The Cursed Treasure of Cahuenga Pass
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The year is 1864. A violent civil war in Mexico that began six years earlier has evolved into something more complex: the Franco-Mexican War. Napoleon III has invaded the country, capitalizing on its loss of military strength, hoping to not only extract payment for unpaid war loans made to the Mexican government, but also to colonize the nation and expand the French Empire into Central America.

Having defaulted on their European debts, facing a continuing conflict with both the Mexican conservatives and now the invading French army, Mexican President Juarez's coffers have been entirely depleted by the war effort.

Unable to garner support from the United States, who is similarly engaged in their own civil war, in desperate need of rifles and ammunition, President Juarez quickly gathered donations, gold, silver, jewels, and other precious items from his fellow Mexican patriots. The treasure amounted to a sum of 619,000 U.S. dollars, which today would amount to over $22 million.

The plan was to deliver this war chest to San Francisco, where it would be exchanged with the Union army for the much-needed weapons to continue the fight for Mexican independence. However, the treasure would never reach its destination. It was buried, and one by one, all of the men who transported it wound up dead.

Quite bizarrely, from the moment it began its journey from Mexico to San Francisco, it would seem that every man that has ever handled this war treasure or has simply sought to find where it was last buried, they have all died, often a sudden and painful death. Some might call that a coincidence, but what is a coincidence except a word for something we cannot explain? Others call it a curse.

This is the story of the cursed treasure of Cahuenga Pass. I'm Luke LaManna and this is Wartime Stories. Benito Juarez is the name that lies at the center of the extensive, violent, and complex conflicts that took place in Mexico during the mid-19th century.

A Zapotec Indian from the state of Oaxaca, elected to the position of governor of his state in 1847, he was expelled from Mexico in 1853 when a conservative dictator by the name of Santa Anna took power. But if Santa Anna had hoped to secure his presidency, he should have killed Juarez when he had the chance. In 1854, Juarez joined a Mexican revolutionary faction while living in exile in the American city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

He and the other liberal revolutionaries then snuck back into Mexico, overthrowing Santa Anna and sending him into exile by the end of the year.

Returning to his position as governor of Oaxaca, Benito Juarez would then quickly rise to become leader of the Liberal Constitutional Party, only to once again be ousted from his position by the Conservatives only a couple of years later in December of 1857. Not to be defeated in retaliation and with much support from his liberal counterparts, Juarez would then declare himself Mexican president a month after his expulsion in January of 1858.

As it was, two Mexican presidents were now concurrently serving in office. Thus began the bloody civil reform war that lasted the following three years. When President Juarez finally gained control of Mexico City in 1861, it became clear that the former president had left him with little more than a dilapidated government, a bankrupted treasury, and significantly outstanding debts to Europe.

Mexico now owed the countries of Britain, Spain, and France a staggering sum of $300 million in unpaid debts, what would today be nearly $11 billion U.S. dollars. Faced with rebuilding his crippled nation from the ground up, believing his debtors could not expect to squeeze blood from a stone, Juarez chose to default.

Following his staunch refusal to repay these indemnities immediately, the three nations simultaneously broke all diplomatic relations with Mexico, and a European coalition was formed in Paris to intervene in Mexico and seek reparations. Juarez's newly established government similarly made fast enemies of the old guard, the Catholic Church, curtailing the Church's virtually unlimited power over Mexican affairs.

In retribution, the Mexican clergymen and their allies sought to once again overthrow Juarez and establish a Catholic monarchy instead. Emissaries then sailed for Europe in search of allies. Their plea for intervention was heard by Napoleon III. With Mexico significantly indebted to France, combined with his long-harbored fantasies of a world dominion, the emperor found the church's request irresistible.

A French Expeditionary Corps soon set sail, intending to reclaim their debts and colonize Mexico by military force. Following this unexpected invasion, the Mexican Congress quickly granted Juarez special executive powers, and on the 26th of September 1861, he again declared war, but this time on France.

