PENFIELD, Pa. – In the center of Pennsylvania elk nation, Eric McCarthy and his shopper, Don Reichel, were given up earlier than break of day to scour the woodland ground for so-called “brown gold” — a rack of freshly shed antlers to upload to Reichel’s assortment again house.
One hill over, a group of FBI brokers was once additionally looking for gold. The steel yellow sort.
The FBI’s highly unusual search for buried Civil War-era treasure greater than 5 years in the past set in movement a dispute over what, if the rest, the company unearthed and an ongoing legal battle over key data. There’s such a lot intrigue that even a federal pass judgement on felt forced to be aware in a ruling ultimate week: “The FBI may have found the gold — or maybe not.”
Now, two witnesses have come ahead to percentage with The Associated Press what they heard and noticed within the woods that late-winter morning, elevating questions concerning the FBI’s timeline and including plot twists to a saga that blends parts of legend, reality and science – and a heavy dose of govt secrecy.
The FBI insists not anything got here of the March 2018 excavation in Dents Run, a far flung wooded valley about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh. But a treasure hunter who led FBI brokers to the hillside the place an 1863 gold cargo would possibly were buried is difficult the federal government’s denials. How may the dig have arise empty, he asks, when the FBI’s personal scans confirmed the chance of a buried steel mass equaling loads of hundreds of thousands of bucks in gold?
McCarthy, a 45-year-old elk information, had by no means met treasure hunter Dennis Parada. But he watched from afar as Parada took the FBI to court and advised his tale within the media. McCarthy lately determined to percentage his personal tale as a result of he concept Parada, who spent years taking a look for the gold earlier than coming near the FBI together with his findings, has been handled unfairly.
“I just felt like I needed to say what I saw, you know?” McCarthy defined. “I have no ties to anybody here. It’s just I felt like they were wronged.”
In an interview at a far flung looking camp about 25 miles (40 km) from Dents Run, McCarthy recollects listening to the surprising clang of heavy apparatus as he labored his manner up the mountain in near-darkness, a dusting of snow at the floor from a contemporary squall.
Later that day, whilst breaking for lunch, McCarthy and Reichel watched a trio of armored vans rumble previous. One of the automobiles rode low, as though it was once wearing a complete load.
“They took something out of Dents Run,” McCarthy insists now. “Something heavy.”
Reached through telephone, Reichel, McCarthy’s 73-year-old shed looking shopper, corroborated his account of listening to early-morning clatter and seeing a loaded truck on March 14, 2018. Their reminiscences echo previous statements from citizens who advised the AP of listening to a backhoe and jackhammer in a single day and seeing a convoy of FBI automobiles, together with armored vans.
Parada, co-founder of the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers, perspectives the eyewitness accounts as vital as a result of they may bolster one of his primary contentions — that the FBI performed a secret in a single day dig for the gold and spirited it away. The FBI’s warrant to excavate the web page restricted paintings to 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.
The company strenuously denies it dug after hours, pronouncing FBI police simply performed midnight ATV patrols to safe the web page.
“No gold or other items of evidence were located or collected. The FBI continues to unequivocally reject any claims or speculation to the contrary,” mentioned spokesperson Carrie Adamowski.
Indeed, there may be little ancient proof to substantiate apocryphal accounts that an Army detachment misplaced a gold cargo within the Pennsylvania barren region, in all probability after an ambush through Confederate sympathizers. But the legend has impressed generations of treasure hunters, Parada amongst them.
Scientific checking out steered he was once on to one thing.
The FBI mentioned in a 2018 courtroom record that its personal geophysical guide recognized an underground metallic mass weighing up to 9 heaps, with the density of gold, on the web page recognized through Finders Keepers. A federal pass judgement on licensed a seek and seizure warrant, and the FBI arrange camp in Dents Run, later describing it as a imaginable “cultural heritage site containing gold belonging to the United States government.” Parada was hoping to earn a finder’s price from the possible restoration.
