Original subtitles

Mysteries can be buried anywhere,

under the earth,

beneath the sea,

or even right under our own feet.

And when we stumble upon them,

sometimes what we find can change history.

Tonight,

accidental discoveries that expose dark secrets,

from a Prohibition era hideout...

The room looks like no one's been down here in decades.

Then something catches their eye.

To a clue from an infamous crime.

It's more money than he's ever seen

in his life.

The FBI run the serial numbers

and what they find is shocking.

To a scandalous secret hidden in Washington, D.C.

Just steps from the Capitol was

the ultimate retreat for Washington's elite.

Join us now, because nothing stays hidden forever.

In the winter of 1977, a man named Ron Lykins

and his friends were all waiters

at the famous Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.

They decide on their day off

that they are going to go snowshoeing

into the frozen tundra of the Yosemite backcountry.

About six miles into their hike,

they spot something surprising.

It's a debris trail,

and then suddenly, they encounter an airplane wing

just sitting out there in the snow.

They head back and report it to the park rangers,

and before along, officials from four government agencies

swarm to the area.

They follow the debris trail,

and eventually come to a twin-engine plane

in a frozen lake.

Officials fire up chainsaws

and start cutting it out of the ice.

When they cut open the cargo hold,

they see something incredible.

They find marijuana, literally tons of it.

They estimate there are 6,000 pounds of weed in the hold.

Authorities spend the next week

hauling bundles of it out of the Yosemite Valley.

Unfortunately, their work is cut short

when a huge snowstorm rolls in.

A full wintertime salvage operation

would be too hazardous,

so the Feds have to press pause on the entire operation

and wait for the spring.

Before they leave for the season,

they run the tail number to ID the plane.

It belongs to a guy named Jon Glisky,

who's been on the DEA's radar for a while.

He's a former Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam

and now a full-time smuggler.

Authorities contact Glisky's wife,

and she shares what she knows.

She confirms that about a month earlier

on the night before the crash,

he loads up three tons of weed at a dusty airstrip in Baja

and under the cover of darkness

flies it into the United States.

But the run ends in disaster.

Glisky's plane goes down in Yosemite,

leaving both men dead

and three tons of marijuana entombed in ice.

Some people overhear off-duty DEA agents at a bar

talking about how they had to leave this wreck until spring

with tons of drugs still inside.

Among those who hear it are three anonymous hikers

who race to the scene days later.

When they reach the plane, one of them sticks his arm

into a hole next to the cockpit

and pulls out a plastic-wrapped bale.

The plane is packed with five kilo bricks

of high grade Mexican weed.

Now, word spreads like wildfire,

and in the days that follow,

a stream of hikers brave the elements to get to the goods

at what they're calling Dope Lake.

When April rolls around, there's an unexpected heat wave.

The snow melts, the trails clear,

and the looting goes into overdrive.

It is a full-blown green rush.

Dozens and dozens of hikers

make the 32-mile round trip.

Some of them carry out 200 pound loads

of marijuana worth about $50,000 at the time.

In just one week, over a half a million dollars

of marijuana goes missing

at the hands of opportunistic Yosemite hikers.

Rangers launch a surprise raid,

but only nab two hikers.

All of the true culprits are never identified,

and the crime slowly fades from memory.

It's one of the wildest forgotten stories

in American crime history.

But for a brief window in the '70s,

Dope Lake turned Yosemite

into the most lucrative hiking trail on the planet.

Years later, a shop owner stumbles

on another set of mysterious criminals,

this time, a couple you'd never suspect.

In 2017, a New Mexico antique shop owner

named David Van Auker is browsing

an estate sale of a recently deceased

pair of school teachers named Jerry and Rita Alter.

He combs through some various knickknacks,

pieces of art, and tchotchkes.

David picks up a few inexpensive items.

He also picks up an old abstract oil painting of a woman.

