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00:00Mysteries can be buried anywhere, under the earth, beneath the sea, or even right under
00:14our own feet. And when we stumble upon them, sometimes what we find can change history.
00:22Tonight, accidental discoveries that expose dark secrets. From a Prohibition-era hideout.
00:33The room looks like no one's been down here in decades. Then something catches their eye.
00:38To a clue from an infamous crime. It's more money than he's ever seen in his life.
00:45The FBI run the serial numbers and what they find is shocking.
00:49To a scandalous secret hidden in Washington, D.C.
00:55Just steps from the Capitol was the ultimate retreat for Washington's elite.
01:00Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.
01:19In the winter of 1977, a man named Ron Lykins and his friends were all waders at the famous Awani Hotel in Yosemite National Park.
01:30They decide on their day off that they are going to go snowshoeing into the frozen tundra of the Yosemite backcountry.
01:38About six miles into their hike, they spot something surprising.
01:45It's a debris trail. And then suddenly, they encounter an airplane wing just sitting out there in the snow.
01:54They head back and report it to the park rangers. And before long, officials from four government agencies swarm to the area.
02:04They follow the debris trail and eventually come to a twin engine plane in a frozen lake.
02:12Officials fire up chainsaws and start cutting it out of the ice. When they cut open the cargo hold, they see something incredible.
02:24They find marijuana, literally tons of it.
02:29They estimate there are 6,000 pounds of weed in the hold.
02:33Authorities spend the next week hauling bundles of it out of the Yosemite Valley.
02:38Unfortunately, their work is cut short when a huge snowstorm rolls in.
02:43A full wintertime salvage operation would be too hazardous.
02:47So the feds have to press pause on the entire operation and wait for the spring.
02:51Before they leave for the season, they run the tail number to ID the plane.
02:56It belongs to a guy named John Glisky, who's been on the DEA's radar for a while.
03:01He's a former army helicopter pilot in Vietnam and now a full-time smuggler.
03:07Authorities contact Glisky's wife and she shares what she knows.
03:12She confirms that about a month earlier, on the night before the crash,
03:16he loads up three tons of weed at a dusty airstrip in Baja
03:20and under the cover of darkness, flies it into the United States.
03:24But the run ends in disaster.
03:27Glisky's plane goes down in Yosemite.
03:33Leaving both men dead and three tons of marijuana entombed in ice.
03:39Some people overhear off-duty DEA agents at a bar
03:43talking about how they had to leave this wreck until spring with tons of drugs still inside.
03:49Among those who hear it are three anonymous hikers who race to the scene days later.
03:55When they reach the plane, one of them sticks his arm into a hole next to the cockpit
04:00and pulls out a plastic-wrapped bale.
04:04The plane is packed with five-kilo bricks of high-grade Mexican weed.
04:12Now word spreads like wildfire and in the days that follow,
04:17a stream of hikers brave the elements to get to the goods at what they're calling Dope Lake.
04:23When April rolls around, there's an unexpected heat wave.
04:29The snow melts, the trails clear, and the looting goes into overdrive.
04:34It is a full-blown green rush.
04:37Dozens and dozens of hikers make the 32-mile round trip.
04:42Some of them carry out 200-pound loads of marijuana worth about $50,000 at the time.
04:51In just one week, over a half a million dollars of marijuana goes missing
04:57at the hands of opportunistic Yosemite hikers.
05:01Rangers launch a surprise raid, but only nab two hikers.
05:06All of the true culprits are never identified.
05:10And the crime slowly fades from memory.
05:13It's one of the wildest forgotten stories in American crime history.
05:18But for a brief window in the 70s, Dope Lake turned Yosemite
05:22into the most lucrative hiking trail on the planet.
05:29Years later, a shop owner stumbles on another set of mysterious criminals.
05:35This time, a couple you'd never suspect.