Over the following three years, the already beleaguered Mexican army, now composed primarily of newly drafted and inexperienced soldiers, would eventually be picked apart by the highly trained French army. Juarez's control of the country quickly fell to Napoleon, who then imposed a new emperor over Mexico, a man named Maximilian, the Archduke of Austria.

Under Maximilian, Juarez soon lost many of his remaining generals, not by death, but by betrayal. They abandoned his resistance effort and submitted themselves to this new French government in exchange for irresistible offers of position and wealth.

With the Mexican Federal Army now scattered to the wind, Juarez and his remaining few loyal compadres were forced to flee the capital city and take refuge in the mountains. Unwilling to relent, Juarez then resorted to his only remaining option to continue fighting: guerrilla warfare.

Inevitably, over the next three years, two factors would bring a successful end to Juarez's persistent fight for independence, a combination of Emperor Maximilian's extreme unpopularity with the Mexican people, along with the eventual diplomatic intervention by the United States on behalf of Mexico.

Napoleon would ultimately choose to withdraw from Mexico entirely, leaving Maximilian's government to be quickly overthrown. Maximilian was likewise abandoned to fend for himself. He fled for his life for a brief time, only to be caught and executed by Juarez. But our story of cursed treasure takes place at the onset of Juarez's unrelenting guerrilla war against the French army, which began in 1864.

The story begins with President Juarez delegating his topmost military priority after fleeing to the mountains, which was the acquisition of rifles and ammunition for his men, and this would require the help of the Americans.

Around the time of Juarez's transition to guerrilla warfare, possibly because of their family ties to Mexico or simply their love of a good fight, hundreds of American idealists and adventurers had enlisted to fight alongside Juarez to overthrow Maximilian.

Among these were even a handful of Union Army officers, evidently those from southwestern territories like Arizona and New Mexico, that were not currently engaged in the ongoing American Civil War, which was primarily fought in the eastern United States.

Whatever their purpose or reasons for being present with Mexican guerrillas, these American military men became an integral part of Juarez's secret plan to purchase firearms from the Union Army garrisoned in the state of California. First, Juarez turned to one of his remaining few but loyal Mexican commanders, General Placido Vega, who orchestrated the fundraising effort.

A Union officer, Major Horace Bell, recounted this portion of the story in his memoirs. Talk about patriotism, you never saw anything like it. Aristocrats with diamonds and pearls that have been heirlooms for generations threw them into the common heap until it was estimated that $200,000 had been acquired in this way without counting the cash contributions.

Once collected, General Vega then consigned the valuables to his own trusted aide and dispatched him, along with three other trusted men, to deliver the war chest to San Francisco. Two of these men served as bodyguards. One of them was an American Union officer by the name of Captain Henry Malcolm.

Setting out from the coastal city of Mazatlán, laden with gold coins, silver, diamonds, family heirlooms, and other jewelry, the four men headed north to San Francisco. And perhaps these men were not alone in their journey. It would soon seem as if these men had a fifth traveling companion, one who goes by the name, the Angel of Death. Carlos, you- Oh, down there.

Juan! Juan! What happened to him? Is he alright? Capitán, no responde. No tiene falso. No puede ser. Let's see if we can revive him. No. Capitán, he's gone. Look, nobody just up and dies like that. Asesinato, señor. I wouldn't put it past those sneaky French bastards. But we can't take any chances. Keep your eyes open.

We ain't safe until we reach San Francisco. Hey, Antonio. Why, uh, why did you insist on making a coffee this morning, eh? Are you accusing me now, Manuel? Yeah, maybe I am. You're the one who's been complaining the whole time. You think I did this? Maybe if you think you can kill us all, you can take your treasure and... Hey, that's enough. General Vega chose all of us because he knew he could trust us. Everyone here is loyal to Juarez. Don't start that horse shit now. We're just as likely to get killed standing here.