All in all, he spends about $2,000,

and he thinks he can make some money off of it

if he cleans up the oil painting

and a few of the other items.

Van Auker throws everything

in the back of his truck,

and when he gets back to his shop,

he leans the painting in the back.

Less than an hour later, a customer approaches David

and tells him that the painting looks

an awful lot like the work

of a famous Dutch-American abstract painter

by the name of Willem de Kooning.

De Kooning became really popular after World War II

in the abstract expressionism movement

and his paintings have sold for millions of dollars.

So it's pretty surprising

that two retired school teachers would own

an original de Kooning.

After being offered $200,000 for the painting

by a customer, Van Auker hides the work in his bathroom

and begins researching de Kooning.

What he finds piques his interest.

Sure enough, he soon finds a de Kooning painting called

"Woman-Ochre" that looks just like the one

he's propped up next to his toilet.

And as he reads about "Woman-Ochre,"

he finds out it was stolen

from the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

Van Auker is shocked.

Could he really be in possession of a stolen masterpiece?

He doesn't wanna get into any trouble,

so he calls the Arizona museum and speaks to the curator.

She tells Van Auker to keep the painting safe

and she'll be there to have a look at it the next day.

Understandably, he is freaking out.

The next day, museum officials visit him

to inspect the painting,

and sure enough, it is the original "Woman-Ochre."

That means it's worth just a little more

than the $2,000 he spent on it.

It's valued at $150 million.

Turns out the painting was stolen

during a bold museum heist nearly 35 years earlier.

The day after Thanksgiving

in 1985 was a pretty slow day

at the University of Arizona Museum.

Shortly after opening, a man and woman entered.

They were sort of acting kind of strange and oddly,

and they only stayed around for about 15 minutes.

A little while later, as museum security guards

made their rounds, they discovered the unimaginable.

One of their most prized paintings,

"Woman-Ochre," had disappeared.

Whoever stole it cut it right out of its frame

and walked out the front door.

At least that's what officials assume happened,

because at the time,

the museum didn't have security cameras.

Museum staff provided a description

of the odd couple to the police

and mentioned also seeing a red sports car

in the parking lot at about the time

that they were in the building.

The couple were really the only suspects,

but the police had no idea who they really were.

There were no photos, no fingerprints, nothing.

It's not until the estate sale

over three decades later that investigators are finally able

to start piecing it all together.

Police sketches of the suspects do resemble the Alters

and a few old family photos placed the couple

in the Tucson area at the time of the theft.

One photo even shows Rita

and Jerry in a rented red sports car.

All signs point toward them as the culprits,

but without a living suspect,

it's almost impossible to prove it for sure.

So David Van Auker returns "Woman-Ochre"

to the University of Arizona Museum of Art,

and declines the reward money.

When authorities look deeper,

they start thinking that a few other paintings

supposedly owned by Jerry and Rita were also stolen.

They'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.

Yard sales can turn up just about anything,

junk, antiques, even hidden gems.

But one Florida man's discovery carried a secret.

It had been stolen.

Back in 2021 in Brooksville, Florida,

Jamie Bath and his wife are browsing a local yard sale.

They like collecting

and looking through all sorts of things,

old coins, vintage radios, maybe a rusty tool or two.

As Bath picks through the goods,

he spots a cool medal lying on a table.

It's gold and purple

with George Washington's face right in the middle,

and he doesn't know what it is,

but for two bucks he figures, "Why not?"

Later, as he's going through his haul,

he spots an engraving on the reverse of the medal.

It says, "For military merit, Gus A. Allbritton."

Bath thinks this thing might be important,

so he starts digging.

A quick search tells him all he needs to know.

This isn't just some old medal.

It's a Purple Heart,

the oldest and one of the most prestigious honors awarded

to members of the US military.

The Purple Heart is awarded to those soldiers

who are wounded or killed in action.

Bath discovers that this is a rare honor.

