[brooding music playing]
- [bird of prey cries] - [Forrest] It's the Rocky Mountains.
There are certain rules that you need to observe
when you go into the forest.
I would urge people to know where you're going.
The mountains can be terribly unforgiving.
But, you know, the American people should not have to be told those things.
There are always exceptions, and they learn the hard way.
[Ben] Randy Bilyeu's death was huge news, international news.
[reporter 1] Fenn told Inside Edition it's not his fault
people are risking their lives.
Now, we asked Forrest Fenn if he would stop the treasure hunts
to try to save lives. He wouldn't give us an answer.
[Ben] You might think all this bad news about the hunt
would've been a cautionary tale
and that the number of hunters would've dwindled…
[horns honking]
…but, instead, in effect,
it was a tremendously successful advertising campaign.
The more national attention it got, the more people poured into the hunt.
[reporter 2] Santa Fe has seen a dramatic influx
of what we're calling treasure tourism since this first death occurred.
[Cynthia] All the media attention just meant
that there are more and more searchers hearing about this for the first time.
I mean, one guy dies,
and now there's 50,000 more people that year going out into the mountains,
not knowing what the hell they're doing, and risk their lives.
[Ben] It drew in, like, a whole new wave of desperate characters to it,
and it's not just a few people now who are searching for it.
You know that there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people
doing the exact same thing you are.
You're all in competition, and only one person's gonna win.
So it brought in a new group of people,
but it also brought a lot of trouble,
and it's a much more competitive, high-pressure situation.
[dramatic music playing]
[Justin] I have to wonder, if Forrest knew everything that would come to pass,
would he have hidden the treasure again,
and would he have done things differently?
[bear roars]
[metallic ringing]
[music fades]
[whooshing]
[upbeat music playing]
"Treasure Hunter," huh?
All right, so you weren't lying. This isn't a totally different show.
- It's not a Love Island-type thing. - [woman] It's not a prank show.
Well, I'm waiting for the ex-girlfriend to jump out.
That kid looks sorta like me.
[man 1 laughing]
Good Lord. [chuckles]
I'm not a treasure-hunt guy.
It wasn't like I was looking for a treasure hunt.
The treasure hunt found me.
[reporter 2] People are literally dying to find Forrest Fenn's hidden treasure.
[Lou] I first found out about the whole thing by watching the news.
I think a treasure hunter died during that period.
Now, that's not on him.
They… you know, they did what they did,
and whatever happened, I wouldn't blame him.
The fact that it had started ten years ago and nobody's found it in all these years.
I'm like, "Well, hold on a second. This is findable. I can do this."
[intriguing music playing]
I've been a 747 captain for almost 25 years,
and I like to video things that go on in my life.
[grunts]
Yeah, he just bit my face.
All right, well, how cool was that encounter?
I have a YouTube channel.
It's a crazy pilot looking for snakes all over the world.
And if you subscribe, I'd really appreciate it. No, I'm kidding.
So I was always looking for new adventures.
When I first found out about the treasure hunt,
I read Forrest's book, like everybody else,
and Forrest mentioned that he was a pilot. That kinda stuck with me.
Maybe the pilot thing, since we're sort of a brotherhood of pilots,
maybe there's something I can relate to that nobody else can.
Maybe something to do with latitude and longitude
because, when he navigated in the war,
everything's done on a grid of latitude and longitude,
and that's what people have overlooked for the last ten years.
They didn't think quite like he did.
[inaudible]
I was on a trip, sitting in cruise for eight, ten hours.
There's a lot of time to think. I'm like, "Okay."
"I'll give this poem a shot." All right, "warm waters halt."
Then I started thinking of the definition of what warm is.
I'm like, "Well, everybody's definition's a little different,
but they all measure it in degrees."
Anything above your body temperature is warmer than you.
Anything colder than your body temperature is colder than you.
So warm waters do halt right at body temperature, 37 degrees.
Soon as I thought that, I'm like, "Let me look at the map of the Rockies
and see where 37 degrees happens to lie."
I opened a map, I looked at it,
and 37 degrees is the exact border between New Mexico and Colorado.
And a light bulb went off. I'm like, "This is it."
- [bell tolls] - There was five canyons.
I went through all of them, drew lines 30 miles down,
which was "not far, but too far to walk."
And I happened to find one that goes right into a place called Beaver Creek,
and I'm like, "That's my spot."
So that's where we're going, Beaver Creek.
We are on the freeway. We are heading eastbound
on the 405 freeway to Orange County Airport.
- Got the family with me. Here's my wife. - Hi.
My daughter, my son.
Chance is back there. Can you wave, Chance?
Getting ready to go on a secret treasure hunt.
- Secret treasure hunt. - Sh!
Anyway, let's do it.
[Lou's wife] Here we go.
[adventurous country music playing]
I think Lou's got a good head on his shoulders,
and so I didn't doubt him.
He came up with something that no one else had thought of yet.
He was sure.
I was like, "Okay, I'm going with you,
and the kids are too." [chuckles]
[Lou] Starbucks. No treasure hunt begins without a trip to Starbucks.
It was a beautiful day. The weather was great.
Once I figured where we were gonna park, it would take us a half hour, maybe, tops,
to walk in, grab it, and bail.
We weren't gonna hang out and see scenery. We were there to pick up the treasure.
But as we started going on these dirt roads
and they turned into rocky roads,
I started thinking, "Okay, this is a little more than I thought."
I'm telling you, we walk out of here with $2 million, it'll be well-earned.
