Cursed Gold: A Shipwreck Scandal (2024) s01e02 Episode Script
Follow the Money
1
When it came to Tommy,
there's, there's two stories.
There's the public story,
and then there's
the story that I knew.
And what
a story this has been,
scientist turned treasure
hunter, Tommy Thompson.
This is the gold pin.
It was given to me by Tommy,
and it is
the SS Central America.
Somewhere off the coast of South Carolina
lies millions upon millions
of dollars' worth of gold.
There's
a lot of emotions.
Tommy is an incredible,
unique human being.
He's three steps
ahead of everybody.
I think there is
a curse to the gold.
It took over Tommy's mind.
The scene has
shifted from the ocean's depths
to a federal courthouse.
Taking risks
all the way to the edge.
And then he fell over the edge.
SS Central America was one
of the most gold-laden ships
that ever sank.
Tens of thousands
of coins, gold bars,
hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of gold,
and Tommy Thompson and his crew
did the impossible and found it.
This is so good.
Finding
the gold is one thing.
to bring it back to the surface
is a completely
different problem.
The wreck
is under 8,000 feet of water.
Nobody has worked
at these depths before.
The pressure,
it's enough to implode
the two-inch-thick steel hull
of a nuclear submarine
at 2,000 feet.
They're four times
deeper than that.
The supervisor of salvage
from the United States Navy,
he himself had tried to salvage
something in the deep ocean,
and he told Tommy Thompson,
"I know how difficult it is."
And he said, "You cannot do what
you claim you're going to do.
It's impossible."
We needed
a remotely operated vehicle
to go after the gold.
There wasn't
an off-the-shelf solution.
In the 1980s,
part of the challenge was
the technology of the day
isn't up to speed
to undertake this task.
Just made it seem
like a crazy endeavor.
I was literally
going to RadioShack
and buying handfuls of parts
off of the shelf,
but still built by far
the most sophisticated remotely
operated vehicle in existence.
And we called it Nemo.
This vehicle is more complicated
than ever before, and
the whole challenge will be
keeping it running.
Keep it running, we're gonna
be successful this summer.
The problem was
this was really the first time
that they were testing
the technology
in the real situation.
Tommy
had a lot of pressure on him.
He's got a lot of people
to answer to,
and they put their trust in him.
You know,
the longer that goes on
without any measurable success,
it's got to weight on someone,
and I'm sure
it weighted on Tommy.
This was their
fourth year in the effort.
At this point, Tommy had
used around $12 million
of the investors' money.
The investors were not
gonna give him any more.
If Tommy came back
with no gold after that season,
that would be the end
of Tommy's dream.
It is definitely
time to deliver.
You have to imagine that this
vehicle is attached to the ship
8,000 feet up by this umbilical.
To pick the gold up
off the bottom,
it's not unlike standing at the
top of the Empire State Building
and dangling
a piece of dental floss
and trying to pick up
something on the sidewalk.
Here we go.
Look at that!
Something has landed
in a foreign environment.
As soon as we got
set down, I went to work.
Get to one
right here in the near field.
Okay.
The big daddy.
And what you
have to appreciate is
how slow and deliberate
all of your movement is.
Nothing happens quickly at all.
Move to the right.
Make sure it's all clear.
Just watch that thing.
There was
a lot of pressure.
We are testing out Nemo.
We're gonna
retreat a little bit here.
That should be
good. Whoa, whoa.
What?
Sorry.
Whoa!
Whoops.
Thought I had it all figured
out, but I guess I didn't.
So we got one here.
Okay, you got it?
Wow, look at that one.
To the left a little.
Yes.
That's sticking out
of the one at the back.
Don't get too
don't get too wild.
Maybe clockwise
just a little.
Don't get a cramp
in your arm now.
Here we go.
Wow!
Look at that!
Look at that!
Oh, man!
All right!
Great going, John.
Good going.
So, we knew we could
pick up the gold bars,
but recovering gold in a way
that will not decrease its value
is another difficult problem.
Some of the coins
were worth about $60,000,
so handling these carefully
was a very high priority.
Would have
taken probably forever
to carefully,
without marking them,
recover each individual coin.
I said, "Why don't we
just cast these piles of coins
into blocks of silicon?"
All right,
everybody ready?
Coming up.
It's good.
Off of the wire, John.
Can I have a tray
of some sort, please?
Wow! That's incredible!
We recovered stacks
and stacks of coins
in like one operation.
And that's hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
Here is
a serious prize, gentlemen.
Yeah, all right!
Woo!
Yes, sir.
Oh, my god!
We did get around 50.
We did get around 50.
It was very special.
We did it.
It was a pretty big deal.
For Tommy,
it was sheer elation.
It was such a special moment.
It took years
to achieve this point.
That is great.
You know, it came
together and worked.
Mint state coins, a lot.
Tommy had
a drive about him.
People had said before,
"Do you think he's a genius?"
And I never quite know
how to answer that
because I do think
that a lot of his genius
was in just not giving up.
Everybody felt happy.
It was a long, hard summer.
A lot of work, a lot of hours.
Yes, wow, baby!
Oh, my gosh.
Will you look at that?
Look at, woo-hoo!
Look at this.
Whoa!
Oh, man, that's incredible!
Eventually we recovered
three tons of gold
or thereabouts.
We were just wrapping it up,
and now it was time,
we'd be able to relax.
And it was just
a wonderful feeling.
Cannonball! Woo-hoo!
Whoa, whoa.
Did you get that, Ray?
You bet I did.
Hey, Mac,
did you see him again?