On the second one day of the FBI dig, McCarthy and Reichel aroused from sleep at 4 a.m. and have been on a mountain that parallels the slim Dents Run valley someday between 5 and 5:30.
By then, the FBI’s presence had change into the controversy of the backcountry, with hypothesis operating rampant that brokers have been looking for gold. The FBI had shooed McCarthy clear of a other section of Dents Run a day previous. But he was once made up our minds to lend a hand his shopper in finding an elk shed. Splitting up to build up their odds, McCarthy dropped Reichel off then parked greater than a mile away.
He mentioned he may pay attention the far away hum of a operating engine once he were given out of his truck. The noise grew louder as he made his manner up the hill and he heard steel on stone, or steel on steel — what sounded to him like heavy apparatus assembly earth.
McCarthy mentioned he were given to the highest of the ridge and began backtrack the opposite facet. That’s when he laid eyes at the FBI operation, at the reverse slope, about 400 yards (meters) away. He noticed lighting powered through a generator. A parked excavator. A smaller piece of apparatus, possibly a skid-steer or quad, shifting up and down the hill. A brown-black gash within the earth surrounded through snow. People huddling underneath a makeshift cover.
“It looked to me like they were wrapping up a dig,” he said.
Reichel, who was farther away from the dig site, said he heard machinery when he crested the ridge.
“I can hear some machines, or something, clanging and banging and roaring and all that stuff,” mentioned Reichel, a retired production employee. He mentioned he was once too a ways away to be ready to see the rest.
An FBI timeline says the search team didn’t arrive at the dig site until 8 a.m. that morning, and an excavator operator arrived even later. That’s well after the time that McCarthy and Reichel say they detected signs of activity.
The pair reconvened for lunch several hours later. It was then, they said, that a convoy of unmarked black SUVs and armored trucks drove by them on Pennsylvania Route 555, heading out of Dents Run. McCarthy and Reichel said one of the three armored trucks seemed to be weighed down — more squat than the other two and lagging behind.
“Eric and I both made the comment that one must be loaded.” Reichel said.
“It was loaded to the gills,” said McCarthy, adding he’s driven overloaded dump trucks and “I know what it looks like.”
Not so, the FBI says. While “appropriate vehicles and equipment” were brought to Dents Run, armored trucks were not among them, according to Adamowski, the FBI spokesperson.
Warren Getler, a consultant who has worked closely with Finders Keepers, argued the eyewitness accounts add up to one thing – a clandestine night dig.
“And why would you do a night dig,” he said, “unless you wanted to remove the gold under cover of darkness?”
Getler, co-author of “Rebel Gold,” a book exploring the possibility of buried Civil War-era caches of gold and silver, joined Parada in Dents Run for the 2018 dig. But the FBI mostly kept them confined to their cars at the bottom of the hill, showing them an empty hole when the work was done.
The company due to this fact stonewalled Parada’s Freedom of Information Act request for data at the dig, prompting him to document a lawsuit. In 2022, a pass judgement on forced the FBI to free up a trove of photos and documents.
But the agency refuses to turn over its operational plan for the gold dig — which Parada and Getler believe might include information about an overnight excavation — and other records the government says are exempt from disclosure. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta told the FBI on Sept. 27 it needed to come up with a better justification for keeping the disputed records under wraps.
While Parada pursues the FBI in court, he hasn’t given up his search in the Dents Run area. He recently hired a New Jersey geophysical company that identified several underground anomalies near the site of the original FBI dig, one of which measures 25 feet (7.62 meters) by 8 feet (2.44 m).
Finders Keepers’ own equipment detected metal objects in the same location, perhaps 15 feet down, presumably in a tunnel or cave, said Parada, playing a video that shows a detector emitting a high-pitched squeal as it is swept across the ground.
He’s now seeking to partner with the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which owns the land, on a new excavation in Dents Run. Parada, his lawyer and top officials from the conservation agency plan to meet later this month.
“It’s a part of our history that’s hidden away,” Parada mentioned, “and I think it’s time that should be told.”
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