05:41In 2017, a New Mexico antique shop owner named David Van Auker
05:46is browsing an estate sale of a recently deceased pair of school teachers
05:51named Jerry and Rita Alter.
05:53He combs through some various knick-knacks, pieces of art, and chotskys.
05:58David picks up a few inexpensive items.
06:01He also picks up an old abstract oil painting of a woman.
06:06All in all, he spends about $2,000, and he thinks he can make some money off of it
06:11if he cleans up the oil painting and a few of the other items.
06:14Van Auker throws everything in the back of his truck.
06:17And when he gets back to his shop, he leans the painting in the back.
06:20Less than an hour later, a customer approaches David
06:23and tells him that the painting looks an awful lot like the work
06:26of a famous Dutch-American abstract painter by the name of Willem de Kooning.
06:31De Kooning became really popular after World War II
06:34in the abstract expressionism movement.
06:37And his paintings have sold for millions of dollars.
06:40So it's pretty surprising that two retired school teachers
06:43would own an original de Kooning.
06:46After being offered $200,000 for the painting by a customer,
06:50Van Auker hides the work in his bathroom
06:53and begins researching de Kooning.
06:56What he finds piques his interest.
06:59Sure enough, he soon finds a de Kooning painting called Woman Ochre
07:04that looks just like the one he's propped up next to his toilet.
07:07And as he reads about Woman Ochre, he finds out it was stolen
07:11from the University of Arizona Museum of Art.
07:14Van Auker is shocked.
07:16Could he really be in possession of a stolen masterpiece?
07:20He doesn't want to get into any trouble.
07:22So he calls the Arizona Museum and speaks to the curator.
07:25She tells Van Auker to keep the painting safe
07:27and she'll be there to have a look at it the next day.
07:30Understandably, he is freaking out.
07:33The next day, museum officials visit him to inspect the painting.
07:37And sure enough, it is the original Woman Ochre.
07:40That means it's worth just a little more than the $2,000 he spent on it.
07:45It's valued at $150 million.
07:49Turns out the painting was stolen during a bold museum heist nearly 35 years earlier.
07:57The day after Thanksgiving in 1985 was a pretty slow day at the University of Arizona Museum.
08:03Shortly after opening, a man and woman entered.
08:07They were sort of acting kind of strange and oddly, and they only stayed around for about 15 minutes.
08:14A little while later, as museum security guards made their rounds, they discovered the unimaginable.
08:21One of their most prized paintings, Woman Ochre, had disappeared.
08:26Whoever stole it cut it right out of its frame and walked out the front door.
08:31At least, that's what officials assume happened.
08:34Because at the time, the museum didn't have security cameras.
08:37Museum staff provided a description of the odd couple to the police.
08:41And mentioned also seeing a red sports car in the parking lot at about the time that they were in the building.
08:47The couple were really the only suspects, but the police had no idea who they really were.
08:53There were no photos, no fingerprints, nothing.
08:57It's not until the estate sale, over three decades later, that investigators are finally able to start piecing it all together.
09:07Police sketches of the suspects do resemble the altars, and a few old family photos place the couple in the Tucson area at the time of the theft.
09:17One photo even shows Rita and Jerry in a rented red sports car.
09:22All signs point toward them as the culprits.
09:25But without a living suspect, it's almost impossible to prove it for sure.
09:30So David Van Ocker returns Woman Ochre to the University of Arizona Museum of Art and declines the reward money.
09:38When authorities look deeper, they start thinking that a few other paintings supposedly owned by Jerry and Rita were also stolen.
09:45They're still investigating, but it may just turn out that these two unassuming school teachers were some of the best art thieves of all time.
09:53Yard sales can turn up just about anything.
10:02Junk, antiques, even hidden gems.
10:05But one Florida man's discovery carried a secret.
10:09It had been stolen.
10:14Back in 2021 in Brooksville, Florida, Jamie Bath and his wife are browsing a local yard sale.