A very large number of recipients of this medal

receive it only because they have been killed in action.

So 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 medal,

Gus Allbritton.

Bath does some sleuthing

and tracks Gus down through the VA

to a town called Dublin, Georgia.

He happened to be alive and well,

and has been volunteering there for over 30 years.

The VA passes Bath's message along,

and when Gus calls him back, Bath is floored

by the veteran's heroic story.

Back in the summer of 1968, Gus graduates high school,

and then receives his draft notice the very next day.

A week later, he reports to Fort Benning

to receive infantry basic training.

And a few months after that,

he's deployed to the Republic of Vietnam.

Over the next two years,

Gus defies the odds in numerous battles.

The war was brutal,

and Gus didn't have it easy.

First, an AK-47 round tears through his shoulder.

He survives.

Then he's shot through the midsection,

and again, he survives.

And just when it seems like he's cheated death enough,

an RPG explodes in his bunker,

sending shrapnel into his back and chest.

Gus is both tough and lucky.

He survives and is awarded the Purple Heart three times.

After the war,

the newly decorated hero moves to Florida,

and gets a job as a court bailiff.

While most people would keep their medals on display,

Gus, he's not most people.

He gives one to his son, a second to his daughter,

and he keeps the third for himself.

Until one day, it disappears.

In 1983, while Gus is at work,

someone breaks into his house.

They steal jewelry, they steal guns,

and they steal his Purple Heart.

Gus has spent enough time in law enforcement to know

that stolen items like these are rarely recovered.

For nearly four decades, it remains lost

until Jamie Bath finds it at a yard sale

in the same town where it was stolen.

Law enforcement thinks whoever took it

probably had no idea what they had

and either tossed it or gave it away.

Once Jamie gets in touch with Gus,

he mails the medal back to him,

a small but valuable piece of stolen valor

returned to its rightful owner after 38 years.

If you think finding a war medal at a garage sale is wild,

wait 'til you see what two brothers uncovered

in their bookstore.

It's 2021 in Evansville, Indiana.

Two brothers, Sam and Adam Morris,

are about to open their dream business,

a bookstore that's appropriately called

Your Brother's Bookstore.

The brothers are eager to open their doors,

but first they need to finish some renovations.

As their workers start ripping up the hardwood,

they find something strange.

One section of the floor doesn't match the rest.

At first, this looks like it's just a bad patch job,

but as the workers begin to pry out the wooden slats,

they find something unexpected.

It's not just a loose floorboard.

It's a secret trap door.

The workers wave the brothers over,

and suddenly, this renovation feels

more like an investigation.

They climb down into the space below,

expecting to find something like an old cellar.

But when they shine their flashlights around,

they discover that this is much larger.

The room is covered in a thick layer of dust.

It looks like no one's been down here in decades,

but then something catches their eye.

There's a hole in the far wall

about the size of a dinner plate.

When they look through it, they see another space,

and what looks like the entrance to another tunnel.

They assume that this is simply a passage

that connects to the basement of the building next door.

That's very mysterious,

but the brothers have a lot of work to do

to get their bookstore open,

so they head back upstairs and get back to work.

A few weeks later, the store opens.

Hoping to pique the curiosity of new customers,

they place a sign outside the business that says,

"Ask us about our secret tunnel."

Soon, someone does.

The Evansville African American Museum.

For years, the museum has been researching

the Evansville history of the Underground Railroad,

the storied network for enslaved persons

who were fleeing Southern states in the 1850s.

Museum officials have heard rumors

that there was a station of the Underground Railroad

somewhere on Main Street,

but they found no evidence until now.

The museum officials

take a look at the mysterious room

under the brothers' bookstore,

then they take a look at the hole in the far wall,

and eventually decide to break through it.

That's when they discover that the tunnel

doesn't just go to the basement of the next building.

It keeps going.

