unlocked for Terry Delonas and the Noss heirs; however, nothing has been found. A small town was built near the place If the treasure was real, Noss had poor timing. The reports of the massive treasure would consume his marriage and eventually his life, and mysteries around the treasure persist to this day (via Legends of America). Lampros, for example, described having his photograph taken with Colonel Willard E. Holt of Lordsburg, New Mexico; each held an end of a bar while it was being sawed in half. Gold bars, silver, and jewels were reportedly buried by a spring under the big rocks of Cabello Canyon. When he reached the surface, he told Babe, This is the last one of them babies Im gonna bring out. However, when Babe rolled the bar over, she noticed a yellow gleam where the gravel of the hillside had scratched off centuries of black grime. He estimated the total amount of gold coming from the peak at a staggering 96 million troy ounces, worth, at $320 an ounce, nearly $31 billion. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. Seventy-nine skeletons were described in an adjacent cavern. Doc returned with a gold bar, presented it to his wife, Babe, and the couple soon dedicated their lives to exploring Victorio Peak, living in a tent at the base of the mountain in search of treasure. Mrs. Noss believes Mr. Bailey's clients to be mili tary officers and perhaps some of her husband's old partners. That while visiting Foss, a man we both knew, E.M. Guthrie, drove in to the station in a late model Ford Thunderbird. The affidavit states: I, Thayer Snipes, first being duly sworn, on my oath state: That in the latter part of 1972, I had stopped by the Airport Chevron Station at the corner of Airway Blvd. According to members of the family, there would have been more, but Docs work was abruptly and unexpectedly brought to a halt in August 1939 when a dynamite blast, set to enlarge a narrow passage, instead caved the passage in, sealing off the main cavern. Hearing about the story, Captain Swanner, who was stationed at White Sands Missile Range in the early 1960s, came forward. His warriors raided southern New Mexico and Texasin an all-out war against the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers. Ova Noss, Leonard Fiege and others dont listen when they are told to shut up and they pay the price. In 1963, the Gaddis Mining Company of Denver, Colorado, obtained permission to work the site under a contract with the Denver Mint and the Museum of New Mexico. Another source, who asked to remain unidentified, stated that he had personally interviewed several men who had brought a large load of the peaks gold to Johnsons ranch. Doc tried several times to regain entry into his mine, but the shaft was sealed with tons of debris. However, Terry Delongas stated, Were not accusing the military of stealing the gold, but I do feel that the Department of the Army in the 1960s treated my grandmother unfairly However, weve worked very hard over the years to establish a working relationship with the military, and were certainly not going to jeopardize that by accusing them of theft.. Victorio used the entire Hembrillo Basin as his stronghold, refusing to live on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, where the government wanted to banish him. In the summer of 1961, upon the advice of the Director of the Mint, Major General John Shinkle of White Sands allowed Captain Fiege, Captain Orby Swanner, Major Kelly, and Colonel Gorman to work the claim. About $250,000 was spent, core holes were drilled, seismic tests were taken, and nothing was found. Though caught trespassing and escorted from the area, the men reported observing several men in Army fatigues upon the peak. Nearly choking, the two men hastily marked their claim and made their exit. Led by U.S. Air Force Captain Leonard V. Fiege, the four had done extensive research on Victorio Peak, poring over old documents and records, and even traveling south into Mexico to check stories there regarding a man who has often been linked with the origin of the gold, Padre Philip La Rue. The night before his death, perhaps sensing that a business deal was going sour, Doc enlisted the aid of a cowboy named Tony Jolley to shuffle the locations of various stashes of the bars. Reaching down, he could not budge it, but after digging around the rock, he got his hands under it. But when the Army; Air Force; the White House; Congressmen; New Mexico's Governor and F. Lee Bailey and dozens of other lawyers get into a single treasure saga, only confusion and rumors remain cheap. Begrudgingly, he did so. The blast was a disaster, causing a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shafts, and effectively shutting Doc out of his mine. Maxmillian was assassinated in 1867. They bore the Spanish stamp. Ferdig, adding, The trouble with treasure stories is that there's always a little truth in them.. And a fourth story, pieced together recently by Howard Bryan, a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune, centers on another Apache war chief named Victorio. The next day, March 5, 1949, Ryan arrived in the area, insisting that they discuss the problem of what happened to the gold. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City has confirmed it was part of the plunder Spanish conquistadors abandoned as they beat a temporary. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. The two decided to keep the discovery between themselves and return to inspect the shaft later. He was also known to take prisoners back to the Basin, where he subjected them to elaborate torture tests before killing them. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. Berlett and Fiege formed a corporation to protect what they had found and make a formal application to enter White Sands for a search and retrieval of the gold. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. According to accounts from members of the Noss family, Doc bagged no deer, but he found something that whetted his appetite for the area a shaft near the top of Victorio Peak which led into the bowels of the mountain. A number of sources also independently named Major General John G. Shinkle, the commander of White Sands Missile Range from June 1960 to July 1962, as knowing about the movement of tons of gold from Victorio Peak. In the Fall of 1939, Doc wanted to enlarge the passageway into Victorio Peak so that the treasures could be more easily removed. Parts of White Sands are sometimes leased by private corporations and foreign governments for experiments. Babe then began a regular correspondence with the military requesting permission to work her claim, but she was always denied. As a child, he said he remembered his grandmother, Ova Noss, talking about it ceaselessly. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his Babe, disappearing into the desert, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed. The cloud of death shrouding Victorio Peak has reached far. Leon Trabuco's Gold A Mexican businessman buries 16 tons of gold in the New Mexico desert and then dies before telling anyone where it is. In 1979, he sold a small mail-order business to devote full time to the search. In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. Army spokesmen have consistently dismissed all reports of Victorio Peak gold as rumors. An apparent propaganda campaign, in fact, has been conducted for many years by the Army in order to dispel these reports and to keep treasure seekers away from the missile range. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. The sources of this threat, according to the man who relayed the threat to Scott, were two agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The family declines to discuss the incident. American and foreign car makers have rented land at the installation to test new air bags. The gold, Porters friend stated breathlessly, ran in a tremendous stack along one side of the cavern stretching for approximately 200 yards. Additionally, the actual land where Victorio Peak is located was not owned by the State of New Mexico but rather by a man named Roy Henderson, who had leased it to the Army. Claimants charge the Army purposely boobytrapped the area with the shells, yet almost weekly a few fevered treasure hunters sneak through helicopter and horsemounted Army patrols to search. They believe that if the Lue Map and the hieroglyphs could be deciphered then the gold bars could be found. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City reveals it was part of the plunder Spanish conquerors tried to carry away as they fled the Aztec capital . The gold concentrates by gravity in incised stream valleys and alluvial fans in deeply weathered highlands. They come in a variety of weights, fineness and designs. A third, smaller stack, pyramidal in shape, stood about three feet high. And, on March 4, 1949, the day before Doc was shot, a small plane crashed near Victoria Peak killing the pilot and severely injuring Marvin Beckwith, son of the, first Mrs. Noss. Patterson, Don Breech, Edgar F. Foreman, Leo D. OConnell, Eppie Montoya and B.D. Sam Scott, for example, a retired airline pilot, was warned in 1977 to keep clear of anything regarding Victorio Peak for at least five years under pain of having his home firebombed and his wife and daughter killed. This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. Current environmental and permitting restrictions also have hampered recent production in the New Placers and Jicarilla districts. After some airmen from a nearby air force base claimed they found some gold at Victorio Peak, the Army and Secret Service began a secret search in 1961. The fortune of a Mexican emperor? That about a month after that, I heard E.M. had been beaten to death in California. Forrest . In addition, Victorio Peak lay on land owned by the state of New Mexico, and removal of gold without permission of the state violated New Mexico law.4. She appealed to state officials, who forced the search to stop. The buying entity was a Middle Eastern principal, Shriver said. After discovering the treasure, Doc and Babe spent every free moment exploring the tunnels inside the mountain, living in a tent at the base of the peak. A priest named LaRue at Durango in northern Mexico was looking after the soldier who told the priest . I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. The slightest movement stirred up a cloud. There wasn't much known about a 4-pound gold bar discovered during construction work in Mexico City nearly 40 years ago, but now experts are calling the precious metal an Aztec relic. some of the gold to Mexico, in light planes. After he got back to the surface, Doc told Ova what he had seen, and almost as an afterthought mentioned the long row of metal bars. ", According to the family, Mr. Noss took some gold bars when he found the cavern in 1937, and planned to return for the rest. Mr. Koury asserted that the General first denied the search was on but admitted it later when sworn statements from the spies were produced. Because of this natural concentration, some placers are richer in gold than the original lode deposits. Known placer gold deposits were found along the southern and eastern flanks of the Ortiz Mountains; however, there could be additional placer gold deposits along the western flanks of the mountain range. Floyd and his friend Pat were getting ready to look for treasure in an area where Pat found found three old metal bars in a cave on the old Spanish trail in New Mexico. Victorio Peak, a craggy outcropping of rock barely 500 feet tall, lies in the center of a desert lake known as the Hembrillo Basin in New Mexico. Deferring to Docs belief that the gold would all be taken by the government should his find become too broadly known, the work force was confined to the immediate family and a couple of handfuls of trusted associates. Gold bullion bars are struck continuously to meet the demand for gold, with the following refineries and mints representing some of the greatest refiners of gold bars: Credit Suisse PAMP Suisse Republic Metals Corporation Sunshine Minting Valcambi Suisse Buying Gold Bullion from JM Bullion (Reuters) A gold bar found in a Mexico City park in 1981 was part of the Aztec treasure looted by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, a new study says.For 39 years, its origins remained a mystery.INAH - National Institute of Anthropology and History/Handout via REUTERS Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History "We're treating the gold searchers just like any other client," said Jim Eckles, a spokesman for the White Sands range. Another source confirmed the manner and the circumstances of E.M. Guthries death, noting that it was listed as just a natural death, but hed been worked over with a baseball bat. This source said that he had hired a team of experienced investigators to dig into Guthries death and more than 30 other deaths in connection with a massive, continuing cover-up of the removal of gold from Victorio Peak. Over the weekend, he said, someone found the chest he had buried with gold nuggets, coins, gems and artifacts. By this time, Babes story had spread across the nation, profiled in several magazines and newspapers. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. One story involves a Jesuit missionary named Padre LaRue whose band of 40 gold mining families was massacred in a punitive raid by Spanish soldiers in the early eighteenhundreds. 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