Original subtitles

[dramatic music] [cannon blast]

- Tonight, one of the most infamous pirates

to prowl America's Gulf Coast, Jean Lafitte.

- He was literally called the Terror of the Gulf.

[cannons exploding]

- There was not anything that Lafitte wouldn't buy,

sell or steal.

Gold, cotton, tobacco, and even people.

- But after amassing a vast fortune,

Lafitte, along with his stash goes missing.

- No one has ever found all of his treasure.

Millions and millions could still be out there today.

- Now we'll explore the top theories

surrounding the whereabouts of this massive hoard.

- Did Lafitte take his treasure with him

or did he stash it on the island for later?

- Legend has it, they panicked

and having no better place to hide the treasure,

they took the wagons on their ship

and just kind of threw 'em overboard.

- When he left Galveston Island aboard his ship, The Pride,

his treasure was right there next to him.

Now the question remains, where did The Pride end up?

- What became of Lafitte's lost treasure

and where could it be?

[upbeat dramatic music]

Early 1800s, the Gulf of Mexico,

for merchants and sailors on the open waters,

one name inspires more fear than any other.

Jean Lafitte.

- Lafitte commands a fleet of ships

that prowl the Gulf of Mexico and prey on unarmed vessels.

[cannon booming]

They then sell what they steal through a smuggling network

that's based in New Orleans.

[dramatic music]

- Jean Lafitte was the final version of pirates.

So you have the golden age pirates

who are working for themselves,

but he's effectively working as a cartel or mob boss.

He has an operation that's moving

millions of dollars worth of merchandise.

- He really caught the imagination

of the American people

because he was a bit of a showman

and he was considered to be something of a folk hero,

like a latter day Robinhood

to the people of Southern Louisiana.

- The reality of Jean Lafitte is darker, much darker.

Tobacco and cotton are prized commodities,

but so is something else, slaves.

Lafitte would steal slaves off of slave ships

and then he would keep them in storehouses

up and down the Gulf of Mexico until he could sell them.

- At one point he was pulling in

about a million dollars a year,

so we're talking about billions of dollars

in today's currency.

He was one of the wealthiest men in the Caribbean

and it's a real mystery, not only what happened to him,

but what happened to all that treasure?

[tense music]

- [Laurence] The uncertainty also surrounds

Jean Lafitte's early days.

- Some believe he was born in France in the late 1700s.

Others report him as being

born around Port-au-Prince.

From a very young age,

him and his brother Pierre become very good seamen.

They're taught how to fight with swords,

how to shoot a pistol, how to command a giant sailing ship.

And there's even legends that at one point they joined

the French Navy to go and fight in the Napoleonic Wars.

[tense music]

- Then in 1803, one of the most consequential events

in American history takes place.

Napoleon's France sells the Louisiana Territory

to the United States for a sum of $15 million.

The United States gains all of the territory

up and down the Mississippi River and west to the Rockies.

- It doubles the size of the United States overall

and gives some territory that stretches from the East Coast

almost all the way to the West Coast.

Strategically, New Orleans is now in a position

where it's one of the major trading hubs

of the United States.

- This really transformed the people living there as well

or transformed their taste,

their desires in certain kinds of ways.

They're rich or wanted to seem rich,

and this is the Lafitte's wheelhouse.

- [Laurence] Sensing a big opportunity,

the Lafitte brothers relocate

and set up shop in New Orleans.

- Lafitte first emerges,

at least in official records, around 1805.

He and his brother Pierre own a warehouse

in the bustling port city of New Orleans

where they're able to distribute their goods

that they've acquired from various means.

- So we're talking tobacco, coffee, some indigo,

cotton to some extent, textiles.

He often had those luxury goods to offer to the population

when they couldn't get them.

- [Laurence] Then in 1807, an act of Congress

starts Lafitte down a darker path.

- Amidst the turmoil of Napoleon's wars in Europe,

American trade vessels are under attack

by both the British and the French.

So the United States passes the Embargo Act in 1807

that prohibits not only the importation

of foreign goods into the US,

but also the importation of slaves.

- Because it does not outright outlaw slavery,

what it does is actually incentivize people

who are dealing in the illegal importation

and trade of slaves.

For someone such as Jean Lafitte,

these acts actually only open

new business opportunities for him.

- Someone had to fill the void.

Just because a supply goes away,

doesn't mean that the demand goes away,

and Lafitte was right at the heart of that.

