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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Eleven years back, a now-deceased millionaire hid a treasure someplace in the mountains out west and released a riddle that would support hunters discover it. The chase spawned partnerships, even marriages, but also inspired hunters to dig up cemeteries, endeavor burglary. This even led to 5 deaths. Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of our daily economics podcast, The Indicator, has extra.
ALEXI HOROWITZ-GHAZI, BYLINE: Cynthia Meachum very first listened to about the treasure about eight several years back. She was living around Albuquerque, N.M., functioning as an engineer at Intel.
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CYNTHIA MEACHUM: 1 of my co-workers form of moseyed up to me and quietly whispered, have you heard of the Forrest Fenn treasure hunt? And I claimed, no. And then he explained, oh, my God, you have to Google Forrest Fenn.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Forrest Fenn, Meachum learned, was an eccentric octogenarian artwork vendor who was proclaiming to have concealed an antique treasure upper body stuffed with in excess of a million dollars’ truly worth of gold coins and uncommon relics somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.
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MEACHUM: I necessarily mean, “Raiders Of the Dropped Artwork,” just a person of my all-time favourite movies. I wanted to be in that motion picture.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: She picked up some maps and a duplicate of the e book comprehensive of clues and headed out into the wilderness afterwards that week. And Meachum fundamentally in no way stopped on the lookout.
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HOROWITZ-GHAZI: How a lot funds do you feel you ended up expending over the past ten years hunting for this treasure?
MEACHUM: In all probability 30,000 bucks, maybe, over 10 a long time.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Wow.
Countrywide media ran with the story of the hunt, and before long enough, hundreds of treasure hunters were descending on the Rocky Mountain states each individual 12 months. But Dan Barbarisi, author of a new guide called “Chasing The Thrill,” says it was not also long in advance of a darkish facet began to arise about the hunt. Searchers acquired into hazardous predicaments in the wilderness, and some took their conspiratorial treasure theories to risky lengths.
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DAN BARBARISI: There was a dude who broke into Fenn’s compound and in fact absconded with a chest of sorts. It was a laundry upper body, but he did depart with it. And Fenn essentially came household. He and a single of his daughters ended up keeping the gentleman at gunpoint.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: A further searcher turned obsessed with the thought that just one of Fenn’s granddaughters was the true treasure and was arrested for stalking. One more man was arrested for digging up a cemetery in Yellowstone. And then, in the wintertime of 2016, the to start with treasure hunter died, followed sooner or later by 4 additional.
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BARBARISI: When individuals start off dying in figures, that created a good deal of phone calls to say, hey, is this detail worth having? Ought to we close this just before far more people die?
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: But the hunt ongoing on – till past calendar year, when the environment figured out a 32-12 months-previous health care scholar named Jack Stuef had found it.
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HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Do you try to remember in which you were being when you located out someone experienced uncovered the treasure?
MEACHUM: Do you know the place you were being when Kennedy was shot or when the place shuttle blew up?
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: And that was only three months in advance of Forrest Fenn himself died previous September at the age of 90.
MEACHUM: And it was like, Okay, now it is actually above. With Forrest gone, it is really, really over.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: Stuef has still to disclose the particular spot he identified the chest, further than that it was in Wyoming. But he did convey to author Dan Barbarisi that he is currently preparing the treasure for sale.
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HOROWITZ-GHAZI: I asked searcher Cynthia Meachum, when she weighed the adventure and camaraderie of the hunt with the fatalities and controversy, no matter if she thought it had all been value it in the stop.
MEACHUM: Oh, my God, indeed, it was really worth it. These are like the finest 10 yrs of my existence.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: And in simple fact, even however the treasure has been claimed, Meachum and her fellow hunters are now location their sights on obtaining out the place it was identified.
MEACHUM: The hunt carries on for us crazy persons that just have no lifestyle and who will just not permit it go.
HOROWITZ-GHAZI: She says she’s headed again to Yellowstone this summer.
Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, NPR Information.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHALE FALL’S “Outdated COUNTY”) Transcript offered by NPR, Copyright NPR.