As they continue to explore the tunnels,

they begin to notice an assortment of strange artifacts,

glass bottles, tables and chairs

built into the tunnel walls,

and the real surprise, a still for making alcohol.

It doesn't look like a safe haven for slaves.

It looks more like a bar.

They realized this tunnel wasn't a station

on the Underground Railroad.

It was a Prohibition era speakeasy.

At the turn of the last century,

Evansville was well-known for its breweries.

But in 1918, the state of Indiana

outlawed the sale of alcohol

two years before the National Prohibition Law.

Not everyone was happy about giving up booze.

With its brewing expertise

and strong German drinking culture,

Evansville becomes a center of speakeasies

and underground drinking halls

like the one the brothers have discovered under Main Street.

The Morris brothers' find doesn't just uncover

a underground hideaway.

It reveals a hidden

and very interesting part of Hoosier history.

It is one of America's most infamous unsolved crimes,

one without any leads,

until a second grader makes the find of a lifetime.

In 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram is out

with his family camping along the Columbia River

in Washington State.

It 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.

While he's smoothing the ground for the fire pit,

Brian's arm brushes up against something.

He immediately recognizes a signature distinctive green,

and he produces a stack of $20 bills.

It's more money than he's seen in his life,

so he calls his dad over.

They start to count the cash,

and all together Brian has found $5,880.

That's the equivalent of over 20 grand today.

But some of these bills have rotted away

down to the size of playing cards.

They don't know if the money is real, counterfeit,

lost, or stolen.

They decide that they have to call up the authorities.

They stuff the cash in a plastic bread bag,

and when they get home, his dad calls the FBI.

Soon, agents show up and collect the money.

The FBI run the serial numbers

on the dollars through their database,

and what they find is shocking.

The cash is associated

with one of the most well-known crimes

in recent American history,

the D.B. Cooper hijacking.

Back in 1971,

a man who is later known as D.B. Cooper

buys a one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle.

He sits in the last row of plane,

and after the plane takes off, has a drink,

and then casually passes a note to a flight attendant.

The note read, "I have a bomb."

And he opened his suitcase

and showed what looked to be a very real bomb,

and at that moment, it became a hijacking.

He contacts authorities

and demands $200,000

and a parachute.

With 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.

Authorities 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.

Shortly after the plane takes back off into the sky,

Cooper parachutes out of the plane

over the Pacific Northwest never to be seen again.

And neither is the money, until now.

Almost a decade after the hijacking,

Brian Ingram is the first and only person to find

any of D.B. Cooper's loot.

This instantly becomes the FBI's best piece of evidence

in the infamous crime.

So how does the stolen cash end up

on the shores of the Columbia River?

Some claim that Cooper landed in the river

and the cash floated downstream.

Others suggest that Cooper buried the cash

on that part of the beach and would come back to it later.

Others even accused 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.

Now, despite the speculation,

Brian is a hero among his fellow second graders.

But unfortunately, this epic monetary find

does not make him rich.

The FBI tells Brian he can't keep any of the money he found

because it's evidence.

What follows is this multi-year court battle,

where Brian ends up getting to keep half the money.

The rest goes to the airline's insurance company.

Now, Brian hangs onto this money until 2008,

when he ends up auctioning off 15 of those bills,

which have a face value of about $300,

but for collectors, they're pieces of an unsolved case,

and they're worth much more to them.

At the auction, these bills end up going for about $37,000.

To this day, not a single additional bill

from Cooper's ransom has been recovered,

and the hijacking remains the only unsolved case

of air piracy in commercial aviation history.

Thousands of miles away and decades earlier,

another shocking discovery is pulled not from the sand,

but from the sea.

It's April, 1935 in Sydney, Australia.

Fisherman Bert Hobson, who's out on the water,

attempting to bring in his daily catch

of things like amberjack and southern calamari.

As 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.

He goes to toss it back in the water,

but then he gets an idea.

His brother runs the local aquarium,

and he figures maybe they could use a new star attraction.