- [Laurence] By 1809, the Lafittes run

a blacksmith shop in the French Quarter.

- But in reality, this is a front

for their smuggling business.

They're bringing in stolen goods

and selling them to merchants and other business people.

- He was smuggling and trading enslaved Africans

using his networks,

the very same networks that he was using for cotton,

indigo and all sorts of other goods.

- [Laurence] To escape the scrutiny

of American customs agents,

Lafitte moves his operation from the blacksmith shop

in New Orleans

to nearby Barataria Bay.

- So Barataria Bay is south and west of New Orleans,

and for Jean Lafitte, it's the perfect place

to hide his criminal enterprise.

- Barataria is one of the most confusing places

to go in America.

The canals, the swamps, the slews, they all twist and turn,

and if you got put down there,

you were gonna be lost before you even started.

But Lafitte and his men had a mastery of these bayous

and the Baratarians, as they called themselves,

run their illegal goods all the way

from the mouth of the Mississippi up into New Orleans.

- They now have a base that they operate

as their own kingdom,

effectively outside the power of the law.

In addition to that, they can see any ships

that might be sailing past Barataria

and strike targets at will.

- Lafitte decides if he can stop the ships

from even reaching the port of New Orleans,

then he can cut off all of his competition

and become even richer and more powerful.

[cannons exploding]

- [Laurence] The Lafittes launch full-blown attacks

on other vessels, essentially becoming pirates.

But to evade the law, Lafitte figures out a loophole

by insisting he's a privateer.

- The line between pirate and privateer is thin

and very, very blurry,

but essentially a pirate is illegal

and is engaged in attacking and thieving.

Privateers do similar things,

but they do so under the guise of some sort of legality.

- The difference is this,

privateers sail under what's known as a Letter of Marque,

which is something granting sanction

to the stealing of goods for nations at war.

- Lafitte claims to be first a French privateer

and then a privateer operating under the Letter of Marque

of a small independent nation called Cartagena.

In reality, he's never taking resources back to Cartagena.

- He was ultimately working for himself,

but becoming a privateer gave him some guise of legitimacy

in case he ever got stopped by officials

that he couldn't outwit.

- Whatever Lafitte doesn't keep,

he smuggles into New Orleans and sells,

by some estimates, as much as a billion dollars

worth of goods in today's currency flowed in

and out of his base in Barataria.

[suspenseful music]

- [Laurence] For years, Lafitte manages to elude capture.

Then in 1821 with the US Navy in pursuit,

he torches his secret compound

and escapes into the Gulf of Mexico.

- As far as we know, that was the last official sighting

of him anywhere in American waters.

But naturally, rumors begin to grow

not only of his whereabouts,

but, of course, the whereabouts of his enormous fortune.

- Lafitte made so much money during his lifetime

that many would say it was impossible for him

to have taken it all with him.

But if he took his treasure, where is it?

- [Laurence] There's one location

near and dear to Lafitte,

that tops the list of potential hiding spots.

[dramatic music]

- Lafitte operates mainly out of two islands,

Grand Isle and Grand-Terre.

These islands are fully equipped.

They've got bases, warehouses,

places where you could stash anything

including enormous quantities of treasure.

[tense music]

- Lafitte lived on various

barrier islands in Barataria Bay.

He warehoused his goods there.

He held auctions there to sell off black market contraband,

generating more loot.

- These auctions only add to Lafitte's wealth,

but he has to stash that loot somewhere.

It's not like a pirate is gonna take his loot to the bank.

- There are rumors of a large cache of gold and silver,

near the home that Jean Lafitte built on Grand-Terre

and lavishly furnished and decorated.

- There's a story that at one point a fisherman

was down in Barataria

and he found a small chest full of gold earrings,

Spanish coins, and a silver imprint of the Virgin Mary.

- It is also believed that a good number of Lafitte's men

made their homes in Barataria

and even raised families there.

- [Laurence] Many Grand Isle families

are descendants of those men,

and whispers of potential burial sites

are passed down through the generations.

- This area is well known

for its several 100- year-old oak trees,

massive trunks, major landmarks

that would be easily identifiable from the water.

There are persistent stories that Jean Lafitte

hid his treasure in the waters,

and that he used certain large trees as landmarks

to tell him where that treasure was.

- Traces of Lafitte's smuggling operation

have been found on Grand-Terre.