10:20They like collecting and looking through all sorts of things.
10:24Old coins, vintage radios, maybe a rusty tool or two.
10:29As Bath picks through the goods, he spots a cool metal lying on a table.
10:35It's gold and purple with George Washington's face right in the middle.
10:39And he doesn't know what it is, but for two bucks, he figures, why not?
10:42Later, as he's going through his hall, he spots an engraving on the reverse of the metal.
10:47It says, for military merit, Gus A. Allbritton.
10:54Bath thinks this thing might be important, so he starts digging.
10:58A quick search tells him all he needs to know.
11:00This isn't just some old metal.
11:02It's a Purple Heart.
11:05The oldest and one of the most prestigious honors awarded to members of the U.S. military.
11:11The Purple Heart is awarded to those soldiers who are wounded or killed in action.
11:18Bath discovers that this is a rare honor.
11:21A very large number of recipients of this metal receive it only because they have been killed in action.
11:27So Bath wants to make sure that it gets back to the brave man or the family of the brave man whose name is engraved on the back of the metal.
11:34Gus A. Allbritton.
11:37Bath does some sleuthing and tracks Gus down through the VA to a town called Dublin, Georgia.
11:43He happens to be alive and well and has been volunteering there for over 30 years.
11:48The VA passes Bath's message along, and when Gus calls him back, Bath is floored by the veteran's heroic story.
11:55Back in the summer of 1968, Gus graduates high school and then receives his draft notice the very next day.
12:03A week later, he reports to Fort Benning to receive infantry basic training.
12:08And a few months after that, he's deployed to the Republic of Vietnam.
12:12Over the next two years, Gus defies the odds in numerous battles.
12:18The war was brutal, and Gus didn't have it easy.
12:22First, an AK-47 round tears through his shoulder.
12:26He survives.
12:27Then he's shot through the midsection.
12:30And again, he survives.
12:33And just when it seems like he's cheated death enough, an RPG explodes in his bunker, sending shrapnel into his back and chest.
12:41Gus is both tough and lucky.
12:43He survives and is awarded the Purple Heart three times.
12:47After the war, the newly decorated hero moves to Florida and gets a job as a court bailiff.
12:54While most people would keep their medals on display, Gus, he's not most people.
12:59He gives one to his son, a second to his daughter, and he keeps the third for himself.
13:04Until one day, it disappears.
13:08In 1983, while Gus is at work, someone breaks into his house.
13:15They steal jewelry, they steal guns, and they steal his Purple Heart.
13:20Gus has spent enough time in law enforcement to know that stolen items like these are rarely recovered.
13:26For nearly four decades, it remains lost until Jamie Bath finds it at a yard sale in the same town where it was stolen.
13:37Law enforcement thinks whoever took it probably had no idea what they had and either tossed it or gave it away.
13:46Once Jamie gets in touch with Gus, he mails the medal back to him.
13:51A small but valuable piece of stolen valor returned to its rightful owner after 38 years.
13:58If you think finding a war medal at a garage sale is wild, wait till you see what two brothers uncovered in their bookstore.
14:10It's 2021 in Evansville, Indiana.
14:13Two brothers, Sam and Adam Morris, are about to open their dream business, a bookstore that's appropriately called your brother's bookstore.
14:23The brothers are eager to open their doors, but first they need to finish some renovations.
14:28As their workers start ripping up the hardwood, they find something strange.
14:35One section of the floor doesn't match the rest.
14:37At first, this looks like it's just a bad patch job.
14:42But as the workers begin to pry out the wooden slats, they find something unexpected.
14:47It's not just a loose floorboard.
14:52It's a secret trap door.
14:55The workers wave the brothers over, and suddenly this renovation feels more like an investigation.
15:02They climb down into the space below, expecting to find something like an old cellar.
15:08But when they shine their flashlights around, they discover that this is much larger.
15:13The room is covered in a thick layer of dust.