Soon after embarking from Mazatlan, General Placido Vega's trusted envoy died a sudden and mysterious death. That's death number one, attributed to the treasure's curse.

There is no indication in historical records that the men were able to determine the cause of his death. Captain Malcolm, however, suspected foul play at the hands of French secret agents. The rest of the journey thus proceeded under a dark cloud of fear and suspicion, the men keeping close watch on the trail behind them, ahead of them, and the surrounding hills for spies. They even began to suspect one another.

After a wearisome journey of nearly 1500 miles, much to their annoyance, the remaining three men quickly realized that San Francisco would offer no sanctuary from Emperor Maximilian's long reach. The city was now crawling with French spies.

Unsure how to proceed without risking the success of their mission, Malcolm and the other two bodyguards first decided to hide the treasure. They divided the gold and jewelry into six portions and wrapped each portion in buckskin. They then rode to a location well outside of town and buried these satchels in a secluded location in the surrounding hills.

Determined to wait for further instructions, a dispatch was then sent back down to Mexico, with Captain Malcolm urgently requesting that General Vega meet them in San Francisco and assume personal control of the mission. With the date of General Vega's arrival approaching, the three men then returned to where they had buried the treasure to now retrieve it before meeting the General. However, their frantic digging was in vain.

they were left staring at a gaping hole and the crushing realization that the war funds had disappeared with suspicions already running high due to the death of the first man captain malcolm's fellow bodyguards immediately began to argue ignoring captain malcolm's efforts to stop them their argument turned violent and the two men ended up killing each other deaths numbers two and three

General Vega finally arrived and Malcolm informed him of the tragic and baffling turn of events. Despite all the potential appearances of guilt, the General was remarkably forgiving. In Malcolm's words, "Vega exonerated me from blame and held me above suspicion." Like his fellow couriers, however, Captain Henry Malcolm would not live long enough to find out what had become of the lost treasure.

After the war, Major Horace Bell recounted that in 1880 he had received terrible news. His army buddy, Captain Malcolm, had been killed down in Waterville, Arizona, just outside the town of Tombstone. Malcolm died while trying to break up a fight in his bar, of which he was the proprietor.

The man that killed him in the brawl fled town, but was quickly captured by a well-known law enforcement officer, Deputy Sheriff Wyatt Earp. All of this was cited in an August 26, 1880 article in the local paper, The Tombstone Epitaph, and also the following day in the Arizona Daily Star.

Captain Henry Malcolm is otherwise documented in Arizona voter records as living in Pima County at the time. Although Captain Malcolm was killed years later and far from where the treasure was, his involvement in transporting it, followed by a similarly sudden and painful death, is widely considered to be linked to the treasure's curse. That's death number four. So, what happened to the treasure?

As fate would have it, five years after hearing about the tragic death of his friend Henry, now in the year 1885, Major Horace Bell again heard news about the treasure's whereabouts. His source was a Frenchman named Martin Labage, the keeper of a tavern in Los Angeles, just south of the Cahuenga Pass.

In his memoirs, it is noted that, likely to protect the true identity of his source, Major Bell scribbled out the type name of Le Beige and changed the tavern keeper's name to Laurent Echepas.

When his memoirs were posthumously published after his death, and this incredible story of the missing treasure was made known, the name Eshpar was the one that appeared in print. L.A. County records do verify, however, that in 1887, a tavern called Six Mile House Tavern, located at what is now the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street in Hollywood,

was indeed owned not by a Laurent Echepard but by a man named Martin Labège. When the two men spoke, Labège, the tavern keeper, told Belle that a Basque shepherd who regularly grazed his flock in the Coahuenga Pass had recently unearthed a heavy, tattered buckskin parcel. The young immigrant shepherd explained that his dog was drawn to the base of a Fresno tree and after some digging had uncovered buckskin leather.

Pulling it up, the man was shocked to find 100 gold coins tucked inside, along with various jewelry. He had then stopped at the nearby tavern and exuberantly displayed his find to its owner, La Beige. Planning to now leave his life as a poor shepherd behind, he told the tavern keeper of his plans to soon set sail and return to his home in Spain.

