The town had been occupied and governed by General Yamashita in the early 1940s. Hunter died Monday at his Northern California home . They investigated and validated first-hand testimony that corroborated the existence of the golden buddha and the gold bullion. An estate lawyer looked over his Last Will and Testament. In 1908, brothers Willie and Frank McLeod went on a trip to mine for gold in what is now known as Nahanni National Park, which was named after the Naha tribe. 0000004492 00000 n Sign up! Roger Roxas was a former Filipino soldier turned locksmith, and president of the Treasure Hunters Association of the Philippines, who lived in Baguio, a mountainous resort town about 130 miles north of Manila. Klaus confirmed that he too had drunk the cobras blood, and that a local shaman had approached him and told him that he knew Klaus had bonded with the cobra family, and so had the spirit-guardian cobra at his one site. He said they were building an extension to the hospital. The 49-year-old American treasure hunter has cordoned off this rectangular swath of Indian Ocean in the Seychelles, and now he's somewhere 25 feet below, chiseling off chunks of granite and. There was also the odour; the smell of decomposed bodies. Japan probably had no surplus from any foreign plundering, and it made no sense to send anything valuable to the Philippines where they knew it was soon going to fall into American hands. A search team began combing the nearby jungle, hoping to find the bodies of the missing men. Roxas reported the incident to the police, who predictably ignored his pleas. Dametz was in poor health, so he needed help from McSherry to get to his digging spot, a small sandy pit in the middle of the forest. Patrick is a great guy, an avid treasure hunter, and was to interview Henry Roxas for the show. I replied, Well, keep digging. Keep going. New York: Verso, 2003. Olof Jonsson: a Las Vegas-based psychic employed by Marcos to help find Japanese treasure sites. In hindsight, Roxas had been aware of the implications of this clandestine relationship, but had had no choice in the matter. 0000001447 00000 n The only way to recover his body was via helicopter. For reasons I will never understand, I responded to his email and mentioned something about the Philippines. Bob Curtis. Whats more, during 1974 and 1975 he excavated the tunnel behind the hospital in Baguio and personally witnessed gold bars falling from wooden crates as they were removed from the site. At a depth of approximately two hundred and twenty-five feet the Japanese had created the largest and most valuable treasure vaults. I inspected it closely and from all angles. The Japanese strategy was two-fold: strip the East of their cultural identity, while returning priceless treasures back to Japan to fund their military, political and economic world dominance for the next thousand years. See Photos. The director was also our health and safety manager for the shoot, and he opted to leave the cameraman behind and do the filming at the bottom of the tunnel complex himself. Anderson reported that Curtis group supplied the maps, which marked an estimated $100 billion in treasure, to Marcos, who used the group to track and recover about $14 billion. Roxass life was not his own. The next morning he arrived in his office to discover that the cleaning crew had not visited the night before. Net Worth: $1 Million Occupation: Treasure Hunter, TV Celebrity & Former Police Officer Birthday: January 6, 1941 Birthplace: Summerland Key, Florida Birth Sign: Capricorn Date of Death: February 19, 2018 Place of Death: Iraan, Texas Nationality: American Ethnicity: Caucasian Married: Twice Children: Darrell, Lauren, Kim, and Kelly Instagram: NA The idea is that during Japan's imperialist phase before World War II, they looted every country throughout Asia that they invaded, melted down all that booty into ingots of pure gold, and buried it all in Philippine strongholds to wait out the end of the war. I had tried dowsing before with little or no success. Author Forrest Fenn is a former art dealer who hid millions of dollars in treasure in the wilderness of New Mexico when he was 80 years old. Perhaps he believed that other men had died from lack of survival training and that his skills at living outdoors would be enough to find the gold mines and make him a rich man. They know the Philippines well, but are unreliable on Japan and do not read Japanese. We embarked on the long drive back to Klauss village and our last night as a team. This way, he could use them as ransom against Marcos, who owed him money for the gold they had already retrieved and sold. Since Feb. 12, with the full sanction and protection of President Corazon Aquinos government, McDougalds group has been tunneling more than 20 feet into the catacombs under Manilas oldest structure, 16th-Century Ft. Santiago. Curtis had raised funding for his treasure hunt by claiming that Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos himself had personally invited him to recover the gold based on his unique expertise. Filed under Conspiracy Theories, History & Pseudohistory, Urban Legends, Skeptoid Podcast What could go wrong? We added each other