Tommy's done something
everybody said was impossible.
Woo! Ha ha!
Now he needs to show
this gold to his investors
so that they know that
their investment has paid off.
Was he excited?
Yeah, and thrilled.
I think maybe
he was worried, too.
Tommy said, "Well, we've
dealt with the sea sharks,
now we have to deal
with the land sharks."
We released to the media
that, hey, we've
found the treasure
and it's time to come in
and show what we've found
to the world.
They wanted us pulling
in Norfolk, Virginia,
and it was gonna be televised
and quite the hoopla.
A salvage ship
carrying what is being called
the richest shipwreck haul
in U.S. history
has landed at Norfolk, Virginia.
Well, it's pretty amazing
when we see the crowd.
We felt like rock stars.
Woo ♪
Hoo, yow ♪
Woo ♪
Not a dime,
I can't pay my rent ♪
I can barely make it ♪
Tommy Thompson
and his ship,
the Arctic Discoverer,
steamed into Norfolk, Virginia,
with the treasure,
with the gold
that they had recovered
from the bottom
of the Atlantic Ocean.
Don't need nothin'
but a good time ♪
A wonderful experience.
We're famous.
It was just quite a scene.
The air was filled
with complete excitement
and curiosity, too.
Everybody wanted to see the gold
and just be part
of the experience.
It was emotional
because it was something
that we had been
working hard for.
The stuff of dreams.
It was very,
very, very exciting.
Oh, Tommy!
Mom and Dad
were just like,
"Oh, my gosh.
He really did it."
Yeah, it was a huge thrill
for the entire family.
Seems like you did
a pretty good job out there.
Yeah, it was good.
As his sister,
I was just proud of him,
but I wasn't surprised.
He was just a very talented,
talented human being.
It's worth millions,
probably hundreds of millions.
The haul could
be worth up to $1 billion.
The investors are
hopeful they'll be rewarded
for their risky undertaking.
We all flew
down there for a frenzy
like a bunch of kids
in private planes and so forth.
Well, I was excited about it.
They came off the ship
carrying these heavy boxes,
and they displayed
gold on tables.
Everybody was as happy
as they possibly be.
It looked as if we were gonna
have a lot of money, everybody.
Along with
a lot of other investors,
Mom and Dad headed down
and got the pictures
and just it had
to have been a truly
one-of-a-kind day in their life.
There's no doubt about it.
I can only imagine
their excitement.
Tommy, it's good
to see you in person.
Thank you, Sam.
It's certainly
a thrill to be here.
And with you is James Lamb,
the Director
of the coin department
of Christie's auction house
in New York.
How much would you
estimate all the gold
that we see in front of us
tonight will bring?
I think
that it's safe to say
that we have many,
many millions of dollars
sitting on this table right now.
To be able to share
what we accomplished together
with the world was,
was the best feeling ever.
It was
just a phenomenal,
exciting adventure.
From that point on,
Tommy was famous.
You mentioned
a fairy tale,
well, this is the end
of the rainbow.
Tommy Thompson,
the leader of
Last we spoke
with Thomas Thompson
And Tom Thompson and his
There's
the prospect of great wealth.
We hope to be rich.
He is handling it
amazingly well.
He seemed to just roll with it.
He didn't get a big head.
He was enjoying the moment,
as we all were.
Good morning, Thomas.
Good morning, Bryant.
Can you give me
a guess as to how much
the stuff you've
brought back is worth?
It's difficult
to tell what it's worth
at this point, Bryant.
Where do you put
so much gold to keep it safe?
I mean, I'm sure you don't
sit out there on board
the ship with a shotgun.
Of course, we can't
talk about that, Bryant,
but we have a number
of very interesting
security procedures that we use.
In the beginning,
it was really exciting.
And then it really wasn't long
where it turned into a tragedy.
If you're gonna do something
magnificent like Tommy did,
you're gonna be up for grabs.
The scene has
shifted from the ocean's depths
to a federal courthouse
now deep in layers of lawyers.
They began surfacing
shortly after the treasure did,
representing people
who felt they deserved a cut.
39 insurance companies
that realized they
or their predecessors
had insured the ship.
It's a well-accepted law that
when an underwriter pays for
gold or whatever, they own that.
We are not trying to take
everything away from them,
it's exactly the opposite,
they're trying to take
everything away from us.
Not a bar to be moved
nor a coin to be sold
till the courts decide
who it belongs to.
It's suddenly
like the record stopping
and screeching to a halt.
Several insurance
companies had filed claims
saying that the gold
that Tommy and his crew
had just risked
their lives finding
and spent millions and millions
of dollars working for
belonged to
the insurance companies.
My name is Rick Robol.
I was the attorney
for Tommy's companies
for approximately 25 years.
I think the feeling in the room
was what a tragedy
that such a beautiful moment
in American history
could be sullied
by the very nature
of human greed
and the desire for money.
Unfortunately, this is a story
of the American dream
and how it can be destroyed
by gold fever.
The insurance companies
did absolutely nothing
for 132 years
to recover the treasure.
They sat back, they waited
for individuals to go out
and do all the work
and take all the risk
and put up all the money,
and then they came into court
and made their claim.
Well, we don't think
that's right.
Did you feel
sort of like a gold prospector
in the Old West who'd
had his claim jumped?
Oh, it felt terrible.
Here we were, had gone
through all these hurdles
over a four-year period of time,
the last thing that we really
wanted to be spending our time
and our precious efforts on
with regard to the recovery.