Descendants claim to have discovered things like coins,

broken pottery and shell heaps,

but nothing amounting to a massive treasure has been found.

- People have really focused on Barataria,

hoping that Jean Lafitte left treasure there,

but the Barataria Bay area is made

part of sort of the National Park system in 1966,

and so you can't just go in there

and start looking for treasure wherever you want anymore.

- Some treasure hunters suggest there is no silver,

there is no gold hidden in these islands,

and it's because he never

hid his treasure there in the first place.

- [Laurence] By 1814, despite being a wanted pirate,

Jean Lafitte is revered by many New Orleans residents.

- The people who settled this area of Louisiana

were not necessarily loyal to the American government.

Local law enforcement in Louisiana

simply let Jean Lafitte be, and most people didn't care

that he was engaged in illegal activity.

- When Lafitte is charged with piracy in 1814,

he knows that he could at any moment

have to flee his base in Grand-Terre.

He needs to get as far away from Barataria Bay as possible,

somewhere where the law can't find him

and somewhere presumably, he could stash his treasure.

- [Laurence] This opens up an endless list of possibilities.

[suspenseful music]

- For the first few years following the Embargo Act,

customs officials pretty much turn a blind eye

to most illegal smuggling activity.

However, over time, this smuggling activity

becomes so rampant and so profitable

that it begins cutting into their tax revenue.

- So while the locals may have been turning a blind eye

to Lafitte's illegal operations,

the American government certainly wasn't,

and Lafitte drew the ire of one very prominent governor

of Louisiana named William Claiborne.

Claiborne sets off on a mission

to end Lafitte's pirating operations once and for all.

Lafitte has become public enemy number one.

- Claiborne took it upon himself to post wanted posters

for the outlaw Lafitte offering a bounty of $500.

Lafitte was thoroughly undaunted

and not only did he evade arrest,

but he himself had posters printed

and those posters said, "Wanted Governor William Claiborne,"

and offered a reward of $5,000.

- Governor Claiborne's not amused.

He's coming in and trying to impose some order.

He's trying to have the people of New Orleans

respect the US government,

and so it's a direct affront to Governor Claiborne's power.

- [Laurence] Their conflict reaches a boiling point

on September 16th, 1814, when the navy sends

the USS Carolina

to lead an all-out assault

on Lafitte's base in Barataria.

[cannon booming]

- Now this is a massive show of force by the US Navy.

Lafitte is surrounded by the USS Carolina and six gunboats.

- The USS Carolina enters Barataria Bay

and absolutely batters Lafitte's pirate camp

with heavy artillery fire.

- It seems that Lafitte's caught off guard by this.

He ends up losing 80 men in the process,

and he loses a number of sailing vessels as well.

[cannons exploding]

- Lafitte's men abandon their ships.

The US Navy burns several of them,

and they're able to capture $500,000

of Lafitte's stolen goods,

which would be somewhere in the neighborhood

of $10 million worth of goods today.

However, what they don't capture is Lafitte himself.

He's able to elude arrest by fleeing into the swamp.

[suspenseful music]

- It is said that Jean Lafitte sneaked away

and found a special hiding place,

tiny little place called Orange Island,

which is 130 miles northwest

of his primary base in Barataria Bay.

[dramatic music]

Now Orange Island is right on the shores of Lake Peigneur.

It would have been a safe and easy place to go

because it is reportedly owned

by Jean Lafitte's brother-in-law.

- The US Navy did recapture a tremendous amount of wealth,

but there's absolutely no way Lafitte allowed them

to capture all of it.

Anywhere that Lafitte is rumored to have been,

there's rumors that that's where he stored his treasure,

including that he brought his treasure with him

to Orange Island and that's where it still is today.

[tense music]

- The theory goes that he was able to make his way

to this new location in the Louisiana Delta.

It was a good place for him to recover from the defeat.

- It does make sense as a possible location

where Lafitte might have taken refuge.

However, as far as actual excavations go,

nothing really that can be tied to Lafitte

has ever been found,

until there was a particular instance back in 1921

when some construction workers found some mysterious pots

that had been bricked up and sealed with lead.

And when they broke them open,

they did find that there were gold and silver coins

that were associated with Spain and Mexico.

- The news of this discovery hits the papers

and people go into a frenzy.

All the treasure hunters in the area

descend upon Orange Island.