on Skype and began a custom of speaking most days. Andrew Gough. Whatever I had expected a Japanese tunnel system to be was wrong or at least greatly miscalculated. To reach the site that were targeting, we left the dense jungle behind and walked up a rapidly flowing stream and a couple small waterfalls; a tricky endeavour at the best of times, but while carrying camera equipment, it was rather treacherous. Two hundred and sixteen feet, Henry replied, without hesitation, seemingly before Patrick had finished asking the question. Curtis to meet privately with a . Andrew Gough. Reassuringly, he informed me that I was fine and that he had simply performed a tune up a bit of preventative maintenance. Andrew Gough. While there, he learned that the village had been a former Japanese military base, and that the locals believed it was ripe with buried Japanese treasure. For a short time Roxas went into hiding near Manila and was provided with bodyguards and a place to live. Andrew Gough. Obviously, this challenge made it into the press. Roxas was assassinated. In 2013 I was contacted by Peggy Seagrave, who invited me to present for a television documentary entitled The Truth About Yamashitas Gold. I was further astounded by the conversation that continued off camera. Roxas was seeking damages, not only for the torture he had endured (and, of course, the golden buddha and its concealed precious stones and all the miniature gold bars that accompanied it), but also for the large quantities of gold that Marcoss men had recovered from the tunnel system that Roxas had discovered. He had spoken to the village elders and learned of locations from their first-hand accounts as to where the Japanese were observed to have buried boxes in tunnel systems deep underground. You dont mind if Klaus videotapes this, do you? I asked cautiously, but with a tone that suggested I would not be denied. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. I was riveted as Cathcart recalled that tragic day and was leaning forward in anticipation as he spoke, when suddenly his carer abruptly corrected him and blurted out facts about the case that I found startling and incongruous from a healthcare professional who had claimed to know nothing about the affair. 0000006813 00000 n We followed a muddy path, not too far from a river that was roaring with monsoon-induced floods, and arrived at the site. Ill explain, but were not at the bottom yet. His conviction was supported by four first-hand accounts and multiple treasure maps given to him by eyewitnesses. He believed that what he had discovered was the tip of the iceberg; the proverbial teaser that the Japanese placed a short distance above the real prize; a treasure that most seekers would be thrilled with, believing they had found it all, when in fact the real treasures were hidden further below, deep underground. Most treasure hunters go searching in the daytime and then return to local motels. Curtis then used another old miner's trick to attract funding to go back and continue the hunt: he claimed his team's expulsion was the result of being just inches away from a fabulous treasure room worth billions that Marcos wanted for himself. When will Klaus enter his first chamber? Roxas was convinced there was treasure buried around the Baguio Hospital, but was unsure exactly where to look. I will always appreciate your sacrifice. Los Angeles Times Communications LLC, 6 Mar. They followed that with a treasure chamber at around a depth of approximately one hundred feet, knowing that most treasure hunters would consider that the final prize. trailer The following day we departed for the mountainous, northern resort town of Baguio to meet with Roger Roxass son, Henry, and to examine his museum, which is dedicated to his father. Dan Cathcart at his home, taking me through his Roxas v Marcos file Soriano, who has been quoted as estimating the buried wealth at $900 billion and is currently overseeing the Ft. Santiago dig, told The Times in a recent interview: To my knowledge, nothing has been recovered yet. Andrew Gough. Curtis, who is now in the Philippines but insists that McDougald act as his spokesman, says that he and 10 other Americans successfully conducted a similar treasure hunt under the regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos in 1975 but fled for their lives after locating a huge buried Japanese vault on the outskirts of Manila that McDougald said contained $8 billion in bullion. Together they wrote a number of books on Asian histories which purported to be nonfiction, most of which portrayed either the CIA or Japanese figures as the villain, and all of which expressed a deep suspicion of all things Western and Japanese. He had a copper mining company and also staked a claim on plots of land that he used to mine gold. Nope, we had to move on; places to be. Back on the surface the cameraman filmed various objects that Klaus had found in the tunnel backfill: symbols such as seashells, leaves, gold dust and other assorted items that should not exist at that depth in the earth, and certainly not with man-made cement and gold dust embedded in them. He was there as the Imperial Japanese army ransacked much