15:17It looks like no one's been down here in decades.
15:20But then something catches their eye.
15:23There's a hole in the far wall about the size of a dinner plate.
15:27When they look through it, they see another space, and what looks like the entrance to another tunnel.
15:34They assume that this is simply a passage that connects to the basement of the building next door.
15:39That's very mysterious, but the brothers have a lot of work to do to get their bookstore open.
15:44So they head back upstairs and get back to work.
15:48A few weeks later, the store opens.
15:50Hoping to pique the curiosity of new customers, they place a sign outside the business that says,
15:57Ask about our secret tunnel.
16:00Soon someone does.
16:01The Evansville African American Museum.
16:04For years, the museum has been researching the Evansville history of the Underground Railroad,
16:11the storied network for enslaved persons who were fleeing southern states in the 1850s.
16:17Museum officials have heard rumors that there was a station of the Underground Railroad somewhere on Main Street,
16:24but they found no evidence until now.
16:26The museum officials take a look at the mysterious room under the brothers' bookstore.
16:32Then they take a look at the hole in the far wall, and eventually decide to break through it.
16:39That's when they discover that the tunnel doesn't just go to the basement of the next building.
16:46It keeps going.
16:48As they continue to explore the tunnels, they begin to notice an assortment of strange artifacts.
16:54Glass bottles, tables and chairs built into the tunnel walls.
16:59And the real surprise, a still for making alcohol.
17:04It doesn't look like a safe haven for slaves.
17:07It looks more like a bar.
17:09They realize this tunnel wasn't a station on the Underground Railroad.
17:13It was a prohibition era speakeasy.
17:16At the turn of the last century, Evansville was well known for its breweries.
17:23But in 1918, the state of Indiana outlawed the sale of alcohol,
17:29two years before the National Prohibition Law.
17:32Not everyone was happy about giving a booze.
17:36With its brewing expertise and strong German drinking culture,
17:40Evansville becomes a center of speakeasies and underground drinking halls,
17:46like the one the brothers have discovered under Main Street.
17:49The Morris brothers' find doesn't just uncover an underground hideaway.
17:55It reveals a hidden and very interesting part of Hoosier history.
17:59It's one of America's most infamous unsolved crimes.
18:09One without any leads until a second grader makes the find of a lifetime.
18:15In 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram is out with his family camping along the Columbia River in Washington State.
18:24It gets cold out, so Brian's father tells him to head down to the river to where the sand is, clear a spot, and build a fire.
18:33While he's smoothing the ground for the fire pit, Brian's arm rushes up against something.
18:39He immediately recognizes a signature distinctive green, and he produces a stack of $20 bills.
18:51It's more money than he's seen in his life.
18:54So he calls his dad over, they start to count the cash, and altogether, Brian has found $5,880.
19:01That's the equivalent of over 20 grand today.
19:05But some of these bills have rotted away down to the size of playing cards.
19:10They don't know if the money is real, counterfeit, lost, or stolen.
19:14They decide that they have to call up the authorities.
19:16They stuff the cash in a plastic bread bag, and when they get home, his dad calls the FBI.
19:23Soon agents show up and collect the money.
19:27The FBI run the serial numbers on the dollars through their database, and what they find is shocking.
19:34The cash is associated with one of the most well-known crimes in recent American history, the D.B. Cooper hijacking.
19:46Back in 1971, a man who is later known as D.B. Cooper buys a one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle.
19:53He sits in the last row of the plane, and after the plane takes off, has a drink, and then casually passes a note to a flight attendant.
20:02The note read, I have a bomb.
20:06Then he opened his suitcase and showed what looked to be a very real bomb.
20:12And at that moment, it became a hijacking.
20:17He contacts authorities and demands $200,000 and a parachute.
20:23With lots of innocent people on board the aircraft, and with no way of knowing whether or not D.B. Cooper's supposed bomb was real or not, the authorities had no choice but to play along.