If you have even
the most tenuous connection
to a hundred or hundreds
of millions of dollars,
if not more, in gold, I think
the natural human impulse
is to wonder how you can
get your share of it.
Suddenly
out of the woodwork
after the insurance
companies appear,
there are others
who are appearing.
There were rival explorers,
rival salvers.
We even
had Capuchin monks
that claimed that we used
a map that they provided
to find the, to find the gold.
I know! I didn't even
know they existed,
Capuchin monks. Yeah.
There were lawsuits being filed
almost in real time.
It was just one after
another after another.
It was just like, what the heck
is going on here?
You can't even
make this stuff up.
We probably
had 100-plus claims.
Judge Richard Kellam
will decide
later this summer
who gets the gold.
These lawsuits were
keeping Tommy from thinking
and creating
and being who he was.
It was like cutting out
part of his brain,
and, wow, that was
very stressful.
It became
very difficult for Tommy
because he was thinking
about many different things
on many different levels
at the same time.
The litigation,
the at-sea operations,
and then he was having to deal
with the money end of things.
We're trying
to keep the momentum going
even though we're tied up
in litigation
and we can't sell
the treasure yet.
We were frozen.
Nothing got done except we were
battling insurance companies.
The company
had to hire many lawyers.
They had a team of attorneys
trying to figure out
how to take care of this.
Tommy started
to get a little paranoid.
At the time, I was
living at the office,
and a large quantity of gold
was in the basement.
I could go down to the basement,
and I could see the ammo cans
and the containers
that had the gold in it.
It was undocumented.
I think that
it was an option, right?
If things didn't go the
way that we wanted them to go,
I don't know. I mean,
we, we couldn't get inside
Tommy's head at that time.
The gold was eventually
removed from the basement
and taken to a secure facility.
But I was the treasurer
responsible for keeping
everything aboveboard,
and I had effectively been asked
to lie about
the gold's whereabouts.
I shouldn't have been
put in that position,
so I left the organization.
When it came to Tommy,
there's, there's two stories.
There's the public story,
and then there's
the story that I knew.
After the recovery
of the gold in 1989,
there were trials,
hearings, appeals,
case sent back, further appeals,
case sent back.
And it lasted for years
and years and years.
The find
was a treasure hunter's
dream come true.
The legal hunt is not over.
The Ohio-based group goes
back to court in Norfolk
where a hearing will decide
what money the group
will get to keep.
At this moment,
after years of effort,
years of waiting,
everyone's future is just
hanging in the balance,
especially with the amount
of money at stake.
Tommy and the other
members of the group,
the investors, all of us
were waiting anxiously,
sitting on the edge
of our chairs as we waited
for the decision
from the court of appeals.
And finally it came.
Some real-life treasure hunters
just found out that they can
keep their discovered riches,
92% of the gold
they found on the ship,
the SS Central America.
Finally there was
an award of 92% of the treasure
to Tommy's companies
and 100% of all future
recoveries of treasure.
So it was a moment
of great jubilation.
Tommy was overjoyed.
I remember that he was virtually
screaming and laughing
and jumping up and down
as though a great burden
has been lifted
from his shoulders.
We couldn't
have better news.
We were just ecstatic.
I will enjoy getting back to the
original mission of the project.
I am now confident that nothing
will stand in the way
of moving forward.
92% of 100
is pretty darn good.
And we can go ahead
and start trying to, you know,
receive some of the profits
from the expedition.
We were really excited.
Thompson's now trying
to sell the treasure
to try to return money
to the partners lickety-split.
The feeling was,
this is just the beginning.
I got the money, yeah ♪
A lot of the investors
were, at this point, probably
deciding how they were
going to spend their share.
Getting ready to buy a fast car,
a swimming pool,
or maybe even a private jet.
By now they've invested
a total of $22 million
in the hopes of massive returns.
I had $10,000,
100 to 1 on 10,000
might be $1 million.
We were very excited.
My dad and I
just got together on,
you know, what is it
gonna be sold for?
In the newspaper,
it's saying, you know,
it's 400 million or
it's 100 million or whatever.
And some people are saying
it's priceless.
But, you know, until you
market it, you don't know.
Tommy had never
sold this kind of treasure,
but nobody else had either.
And there were a lot
of discussions, I'm sure,
that went back and forth.
I did not
Finally,
in December of 1999,
the gold is sold to
California Gold Marketing Group
for $52 million.
Some investors
may have been disappointed
at the amount it sold for,
because years earlier
experts had estimated it
could be worth $400 million.
But it's like
a da Vinci painting,
it's an artificial amount
that you're setting,
and I think to sell it
for 50-something million dollars
was a good deal.
There was nobody else
who could have come in
and done a better job at this.
We're back in business,
but there's one problem.
We have $50 million in debt.
When we finally sold the
treasure, we paid off the debt,
but we didn't have enough money
for the partners, nothing.
Welcome. Thank
you all for coming today.
Can everybody hear me okay?
Tommy, I'm
very frustrated at this meeting.
I have no idea sitting here
what the outcome is.
You may have the most to lose,
but I think
that's another bad deal.
Very frustrating.
My dad and I, you know,
we're both frustrated,
and other investors
are absolutely frustrated,
and we didn't know
what was going on.
It's hard to have
invested something in 1985.
Most of these people
were probably in their 60s.
There are people
that say my father died
and he was consumed by this.
I really want you
to know that, you know,
that there's been a lot
of stress in this project
for everybody,
for the staff, for me,
and I needthe psychological
support of the partners
is critically important
to me, you know,
psychologically
as well as every other way.