- [Sherri] Oh no. - [Lou's son] Private property.
- [music fades] - [Sherri sighs]
[Lou] All right, so we've stopped because, uh, ran into this.
Oh man. I am three miles from where I wanna be.
I really wanted to keep going,
but I was in such a remote place with my family.
You know, the whole "trespassers will be shot" type thing.
I wasn't gonna risk our lives over it.
[Sherri] It was emotional.
I remember Lou threw his hands up in the air and was like,
you know, "Could I… could I be wrong? Why would… why would there be, uh…"
You know, he wouldn't hide it and make us trespass to find this treasure.
That's gonna do it for this one, guys.
Uh, not the trip we started out to…
[chuckles] …not the trip we were starting out for.
- [tuts] - [somber music playing]
I was disappointed.
I just felt like I let everybody down, especially for my kids.
Like, "Hey, Dad… Dad knows where this is. Dad's gonna go grab it," you know?
I sorta owed it to them to be right as a father.
Like, they look up to you, you know, as the person who knows things,
and I don't wanna be the wrong… the wrong person, I guess.
So…
Kinda ran into a roadblock,
but… I wasn't gonna let it stop me 100%.
You know, I still thought I was right. I just couldn't get there.
The private property was a big flag of, like, something's not right.
I went home. I didn't think about it for long.
- I got on the computer right away. - [intriguing music playing]
I looked up the owner of the land first. The guy's name is Don Mullins.
Is there any relationship between Don Mullins and Forrest Fenn?
Google search, "Fenn Mullins."
Get a hit right away.
Fenn and Mullins coauthored a couple books together,
but the guy's name was Mark Mullins.
So I Google searched Mark Mullins.
He named one of his kids Fenn.
Like, who would name their kid Fenn, right?
That still doesn't help me with Don Mullins. I…
You know, it's not Don Mullins. It's Mark Mullins.
So I look up the parents of Mark Mullins.
Mark Mullins's dad happens to be named Don Mullins.
And I was like,
"Okay, this is too strange."
I've taken the entire Rocky Mountains,
came to all these intersections of clues,
came to a gate that kept me out of a property,
and it's tied to a guy that wrote a book with Forrest Fenn
out in the middle of all the Rocky Mountains.
And I'm like, "That can't be a coincidence."
"It… it just can't be."
There was enough to it where I'm like, "I… I've gotta go back."
Like, "I've gotta go back," and… and that's exactly what I did, and
it didn't stop us.
[rock music playing]
[tires screech]
[man 1] That is a rainbow.
- We found Forrest's rainbow! - [Christopher] The pot of gold.
[man 2] See that rock?
- That's where the gold is. - [man 1] Look at that.
We knew the treasure was under the rock.
He placed the chest right about here.
Unfortunately, it's under a big-ass rock.
We're gonna dig the bank out, gonna get rid of the boulder.
[man 2] My dad is not the type of guy to go look out for a treasure for fun.
Yep.
He's the type of guy that'd go look for a treasure
'cause he knows where it's at.
So I'm… I'm starting to take it serious.
- He wants his cut. - [laughs] Yeah.
Day two on the boulder.
- Day three. - [man 2] We'll chip this rock away, Dad.
Chip away.
What did a day look like? You get up crack of dawn…
[Christopher] Good morning to you. Coffee?
[man 2] …drink fucking coffee grounds,
Yeehaw!
…and then start walking all the way up the canyon.
- [adventurous music playing] - Like a wolf with his pack.
Makin' sure they're okay. We'll follow them in.
[man 2] I had no liner in my boots, couldn't feel my toes.
Digging all day, hands blistering.
He's wearing Dorito bags on his feet 'cause his socks are wet! [laughs]
[man 1] Best socks around, baby. Best thermal.
- [man 2] You don't have socks under those? - [man 1] No, didn't have none.
I was walking in snow out there. I had to run to the truck.
We were consumed by it. Oh my God. We lived there all year round.
Day eight. Day 12.
Sixteenth day out here on the boulder.
Yeah, we were out there a full year.
And I'm going out there with four-wheelers, backhoes.
- Pickaxes. - Oh, everything.
- Jackhammers. - Jackhammers.
We were really just pissed off at it.
- How deep is the hole, Forrest Fenn? - [man 2] Too fuckin' deep!
- How deep is the hole, Fenn? - [music fades]
How deep is the damn hole?
[Christopher] It sucked, yeah. We were freezing.
We might've died.
I risked my life out there. We both risked our lives out there.
We were in the middle of the canyon, freezing to death.
[man 1] It's snowing on us.
- Separate the boys from the men. - [Christopher] Yes, sir.
We did all this just so my sister and my mother…
they need a comfortable house. They need to live well.
They need to be taken care of.
[poignant music playing]
A more comfortable life for my little sister Angelina.
She has Down syndrome.
And my mother.
'Cause she's… [exhales sharply] Man, it makes me sad thinking about it.
She has worked hard for our family. Very hard.
[man 2] She was the main motivation too.
We wanted to set them up for early retirement.
We wanted to make sure they have everything they wanted.
Not just simple things, but extra things, you know?
Saturday, the 11th,
day before Mother's Day and my wife's birthday.
Out here trying to make it happen for her birthday, Mother's Day.
Oh, Lord help us.
Lord help me.
Every seven years, her birthday falls on Mother's Day.
And it was her birthday or Mother's Day,
and I was out there digging, talking in the phone.