After hearing Labage recount this story, Major Horace Bell immediately suspected that the buckskin package was one of the six parcels his friend Malcolm said he had buried outside San Francisco, and Bell's suspicions would soon be confirmed.

So anyway, and then Henry... Your soldier, compadre, si? Yes, yes, that one. Well, he gets himself killed down in a bar fight in Arizona. Oh, that is terrible. I am so sorry. Well, let me finish. You're not going to believe this. So, after he dies, a few years later, I end up having a drink at the Six Mile. You know, Martin's place? Yes, yes, of course. And so he starts telling me...

About how some shepherd came into his tavern one day raving about how he had found a bag of gold in the pass just north of here. La Napolena? Right, that one. Dios mio. And this shepherd... I am sorry, Joris. Allow me to interrupt you. What's the matter, Jose? Look like you've seen a ghost or something. Perhaps I have, amigo. You say Martin had a shepherd come in and say he found gold in the northern pass. That's right. That's what he said, anyway.

Never saw it, of course. He was telling the truth. Is that right? How do you figure? This is unbelievable. Like the hand of God. What are you talking about, Jose? Horace, now I'm afraid you will not believe me. When I was a niño, some 25 years ago, my stepfather came home one day with a very sick man. His name was Moreno. Diego Moreno. He was also a shepherd. He told my father and I the most incredible story about...

A few years later, during the early 1890s, Bell recalled that he happened to share this story about missing treasure with a friend of his, a Los Angeles policeman named Jose Gumisindo Correa.

In hearing about it, Correa then recounted an extraordinary memory from his childhood, an account that would finally explain how the treasure originally made its way from its disappearance near San Francisco to its reappearance in the Cahuenga Pass. Back in 1866, Correa's stepfather, Don Jesus Martinez, had unexpectedly brought home a haggard-looking stranger.

The sickly stranger identified himself as one Diego Moreno and said he had once worked as a shepherd on a rancho near San Francisco. Moreno revealed that in spite of his humble appearance, he was in fact the owner of a phenomenal treasure.

He then told young Correa and his stepfather Martinez just how he had come into possession of this great wealth. While tending his flock two years earlier, Moreno had watched from a distance as three men buried six heavy buckskin parcels in the hills outside of San Francisco. The men were evidently not aware of the shepherd's presence and that he was watching them.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Moreno said he had returned later that night, unearthed the bundles, and discovered they were filled with gold and jewels. Both elated and terrified, Moreno quickly loaded up the treasure and immediately headed for his home in Sonora, Mexico.

He got as far as the Coahuenga Pass, the northern mountain gateway to Los Angeles. Moreno said he stayed at a primitive tavern or "Hakal" near the south end of the pass and it was there, during the night, he was visited by a terrifying dream. By some accounts, it seems that he had dreamt that an angel came to him and warned him that if he ever entered the city of Los Angeles with the treasure or spoke of it to anyone, he would die.

Whatever the dream was, nightmare, vision, or premonition, foreseeing his own death left Moreno terrified. As a precaution, he decided to heed the warning. He buried the six parcels in the nearby pass before entering the city.

Forgoing his return home to Sonora, Mexico, Moreno then spent the next two years living in Los Angeles, wanting to remain close to the treasure while he figured out what to do with it. He made a few local friends, but he struggled to find consistent work, subsequently becoming malnourished. Because of this, he eventually became ill.

Now haggard and weakened, too sick to care for himself, that is when he found shelter with one of his only friends, Don Jesus Martinez, who took him in and introduced him to his stepson, a future police officer and future friend of Major Horace Bell, the young Jose Correa.