Among the investors,
there was confusion
and disappointment,
but some took a harder line.
Perhaps natural suspicion
would be to accuse Tommy
of doing something, and that's
the track that they took,
that Tommy was to blame.
Gradually these rumors
built up and up and up
to the effect that Tommy
had not used the money
that he had gotten
to pay off debts
but had made tens
of millions of dollars
and had taken them for himself.
The image of Tommy
was that he was off
living the high life.
He was sipping margaritas
by the pool,
and he had millions buried
somewhere on an estate.
Some people called it
a seaside mansion.
None of that was true.
It was not even
remotely like that.
Honestly,
do you want me to get into
why there was so much debt?
$50 million,
that's a lot of money.
My name is Quintin Lindsmith,
and I was hired to try and dig
into where the money went.
I was counsel in the Lehman
Brothers bankruptcy case.
I've done all kinds
of high-profile litigation.
This case alone probably
was the most fascinating case
I have ever had
in my 40-plus-year career.
I came to Columbus in 1987,
and some of the partners
at this law firm were investors,
and I remember them
talking in the hallways
about the gold ship recovery.
They really thought
it would change their lives
in terms of wealth.
So, what happened
to all that money?
It would not
be difficult for anybody
to count up all the legal fees
and all of the money
that had to be borrowed
to make all those payments
and all the interest
that had to be paid to the banks
for that money,
and pretty soon
it's $50 million.
I'm sorry, what?
So, he runs up a huge debt
during the insurance litigation,
but not because
he had to pay the lawyers.
Again, what happened
to that 50 million?
So we maintained a ship,
we had supply ships,
we had the crew,
we had a technical crew,
so we had large expenses there.
He didn't spend
money to maintain the ship
that was the original
exploration vessel
because that thing
sank in the harbor.
Well, Tom kept his
staff on, kept paying them.
If you think that
didn't drain finances,
and all those lawsuits
cost money to defend yourself,
so people don't seem
to understand it's the lawyers.
It's the lawyers.
Well, we know
where a lot of the money went.
Apparently he was
developing an airplane
that could go out
to the wreck site
and land on the wreck site
and dump something
in the water and come back.
Nobody had ever thought
of having an airplane
that could fly out to the site,
go down 3,000 feet
with a 750-pound robot
shaped like a pyramid
with three parts to it.
It spun, and little legs
came out so that you
It was amazing.
Goofy things,
in my view.
He was hanging out
in the presidential palace
of the president of Colombia
to help explore
for more shipwrecks.
We knew
that the San José,
which is the greatest
wreck ever known,
was off of the coast
of Colombia.
We knew it had 100 cases
of emeralds on board.
It was worth $20 billion,
and we were planning
to go there.
Tommy Thompson was
the Elon Musk of the deep ocean.
He was a visionary.
The focus was on the development
of new technologies to continue
this process of opening up
the deep ocean frontier.
Here's the big problem.
It is one thing
to spend your life
looking for a single wreck site
and working through
and identifying where
you think it might be,
but it is another thing
to essentially take their money
and spend it on these projects
without telling them
that's what you're doing.
But that's
not what happened.
The investors did know
about the airplane,
and they also knew about
the search for the San José.
This was about suspicions
being deliberately cast
on Tommy's character.
Eventually a couple
of the larger investors
start inquiring, and they
start sending letters,
can you send us the financial
records of what happened?
Behind all of this was
a family called the Wolfes.
The Wolfe family
in central Ohio
has been probably
the most influential family
for over a century.
They started out
manufacturing shoes
but then quickly
moved into buying
the two major newspapers
in town.
They then moved into banking.
They then moved
into real estate.
People said we don't
have the Mafia in Columbus
because we had the Wolfes.
Well, that was probably true.
The Wolfe family had
invested $1 million in Tommy,
so they just want to
find out what happened.
And when we talk about
the Wolfe family at that time,
it's really John F. Wolfe.
You know in this
town not to cross the Wolfes.
Everybody knows that.
Tommy knew that.
You don't cross the Wolfes.
John Wolfe became concerned
that others had invested
because the Wolfe family
had invested.
I think he felt an ethical
and moral obligation
to find answers
for the investors.
At this point in time,
I was giving faith to Tommy
that he was looking after us
and our best interests still.
John Wolfe
has his attorneys
send a letter to Tommy, asking,
can you give us
the books and records
so we can see what happened
to all the money?
Tommy doesn't respond.
Mr. Wolfe's lawyers send eight
more letters, one every month.
Tommy ignores
every single one of them.
I mean, why can't you
just respond to a letter?
That's a red flag.
Finally in 2005,
Mr. Wolfe and another investor
authorized the filing
of a lawsuit.
Tommy thought he'd
done the extraordinary, yes.
He certainly didn't think
it would turn out like this.
He didn't know that one man
would go after him.
I can't figure out why on earth
he would try and destroy Tom,
but that's what he did.
That's when life
started changing.
The lawsuit filed
by John Wolfe got me thinking
that something's going wrong
when there's just, you know,
radio silence on what was
going on with the company.
I think at that point in time,
we were grateful for John Wolfe.
They claimed there was
tens of millions
of dollars missing.
I mean, we spent years
just dreaming of getting out
of these litigations,
and now it's been devastating.
Tommy had no money
to pay the investors.
If he had had money to pay
the investors and he kept it,
that would have been
a whole different story.
But it's not
just John Wolfe
who filed suit against Tommy.
To add insult to injury,
even some of his own crew
turned on him.
Williamson came in
and made his facetious claim.