"I'm trying to bring it home to us, Mama."
"If we can get this, boy, we can… we can actually get the house you want
and lay down somewhere."
Basically was choosing that over her.
And she wanted a divorce.
She's like, "You either gotta choose or I'm gone."
And I was like, "I'll live in the mountains."
"You'll get over it when I bring it home."
That's what I told her.
[camera flashes]
She hated it, but she's just trying to make the best of it with us.
She knew we were going through something,
and it… it was… it upsets her, too,
to see us going through the stuff we were going through.
So, after six months of hitting boots on the ground,
we knew we wasted all our resources,
and we knew we had to regroup then.
"We need to figure out a better system."
"This is knocking the fight out of us. Too much work."
[Christopher] We kinda just backed off a little bit.
Packed our tools and, boom, we were outta there.
I went back home. Take a break, give your mind a rest.
I really didn't take a break.
I really still was constantly on my phone,
digging and reading up on history, and…
- We were consumed by it, for sure. - Yeah.
We didn't wanna let it go. We were stuck on it hard.
[reporter] Treasure hunter Randy Bilyeu has been found dead.
And new tonight, his wife...
[man 1] And we're watching YouTube. We're watching Forrest Fenn.
We were consuming Forrest Fenn's interviews.
[Forrest on TV] I… I don't feel responsible.
I… I don't feel like I'm to blame
for any… any… any of those things that happened.
[Christopher] At that point in time, the treasure hunt was fucking nuts.
If I was in his position, I would have called it.
That's how crazy this shit was.
[somber music playing]
[Ben] Forrest had always been this media darling,
and it really… the tone did change after Randy Bilyeu died
because there was no romance
to the fact that this poor guy had drowned looking for the treasure.
It just completely changed how you could look at that treasure hunt.
You started seeing headlines
like, "The book that lures readers to their death."
And it turns out that Randy Bilyeu's death was not a one-off.
- It was a sign of things to come. - [unsettling music playing]
[reporter 2] It was only a year ago when 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu died
while looking for treasure in the Rio Grande.
Now the body of Colorado pastor Paris Wallace,
found 80 miles away,
marks the second confirmed death of the treasure hunt.
Then other people died.
[man 2] Eric Ashby was reported missing on June 28th by his friends
after a rafting accident on the Arkansas River.
2017, it was like the year of death. Three different searchers died.
At that point, you have to be extrapolating out,
like, "Okay, one, three…"
Like, "What's next? I mean, it's gonna get really bad."
And people started just asking Forrest, "Why don't you call off the hunt?"
"How can you continue now that we know that people are dying?"
[music fades]
[man] Control is a large part of what we do in law enforcement.
We wanna control the outcome. That saves lives.
And I had no control, right?
I did not know how to stop this.
I wanted to quit sending in people to save the searchers.
It was a colossal waste of resources, I felt.
I think I'd done an interview with a local newspaper,
The Santa Fe New Mexican.
I said that the Forrest Fenn treasure hunt was stupid
and that the treasure should be pulled,
and that's when Good Morning America grasped onto it.
[intriguing music playing]
[Ben] Pete Kassetas, head of the state police in New Mexico,
went on Good Morning America.
He implores Forrest to end it, and then he calls Forrest live on air.
I also wanna know what the GMA producers told Forrest
'cause clearly they're like, "We're gonna call you with a special guest,"
and look, the guy, like, ambushes him.
And again, I call for you to… to pull it.
[Forrest] I'm not gonna give a clue to help people find the treasure.
I'm gonna give a clue to try to keep them out of trouble.
- Yeah, yeah. - To make them safer.
As… as the call winded down, um, I realized it was kind of a stalemate.
He was understanding of my position, so he said he would think about it.
At that point, I'm agreeing, like, "Okay, let's see how this one ends."
Like, "Let's see what happens, what's the result."
[woman] Forrest explained, "I have given a lot of thought about ending the search,
but I am not sure what that would accomplish."
Forrest's basic response was
this kind of, like, American, self-sufficient, bootstraps, libertarian,
uh, you know, "We're all grown-ups here."
If somebody drowns in a swimming pool, should… should we drain the pool,
or should we teach people to swim?
- [brooding music playing] - [scribbling]
[Justin] It's amazing how quickly the narrative for something truly amazing
can shift so dramatically.
Forrest was getting pressure at that time to just call this off.
I wrote a letter to Forrest,
and I told him that,
while we are in the wake of a true tragedy,
don't forget the vision that you had.
I know that you didn't want to imperil anyone's life,
but it felt like we had a very fleeting window of time
in order to find the treasure.
[music fades]
After I had created that facial-recognition software,
I had a strong belief that the treasure was located in Yellowstone National Park.
[stirring music playing]
I knew it was there somewhere.
All the data had lined up.
Now, there's a story in… in the book
where he talks about going to fish with his father
on the Firehole, the Madison, and the Gibbon River.
[Forrest] I can't remember how many times that I could hardly wait in Yellowstone
to go trout fishing on the Madison River, the Gallatin, the Firehole, the Gibbon.
[Justin] All of which are relatively warm bodies of water.
Firehole and the Gibbon end abruptly,
and the Madison begins.
And so, when you talk about "where warm waters halt,"
waters is plural.
You've got three major bodies of water on the map.
So that's a very compelling starting location.
The second clue is "And take it in the canyon down."
Well, he's a fisherman. What does down mean?
Down means downstream.
That's Madison Canyon.
From there, it's "Put in below the home of Brown."