Perhaps fearing the treasure would be wasted on him if he died, while he lay sick, Moreno decided to tell his two friends his incredible story, about stealing the treasure from the three men, about the terrifying dream, and about burying the treasure in the Kohanga Pass. Following the retelling of his nightmare, Moreno then told them where exactly he had buried it. "Everything being quiet in the tavern, I slipped out with the treasure.

to a previously selected spot on the side of the pass about halfway from the Hakau to the summit on the hillside opposite the main road and buried it. I buried it in six different holes taking measurements from a Fresno tree east, west, north and south. It is the only Fresno tree in that locality

The very moment these words left his mouth and he divulged the treasure's location to Correa and his stepfather, the angel's dire warning evidently came to fulfillment. Helpless to do anything for him, the boy and his father watched as Moreno immediately fell into wrenching convulsions and died. Diego Moreno was death #5.

Seeing the man now dead, with the gold of no use to him, Don Jesus Martinez had no qualms about claiming it for himself. He immediately headed for the Coahuenga Pass to recover Moreno's treasure, taking his young stepson, Jose, with him. They easily located the Telltale Fresno tree. However, as Jose later recounted to his friend, Major Bell, many years later, even before they could begin to dig, he watched as his stepfather suddenly fell to the ground,

his body in the grip of a terrible seizure, and then he stopped moving. Don Jesus Martinez was dead. Death #6 Terrified for his own life, young Jose Correa fled from the area. Remembering what Diego Moreno had said about his terrible dream, for some 25 years, Jose resisted the urge to return to find the buried treasure himself.

The passage of time, however, eventually dissipated Correa's fear. After a long and wearisome career as a police officer, he would do anything to secure an early retirement, and the temptation was too much to resist. After learning from Major Bell that only one parcel had been uncovered by the Basque Shepherd, who had then returned home to Spain unharmed, Correa reasoned that he could safely return to the location and find the remaining five.

The Fresno tree had long since been cut down, but Correa suggested that he and his friend Major Bell go out and acquire a lease for the land where the tree once stood. Under the pretense of farming, they could then plow the area and turn up the remaining parcels without arousing any curiosity. At first, Bell said he wholeheartedly agreed to the idea. However, their plans would quickly go awry.

Before a contract with the landowners could be finalized, Jose Correa was suddenly gunned down in the streets of Los Angeles. The September 25, 1894 copy of the Los Angeles Times documented his death, citing the reason for his murder being the result of a year-long family feud.

The date of this paper also corroborates Major Bell's claim about the time in which he said he had spoken with his friend Jose, sometime in the early 1890s. Jose's murderer was his own brother-in-law, Gaspar Valenzuela, who had shot him twice in the stomach following an exchange of insults. Leaving his body in the street, he then turned himself in to the county jail.

Jose Correa was death number seven, and Major Bell had now lost two good friends to the curse of the Coahuenga Pass treasure. And not long after, Bell was shocked by even more dire news. This time, it came from Spain. Martin Labage, the tavern keeper, informed Major Bell of death number eight.

News had come back from Spain about the tragic death of the Basque Shepherd, who had uncovered the first treasure parcel. Fearing the theft of his valuables during the voyage to Spain, the Shepherd had apparently sewn them into the lining of his coat. Most tragically, the report indicated that as he was disembarking the ship in Barcelona, he suddenly stumbled off the gangplank into the water.

He might have survived the fall into the water if his heavy coat had not then served as an anchor, dragging him under the surface where he then drowned. After hearing this, Major Bell said, "I abandoned my plan to unearth the treasure and I do not know that anyone else has ever taken up the hunt. There it lies, along the road that leads down through La Napolera, the La Brea pits and the City of Angels, waiting to be mined out."

Who will be next to take a chance against the mysterious, unseen forces that seem to haunt this reminder of the Emperor Maximilian and his Empress Carlotta? The La Napolera, he mentions, was a Spanish term for the Cahuenga Pass, named by the local residents for the dense colonies of nopal cactus that once grew there.