Bert's brother feels,

"Oh, having a shark in the aquarium

would definitely bring in the crowds.

Bring the shark over," and they do,

and they toss it in a tank at the aquarium.

And then there's a problem.

The shark isn't exactly thriving in its new environment.

At first, the shark looks agitated,

and then it starts to look sick.

And then one day, in front of a very stunned crowd,

the shark convulses and vomits.

What the shark coughs up isn't fish bones or bait.

It's a human arm.

Upon further analysis, the authorities realize this arm

was not bitten off by a shark.

They don't notice any sort of jagged teeth markings

on the arm, but more cleaner incised wounds

from either a knife or a cleaver.

So now, they realize that there is a homicide

on their hands.

The severed arm has a pretty distinctive tattoo

of two boxers fighting.

So authorities release this information

to the general public, and not long after that,

a man by the name of Edwin Smith comes forward.

He says that his brother James

had a tattoo just like that.

James Smith is a failed boxer, small-time crook,

and an occasional police informant.

Edwin tells police that he hasn't seen his brother

for a few weeks.

Further digging reveals that the last person

that James Smith was seen with was

a man by the name of Patrick Brady.

Now, both Brady and Smith work for a local crime boss

by the name of Reginald Holmes.

So the police think that Brady

and Holmes might've teamed up to take out Smith.

Police arrest Brady first,

but when they go after the boss, Holmes, he panics.

He jumps in a boat, speeds into the harbor,

and tries to shoot himself in the head.

Now, Holmes ends up surviving,

and when questioned by authorities

gives his own version of the events.

After he recovers, Holmes swears that he had nothing to do

with Smith's murder, and he pins the whole thing on Brady.

Before Holmes can testify at Brady's trial,

he's found dead in his car under suspicious circumstances.

Police suspect that Brady

had Holmes killed to shut him up.

But without Holmes' testimony or Smith's body,

prosecutors have no case.

Brady walks free, and lives a long and peaceful life

for the next 30 years.

The rest of James Smith's body is never found.

As for what happens to the shark,

I think it's safe to say

that it never had another meal like that again.

Washington, D.C. is known

for its secrets and scandals.

One of the most intriguing lay hidden for over a century

buried in a place you'd never expect.

It's 1997,

and the Smithsonian Institution is looking

to build the brand-new Museum of the American Indian

near the National Mall.

And so, before they can build, they want to do

a full survey of the site.

As the team surveys this piece of land,

they find something surprising.

The workers discover

the remnants of a palatial estate.

But what's strange is historians know this area

used to be a working class neighborhood

populated with the homes of people

who worked in nearby factories.

The foundation of this house, however,

is way larger than all of the modest homes around it.

Archeologists start a formal excavation,

and they find china, champagne corks,

and various women's fashion pieces.

This is all high-end stuff

and it doesn't make sense to find it

in this old working class neighborhood.

So who could've owned such a luxurious home here?

Some of the museum's researchers start looking

at historical maps and real estate records of the day,

and 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.

But Mary wasn't just any woman.

She was known as the Madam of the Mall,

and her house was a high-end brothel.

Mary was born in 1814,

and by all accounts became a rather successful prostitute.

She was so successful, in fact, that she was able

to earn enough money to buy a lot

on what is now the National Mall

and build a rather impressive house on it.

Today, you find a bunch of stately monuments in the area,

but back then, it was not the most respected part of town.

There were streets with names like Louse Alley

and Murderer's Row, so it's incredibly clear

that this was a very unsavory area.

But Mary was a very shrewd businesswoman,

and she stayed in business for about 40 years.

And in fact, Mary's tenure spanned the terms

of about a dozen different presidents.

Just steps from the Capitol,

Hall's three-story brick mansion was the ultimate retreat

for Washington's elite.

While there are no surviving records

naming her high-end clientele,

it's clear that the Madam of the Mall was

a talented businesswoman.