They start digging up anything and everything,

and the newspapers report

that they found other coins in the area,

both English and French.

- So that could have possibly come from

Lafitte's treasure trove.

However, there's nothing definitive.

A more likely candidate seems to lie further west.

- [Laurence] By the end of 1814, Jean Lafitte

and his brother Pierre are no longer working together,

and Jean is a wanted man, accused of piracy

and run out of Barataria Bay by the US Navy.

But his fate is about to turn.

[dramatic music] [guns firing]

- A war breaks out between the United States and Britain.

The Americans and the British were doing battle

over a course of about two years,

between 1812 and 1814.

- The British wanted to take New Orleans

so they could control the North American interior,

and in order to take control of New Orleans,

they knew they were gonna need some help.

- The British approached Lafitte

and offered him the equivalent today

of what would be about $2 million in funding

in order for him to side with them

and attack New Orleans from that back entryway

that he was using to smuggle goods.

- Lafitte is no patriot.

He's looking out for number one,

and he sees a unique opportunity.

And so he tells the British he needs two weeks

to think over their offer,

but secretly Lafitte has other plans with the other side.

- He now can use this leverage from the British

as a get out of jail free card with the United States

in order to allow them to live free

after the war is concluded.

- [Laurence] Future US President,

General Andrew Jackson is wary of Lafitte,

but he's also desperate to gain the upper hand.

- The British Navy rules the seas.

General Jackson is facing absolutely impossible odds

against the sheer size of the British force.

Jean Lafitte goes to General Jackson.

He says, "I can give you my men, I can give you my boats,

I can give you my cannon.

I can give you the knowledge of these waterways."

And General Jackson sort of has to make a deal

with the pirate Jean Lafitte.

- In exchange for the Baratarians

joining Andrew Jackson's army,

Andrew Jackson agrees to pardon all of the Baratarians,

including Lafitte if they survive the battle.

[guns firing]

- Lafitte and the pirates of Barataria

bring a lot to the table.

They are incredibly

skilled with artillery

and they have maps, they have charts,

they have local intelligence.

They're more like a seasoned military force.

[cannons exploding]

- [Laurence] On January 8th, 1815,

Great Britain launches its invasion of New Orleans

with 8,000 soldiers and dozens of ships.

- Lafitte's men help Jackson form a defensive line

that extends all the way from the river

to the nearby swampland.

- The British army becomes an easy target

for Lafitte's cannons.

Thanks to his very skilled cannoniers,

he and his men are able to help defeat

one of the greatest armies to ever walk the earth.

[cannon booming]

- The British continued to fight for another 10 days

just at the mouth of the Mississippi River,

but then they couldn't hold their ground

and had a final retreat from the region altogether,

and it marked a definitive American victory.

- [Laurence] The win not only puts Andrew Jackson

on the path to the presidency,

but casts Lafitte in an entirely new light.

- It's a transformative event for him.

Prior to the battle of New Orleans, he's a bandit.

In fact, he's the worst of the bandits, he's a pirate.

- When the smoke clears.

Jean Lafitte, Pirate, is now an American hero.

Andrew Jackson publicly credits him

with saving the city of New Orleans,

and none other than President James Madison himself

pardons Lafitte for his crimes.

- For a short time, Lafitte returns

to the city of New Orleans

and it really looks like he has changed his ways

and is a reformed man.

But it takes less than a year for the rumors

to begin to circulate that he has returned

to his life of piracy, and in order to avoid arrest,

he ultimately flees the city.

- [Laurence] This time, Lafitte operates out of the bayous

around Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Many people speculate that it's here

where he stashed a good chunk of his treasure

in an aptly named location.

[dramatic music]

- Contraband Bayou.

This was Lafitte's backyard.

Almost one quarter of the state is underwater,

so this part of Louisiana is really

an endless water landscape.

He knew this area of Louisiana better than anyone.

- There are people living in that area

who have for generations passed down legends

of Lafitte and his treasure.

Silks and jewels, silver bars and Spanish gold coins.

- There is lore that suggest that Jean Lafitte

actually seized a Spanish treasure ship.

He took the gold and the treasure from this vessel,

but not before being followed by a United States warship.

Lafitte knew that that US warship could not access

the smaller waterways, so he slipped into Contraband Bayou

to elude capture.

[suspenseful music]

- According to legend, once the danger has passed,

Lafitte makes his way to an island in Contraband Bayou,

now known as Money Hill,

where he stashes the loot from the Spanish ship.