It was my sonar crew,
not all of them;
a dozen people,
something like that.
Tommy owed us percentages
of the gold that
had been recovered,
like 1.9%.
But 1.9% could be a lot
of a lot of money.
We had legal counsel,
and we weren't getting anywhere,
and that's when
we filed our suit.
So, now
we are out of money.
Here's Tommy Thompson
fighting lawsuits every day.
Any relationships he was
developing are now dead.
Well, it was a matter
of principle, I guess.
At this time
in Tommy's life,
all the difficulties
of the past decade and a half
seem to come to a head.
All of the regular stressors
of daily life are magnified
by this enormous
legal quagmire he was in.
I could see
that Tommy was exhausted,
that his health was failing.
His dream was being
taken away from him.
I have been
working on this
since 1985 without stopping.
And I have been
in litigation constantly.
I've pretty much
dedicated my life
to protecting
the partners' interests
and everybody's interests
that are involved in this.
Over the years, you can
see the weight of the burden
that Tommy was carrying.
It was apparent
that something was wrong.
One time,
I couldn't get ahold of him,
he wasn't answering the phone,
so I actually went over.
There were many papers and
things all over the doorstep.
It looked like
nobody lived there.
In several, several hours,
Tommy came downstairs.
He had been throwing up
for like three days.
I mean, this kind of stress
was monumental for Tommy.
It was like turning him
upside down
and hanging him by his feet.
When the world's crashing down
on you, you get sick.
He had no idea that something
like this would ever happen.
We all have breaking points.
You know, at this
point, it's been 20 years
since the first dollars
were invested,
but we're now at 2005.
The lawsuit goes on
for about seven years.
In 2012, the Wolfes,
they still didn't have answers.
And the different judges
get more and more frustrated
with Tommy and his lawyers,
accusing Tommy of not
complying with court orders
to turn over records
to find out what happened.
John Wolfe's lawyers
claimed that there were
tens of millions of dollars
unaccounted for, just missing.
And the whole thing,
if you went through all of it,
court after court after court,
year after year,
it dwindled to a single thing,
and that is 500
commemorative gold coins.
When the treasure
was sold, as part of the deal,
the investors were promised
500 gold coins.
These are newly minted coins
made out of the original
California gold
using the gold press
from the 1850s.
Each coin is 2.5 ounces of gold.
That's a lot of gold.
Altogether they're valued at
the time at about $2.5 million.
They were saying
that each of the investors
could get one
of those restrike coins,
and that would have
been fabulous,
but that never came to be.
At this point, the story
basically is one big question:
Did Tommy steal
these investors' coins?
Thompson would
never steal a mouse.
What a bunch of crap.
I felt bad for Tommy.
At this point, he had not
been paid for several years.
Tommy feels that he was entitled
to the coins for back pay.
But the judge says
that Tommy owes these coins
to the investors to deliver
on some of these returns.
The judge orders Tommy
to come into court
in Columbus, Ohio.
Get out of your house and come
into this federal court.
You get under oath and tell me
where those coins are.
I was actually there
the day of that hearing.
And his lawyer appeared, and I
remember him telling the judge,
"He ain't here."
The judge has had enough.
He turns to the marshal
and says,
"I want you to go
arrest Tommy Thompson."
I remember thinking at the time,
he's, he's really issuing
an arrest warrant.
This is really happening.
The marshals are gonna
go get this guy.
Whoa, everything
was just so unbelievable.
At this point,
now everyone was believing
that Tom was
a criminal, a crook,
that he'd stolen coins.
At that moment,
Tommy Thompson was
a fugitive from justice,
and that's when
the manhunt began.
When it came to Tommy,
there's, there's two stories.
There's the public story,
and then there's
the story that I knew.
And what
a story this has been,
scientist turned treasure
hunter, Tommy Thompson.
This is the gold pin.
It was given to me by Tommy,
and it is
the SS Central America.
Somewhere off the coast of South Carolina
lies millions upon millions
of dollars' worth of gold.
There's
a lot of emotions.
Tommy is an incredible,
unique human being.
He's three steps
ahead of everybody.
I think there is
a curse to the gold.
It took over Tommy's mind.
The scene has
shifted from the ocean's depths
to a federal courthouse.
Taking risks
all the way to the edge.
And then he fell over the edge.
SS Central America was one
of the most gold-laden ships
that ever sank.
Tens of thousands
of coins, gold bars,
hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of gold,
and Tommy Thompson and his crew
did the impossible and found it.
This is so good.
Finding
the gold is one thing.
to bring it back to the surface
is a completely
different problem.
The wreck
is under 8,000 feet of water.
Nobody has worked
at these depths before.
The pressure,
it's enough to implode
the two-inch-thick steel hull
of a nuclear submarine
at 2,000 feet.
They're four times
deeper than that.
The supervisor of salvage
from the United States Navy,
he himself had tried to salvage
something in the deep ocean,
and he told Tommy Thompson,
"I know how difficult it is."
And he said, "You cannot do what
you claim you're going to do.
It's impossible."
We needed
a remotely operated vehicle
to go after the gold.
There wasn't
an off-the-shelf solution.
In the 1980s,
part of the challenge was
the technology of the day
isn't up to speed
to undertake this task.
Just made it seem
like a crazy endeavor.
I was literally
going to RadioShack
and buying handfuls of parts
off of the shelf,
but still built by far
the most sophisticated remotely
operated vehicle in existence.
And we called it Nemo.
This vehicle is more complicated
than ever before, and
the whole challenge will be
keeping it running.
