In the heart of Pennsylvania elk country, Eric McCarthy and his client, Don Reichel, awoke before sunrise to scour the woods for so-called “brown gold,” a rack of freshly harvested antlers. toss to add to Reichel’s collection.
Up a hill, a team of FBI agents was also panning for gold. The metallic yellow kind.
The FBI’s highly unusual search for buried Civil War-era treasure more than five years ago set off a dispute over what, if anything, the agency uncovered and an ongoing legal battle on key records. There is so much intrigue that even a federal judge felt compelled to point out in a ruling last week: “The FBI may have found the gold, or they may not.”
Now, two witnesses have come forward to share with The Associated Press what they heard and saw in the woods, raising questions about the FBI’s timeline and adding plot twists to a saga that combines elements of legend, fact and science, and a heavy dose of government secrecy.
The FBI insists nothing came of the 2018 dig at Dents Run, a remote wooded valley about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh. But a treasure hunter who led FBI agents to the hillside where an 1863 gold shipment may have been buried is challenging the government’s denials. How could the dig have come up empty, he wonders, when FBI scans showed the likelihood of a buried mass of metal worth hundreds of millions of dollars in gold?
McCarthy, a 45-year-old elk guide, recently decided to share his story because he thought treasure hunter Dennis Parada, who spent years panning for gold before approaching the FBI with his findings, he had been treated unfairly.
“I don’t have ties to anybody here. It’s just that I felt like they were hurt,” McCarthy explained.
In an interview at a remote hunting camp about 25 miles (40 km) from Dents Run, McCarthy recalls hearing the unexpected noise of heavy equipment as he climbed the mountain in near darkness.
Later that day, while taking a lunch break, McCarthy and Reichel saw a trio of armored trucks drive by. One of the vehicles went low, as if carrying a full load.
“They took something out of Dents Run,” McCarthy insists now. “Something heavy.”
Reached by phone, Reichel, McCarthy’s 73-year-old shed hunting customer, corroborated his account of hearing the noise in the early morning hours and seeing a loaded truck on March 14, 2018.
Their recollections echo earlier statements from residents who told the AP they heard a backhoe and a jackhammer overnight and saw a convoy that included armored trucks.
Parada, co-founder of the treasure-hunting group Finders Keepers, has long suspected that the FBI conducted a secret overnight dig to find the gold and wipe it out. The FBI’s order to excavate the site limited work to 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The agency denies digging after hours, and says it has recovered nothing of value from Dents Run.
There is little historical evidence to corroborate old stories that an army detachment lost a shipment of gold in the Pennsylvania wilderness. But the legend inspired generations of treasure hunters.
Scientific evidence had suggested that Parada was onto something.
The FBI said in a 2018 court filing that its own geophysical consultant identified an underground metal mass weighing up to 9 tons, suggestive of gold, at the site identified by Finders Keepers. A federal judge approved the FBI’s request for a search and seizure warrant. Parada hoped to earn a finder’s fee from the potential recovery.
On the second day of the dig, McCarthy and Reichel woke up at 4 a.m. and were on the mountain between 5 and 5:30, splitting up to increase their odds of finding moose cover.
McCarthy said he could hear the distant hum of an engine as soon as he got out of his truck. The noise grew louder as he climbed the hill, and he heard what sounded like heavy equipment hitting the ground.
Scaling the ridge, McCarthy saw the FBI operation on the opposite slope, about 400 yards away. He saw lights powered by a generator. A parked excavator. A smaller team going up and down the hill. A brown-black crack in the earth. People huddled under a canopy.
More than 700 gold coins worth more than $2 million were found in a Kentucky cornfield.
“It looked to me like they were finishing a dig,” he said.
Reichel, who was further away, said he heard machinery from atop the ridge.
“I can hear some machines, or something, rumbling, banging and roaring and all that stuff,” said Reichel, a retired manufacturing worker. He said he was too far away to see anything.
An FBI timeline says the search team didn’t arrive at the dig site until 8 a.m. that morning, and an excavator operator arrived even later. That’s well after the time McCarthy and Reichel say they detected signs of activity.
The couple had lunch again a few hours later. That’s when, they said, an unmarked convoy of SUVs and armored trucks drove past. McCarthy and Reichel said one of the three armored trucks appeared to be heavy.
“Eric and I mentioned that one should be loaded.” Reichel said.
“It was loaded to the gills,” McCarthy said.
Not so, says the FBI. While “appropriate vehicles and equipment” were brought to Dents Run, armored trucks were not among them, FBI spokeswoman Carrie Adamowski said.
After the FBI told Parada the dig came up empty, it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records. In 2022, a judge forced the FBI to release a trove of photos and documents, but Parada is seeking additional material, including an operational plan. A federal judge told the FBI last week it had to find a better justification for keeping the disputed records secret.
Parada, for his part, has not given up his search in the Dents Run area. Now he’s looking to partner with the state conservation agency, which owns the land, on a new dig.
“It’s a part of our history that’s being hidden,” Parada said, “and I think it’s time it should be told.”