- The allure of this story is so strong

that treasure hunters dug all around Money Hill

really up until the 1940s, but nothing was ever found.

- In addition to that one little island,

treasure hunters dig all over Lake Charles,

the Calcasieu River, Contraband Bayou

never turning up any of Lafitte's lost millions.

Now, some would say that it is still there,

it's just much harder to get to.

- In the modern era, Lake Charles

has been turned into a sort of resort town and a golf course,

so it's possible that people are playing golf

on top of Lafitte's hidden treasure.

- Given how many efforts have been made

to find the treasure in this region,

and come up empty handed, we have to admit the possibility

that maybe Lafitte may have taken it with him

when he had to leave the United States.

- 200 years after Jean Lafitte is last seen,

rumors of his buried treasure still swirl.

And while most searches focus on areas

in and around New Orleans,

some believe his riches lie, one state over in Texas.

- Soon after the Battle of New Orleans,

Lafitte heads west to Galveston Island,

which is itself a 30- mile thin strip of sand,

and is infamous for the thousands

of venomous cottonmouth snakes that inhabit the island.

- Galveston Island is this extraordinarily

dark and gloomy place,

and Lafitte took every advantage of its isolation,

of its supposed inhabitability

to set up what would become a flourishing pirate colony.

- Most importantly, it's beyond the authority

of the United States of America.

At this point, Spain controls all of Texas and Mexico.

- Spanish Texas, at the time, is conflicted territory.

You have the Mexican revolutionaries

fighting their war of independence,

which puts them at odds with Spain.

Lafitte can now play both sides in this situation

to allow him to conduct his privateering operations.

- Lafitte really had a knack

for creating something out of nothing,

and he created a colony, which he called Campeche,

right there on the island.

Over 200 structures were built by Lafitte and his men.

Thousands of crewman lived there

and they commandeered at least 20 vessels.

- This was probably one of the largest

private fleets in history,

and that doesn't happen without money.

You need enormous wealth.

- Campeche is a huge colony

and it is funded entirely

by Lafitte's pirate operation,

which makes him essentially a king.

And everyone who lives there

has to pledge their loyalty to him

and must help him raid ships

in order to increase his wealth.

[dramatic music]

- For whatever reason, Lafitte wanted to give the appearance

of legitimacy to his operations,

and in exchange for people's loyalty,

he would offer them Letters of Marque.

In the minds of everyone working for him,

this was a real privateering venture,

but these were fraudulent Letters of Marque

and everyone was actually operating in reality as pirates.

- [Laurence] Legend has it

that the newly-minted Pirate King Lafitte,

scores his most lucrative robbery in 1816.

- It's alleged that Lafitte captures

a Spanish treasure ship called the Santa Rosa

that has $2 million worth of silver on board,

and the only way to escape is to navigate

a pretty treacherous route up the Sabine River.

[tense music]

- The Sabine River is a river that runs

right along the border between Texas and Louisiana,

stayed on the Spanish side,

so still out of the authority of the US

and with the help of traitors in the interior

was able to move the treasure up the river.

But apparently his men got spooked by a band

of indigenous people

or potentially by a US vessel that was in the area.

Legend has it, they panicked

and having no better place to hide the treasure.

They took the wagons on their ship

and just kind of threw 'em overboard

and let the treasure settle at the bottom of the river.

[suspenseful music]

- Locals hear this legend and pass it on for generations.

And while the legend lives on,

no one ever dredges up any treasure from the river.

That is until 1895,

when a local fisherman pulls up silver in his fishing net.

- This is in the middle of nowhere,

and so everyone immediately recalls

the stories of Lafitte's treasure.

- Once the story hits the newspapers,

treasure hunters descend on not only the Sabine River,

but also nearby Hendricks Lake

where some think

the treasure may have washed up.

- There at Hendricks Lake treasure hunters have tried

a variety of different methods of trying to see

what might be buried there.

One of the earliest attempts was by a man

who had the grand vision of trying to drain the lake.

- This man not only has an entire operation of pumps,

drills, and conveyor belts to help him reach the bottom,

he also has a nasty temper.

And so when one of the locals

begins criticizing his efforts,

he loses it and murders him

[gun firing]

right there on the bank of the river and is arrested.

But fortunately, subsequent treasure hunters

have been much more levelheaded.