20:33Authorities get the money and the chute together, the plane touches down in Seattle, D.B. Cooper makes good on his word and lets the hostages go, picks up the money and the chutes, and the plane takes off again.
20:48Shortly after the plane takes back off into the sky, Cooper parachutes out of the plane over the Pacific Northwest, never to be seen again.
20:58And neither is the money until now.
21:03Almost a decade after the hijacking, Brian Ingram is the first and only person to find any of D.B. Cooper's loot.
21:10This instantly becomes the FBI's best piece of evidence in the infamous crime.
21:15So how does the stolen cash end up on the shores of the Columbia River?
21:20Some claim that Cooper landed in the river and the cash floated downstream.
21:26Others suggest that Cooper buried the cash on that part of the beach and would come back to it later.
21:31Others even accuse the Ingrams of working in cahoots with Cooper by finding this little bit of money as a way to throw the authorities off of D.B. Cooper's trail.
21:42Now, despite the speculation, Brian is a hero among his fellow second graders.
21:48But unfortunately, this epic monetary fine does not make him rich.
21:54The FBI tells Brian he can't keep any of the money he found because it's evidence.
22:01What follows is this multi-year court battle where Brian ends up getting to keep half the money.
22:07The rest goes to the airline's insurance company.
22:10Now, Brian hangs on to this money until 2008 when he ends up auctioning off 15 of those bills, which have a face value of about $300.
22:19But for collectors, they're pieces of an unsolved case, and they're worth much more to them.
22:25At the auction, these bills end up going for about $37,000.
22:31To this day, not a single additional bill from Cooper's ransom has been recovered.
22:36And the hijacking remains the only unsolved case of air piracy in commercial aviation history.
22:42Thousands of miles away and decades earlier, another shocking discovery is pulled not from the sand, but from the sea.
22:54It's April 1935 in Sydney, Australia.
23:00Fisherman Bert Hobson, who's out on the water, attempting to bring in his daily catch of things like amberjack and southern calamari.
23:08As he's hauling in a big catch, he notices that what he's caught is no ordinary game fish, but in fact, is a 14-foot live tiger shark.
23:25He goes to toss it back in the water, but then he gets an idea.
23:29His brother runs the local aquarium, and he figures maybe they could use a new star attraction.
23:35Bert's brother feels, oh, having a shark in the aquarium would definitely bring in the crowds, bring the shark over.
23:41And they do, and they toss it in a tank at the aquarium.
23:45And then there's a problem.
23:47The shark isn't exactly thriving in its new environment.
23:51At first, the shark looks agitated, and then it starts to look sick.
23:57And then one day, in front of a very stunned crowd, the shark convulses and vomits.
24:05What the shark coughs up isn't fish bones or bait.
24:09It's a human arm.
24:12Upon further analysis, the authorities realized this arm was not bitten off by a shark.
24:18They don't notice any sort of jagged teeth markings on the arm, but more cleaner incised wounds from either a knife or a cleaver.
24:25So now they realize that there is a homicide on their hands.
24:30The severed arm has a pretty distinctive tattoo of two boxers fighting.
24:36So authorities released this information to the general public, and not long after that, a man by the name of Edwin Smith comes forward.
24:43He says that his brother James had a tattoo just like that.
24:47James Smith is a failed boxer, small-time crook, and an occasional police informant.
24:53Edwin tells police that he hasn't seen his brother for a few weeks.
24:57Further digging reveals that the last person that James Smith was seen with was a man by the name of Patrick Brady.
25:05Now both Brady and Smith worked for a local crime boss by the name of Reginald Holmes.
25:12So the police think that Brady and Holmes might have teamed up to take out Smith.
25:19Police arrest Brady first, but when they go after the boss, Holmes, he panics.
25:26He jumps in a boat, speeds into the harbor, and tries to shoot himself in the head.