I think immediately about fishing holes.
Great places to fish for brown trout.
Furthermore, he's got his father standing in front of this large rock.
That's Nine Mile Hole.
I was so excited, I immediately called my brother Brandon.
[man] Okay, let's start over here.
You go first, Brandon.
Um, I'm Brandon from Tucson, Arizona.
And I'm Justin from Tucson, Arizona, and I'm his brother.
[woman chuckles]
- [camera clicks] - [gentle country music playing]
[Justin] Brandon was three years younger than I was.
He followed me everywhere,
and we were always on the verge of the next great discovery.
[energetic rock music playing]
When I started this treasure hunt,
I had probably shared hundreds of solves with Brandon,
and, up until that time,
he hadn't really been all that invested.
But, that time, his response was, "Huh. That actually might make some sense."
After I told him about the solution, he wanted to come out and search together.
It was more than just a treasure hunt to him.
It was a way for us to spend time together.
We slowly worked our way down the canyon,
and I could see, as I walked through it,
his excitement continued to grow to the point where he was invested.
[music fades]
We walked right up to that rock, and it was an aha moment
because it was directly out of the book.
[magical tinkling]
Well, when we made it to the other side of the river,
it was all new growth.
Uh, a lot of them are chest height to head height on me,
and you're just wading through them.
You're covered in sap,
torn up from head to toe.
- [gentle music playing] - That was probably weeks of work.
Anything?
[clicks tongue] The hunt continues. Still no luck.
However, I didn't have the confidence that I could safely eliminate this.
Tucker would sniff out bronze anywhere.
The problem was the law.
- [Tucker snorting] - [Justin clicking tongue]
Yellowstone does not allow dogs on trails.
Jump up. There ya go.
And without Tucker there, it was, uh…
[music fades]
…it felt like you were searching blind.
[Tucker whimpering]
Speak of the devil.
[Ben] After weeks of speculation, Forrest reaches out to the media
with his final decision on the treasure hunt.
I mean, even the reporters seemed skeptical.
Fenn tells me, regardless of the loss of life,
he won't call off the treasure hunt.
[brooding music playing]
[Pete] He wasn't gonna budge.
Forrest was a worthy adversary.
I thought I could take this old man on and get him to do what I wanted to do,
but I couldn't get him to stop and pull the treasure.
It had come too far for him. He couldn't turn back.
After I went on TV, I inadvertently caused this wave of, essentially, outrage.
I knew there was gonna be fallout. I didn't realize how big it was gonna be.
Some people are apparently not happy with Police Chief Pete Kassetas's call
for Forrest Fenn to end…
[woman 2] Police Chief Kassetas has become a pariah.
There was this onslaught of calls and emails.
People, like, literally making death threats
because of the position I took.
[man] I'm outraged by your public comments,
and I'm gonna tell you to mind your own [bleep] business and shut up.
But it was just the beginning of the craziness around Forrest Fenn.
[music fades]
It's a lot to expect that someone who would be…
the kind of person who would start this thing would give it up
under almost any circumstances.
- [applause] - Hey! Forrest Fenn!
[intriguing music playing]
He was having the time of his life,
but he also becomes kind of a godlike figure
in the treasure community, and that's a lot of power to have.
So why is he not ending it?
I come back to relevance.
It's… it's really hard to… to stay relevant into your late eighties.
And if he were to end the hunt, that's kinda the end.
That's his last chapter.
- [music fades] - [woman] Why do you engage with searchers?
- Why do I engage with them? - [woman] Mm-hmm.
That's the only thing I have left.
[jaunty music playing]
[camera clicking]
[Justin] Cynthia was ubiquitous in the chase.
She was very well-known.
- [man 1] Cynthia Meachum. - [woman 1] …Cynthia Meachum.
[woman 2] Cynthia Meachum, I made…
[man 2 in Spanish] Cynthia Meachum, una…
[man 3] Amateur treasure hunters like Cynthia Meachum…
And so by virtue of just getting to know Forrest,
uh, you'd have to get to know Cynthia 'cause she was there a lot of the time.
- [camera clicks] - [music fades]
[Cynthia] I never really knew,
out of the hundreds or thousands of searchers that he met,
why did he let me come into his life to the extent that he did?
[intriguing music playing]
[Cynthia] Forrest and I were like playmates.
I'd get up in the morning, and I'd send an email to Forrest
and say, "Can you come out and play today?"
[camera clicking]
[Cynthia] Our friendship, you know, just got more and more intimate.
I got to know Forrest Fenn the man,
and it's like he… he reached in and grabbed my soul.
- [interviewer] Can you elaborate? - No. [chuckles softly]
We'll just keep it like that.
[indistinct chatter]
[Cynthia] I never went there hoping to get clues.
But, as a searcher,
any time that Forrest told me stories face-to-face,
I always listened like,
"Is he telling me something that I need to analyze?"
[mysterious music playing]
And I remember one time when Forrest looked at me
and he said, "You should go spend the summer in Yellowstone Park."
And to me that was like, "Holy cow."
And then there were media people taking our pictures.
[camera clicks]
And I said to him,
"Whisper something in my ear like you're giving me a hint."
He leaned over, and he whispered in my ear, "Go to hell,"
and then he laughed his ass off.
[laughter]
[Cynthia] He was so tickled by this.
Forrest never cussed in front of me,
and so it's like, "Well, this is really weird too."
And I got to thinking about…
[incoming message beep]
…if you look up the history of Yellowstone,
the early explorers described Yellowstone as being hell.