Mary found great success at a time

when women had very few rights to property

or business ownership.

In 1883, Mary retired with over $87,000.

That's the modern equivalent of over $2 million.

After getting out of the brothel business,

Mary rented the property to a women's health clinic.

In 1886, shortly after her death, it was converted

yet again into a school for African American children.

Even though we can acknowledge

that Mary's field was a rather illicit one,

some say she has a better reputation

than many of the politicians that passed through her door.

In a quiet neighborhood backyard,

another mystery is about to surface,

one that will solve what was thought to be a murder.

In August of 2019,

a man is using some online tools to take a virtual walk

through his old neighborhood in Wellington, Florida.

While scanning satellite images

of his former stomping ground,

he notices something unusual

about his former neighbor's pond in his backyard.

It's white, kind of shiny, kind of metallic looking,

so he zooms in,

and it looks like a car.

The man calls his former neighbor, Barry Fay,

and tells him what he saw.

But Fay's not buying it,

because he spent thousands of hours in his yard,

and he's never noticed anything weird,

even when the water levels drop.

Just to be sure, though, Fay asks a friend

to fly a drone over the pond,

and when they take a look at the footage,

there's no question.

There's absolutely a car underwater.

Fay calls the police,

and soon, his backyard turns into a crime scene.

Officers work late into the night

and wind up pulling out a white 1994 Saturn from the pond,

but that's not all they find.

Inside the car is a skeleton.

Forensic testing matches the remains

to a man who's been missing for decades,

a mortgage broker named William Moldt.

Authorities look into Moldt

and soon uncover the shocking details

surrounding his disappearance.

In November of 1997, Moldt is out partying

with a few of his buddies, and around 9:30 p.m. that night,

he calls his girlfriend to let her know

that he's heading home.

But he never made it home that night.

In fact, no one ever found a trace of him.

Moldt was reported missing,

and police opened an investigation,

but the case went cold, until now.

Investigators see no signs of foul play.

They think that Moldt lost control of his car,

veered off the road, and crashed into the pond.

Over the next two decades,

the neighborhood developed around the pond.

Houses were built, roads were paved,

and all the while, William Moldt

and his car are hidden beneath the surface.

Thanks to Fay's former neighbor

and some zoomed in satellite images,

the case of the missing mortgage broker is finally solved

22 years later.

Imagine searching for a legendary wreck

said to hold 10 tons of gold and silver.

Instead of treasure, you uncover evidence

of a crime hidden beneath the sea.

In 2005, a team of researchers launch a mission

to locate the wreck of a famous warship

that sank in the Mediterranean more than 200 years ago.

The HMS Sussex was a ship in the Royal English Navy's fleet

that sank in 1694 during a violent storm.

The team deploys an underwater robot,

and begins scanning the seabed between Spain and Morocco,

where it's rumor that the ship went down.

Hours pass.

They find nothing but sand and shadows.

Then suddenly, bingo.

They see a wreck.

When the remotely operated vehicle moves in

for a closer look, something doesn't add up.

The Sussex was a beast,

157 feet long, three towering masts, 80 guns.

But this wreck is a much smaller ship,

just 45 feet,

a sleek, two-masted vessel called a tartane.

It's not what they're looking for,

but it's still something worth exploring.

Lying 2,700 feet below the surface,

this wreck is remarkably well-preserved.

Among the debris they find pottery and glassware.

They also find Turkish tea bowls

and liquor bottles made in Germany and Belgium.

These discoveries all suggest the ship was made

to pass as a trading vessel,

but its real mission was more sinister.

The rover shines its light on the wreck

and reveals four large cannons.

They also see muskets and 10 swivel guns.

Researchers know that when a tartane is outfitted

with this type of artillery that only means one thing.

It's a pirate ship.

Another 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.

During the late 18th and the early 19th centuries,

this was a notorious hunting ground for pirates

who attacked ships and ran brutal slave raids.