To all known sources, the tavern-keeper Le Beige and Major Bell were the only remaining men who knew of the treasure's whereabouts or of its ominous ability to end the lives of those who sought to find it. Not much is known about the fate of the tavern-keeper, although at least one source indicates he died only a few years later, at the age of 45, from cirrhosis of the liver.

Certainly a much less gruesome end than the others. His death is thus not attributed to the curse. Perhaps because of his similar change of heart, Major Horace Bell lived out the rest of his life in relative peace. He died in 1918 of unknown causes. The story of the treasure's curse, however, did not end with Major Bell's death.

The treasure story was uncovered in his writings and was included in his second volume of memoirs titled "On the West Coast" which was published posthumously in 1930. While he and Le Beige appear to have escaped suffering premature deaths, before a decade more had passed, the treasure's mysterious unseen forces were observed once again.

By the year 1939, Cohinga Pass had changed beyond recognition. El Camino Real, once a rutted dirt trail that had borne ox carts and stagecoaches through the pass, was now paved and heavily traversed by automobiles. No longer an empty desert, the pass now echoed with not only the sounds of traffic, but with the sounds of starlight symphonies, issuing out of the now famous outdoor amphitheater called the Hollywood Bowl.

It was here, at the site of this 50-acre outpost of 20th century culture, that Henry Jones, an oil mining expert from San Francisco, assisted by Walter Combs, a mechanic from Bakersfield, launched a treasure hunt in 1939. Jones told a reporter for the Hollywood Citizen News that he and Walter's search was founded on his reading of the now deceased Major Bell's account published from his memoirs.

Having scoured the area with a metal detecting device they called the Doodle Bug, something invented by Walter's uncle, Enes Combs, the three men had potentially zeroed in on the treasure's location. There was just one problem. It was estimated to be buried 15 feet underneath the bowl's asphalt parking lot, just behind the venue's acoustical shell. Henry Jones then petitioned bowl officials for permission to excavate.

Under the terms that any recovered treasure, as well as publicity, would be shared equally with the Hollywood Bowl Association, Carl E. Jacobson, the association's manager, forwarded the request to Los Angeles County authorities, urging them to approve it.

On November 8, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to allow the dig, but stipulated that the hole must be refilled and that the county, rather than the Bowl Association, be the one to share in any treasure that might be recovered. All parties conceded to the arrangement.

With the local press religiously reporting the planned treasure hunt, Los Angeles now teemed with gold fever. The excavation was scheduled to begin in late November. With all the excitement, the LA County Sheriff's Office had to erect a fence around the intended dig site, with Boal security guards working to stop claim jumpers from starting their own excavations.

Finally, on November 23rd, an Examiner article proclaimed that, curse or no curse, the treasure hunt would start the next day. Then, Walter and Ennis Combs suddenly quit.

By now the treasure hunt had received national attention. Ennis and Walter's sudden departure was reported by Newsweek, which attributed their sudden change of heart to fear of joining the list of eight victims already killed by the supposed curse. Their departure served to only fuel the rumors and air of intrigue surrounding the treasure hunt.

In spite of his partner's getting cold feet, Jones vowed to move forward with the dig. He had plenty of eager volunteers waiting in line to assist him, and had assembled a new team four days later. Jones was now joined by four men: Ray Johnson, a former vaudevillian and Hollywood stuntman; Frank Huckstra, a Highland Park inventor; and Huckstra's two sons, Henry and Frank Jr.

Huckstro was brought on because, as an inventor, he was adamant about the usefulness of his gold detecting device, which he termed an electrochemical recorder. The search finally began Monday morning, November 27th, with Jones plowing through the asphalt pavement with a pneumatic drill. Newspaper articles account for at least three film crews being present to record the moment, which in a pre-television era would have been shown in movie theaters across the country.

Jones and his team dug fervently, unearthing eight feet of dirt on their first day and four feet on the next. A wooden pulley system was erected to continue their dig, lifting dirt out of the hole one bucket at a time. Tour buses began making runs past the Hollywood Bowl and the famous treasure dig. A carnival sprung up outside the fence line, with onlookers buying popcorn and cold drinks while trying to catch a peek over the fence into the deepening nine-foot square hole.

