Treasure chest hidden In Rocky Mountains- finder exposes his identity.
The man who found a buried chest that had enraptured scores of treasure hunters for a decade has revealed his identity.
The following written by Laurel Wamsley
The man who found a buried chest that had enraptured scores of treasure hunters for a decade has revealed his identity. His name is Jack Stuef, and in June, he found the treasure famously buried by author and retired art dealer Forrest Fenn somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, with a poem from Fenn’s memoir, The Thrill of the Chase,offering clues to its location.
Fenn announced in June that the treasure had been found — but he wouldn’t say where exactly it was found or who found it. And in July, to provide some “closure” to those who had searched in other states, Fenn revealed that the chest had been hidden in Wyoming. Over the course of the hunt, at least four people died searching throughout the Rockies for the trove, which Fenn said contained about $2 million worth of gold and precious gems.
Stuef, in a post on Medium, says he had asked for his identity to be kept secret so that he wouldn’t invite the same fate that Fenn and his family dealt with amid fervent treasure hunters.
“For the past six months, I have remained anonymous, not because I have anything to hide, but because Forrest and his family endured stalkers, death threats, home invasions, frivolous lawsuits, and a potential kidnapping — all at the hands of people with delusions related to his treasure. I don’t want those things to happen to me and my family,” Stuef wrote.
Fenn died in September at age 90. His family confirmed on Mondaythat it was Stuef who found Fenn’s treasure. Some treasure-seekers had believed the finding was a hoax.
“We congratulate Jack on finding and retrieving the treasure chest, and we hope that this confirmation will help to dispel the conjecture, conspiratorial nonsense, and refusals to accept the truth,” wrote Fenn’s grandson, Shiloh Forrest Old. Read more from NPR.
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