25:32Now Holmes ends up surviving, and when questioned by authorities, gives his own version of the events.
25:41After he recovers, Holmes swears that he had nothing to do with Smith's murder, and he pins the whole thing on Brady.
25:50Before Holmes can testify at Brady's trial, he's found dead in his car under suspicious circumstances.
25:59Police suspect that Brady had Holmes killed to shut him up.
26:03But without Holmes' testimony or Smith's body, prosecutors have no case.
26:08Brady walks free and lives a long and peaceful life for the next 30 years.
26:14The rest of James Smith's body is never found.
26:17As for what happens to the shark, I think it's safe to say that it never had another meal like that again.
26:29Washington, D.C. is known for its secrets and scandals.
26:34One of the most intriguing lay hidden for over a century, buried in a place you'd never expect.
26:42It's 1997, and the Smithsonian Institution is looking to build the brand-new Museum of the American Indian near the National Mall.
26:50And so before they can build, they want to do a full survey of the site.
26:55As the team surveys this piece of land, they find something surprising.
27:04The workers discover the remnants of a palatial estate.
27:09But what's strange is historians know this area used to be a working-class neighborhood,
27:14populated with the homes of people who worked in nearby factories.
27:18The foundation of this house, however, is way larger than all of the modest homes around it.
27:25Archaeologists start a formal excavation.
27:28And they find china, champagne corks, and various women's fashion pieces.
27:35This is all high-end stuff, and it doesn't make sense to find it in this old working-class neighborhood.
27:41So who could have owned such a luxurious home here?
27:45Some of the museum's researchers start looking at historical maps and real estate records of the day,
27:51and they discover that in the 1840s, six women in their 20s and 30s lived here in a house owned by a woman named Mary Hall.
28:01But Mary wasn't just any woman. She was known as the Madam of the Mall, and her house was a high-end brothel.
28:11Mary was born in 1814, and by all accounts became a rather successful prostitute.
28:18She was so successful, in fact, that she was able to earn enough money to buy a lot on what is now the National Mall,
28:26and build a rather impressive house on it.
28:28Today, you find a bunch of stately monuments in the area.
28:32But back then, it was not the most respected part of town.
28:36There were streets with names like Laos Alley and Murderer's Row, so it's incredibly clear that this was a very unsavory area.
28:46But Mary was a very shrewd businesswoman, and she stayed in business for about 40 years.
28:53And in fact, Mary's tenure spanned the terms of about a dozen different presidents.
29:01Just steps from the Capitol, Hall's three-story brick mansion was the ultimate retreat for Washington's elite.
29:09While there are no surviving records naming her high-end clientele,
29:14it's clear that the Madam of the Mall was a talented businesswoman.
29:19Mary found great success at a time when women had very few rights to property or business ownership.
29:26In 1883, Mary retired with over $87,000.
29:31That's the modern equivalent of over $2 million.
29:34After getting out of the brothel business, Mary rented the property to a women's health clinic.
29:41In 1886, shortly after her death, it was converted yet again into a school for African-American children.
29:48Even though we can acknowledge that Mary's field was a rather illicit one,
29:54some say she has a better reputation than many of the politicians that passed through her door.
30:00In a quiet neighborhood backyard, another mystery is about to surface.
30:06One that will solve what was thought to be a murder.
30:10In August of 2019, a man is using some online tools to take a virtual walk through his old neighborhood in Wellington, Florida.
30:23While scanning satellite images of his former stomping ground, he notices something unusual about his former neighbor's pond in his backyard.
30:33It's white, kind of shiny, kind of metallic looking.
30:37So he zooms in and it looks like a car.
30:45The man calls his former neighbor, Barry Faye, and tells him what he saw.
30:49But Faye's not buying it because he spent thousands of hours in his yard.
30:53And he's never noticed anything weird, even when the water levels drop.
30:57Just to be sure though, Faye asks a friend to fly a drone over the pond.