With Huckster's device egging them on, its measurements reading stronger the deeper they got, they had reached a depth of 22 feet before they suddenly hit something: a hard layer of soil. Not at all dismayed, county engineers urged them on. They had determined that the first 20 feet had indeed been a fill layer, scraped down from the surrounding hills years earlier when the amphitheater was being constructed.

Exhausted from digging, having so far uncovered only a pair of rusted wristwatches and an old two-cent piece, this revelation buoyed Henry Jones' spirit. "Well, it means we have penetrated the original surface of the canyon. According to our calculations, we should be within four or five feet of the $200,000 Benito Juarez. I'm spying cash."

Subsequently reassured by the bouncing needle of Huckstra's device, they continued digging. That is, until they hit a depth of 24 feet and punctured a bubble of subterranean gas. The gas filled the deep hole, practically suffocating the men as they scrambled to get out. However, Jones remained optimistic.

At 27 feet, they dug up the roots of long-dead trees and shrubs, vestiges they believed of the very shrubs Diego Moreno had buried his treasure beneath 75 years earlier.

Feeling even closer than ever, by December 7th, Jones predicted another 10 feet should disclose the treasure. Hoekstra, on the other hand, seemed less confident than when he had began, voicing a prediction that they might at least strike a vein of gold, if not the treasure. However, time was running short. They had been given a deadline of December 13th, which the Board of Supervisors then granted an extension until the day before Christmas. This included refilling the hole.

At 38 feet, water began to ooze into the shaft. Even using a pump, they still contended with a continuous depth of at least 5 inches of water, now having to slog through mud. At 42 feet, they finally reached the end of their dig. They had hit a large boulder.

Now thoroughly frustrated and exhausted, he and his partners, having moved over 100 tons of dirt over a period of 24 days, on the afternoon of December 20th, Jones finally called it quits. In the following weeks, many more treasure seekers would submit requests to the county board to follow in Jones' footsteps. However, scarcely a month later, a shocking piece of news derailed any further requests.

Henry Jones was dead. So what do we got, Jimmy? Did the Fillmores bump off another poor stooge? Nah, nothing like that, Sarge. Probably not gang-related. Guy's got a hose running from his tailpipe. Could still be the North Beach boys. We had a case not too long ago like this. Wanted to make it look like the guy wandered off himself, but he was a key witness against their enforcer, DiGiorgio. Well, if it is, they did a bang-up job on this guy. Look at this.

What's this? A letter? Yep. Looks pretty open and shut to me. His wife just left him. Ah, poor bastard. Always a dame. Wait a minute. This guy is Henry Jones. Why, you know him? We both do, Eddie. We do? Press is going to have a field day with this one. We've been reading about him in the paper the past two months. The treasure hunt guy. Down in L.A. Well, I'll be damned. You're right. Spooky. Spooky.

I guess the curse got him after all." On January 26th, 1940, only a few short weeks after his legendary treasure hunt, Henry Jones was found slumped in an automobile in a San Francisco parking lot. In regards to the treasure's curse, his death was nothing like the other men on the list of victims. A telltale hose was found running from his tailpipe in through the car's window.

The coroner ruled that Jones had taken his own life. Notes found with him in the car indicated he was despondent over the fact that his wife had divorced him two weeks before. Los Angeles papers, however, couldn't resist adding his name to the list of victims associated with the treasure.

Following his death, few efforts would be made over the following decades to take up the search, and even those few were shot down by the Bull Association. There was one account of a treasure hunter using a metal detector who had supposedly unearthed a small hoard of Mexican and Chilean silver coins dating from the 1800s from the Hollywood Bull area in 1943. Lacking both names and a precise date, this account is difficult to verify.