Keep it running, we're gonna
be successful this summer.
The problem was
this was really the first time
that they were testing
the technology
in the real situation.
Tommy
had a lot of pressure on him.
He's got a lot of people
to answer to,
and they put their trust in him.
You know,
the longer that goes on
without any measurable success,
it's got to weight on someone,
and I'm sure
it weighted on Tommy.
This was their
fourth year in the effort.
At this point, Tommy had
used around $12 million
of the investors' money.
The investors were not
gonna give him any more.
If Tommy came back
with no gold after that season,
that would be the end
of Tommy's dream.
It is definitely
time to deliver.
You have to imagine that this
vehicle is attached to the ship
8,000 feet up by this umbilical.
To pick the gold up
off the bottom,
it's not unlike standing at the
top of the Empire State Building
and dangling
a piece of dental floss
and trying to pick up
something on the sidewalk.
Here we go.
Look at that!
Something has landed
in a foreign environment.
As soon as we got
set down, I went to work.
Get to one
right here in the near field.
Okay.
The big daddy.
And what you
have to appreciate is
how slow and deliberate
all of your movement is.
Nothing happens quickly at all.
Move to the right.
Make sure it's all clear.
Just watch that thing.
There was
a lot of pressure.
We are testing out Nemo.
We're gonna
retreat a little bit here.
That should be
good. Whoa, whoa.
What?
Sorry.
Whoa!
Whoops.
Thought I had it all figured
out, but I guess I didn't.
So we got one here.
Okay, you got it?
Wow, look at that one.
To the left a little.
Yes.
That's sticking out
of the one at the back.
Don't get too
don't get too wild.
Maybe clockwise
just a little.
Don't get a cramp
in your arm now.
Here we go.
Wow!
Look at that!
Look at that!
Oh, man!
All right!
Great going, John.
Good going.
So, we knew we could
pick up the gold bars,
but recovering gold in a way
that will not decrease its value
is another difficult problem.
Some of the coins
were worth about $60,000,
so handling these carefully
was a very high priority.
Would have
taken probably forever
to carefully,
without marking them,
recover each individual coin.
I said, "Why don't we
just cast these piles of coins
into blocks of silicon?"
All right,
everybody ready?
Coming up.
It's good.
Off of the wire, John.
Can I have a tray
of some sort, please?
Wow! That's incredible!
We recovered stacks
and stacks of coins
in like one operation.
And that's hundreds and hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
Here is
a serious prize, gentlemen.
Yeah, all right!
Woo!
Yes, sir.
Oh, my god!
We did get around 50.
We did get around 50.
It was very special.
We did it.
It was a pretty big deal.
For Tommy,
it was sheer elation.
It was such a special moment.
It took years
to achieve this point.
That is great.
You know, it came
together and worked.
Mint state coins, a lot.
Tommy had
a drive about him.
People had said before,
"Do you think he's a genius?"
And I never quite know
how to answer that
because I do think
that a lot of his genius
was in just not giving up.
Everybody felt happy.
It was a long, hard summer.
A lot of work, a lot of hours.
Yes, wow, baby!
Oh, my gosh.
Will you look at that?
Look at, woo-hoo!
Look at this.
Whoa!
Oh, man, that's incredible!
Eventually we recovered
three tons of gold
or thereabouts.
We were just wrapping it up,
and now it was time,
we'd be able to relax.
And it was just
a wonderful feeling.
Cannonball! Woo-hoo!
Whoa, whoa.
Did you get that, Ray?
You bet I did.
Hey, Mac,
did you see him again?
Tommy's done something
everybody said was impossible.
Woo! Ha ha!
Now he needs to show
this gold to his investors
so that they know that
their investment has paid off.
Was he excited?
Yeah, and thrilled.
I think maybe
he was worried, too.
Tommy said, "Well, we've
dealt with the sea sharks,
now we have to deal
with the land sharks."
We released to the media
that, hey, we've
found the treasure
and it's time to come in
and show what we've found
to the world.
They wanted us pulling
in Norfolk, Virginia,
and it was gonna be televised
and quite the hoopla.
A salvage ship
carrying what is being called
the richest shipwreck haul
in U.S. history
has landed at Norfolk, Virginia.
Well, it's pretty amazing
when we see the crowd.
We felt like rock stars.
Woo ♪
Hoo, yow ♪
Woo ♪
Not a dime,
I can't pay my rent ♪
I can barely make it ♪
Tommy Thompson
and his ship,
the Arctic Discoverer,
steamed into Norfolk, Virginia,
with the treasure,
with the gold
that they had recovered
from the bottom
of the Atlantic Ocean.
Don't need nothin'
but a good time ♪
A wonderful experience.
We're famous.
It was just quite a scene.
The air was filled
with complete excitement
and curiosity, too.
Everybody wanted to see the gold
and just be part
of the experience.
It was emotional
because it was something
that we had been
working hard for.
The stuff of dreams.
It was very,
very, very exciting.
Oh, Tommy!
Mom and Dad
were just like,
"Oh, my gosh.
He really did it."
Yeah, it was a huge thrill
for the entire family.
Seems like you did
a pretty good job out there.
Yeah, it was good.
As his sister,
I was just proud of him,
but I wasn't surprised.
He was just a very talented,
talented human being.
It's worth millions,
probably hundreds of millions.
The haul could
be worth up to $1 billion.
The investors are
hopeful they'll be rewarded
for their risky undertaking.
We all flew
down there for a frenzy
like a bunch of kids
in private planes and so forth.
Well, I was excited about it.