31:02And when they take a look at the footage, there's no question.
31:07There's absolutely a car underwater.
31:10Faye calls the police and soon his backyard turns into a crime scene.
31:16Officers work late into the night and wind up pulling out a white 1994 Saturn from the pond.
31:23But that's not all they find.
31:26Inside the car is a skeleton.
31:30Forensic testing matches the remains to a man who's been missing for decades.
31:35A mortgage broker named William Malt.
31:38Authorities look into Malt and soon uncover the shocking details surrounding his disappearance.
31:45In November of 1997, Malt is out partying with a few of his buddies.
31:49And around 9.30pm that night, he calls his girlfriend to let her know that he's heading home.
31:55But he never made it home that night.
31:57In fact, no one ever found a trace of him.
32:00Malt was reported missing and police opened an investigation.
32:04But the case went cold until now.
32:07Investigators see no signs of foul play.
32:10They think that Malt lost control of his car, veered off the road, and crashed into the pond.
32:16Over the next two decades, the neighborhood developed around the pond.
32:21Houses were built, roads were paved, and all the while, William Malt and his car are hidden beneath the surface.
32:29Thanks to Fay's former neighbor and some zoomed-in satellite images, the case of the missing mortgage broker is finally solved.
32:3822 years later.
32:40Imagine searching for a legendary wreck said to hold 10 tons of gold and silver.
32:52Instead of treasure, you uncover evidence of a crime hidden beneath the sea.
32:57In 2005, a team of researchers launched a mission to locate the wreck of a famous warship that sank in the Mediterranean more than 200 years ago.
33:10The HMS Sussex was a ship in the Royal English Navy's fleet that sank in 1694 during a violent storm.
33:18The team deploys an underwater robot and begins scanning the seabed between Spain and Morocco, where it's rumored that the ship went down.
33:29Hours pass.
33:31Hours pass.
33:32They find nothing but sand and shadows.
33:35Then suddenly, bingo!
33:38They see a wreck.
33:41When the remotely operated vehicle moves in for a closer look, something doesn't add up.
33:48The Sussex was a beast.
33:51157 feet long, three towering masts, 80 guns.
33:56But this wreck is a much smaller ship, just 45 feet.
34:00A sleek, two-masted vessel called a Tartane.
34:03It's not what they're looking for, but it's still something worth exploring.
34:07Lying 2,700 feet below the surface, this wreck is remarkably well preserved.
34:14Among the debris, they find pottery and glassware.
34:17They also find Turkish tea bowls and liquor bottles made in Germany and Belgium.
34:23These discoveries all suggest the ship was made to pass as a training vessel, but its real mission was more sinister.
34:32The rover shines its light on the wreck and reveals four large cannons.
34:38They also see muskets and ten swivel guns.
34:42Researchers know that when a Tartane is outfitted with this type of artillery, that only means one thing.
34:48It's a pirate ship.
34:51Another piece of evidence, the shipwreck's location is on the Barbary Coast, which stretches along the western coastline of North Africa from modern-day Morocco to Libya.
35:01During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this was a notorious hunting ground for pirates who attacked ships and ran brutal slave raids.
35:10The Tartane was one of their primary tools of terror.
35:14From a distance, it looks like a small fishing boat, allowing them to nonchalantly pursue their target.
35:20By the time the target realized they were in danger, it was already too late.
35:24But this ship wasn't just plundering other boats. It was abducting people.
35:34When most of us think about the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, we naturally think of Europeans and Americans enslaving Africans.
35:43But there was also a smaller slave trade working in the other direction, with Africans from the Barbary Coast enslaving Europeans through the Mediterranean.
35:55It's estimated that 1.25 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary pirates.
36:01And the area that this ship is in leads researchers to suspect that it was en route to Spain, which is just across from the Barbary Coast.
36:10By presenting as a harmless trading vessel, the pirates could ambush their target.