It was not until the fall of 1974, 35 years after the death of Henry Jones, that the Board of Supervisors finally permitted another search. A man named William W. Boyle was permitted a single day to find the treasure. His method was a device called his mineral rod, a sort of special divining rod he used to locate gold. However, he returned home that same evening, Halloween Day of 1974, empty-handed.

Not much is known about Mr. Boyle other than a picture taken of him with his device and the record of his treasure trove license still held by the Hollywood Bowl Board of Supervisors. Cemetery records near Norwalk, California do account for two different William W. Boyles, both of whom would meet the approximate age of William as he was pictured in 1974, somewhere in his mid to late 50s.

One of these Williams passed away three years after the single-day gold search in 1974. The second William passed away about six years later. No record was made of how these two men died, and neither of them can be verified as being the same William who conducted the search for the gold.

The story of the cursed treasure of Cahuenga Pass is something of a forgotten relic in Southern California history. In the spring of 1999, Joshua Alper authored an article titled "The Cahuenga Pass Treasure" in Volume 81, Issue 1 of the Southern California Quarterly, which is the scholarly journal of the Historical Society of Southern California.

His article provides numerous source materials for this story and depicts the overall narrative as being not only credible but well-documented, even pertaining to documents written by General Placido Vega about his patriotic mission to San Francisco, the French spies patrolling the city, the mysteriously missing funds, Vega's inevitably successful efforts to supply thousands of muskets and millions of rounds of ammunition to President Juarez's guerrilla fighters.

It's all there. Outside of documented sources, with Major Horace Bell having not been present during the events, it was his soldiering buddy, Captain Henry Malcolm, who verbally relayed much of the account of this elaborate story to him in 1874, six years before Malcolm was killed.

Also a veteran of the Union Army, Bell went on to become a prosperous rancher, attorney, and publisher, quoted by historians as being an outspoken defender of the powerless and a vociferous opponent of civic corruption. Having moved to California in 1852 during the Gold Rush years, Major Bell otherwise established himself as a notable figure in Los Angeles history, when the city was at the peak of its years as a Wild West frontier town.

The incredible story he relayed was the summation of not only his friend Henry Malcolm's account, but that of two other men, his LA County Police Officer friend Jose Correa and the Six Mile Tavern Keeper, Martin Labage. Georgia Street in the South Park neighborhood of Los Angeles may now be the last remnant of Major Bell's history in the now bustling city, sitting on the land he once owned, the street being named after his wife.

Georgia, Herrick, Bell. Where the supposedly cursed treasure is today is far less evident. Perhaps it is long gone, uncovered by some poor devil who either managed to spend it or suffered a similarly gruesome fate as his predecessors and whose name was lost to history.

Or perhaps it remains right where Diego Moreno buried it, now nestled under tons of earth and the concrete of either Coahuenga Boulevard or the 101 freeway.

But why would the treasure have been cursed? There aren't many theories. Perhaps Diego Moreno's terrifying dream was an indicator of divine intervention, that some greater unseen power was guiding the outcome of the war and the treasure being lost. What worse fate can a supernatural curse bring than death?

Or perhaps calling back to other purportedly cursed items like the Hope Diamond or the Koh-i-Noor Diamond and the Black Prince's Ruby, both stones now being a part of the British crown jewels, there is the idea that one of the jewels or items included in the war chest was cursed. Perhaps some Mexican aristocrat seeking to rid themselves of a cursed family heirloom when General Vega came collecting donations, tossed it onto the pile, passing their family's curse

onto the poor unsuspecting men who then carried it away. What we do know is that eight men who touched or sought after this legendary treasure subsequently died abrupt, violent deaths, and several more died still wishing they might have found where it was buried.

So what about you? If you should be hiking through the desert trails of the Hollywood Hills and should happen to see a piece of old leather sticking up out of the soil, or should a glint of something reflecting in the sunlight catch your eye? Having now heard this story, what would you do?

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Lacascio, and Wit Lacascio. Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham. Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone. Production coordination by Avery Siegel. Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden. Artwork by Jessica Clarkson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picotta. Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.