They came off the ship
carrying these heavy boxes,
and they displayed
gold on tables.
Everybody was as happy
as they possibly be.
It looked as if we were gonna
have a lot of money, everybody.
Along with
a lot of other investors,
Mom and Dad headed down
and got the pictures
and just it had
to have been a truly
one-of-a-kind day in their life.
There's no doubt about it.
I can only imagine
their excitement.
Tommy, it's good
to see you in person.
Thank you, Sam.
It's certainly
a thrill to be here.
And with you is James Lamb,
the Director
of the coin department
of Christie's auction house
in New York.
How much would you
estimate all the gold
that we see in front of us
tonight will bring?
I think
that it's safe to say
that we have many,
many millions of dollars
sitting on this table right now.
To be able to share
what we accomplished together
with the world was,
was the best feeling ever.
It was
just a phenomenal,
exciting adventure.
From that point on,
Tommy was famous.
You mentioned
a fairy tale,
well, this is the end
of the rainbow.
Tommy Thompson,
the leader of
Last we spoke
with Thomas Thompson
And Tom Thompson and his
There's
the prospect of great wealth.
We hope to be rich.
He is handling it
amazingly well.
He seemed to just roll with it.
He didn't get a big head.
He was enjoying the moment,
as we all were.
Good morning, Thomas.
Good morning, Bryant.
Can you give me
a guess as to how much
the stuff you've
brought back is worth?
It's difficult
to tell what it's worth
at this point, Bryant.
Where do you put
so much gold to keep it safe?
I mean, I'm sure you don't
sit out there on board
the ship with a shotgun.
Of course, we can't
talk about that, Bryant,
but we have a number
of very interesting
security procedures that we use.
In the beginning,
it was really exciting.
And then it really wasn't long
where it turned into a tragedy.
If you're gonna do something
magnificent like Tommy did,
you're gonna be up for grabs.
The scene has
shifted from the ocean's depths
to a federal courthouse
now deep in layers of lawyers.
They began surfacing
shortly after the treasure did,
representing people
who felt they deserved a cut.
39 insurance companies
that realized they
or their predecessors
had insured the ship.
It's a well-accepted law that
when an underwriter pays for
gold or whatever, they own that.
We are not trying to take
everything away from them,
it's exactly the opposite,
they're trying to take
everything away from us.
Not a bar to be moved
nor a coin to be sold
till the courts decide
who it belongs to.
It's suddenly
like the record stopping
and screeching to a halt.
Several insurance
companies had filed claims
saying that the gold
that Tommy and his crew
had just risked
their lives finding
and spent millions and millions
of dollars working for
belonged to
the insurance companies.
My name is Rick Robol.
I was the attorney
for Tommy's companies
for approximately 25 years.
I think the feeling in the room
was what a tragedy
that such a beautiful moment
in American history
could be sullied
by the very nature
of human greed
and the desire for money.
Unfortunately, this is a story
of the American dream
and how it can be destroyed
by gold fever.
The insurance companies
did absolutely nothing
for 132 years
to recover the treasure.
They sat back, they waited
for individuals to go out
and do all the work
and take all the risk
and put up all the money,
and then they came into court
and made their claim.
Well, we don't think
that's right.
Did you feel
sort of like a gold prospector
in the Old West who'd
had his claim jumped?
Oh, it felt terrible.
Here we were, had gone
through all these hurdles
over a four-year period of time,
the last thing that we really
wanted to be spending our time
and our precious efforts on
with regard to the recovery.
If you have even
the most tenuous connection
to a hundred or hundreds
of millions of dollars,
if not more, in gold, I think
the natural human impulse
is to wonder how you can
get your share of it.
Suddenly
out of the woodwork
after the insurance
companies appear,
there are others
who are appearing.
There were rival explorers,
rival salvers.
We even
had Capuchin monks
that claimed that we used
a map that they provided
to find the, to find the gold.
I know! I didn't even
know they existed,
Capuchin monks. Yeah.
There were lawsuits being filed
almost in real time.
It was just one after
another after another.
It was just like, what the heck
is going on here?
You can't even
make this stuff up.
We probably
had 100-plus claims.
Judge Richard Kellam
will decide
later this summer
who gets the gold.
These lawsuits were
keeping Tommy from thinking
and creating
and being who he was.
It was like cutting out
part of his brain,
and, wow, that was
very stressful.
It became
very difficult for Tommy
because he was thinking
about many different things
on many different levels
at the same time.
The litigation,
the at-sea operations,
and then he was having to deal
with the money end of things.
We're trying
to keep the momentum going
even though we're tied up
in litigation
and we can't sell
the treasure yet.
We were frozen.
Nothing got done except we were
battling insurance companies.
The company
had to hire many lawyers.
They had a team of attorneys
trying to figure out
how to take care of this.
Tommy started
to get a little paranoid.
At the time, I was
living at the office,
and a large quantity of gold
was in the basement.
I could go down to the basement,
and I could see the ammo cans
and the containers
that had the gold in it.
It was undocumented.
I think that
it was an option, right?
If things didn't go the
way that we wanted them to go,
I don't know. I mean,
we, we couldn't get inside
Tommy's head at that time.
The gold was eventually
removed from the basement
and taken to a secure facility.
But I was the treasurer
responsible for keeping
everything aboveboard,
and I had effectively been asked
to lie about
the gold's whereabouts.
I shouldn't have been
put in that position,
so I left the organization.
When it came to Tommy,
there's, there's two stories.
There's the public story,
and then there's
the story that I knew.