- [Laurence] Still everyone comes up empty,

but that doesn't stop hopeful fortune hunters

from continuing to look.

- Although the legends surrounding the Sabine River

and Lake Hendricks have driven

a lot of treasure hunting activity over the years,

perhaps the most sustained

and legitimate excavation attempts

have come from the documentary filmmaker,

Christian B. Roper.

- Roper came in and used even more sophisticated equipment,

including some deep sea sonar

to investigate this area of Hendricks Lake

- Using aerial flights

to determine the most likely smuggling route

through the lakes, Roper is able to narrow his search

and he begins diving.

- This is the most exhaustive search of the lake yet,

and it is still ongoing

and with every dive Roper gets closer and closer

to where he believes the treasure lies.

- Incredibly, he has found a portion of a wagon

that could have been used to haul

some of Lafitte's treasure,

but the treasure itself has yet to be found.

- A lot of historians think that

if there's anything to be found,

then it's gonna be something closer to home

and closer to Lafitte's heart,

quite possibly the location

where he spent his happiest days.

- [Laurence] By 1819,

Jean Lafitte's pirate commune on Galveston Island, Texas

is a bustling operation.

- Lafitte founds his pirate colony of Campeche.

This was more than just a little pirate shanty town,

this was an actual colony,

and this becomes a hotbed for pirating,

smuggling and privateering.

- At the height of its operations,

Campeche is bringing in millions of dollars a year

in resources and money for Lafitte,

and he has at least 1,000 privateers

at any given time operating from his base.

- It has between 100 and 200 permanent structures,

but the most stately of all of them

is Lafitte's own residence, Maison Rouge.

- Lafitte brings everything that he holds dear,

including his common-law wife, Catiche Villard,

and their children to Maison Rouge.

- [Laurence] It's believed he also brings

something else important here.

[dramatic music]

- He has a cannon on the roof, 36-pound cannons

poking out of the windows

and 40-pound cannons encircling the home.

It's basically pirate Fort Knox.

- It was here at Maison Rouge

that Lafitte spent his happiest

and seemingly safest days as a pirate.

For Lafitte, a man who has made his entire career

smuggling prized luxury goods to the citizens

all along the Gulf Coast,

Maison Rouge was the place where he finally settled down

and enjoyed some of those finer things.

Rumors have it that he stocked his mansion

with the finest brandies, finest wines,

most expensive Chinas

and everything that you could imagine desiring

from the European marketplace.

[tense music]

- [Laurence] But this cushy period of Lafitte's life

comes to an abrupt end in 1821.

- Lafitte's domestic bliss was once again to be short-lived

because he really couldn't stop pirating.

So, he made the decision to attack

an American merchant ship.

[cannons exploding]

This was something that of course

could not be tolerated by the United States.

- The US government has finally had enough.

It doesn't matter that Lafitte is living outside

of US jurisdictions there in Galveston Island.

What matters is that he has now become

this irredeemable thorn in their side.

The USS Enterprise arrives there in Galveston Bay

and tells Lafitte that he can go quietly

or he can go out in a bang.

[tense music]

- Lafitte realizes that if he makes a stand, he's gonna die.

So he strikes a deal with the US Navy

to leave Campeche without a fight.

Lafitte orders an evacuation of the island,

sets his colony on fire and sails away.

So the question arises, did Lafitte take his treasure

with him or did he stash it on the island for later?

Some believe that it's stashed in the ground

underneath the foundation of Maison Rouge.

- His home of Maison Rouge was burned to its foundation.

So today what one sees is only a remnant, an echo really,

of Lafitte's time on Galveston Island.

- Although a pirate mansion seems like an intriguing place

to look for treasure, it hasn't really spurred

the same kind of gold hunting frenzies

that other locations have.

In fact, as far as we know, only a handful of attempts

have been made to locate anything of value

at Maison Rouge.

- Supposedly in the 1940s,

two men were hired to clean up the property of Maison Rouge.

They did the job for a few days and then disappeared.

One of them resurfaces years later in East Texas,

he's now the owner of a big farm.

The other is killed in World War II

and leaves behind for his family an estate

worth more than $60,000.

Now, that's an enormous sum of money in the 1940s.

One can only speculate

that they maybe found a bit of pirate treasure.

- In 1984, there was an archaeological investigation

conducted by the University of Houston

around the site of Maison Rouge,

but all they found there were liquor bottles from the 1880s

and no signs of any of Lafitte's treasure.