And I'm thinking, "Oh my God. Is… is he directing me to Yellowstone?"
So I drove to Yellowstone the very next day.
[adventurous music playing]
It was, like, the most incredible place ever.
You go in there and you see it, and you're gonna understand
that's where Forrest is going to hide that treasure chest.
I was convinced the treasure was in Yellowstone.
That summer, I searched all over the park.
I started searching around the Ojo Caliente area.
I went upstream to Pocket Basin there
that had all these hot springs.
I searched Sunlight Creek and Sunlight Basin.
[music fades]
What made Yellowstone so special
was the fact that there was this added danger to it.
[tense music playing]
In New Mexico, I never worried about black bears or even rattlesnakes,
but searching in Yellowstone, that's a different ball game.
When you're searching and there's the possibility of grizzly bears,
you're just so on edge and… and alive.
[bear snarling]
And one time I saw a grizzly bear.
It's like, "Okay, I'm gonna be really careful today."
[bear growling]
And I took the trigger guard off my bear spray,
put that canister in my pocket,
and I scrunched down.
[gas hissing loudly]
Oh fuck.
And all of a sudden, I heard this "pssh."
[Cynthia coughing]
And I'm thinking, "It sounds like they have sprinklers here,
but there can't be sprinklers," and then I felt the pain.
Oh my God.
I just sprayed myself with bear spray.
The burn.
[grunts] Holy fuck.
And I had sprayed my crotch.
- [mischievous music playing] - I got the crotch, and it burns.
And then it's like, "Okay, now what do I do?"
I will now be taking my pants off and washing out my pants.
Well, I'm not not gonna search. I went there to search. I don't care.
So I put a clean pair of pants on, put my boots back on,
and hiked across the river.
[music fades]
When I got back to the hotel,
I'd send an email to Forrest
and say, you know, "I'm back home. I wasn't killed,"
and he'd say, "Well, the night's not over."
[mysterious music playing]
He would ask me to let him know when I got back safely,
and I would give him a little highlight of where I searched, what I saw,
and he would say, "That's nice," whatever, "but there's no fish there."
And, the first time he said that, it's like, "What the hell does that mean?"
There's tons of fish there. I saw fish. There's fish!
And then I noticed, other times after that,
it'd be like, "If you want fish, go to the grocery store."
It was definitely a hint,
and he was telling me I needed to go to a different search location.
There were times that he would talk really, really candidly
about my, uh, my solutions and whatever,
and, basically, it… there was an understanding
that you don't repeat what we say to each other.
"This is for you only."
"You are not to share this with everybody else."
Somebody asked me was he playing fair?
The fairest thing that could've been done in the treasure hunt is
Forrest Fenn hides the treasure,
he writes that book,
and he does nothing more.
- [brooding music playing] - He does no interviews.
He never exchanges emails.
He never has all these people come to his house.
But who the fuck said life is fair?
[music fades]
[clicking]
[intriguing music playing]
[Ben] I think Forrest just couldn't help getting involved.
He was a bit of a prankster that way.
He was doing things that kept putting him back in the center of the race.
He was still appearing on TV
and giving out mysterious answers to the simplest questions.
People have been within 200 feet,
and I know that because they send me emails,
and they tell me exactly where they are.
Like, so that's just tormenting to people who are like, "Was I that person?"
Like, he didn't… he doesn't say who it was.
Holy fucking shit.
So searchers have been about 200 feet from the treasure chest and not known.
- [woman] No. Shut the front door! - What the hell?
- Holy shanky doodles! - Oh my gosh.
This is so insane!
- [music fades] - [train horn honks]
[Christopher] 1After we found the boulder, I've been emailing Forrest.
He would read our email within minutes.
[man 1] Minutes. Every time.
Notification popped up on the phone.
"Forrest Fenn has read your email."
I screenshotted them. Crazy.
[man 1] Whoo-ee!
- [Christopher] Once we found the rock… - [man 1] Everyone thought we found it.
Our… our hometown thought we found it.
- Everybody who's in Cody. - [Christopher] They were rooting for us.
They were all ready to come together as a team and finish this once and for all
by funding us and working with us.
- And helping us. - To get this treasure hunt done.
[man 2] Some people threw in money for gas,
but mainly, it was a lot of manpower.
[man 1] At that point, we knew the treasure was under the rock.
We were like, "We need to figure out a better system."
I… I said, "The boulder's gotta go."
I figured we'd blast it with dynamite.
[man 3] You first tried to move it,
and then, when you couldn't move it, you tried basically…
Blowing it up.
[Christopher] Rocks are flying!
I'm a little aggravated.
I thought…
I didn't think it'd be that much work after the… the boulder had gone
fucking out of the hole.
This is tomfuckery!
Complete tomfuckery.
[somber music playing]
When we finally moved this boulder
and nothing was there…
oh my God, it's the hardest work that I've ever did in my life.
He could've just said, "No, you're wrong, son."
I wish he could've just said that, you know? He told other people that.
Why couldn't he just tell me that?
It was a defeat.
Pretty sad.
[music fades]
Pretty sad. Yeah.
- [man 2] I love you. - I love you too.
We kinda just backed off a little bit.
We moved back east to Kentucky.
But, anything you put in front of us, we have perseverance.
- We're not gonna stop. - Chaos.
I was never gonna give up, no matter what it took.
[intriguing music playing]
[Justin] So many people believed it was them.
"I must be this close."