of China and southeast Asia, and he was there for the duration of World War II; and he grew up knowing little about the Japanese besides that they were the world's aggressors, and the brutal assailants of a peaceful people. Jose was clearly a wind-up-and-go type of historian. With a fragile intonation in her voice she recounted the story of her husbands last days. Klaus was already at the bottom as I made my way down slowly, cautiously, and deliberately. He recounted one incident when he and Peggy were going for a walk down a country lane when a car crept along behind and slowly overtook them. I was disappointed when I reached the bottom and learned that I had to crawl on my hands and knees for about fifty feet until I reached the next descending shaft. But the picture changed with the deaths last month of the two Filipino workers, suffocated in a cave-in that McDougalds engineers now attribute to a booby trap left behind by the Japanese. Still, I seized the opportunity and worked with the production team to shape the initial storyline and ensure that it did not become a hatchet job. Fortuitously, Cheatham took a photo of himself with the golden buddha. One even had a cobra as its spiritual guardian that Klaus had encountered before. Since he was a professional fur trapper, he surely felt confident in his ability to hunt and survive in the wilderness. Andrew Gough. Goodness knows, hes close. I say successful, because I was not bitten by one of the many cobras lurking in the rice paddies along the way and was only partially bitten to death by hordes of mosquitos the size of hummingbirds. On the contrary, this young man was conspicuously well informed and appeared to possess some highly classified information. I, on the other hand, was experiencing a fair bit of disappointment. I was not able to track down any good information explaining why the judge upheld the Golden Buddha Corporation's claim against Marcos, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time a court of law made a ruling that was not in harmony with true science or the true history of a case. One mans wallet was apparently thrown near his remains. Before I could comment Klaus had taken out his dowsing rods and located the entrance shaft to the tunnel system that the bent tree was pointing towards. The Naha tribe were the indigenous people who lived in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Look at this tree, he abruptly proclaimed, stopping us dead in our tracks. Torn Treasure Map 1: On the far left side of the map, at the start of the Little Creek River, inside a drawer of a wooden hut. In fact, they told me it was a dreadful idea. There are five Americans from the company working at the Ft. Santiago site, McDougald said, along with about 30 Filipino laborers who are digging the 3-foot-by-7-foot tunnel through the forts long-buried catacombs. Klaus has been shut down for several months as he awaits his permit from the Mining Department of the Philippine Government, but he is optimistic and believes he is tantalisingly close to unearthing the greatest treasure hoard of this century. 32 25 Each day after class she dug in the back garden of the schoolyard. Crawling through the inhospitable tunnel system In my mind I visualised a hole running straight through my body and out the other side. McDougald was reluctant to discuss details of the groups actual mining methods, but he stayed in character when describing what he expects to find at the end of the tunnel. Since there were so many people, everyone was in close proximity to one another. Despite his altruistic intentions (ie not wanting to risk more of the team getting injured than was necessary), this approach would prove fatal, as he did not do a very good job, and Klaus would have to reshoot the tunnel footage himself, weeks later, and with far inferior equipment. He complained at length that none of his journalism colleagues would help him and Peggy with their book. My business proposal for additional funding to expedite Klauss work had been met with a polite not interested from Richard Bransons people, while Elon Musks people had been less gracious they blocked my IP address. Conventional military site treasure symbols. Andrew Gough. After a long morning of work, Bob and Billy decided to take an afternoon nap. He never came back. Andrew Gough, A leaf of the bogtalay tree Honolulu: Supreme Court of Hawaii, 1988. Andrew Gough, Afterwards, as we were packing up outside the priests house, Klaus was recounting to one of the other treasure hunters who had assembled that morning that he had discovered leaves deep underground in the backfilled tunnels of one of his sites. Years after his disappearance, he was assumed to be dead. Andrew Gough. They were not going to give up their secrets to a production team with hi-tech equipment and a $1 million an episode budget, who were on location for a week to excavate. No explanation was offered as to why the map's original owner simply gave it away. I knew we were essentially talking to the taxman about poetry. Over the next few days Klaus took me around his sites; each was different, but equally spectacular. 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