- [Laurence] This opens up another possibility.

Maybe he took it with him.

- We have to consider that Lafitte

was not gonna leave his treasure along with his colony,

and that he actually did manage to load it all onto his ship

and to sail off into the distance.

- [Laurence] When Jean Lafitte is forced to leave

his Galveston base in 1821,

it's believed that he fled aboard his flagship, The Pride,

with his family and a cargo hold full of treasure.

- There's very little historic record

of what happens to Lafitte after he leaves Galveston Island.

- There's some prevailing theories, however,

that suggest different outcomes for him.

One is that he ended up in the Yucatan

and continued his pirate operations there

in the Gulf of Mexico for many more years.

Another theory is that he went down with The Pride,

probably in a hurricane, as one legend says.

- There is some historical evidence

that he made his way to Gran Colombia

and there obtained for the first time

a truly legitimate Letter of Marque

to then go pursue Spanish ships,

until he picked a fight with a warship and died at sea.

- Some people say that he rescued Napoleon from Elba

and they both make their way back to Louisiana together.

However, there are other people that believe

he may have faked his own death.

- The most interesting theory

is that he simply changed his name,

gave himself a new identity,

and moved to North Carolina

under the name of Lorenzo Ferrer.

And no one ever heard from Jean Lafitte again.

- No one knows for sure what happened to Lafitte

or his treasure.

It may have been that he didn't get very far

and that his life of piracy caught up to him.

- [Laurence] But there's one more possible theory

that interests modern treasure hunters.

- One legend says that after his encounter

with the US Navy at Galveston Island,

Lafitte sailed his ship, The Pride, into Trinity Bay.

- He sailed into Trinity River

there because the Gulf

access was blocked

by the United States government.

Then Lafitte sank The Pride to the bottom of Lake Miller

with all of his treasure aboard,

most likely with the intention of returning

to claim his treasure.

[dramatic music]

- This theory that Lafitte sailed The Pride

up the Trinity River has attracted a lot of attention.

So according to local legends down there in Galveston Island,

in the 1850s a cotton gin operator

claimed that his logs had gotten stuck

on some kind of wreckage there in the lake.

- This supposed underwater shipwreck

is where Lafitte is said to have sank The Pride.

And the cotton gin operator

claims that he even walked on the ship's deck.

But this remains just a family story,

because there's no way to bring this ship to the surface.

- [Laurence] Then in 1949,

two businessmen mount an expedition

to explore Lake Miller.

- They discover what what they believe

is the hull of an old ship

somewhere beneath 16 feet of mud and moss

at the bottom of this lake.

- And they go to the Corpus Christi newspaper

with that information.

There is a frenzy of treasure hunting

excitement around this.

In response, the State Land Commission

ends up shutting off permits to search Trinity Bay

for the remains of Lafitte's ship.

- So the operation gets called off about two weeks later

because too many people are coming out

looking for lost pirate treasure,

and no other search has been mounted since.

- This is a theory that has not been debunked necessarily,

but The Pride was his flagship vessel.

It was a pretty substantive ship,

so there's some doubt as to whether

he really would've been able to navigate

the tiny lake pass in order to get to Lake Miller.

One thing we can say is that Lafitte really began

and remained a man of great mystery.

And this element of mystery of his origins

and of his final destiny

is part of what makes his legend so long lasting.

- To this day, if you go to Galveston Island

or you drive through Southern Louisiana,

you're gonna see Lafitte's name on anything and everything.

Trinkets at the gas station, souvenir shops, golf courses.

From Texas to Louisiana,

the legend of Lafitte's lost treasure

is certainly alive and well.

- Jean Lafitte in a lot of ways represents

what people perceive as freedom,

but it also masks who Lafitte actually was as a person.

In reality, his actions as a pirate

and as a human trafficker, would've limited the freedoms

of thousands of people

in the areas that they were operating in.

- So we have these two very diverse aspects of Lafitte.

You have someone who is an anti-hero, he's a criminal,

but so much lore surrounds him because he was rich,

and we don't know what became of his treasure.

His story is unfinished.

[dramatic music]

- Jean Lafitte leaves behind a legacy of tales

and a wealth of treasure

that may still be out there somewhere

to be found by those willing to brave the swamps

and bayous he knew so well.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."

[dramatic music]