The tartane was one of their primary tools of terror.

From a distance, it looks like a small fishing boat,

allowing them to nonchalantly pursue their target.

By the time the target realized they were in danger,

it was already too late.

But this ship wasn't just plundering other boats.

It was abducting people.

When most of us think about the slave trade

in the 17th and 18th centuries,

we naturally think of Europeans

and Americans enslaving Africans.

But there was also a smaller slave trade

working in the other direction,

with Africans from the Barbary Coast

enslaving Europeans through the Mediterranean.

It's estimated that

1.25 million Europeans were enslaved

by Barbary pirates,

and 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.

By presenting as a harmless trading vessel,

the pirates could ambush their target.

And then would use larger galley ships

to transport the slaves back to North Africa.

Ships like this menace the open seas

for another half century after this particular boat sank.

Eventually, their reign of terror ended in the early 1800s

thanks to the Barbary Wars.

This amazing discovery serves as a reminder

that even the ocean keeps her secrets,

some lost to history,

and some just waiting for the right time to resurface.

Sorting through a deceased father's keepsakes

doesn't usually turn up evidence of a crime,

but that's just what one family uncovers

to their total surprise.

In 2023, a Massachusetts family is going through

their late father's house.

As they start rummaging through bags and boxes,

they find the things that you would expect to discover,

old documents, holiday decorations,

and some family heirlooms.

As they make their way through these boxes,

they find something totally unexpected,

a collection of Japanese artifacts.

They carefully collect the antiques,

bring them downstairs to try to learn more about them.

With any luck, they figure,

"Maybe this stuff might be worth a few bucks."

The family begins researching

the unfamiliar artwork,

and soon, they find themselves on the last website

they expected,

the FBI's National Stolen Art File database.

Basically, if something culturally significant

goes missing anywhere in the world,

it ends up on this website.

One 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,

and that can only mean one thing.

All of these artifacts that they find

in their dad's attic are stolen Japanese treasure.

The family contacts the FBI to tell them

how they stumbled onto these works of art.

They meet up with FBI Agent Geoffrey Kelly

assigned to investigate art crime in Boston.

The 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.

And 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.

In all, there are 22 artifacts

that date to the Ryukyu Kingdom,

the kingdom that ruled Okinawa

from the 15th to the 19th centuries.

Little of the art from this time period survived,

and that makes these artifacts all the more valuable.

These were not little trophies or knickknacks.

These were incredibly important pieces of cultural patrimony

for the Okinawan people.

The FBI is determined to figure out

how these relics ended up in this attic.

Agents begin investigating the artwork,

and soon trace them back to World War II.

In the spring of 1945,

the Battle of Okinawa was raging in the Pacific.

During the fighting, a group of American soldiers occupied

the palace of a royal family that fled the city.

When the fighting ended

and Americans vacated this palace,

authorities eventually returned to the island

and found that many of its artifacts had been looted.

But according to the family,

their father was never stationed in the Pacific,

something that initially confuses Agent Kelly,

until he uncovers a clue.

As I'm examining these artifacts,

I see that tucked inside a ceramic jug is

an unsigned typed letter,

and this isn't just any letter.

This is basically a confession.

The 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.

According to the letter,

when this author made it back to the United States,

he tried to sell the artifacts to a museum.

The museum declines,

and the artifacts vanish into storage for decades.

How they surfaced in an attic remains unclear,

but the FBI is now on a mission to send them home.

In 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.

It was a big event in Okinawa

for them to finally get these items back,

items that they never thought that they would see again,

and I was really proud that we were able to help out.

It's just part of the $900 million

that the FBI's Art Crime Program

has recovered over the years.

Whether it's ransom money, stolen treasure,

or a case gone cold,

sometimes the darkest secrets have a way

of coming back into the light.

I'm Danny Trejo.

Thanks for watching Mysteries Unearthed.