"What if this is me?"
And, yeah, I thought about that too
because I would send Forrest emails,
and so he knew the areas that I was searching in.
So when he would come out and say,
"Oh," you know, "there's somebody who's within 200 feet," or something,
you know, everybody wonders, "Is that… is that me?"
The search season for me would depend on snow melt,
so February, March, started getting itchy.
So you'd be on the computer
checking the snow-depth reports at different areas,
trying to figure out when it's gonna clear.
That's when the search season would begin.
[music fades]
In early January,
- I was prepping for the next season. - [somber music playing]
I was headed toward Yellowstone
to search the Nine Mile Hole area again
when I got a call from my mother.
She was very upset.
[unsettling music playing]
My brother Brandon was missing.
So I hopped on the first plane out and went… and went to Tucson.
I was just kinda frantic to find him.
He had left a note. It had a symbol on it,
and I figured out it was basically a mile-marker post just east of Tucson,
so that's where I went.
I pretty quickly found his pack and towel up on a mountainside.
I was pretty concerned at that point, and so I called search and rescue.
He had left some messages in the area that I knew came from him,
and the last one that I found was the name Forrest Fenn
with a X marks the spot.
But I, um,
I couldn't find him.
Uh…
Just couldn't find him.
[mournful music playing]
Eventually, he was found up on the mountainside.
He, uh…
[breathing shakily]
…he… [groans]
…he, uh, he shot himself.
The autopsy report showed
that if I had figured out that message sooner,
it would've probably been a different ending.
[breathing shakily]
Um…
He was my responsibility.
Um… [shuddering]
I was disappointed in myself,
but I made a pact with myself at that time that I would keep searching.
I felt that I owed it to him to find
what we had started to hunt for.
[adventurous music playing]
I went back to Wyoming…
and I tore that place up.
I searched an area I probably shouldn't have
in weather that I know I shouldn't have.
I really did throw personal safety to the wind.
I didn't have any other thought than finding that.
[music fades]
[somber music playing]
[Ben] A million-dollar treasure is easy to get obsessed about.
And in fact, 10% of the searchers
said that their connection to the hunt might qualify as an addiction.
This gave them meaning in their lives,
and it led people to give up everything in pursuit of the treasure.
People were going through their savings to fund their searches,
relationships ending, some people going to prison.
I mean, so many crazy things happened
that tells you the level of obsession for some of these people.
It started getting personal for Forrest too.
For a period, it was like
some of the more zealous and inexperienced treasure hunters
were getting into physical trouble,
but at a certain point, like, Forrest and his family started suffering, right?
They started experiencing their own threats.
[music fades]
[woman] When he started the whole treasure-chest thing,
it really was to get people outside and doing stuff together,
and… and it really did.
It really, um, changed a lot of people's lives for the good.
I don't think it really hit me
that people were so crazy and obsessed with the whole thing
until it hit
my family personally.
[tense music playing]
People would constantly show up at the gate.
Shiloh's had to… to throw people out that have jumped over the gate
'cause Shiloh lived here.
He was the keeper of the gate for many, many years.
[music fades]
[man] I don't believe things ever spun out of control,
and I don't believe that anybody was at fault.
I think, at a certain point,
the Forrest Fenn treasure story took on a life of its own,
and it was its own beast.
Not a monster. Just a beast.
And, uh, nobody was in control.
Nobody was driving the ship.
About the time that the search really started to heat up,
my family felt that it would be best if somebody were to live here,
and I agreed with them.
[tense music playing]
One day,
my mother and my grandparents were out and about running errands around town.
After having been gone for a couple of hours,
they returned to the property.
And just about the time she looked over to the guesthouse,
this guy was walking out of the front door.
[dog barking]
[man 1] Uh, walk forward, sir.
- Get on your knees. Get on your knees. - [man 2] I am.
[man 1] Cross your… cross your feet.
All right, you gotta go in handcuffs.
- [man 2] Sorry. - [radio beeps]
213. One detained.
So what the hell is going on?
I thought the poem directed me into here.
- I thought it said… - [man 1] Poem?
Yeah, the… the treasure map, the treasure hunt, you know?
He had broken through the gate.
I have a hatchet there,
and he took a hatchet and broke through the glass on this front door,
let himself in.
He'd opened up my refrigerator and helped himself to a beer.
He'd used my facilities and not bothered to flush.
And, as my mother and grandparents were driving through the gate,
he was walking out of the door holding this chest,
which is just full of linens.
[music fades]
And sees my mom, who has just gotten out of the car with my grandparents.
- [uneasy music playing] - [Zoe] I don't know the guy.
I've got my 88-year-old dad standing in the driveway.
So I stood there with my gun on the guy
because I wasn't gonna take a chance that… he could've hurt somebody.
- [music fades] - [man 1] Ma'am, can you put the gun away?
We're almost down the road, okay?
- So you broke the window to get in there? - Yeah.
[man 1] Why would you do that? Over a poem?
It told me to do it.
He was struggling.
He was trying to provide for his family
and, you know, figured if he could find that treasure chest,
that it would… it would change his life,
change his kids' lives.
[approaching siren]
But a treasure chest that is worth millions and millions,
you know, it… it does cr… it does crazy stuff,
really crazy stuff to people.
The minute it got out of control for me
was when a stalker, one of the treasure hunters,
decided to start stalking my daughter.
- [camera clicks] - [tense music plays]
[mysterious music playing]
Paco is a treasure hunter that had come to my dad's gate a couple of times.