36:17And then would use larger galley ships to transport the slaves back to North Africa.
36:22Ships like this menaced the open seas for another half century after this particular boat sank.
36:31Eventually, their reign of terror ended in the early 1800s, thanks to the Barbary Wars.
36:37This amazing discovery serves as a reminder that even the ocean keeps her secrets.
36:43Some lost to history, some just waiting for the right time to resurface.
36:52Sorting through a deceased father's keepsace doesn't usually turn up evidence of a crime.
37:01But that's just what one family uncovers to their total surprise.
37:09In 2023, a Massachusetts family is going through their late father's house.
37:15As they start rummaging through bags and boxes, they find the things that you would expect to discover.
37:21Old documents, holiday decorations, and some family heirlooms.
37:26As they make their way through these boxes, they find something totally unexpected.
37:31A collection of Japanese artifacts.
37:34They carefully collect the antiques, bring them downstairs to try to learn more about them.
37:41With any luck, they figure maybe this stuff might be worth a few bucks.
37:45The family begins researching the unfamiliar artwork, and soon they find themselves on the last website they expected.
37:54The FBI's National Stolen Art File Database.
37:58Basically, if something culturally significant goes missing anywhere in the world, it ends up on this website.
38:04One by one, they start to see that these dusty antiques in their living room seem to be matches to the black and white photos on the FBI's website.
38:14And that can only mean one thing.
38:17All of these artifacts that they find in their dad's attic are stolen Japanese treasure.
38:24The family contacts the FBI to tell them how they stumbled onto these works of art.
38:30They meet up with FBI agent Jeffrey Kelly, assigned to investigate art crime in Boston.
38:37The first thing that I needed to do was verify that these objects were the same ones that were listed on the FBI's stolen property database.
38:45And when I compared them with the old black and white photographs that were on our stolen art file database, you could tell that they were a match.
38:55In all, there are 22 artifacts that date to the Ryukyu Kingdom, the kingdom that ruled Okinawa from the 15th to the 19th centuries.
39:04Little of the art from this time period survived, and that makes these artifacts all the more valuable.
39:10These were not little trophies or knickknacks.
39:13These were incredibly important pieces of cultural patrimony for the Okinawan people.
39:18The FBI is determined to figure out how these relics ended up in this attic.
39:24Agents began investigating the artwork and soon traced them back to World War II.
39:29In the spring of 1945, the Battle of Okinawa was raging in the Pacific.
39:36During the fighting, a group of American soldiers occupied the palace of a royal family that fled the city.
39:44When the fighting ended and Americans vacated this palace, authorities eventually returned to the island and found that many of its artifacts had been looted.
39:52But according to the family, their father was never stationed in the Pacific.
39:57Something that initially confuses Agent Kelly until he uncovers a clue.
40:03As I'm examining these artifacts, I see that tucked inside a ceramic jug is an unsigned typed letter.
40:11And this isn't just any letter. This is basically a confession.
40:15The author discusses how he came to acquire these pieces when he was stationed in Okinawa, and he found them in a palace, and he brought them back to Massachusetts.
40:25According to the letter, when this author made it back to the United States, he tried to sell the artifacts to a museum.
40:32The museum declines, and the artifacts vanish into storage for decades.
40:38How they surfaced in an attic remains unclear, but the FBI is now on a mission to send them home.
40:46In 2024, the FBI teams up with the Smithsonian to help pack up all of these ancient artifacts and return them to Japan, to their rightful home.
40:57It was a big event in Okinawa for them to finally get these items back, items that they never thought that they would see again.
41:05And I was really proud that we were able to help out.
41:09It's just part of the 900 million dollars that the FBI's art crime program has recovered over the years.
41:19Whether it's ransom money, stolen treasure, or a case gone cold, sometimes the darkest secrets have a way of coming back into the light.
41:28I'm Danny Trejo.
41:30Thanks for watching Mysteries on Earth.
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