Be wary when searching for lost treasure online

The world has certainly changed since I wrote my first edition of Treasure, British Columbia in 1971.

Back then, I typed my manuscript on a typewriter; today it’s on a computer. Back then, my finished book was laboriously printed by offset press; today it’s digital.

But something else has changed, something that has totally transformed publishing from what it was then. That something is the internet. Now virtually anyone can, at modest expense, speak directly to the entire world via the social media and/or by blogging.

With these revolutionary innovations have come geocaching with its strictly-for-fun treasure hunts, and voluminous outpourings of information online.

But there’s a distinct downside to the latter—misinformation, or what has come to be known as alt news.

You’ve never been able to believe everything you read but this is particularly true of some websites dedicated to lost treasure. Time and again, I’ve come across sites that are so inaccurate, so far removed from the initial grain of truth as to be altogether fictional.

Some YouTube sites are just some guys, usually young, having a great time in the woods by panning and playing at treasure hunting.

Let’s face it:
Many stories of lost treasure are legends at best—great stories without real substance or based upon very shaky foundations—so much so that they don’t need any further embellishment and distortion.

In the case of the Lost Lemon Mine, the storyline has more or less survived intact but for the small matter of the lost mine site having jumped from “somewhere in the rocky foothills of the Highwood Mountain Range of Alberta” to B.C. And the late Jack Mould (Jack Mould and the Curse of Gold by Elizabeth Hawkins, Hancock House Publishing), while also looking for a lost Spanish mine and a sunken Spanish galleon, was convinced that the Lost Creek Mine wasn’t at the head of Pitt Lake but at the head of Bute Inlet. Just look at a map to see the discrepancy there.

Then there’s the story of a lost Second World War bomber loaded with Nazi bullion that supposedly “went down west of Pitt Lake”. Seriously now, what was a B-25 doing, flying British Columbia skies with such a cargo?

Was he really a serial killer?
And can we really believe that Slumach was a bluebeard who killed a succession of ‘wives’ after they were of no further use to him but posed a threat to the secrecy of his gold mine?

Perhaps the most exotic example of an uncorroborated (but fascinating!) tale of mass murder and lost treasure is that originally told by the late Laurence Lazeo in his 1973 book, Lost Treasure In British Columbia. This story has since been picked up by the British Columbia Folkore Society which entitled it, ‘The Lost Treasure of 108 Mile House.’

According to Lazeo and the BCFS, a Scottish immigrant named Agnus (sic) MacVee, her husband Jim and son-law Al Riley operated a roadhouse at 108 Mile House on the Cariboo Wagon Road between 1875 and 1885. This was after the Cariboo gold rush had peaked but there appears to have been a steady stream of traffic.

For Sale: Young women
Likely of log construction, their hotel was large enough to have needed seven fireplaces, and offered not just the usual lodging, food and liquor, but “the sale of young women” to travellers. These women, described as mostly runaways, were under the dominaton of the fierce Agnus who maintained discipline by (I’m quoting) throwing two of them into a fireplace!

Over that 10-year period, “the bodies of more than 59 prospective buyers of young women, murdered by the MacVees and Riley, were found in small lakes in the area.”

It was the murder of a gambler named MacDonald, who’d paid $4000 (an immense sum in those days) for one of their captive employees, that was their downfall. The woman managed to get away and to alert the authorities, causing the MacVees to have a falling-out and Agnus to end the marriage with poison.

Finally, the police closed in.
When the police investigated, they found no fewer than eight malnourished young women in chains and “the remains of human bones were found in the ashes sifted from the fireplaces”.

Arrested, Agnus cheated justice by taking poison and leaving Riley to face the hangman alone.

What a story!
Shades of the murdering Bender family of Kansas who operated 1871-1873!

Too bad the B.C. version is baloney.

Which makes the legendary treasure the MacVies and Riley supposedly concealed suspect to say the least. Variously estimated to be as much as $150,000 in gold nuggets and gold coins (the currency of the day) taken from the murder victims, it’s supposedly buried “in several caches near the hotel,” which was demolished in 1892 and replaced with a new building.

One cache, worth $2500, was unearthed by a farmer in 1924, a second, valued at $6000, was also found.

If we can believe Mr. Lazeo.
I’ve yet to find any corroborative evidence to support this story of mass murder (Agnus and Co.’s body could would put them at the top of the list of Canadian serial killers) in any way, shape or form. Certainly the late deputy commissioner of B.C. Provincial Police Cecil Clark would have made hay of this story in the scores of crime articles he wrote for magazines and newspapers during his lengthy retirement.

Personally, I love a great story, particularly one with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But I’ll save my time and effort on this one.