Very odd guy.
[system beeps]
[Shiloh] He rang the doorbell,
and my grandfather cautiously opened the gate…
and he stood there this far away from him and didn't say a word.
Just blank face. Just creepy.
[unsettling music playing]
[Zoe] My dad, at the beginning,
thought it was very harmless, and it… it was not harmless.
[Shiloh] After that,
he began sending envelopes addressed to my grandfather,
the contents of which, however, were addressed to one of my sisters.
There were some really vile things that were put in these envelopes.
On the very, very low end of the scary spectrum,
there were stickers of duct tape
and machetes and bloody dolls.
Just really disgusting, dangerous, messed-up stuff.
[music intensifies, fades]
It became very clear that he believed that my sister was the treasure.
[menacing music playing]
That the treasure was not a physical chest full of golds and jewels,
that the treasure was my sister.
And as the poem says, it's yours to take if you find it.
So he believed that this girl was the treasure,
and he was gonna find her and take her.
[Zoe] My dad called me in and gave them to me,
and it really freaked me out.
I turned into a mama bear
because you don't mess with my kids.
You don't mess with my family.
[Zoe] We have had some threats made against my daughter,
and I would like to speak with somebody.
[woman] Okay. Are they making these threats over the telephone?
- [Zoe] No, it's via a package we received. - [music intensifies]
[Shiloh] There were security measures. My grandfather had guns
just about in every room in the house and knew how to use them.
There was a restraining order,
and he wasn't allowed to come within a certain distance of her,
which he, of course, rapidly broke.
[man] Santa Fe 911. What is your emergency?
[woman] We have a gentleman at our gate stalking my niece,
and there's a restraining order against him.
His name is Paco.
[man] And he's been stalking your niece?
[woman] My dad's going to talk to him through the gate.
This is just a bad situation. Can you just send somebody right away?
[man] We're sending somebody as soon as possible.
- Does he seem intoxicated? - [woman] No.
- He seems emphatic, like he has a plan. - [music intensifies]
[music subsides]
[Shiloh] He was extradited to Nevada.
He was let out of jail in due course with an ankle monitor,
which he then very quickly cut off.
- [menacing music playing] - [siren wailing]
We had the SWAT team at our house and my parents' house.
They wanted to take us all into protective custody.
All because of Paco.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
There had been a roadblock set up looking for him,
and they caught him coming into New Mexico.
Inside of the vehicle, they found suitcases full of clothes
as if he were planning on going on a long trip,
weapons, including a long machete,
rolls of duct tape, quite a bit of cash,
and some other things that I care not to mention on camera, frankly.
Obviously that put him back in jail for a much longer period of time.
- [cell door slams] - [indistinct chatter]
[music fades]
[Zoe] I think my dad really didn't want us too much involved
because he… he was… he was a little bit frightened by… by some of it,
and with good reason.
[man] Did you ever think, "I wish this could be over"?
[hesitates] You know,
I'm not one to wish things
that I know aren't gonna happen and have no control over.
And, you know, the things I have no control over,
I leave in the hands of God, and he's carrying me.
[somber music playing]
[Justin] There was a belief that Forrest's family held a…
they called it an intervention
and had asked him to stop the treasure hunt for their own safety.
I certainly would not have faulted them if they had done that.
He probably thought that,
by continuing with this treasure hunt,
"I risked my own personal safety,"
and probably more importantly to him, his… his family.
[Christopher] I think he got in a little over his head.
His family's looking at him like, "Don't leave us with this shit show."
[Cynthia] There was more and more pressure for him to call it off,
and I'm not even a mom.
Well, I was a mom to my dogs,
and my God, if I had someone threatening my dogs,
I would've certainly taken action.
[music fades]
[Shiloh] It wasn't our decision. It was his decision.
It wasn't the family ganging up on him. It was never like that.
However, the… the… the topic arose
about the possibility of finding a way to
change the ending
so that we became less of a target for people.
[somber music playing]
But the more we thought about it,
there were already people that were obsessed.
There were already people that had spent many thousands of dollars
that maybe they shouldn't have.
What would you say to those people?
Would it have been fair to those people
if my grandfather had decided to go retrieve the chest?
I say absolutely not.
But I had, never in my life…
at least I don't remember him being as challenged as he was
during certain points within the treasure hunt.
No matter what decision he made, it was going to have consequences.
[Forrest] Everything I do today is as a result of that treasure chest,
and it was fun to begin with,
but I'm trying to figure out now how I can get out.
I mean, tell me what I can do.
How can I get out now?
[music fades]
[Ben] There are signs that something's going on with Forrest,
that he's changing how he is viewing the hunt and his role in it
and even the decision of whether or not to keep it going.
At this point, four people have died. Your granddaughter's being stalked.
You know, people are breaking into your home.
Why on earth would you continue… a… a game, a treasure hunt?
- Here's a wonderful artifact. - [mysterious music playing]
This is a lantern.
[Ben] And that's when he goes on Nightline.
[man] Fenn says this may be his last TV interview.
I just don't feel like I have anything to say anymore.
[Ben] And then, in 2018, he types a short little message for an interview.
[adventurous music playing]
This was a very strange thing to say for someone who earlier had said,
"I think it will take 900 years for people to find it."
If you're a searcher, you have to…
I mean, it's very reasonable to interpret that as, "This is the end."
[Pete] Fenn has created a situation
where people are scrambling to find the treasure.
[Cynthia] I think Forrest wanted someone to find it and for it to come to an end.
It was like, "Holy cow."
"I've got to do one last boots on the ground
before the chase is over."
All of a sudden, it was clear I was running out of time to find the treasure.
All right, so remember this gate.
The fact that that private property
belonged to somebody that I believe had strong ties to Forrest Fenn
was… too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.
I'm like, "This is the place, and we are going back."
[Cynthia] What made Yellowstone so special
was the fact that Forrest basically told me to spend my summer there.
I mean,
how could I look at anything else?
It's really rare for me
to find a situation where data drove me to a location
that also coincided with, dare I say, a feeling.
Yellowstone feels like Forrest.
[mysterious music playing]
- Happy treasure-hunt day. - Yeah.
This was gonna be a different adventure than the first one.
[adventurous music playing]
Now we're gonna come from the back of the creek
and then all the way back to where the treasure is,
and I wasn't gonna let another gate stop me.
All right, let's go find some treasure.
I was like, "This is it. We're gonna find it." Like, "It's here."
[birds honking]
I felt very confident that there was a shortlist of places where this could be.
And as I walked around Yellowstone,
I just felt myself getting closer and closer and closer.
[Cynthia] Absolutely, there was hope now.
I mean, I would often say, "Is this the day we're gonna find Fenn's treasure?"
[music fades]
[Christopher] We wasted a lot of time and energy on that boulder.
[man] How long were you guys there for?
Two years.
- [man] Two years on the boulder? - Yeah.
God, that was so absurd.
I wish we would've never told you that because, like, that is…
looking back on it now, that was just, you know…
that was gold fever for sure.
And this is where it gets a little bit tricky.
This is bizarre.
This is absolutely the most mind-blowing thing
of all of the thrill of the chase.
[intriguing music playing]
What if the definition of treasure for Forrest Fenn
is different than the definition you think?
See what I'm saying?
[Forrest, echoing] Imagination is better than knowledge.
Doesn't matter what it is. It only matters what you think it is.
[Christopher] Maybe the treasure that he speaks of is not the box of gold.
It's a treasure of another kind.
But… that's out of his own mouth, not mine.
[man] If you had to summarize your message,
what would that message be?
How do you know where the edge is if you don't go out there and look?
[man 1] And that's when it hit me.
The treasure was not what we… what everybody thought.
You think he's gonna be some crackpot, and just…
No, he's… a very, very smart guy.
He knew geography, geology.
He knew literature.
So it's much deeper than just words on a piece of paper.
That's the tip of the iceberg.
So we went back and read one of the chapters in his book
called "Me in the Middle."
- [suspenseful music playing] - And I said, "Holy cow."
"Whatever this thing is, it's in the middle."
I realized we had three points.
We had our point A here,
which is the F on the side of the mountain.
You see it?
[man 1] Okay, that was my F, my gray F.
[Christopher] And then we had our point B,
which was Cascade Creek, just like the poem says.
"There will be no paddle up your creek."
[man 1] Cascade should be in there.
[Christopher] And then Kirwin.
[man 1, chuckling] Yeehaw!
[music subsides]
[Christopher] So what we do then was bisect the triangle.
Boom, boom, boom.
What it means, the treasure is dead center.
[dramatic music playing]
We're making it happen, Fenn. You already know it.
All right, so, yeah,
we're searching what I consider a really, really good spot.
Where's my blaze?
My guess would be one of these downed trees here has a mark in it.
Here's where it gets crazy. The center of the triangle, boom,
dropped us dead on a new blaze marker.
[man 1] Well, you can see the hatchet marks where he made.
You know what I mean?
So we stood at the blaze marker and took pictures…
[camera clicking]
…because we knew we were looking for something.
We knew we were supposed to be finding something significant.
Now, we're studying these photos for days.
And I was like, "What the hell? Ain't nothing here."
But finally I see it.
No way.
That's a… that's a bear head.
- [bear roars] - [intriguing music playing]
Bears have many connections to Forrest Fenn.
[man 1] He has even told stories
about him and his brother cutting off the head of a grizzly
and putting it in someone's bed, playing a joke on 'em.
[Christopher] It's an amazing correlation
because the treasure hunt was ended in the exact same way.
We are led to a grizzly bear sculpture,
and what do we do?
We cut off the head of the grizzly bear.
- [bear roars] - It was all destiny. It was all destiny.
That this was something he treasured.
That art, that story, is what he treasured.
- [man] The bear statue? - Yeah.
I started to think it was something like a Willy Wonka ending.
I thought it was all about finding someone to fill his shoes,
and I thought, once you solved it,
you know, he says, uh, "I give you the riches." You know?
This was the key to solving it.
[man 1] As soon as we found the bear, I sent him pictures of everything.
And then, that night, when we got back to town,
he called it.
It was like news reporters were like, "What the fuck is going on?"
[intriguing music playing]
[woman] The search for Forrest Fenn's treasure is now over.
Forrest Fenn confirmed with News 13
that someone has found the treasure he hid more than ten years ago.
When the news comes out, you know, everyone's texting each other,
it's on all the forums and the blogs,
and people are… are en route to their search zone,
they get the news, and it's just suddenly over.
Oh my gosh.
"There's just no way. There's no way!"
"No, no, no. No, no, no."
"That's not… that's not true You're lying to us."
- And we're like, "Oh my God." - [man 2 chuckles]
- "That's us." - Yeah.
"We did it."
[music fades]
[closing theme music playing]
[music fades]