After the recovery
of the gold in 1989,
there were trials,
hearings, appeals,
case sent back, further appeals,
case sent back.
And it lasted for years
and years and years.
The find
was a treasure hunter's
dream come true.
The legal hunt is not over.
The Ohio-based group goes
back to court in Norfolk
where a hearing will decide
what money the group
will get to keep.
At this moment,
after years of effort,
years of waiting,
everyone's future is just
hanging in the balance,
especially with the amount
of money at stake.
Tommy and the other
members of the group,
the investors, all of us
were waiting anxiously,
sitting on the edge
of our chairs as we waited
for the decision
from the court of appeals.
And finally it came.
Some real-life treasure hunters
just found out that they can
keep their discovered riches,
92% of the gold
they found on the ship,
the SS Central America.
Finally there was
an award of 92% of the treasure
to Tommy's companies
and 100% of all future
recoveries of treasure.
So it was a moment
of great jubilation.
Tommy was overjoyed.
I remember that he was virtually
screaming and laughing
and jumping up and down
as though a great burden
has been lifted
from his shoulders.
We couldn't
have better news.
We were just ecstatic.
I will enjoy getting back to the
original mission of the project.
I am now confident that nothing
will stand in the way
of moving forward.
92% of 100
is pretty darn good.
And we can go ahead
and start trying to, you know,
receive some of the profits
from the expedition.
We were really excited.
Thompson's now trying
to sell the treasure
to try to return money
to the partners lickety-split.
The feeling was,
this is just the beginning.
I got the money, yeah ♪
A lot of the investors
were, at this point, probably
deciding how they were
going to spend their share.
Getting ready to buy a fast car,
a swimming pool,
or maybe even a private jet.
By now they've invested
a total of $22 million
in the hopes of massive returns.
I had $10,000,
100 to 1 on 10,000
might be $1 million.
We were very excited.
My dad and I
just got together on,
you know, what is it
gonna be sold for?
In the newspaper,
it's saying, you know,
it's 400 million or
it's 100 million or whatever.
And some people are saying
it's priceless.
But, you know, until you
market it, you don't know.
Tommy had never
sold this kind of treasure,
but nobody else had either.
And there were a lot
of discussions, I'm sure,
that went back and forth.
I did not
Finally,
in December of 1999,
the gold is sold to
California Gold Marketing Group
for $52 million.
Some investors
may have been disappointed
at the amount it sold for,
because years earlier
experts had estimated it
could be worth $400 million.
But it's like
a da Vinci painting,
it's an artificial amount
that you're setting,
and I think to sell it
for 50-something million dollars
was a good deal.
There was nobody else
who could have come in
and done a better job at this.
We're back in business,
but there's one problem.
We have $50 million in debt.
When we finally sold the
treasure, we paid off the debt,
but we didn't have enough money
for the partners, nothing.
Welcome. Thank
you all for coming today.
Can everybody hear me okay?
Tommy, I'm
very frustrated at this meeting.
I have no idea sitting here
what the outcome is.
You may have the most to lose,
but I think
that's another bad deal.
Very frustrating.
My dad and I, you know,
we're both frustrated,
and other investors
are absolutely frustrated,
and we didn't know
what was going on.
It's hard to have
invested something in 1985.
Most of these people
were probably in their 60s.
There are people
that say my father died
and he was consumed by this.
I really want you
to know that, you know,
that there's been a lot
of stress in this project
for everybody,
for the staff, for me,
and I needthe psychological
support of the partners
is critically important
to me, you know,
psychologically
as well as every other way.
Among the investors,
there was confusion
and disappointment,
but some took a harder line.
Perhaps natural suspicion
would be to accuse Tommy
of doing something, and that's
the track that they took,
that Tommy was to blame.
Gradually these rumors
built up and up and up
to the effect that Tommy
had not used the money
that he had gotten
to pay off debts
but had made tens
of millions of dollars
and had taken them for himself.
The image of Tommy
was that he was off
living the high life.
He was sipping margaritas
by the pool,
and he had millions buried
somewhere on an estate.
Some people called it
a seaside mansion.
None of that was true.
It was not even
remotely like that.
Honestly,
do you want me to get into
why there was so much debt?
$50 million,
that's a lot of money.
My name is Quintin Lindsmith,
and I was hired to try and dig
into where the money went.
I was counsel in the Lehman
Brothers bankruptcy case.
I've done all kinds
of high-profile litigation.
This case alone probably
was the most fascinating case
I have ever had
in my 40-plus-year career.
I came to Columbus in 1987,
and some of the partners
at this law firm were investors,
and I remember them
talking in the hallways
about the gold ship recovery.
They really thought
it would change their lives
in terms of wealth.
So, what happened
to all that money?
It would not
be difficult for anybody
to count up all the legal fees
and all of the money
that had to be borrowed
to make all those payments
and all the interest
that had to be paid to the banks
for that money,
and pretty soon
it's $50 million.
I'm sorry, what?
So, he runs up a huge debt
during the insurance litigation,
but not because
he had to pay the lawyers.
Again, what happened
to that 50 million?
So we maintained a ship,
we had supply ships,
we had the crew,
we had a technical crew,
so we had large expenses there.
He didn't spend
money to maintain the ship
that was the original
exploration vessel
because that thing
sank in the harbor.
Well, Tom kept his
staff on, kept paying them.
If you think that
didn't drain finances,
and all those lawsuits
cost money to defend yourself,
so people don't seem
to understand it's the lawyers.
It's the lawyers.
Well, we know
where a lot of the money went.
Apparently he was
developing an airplane
that could go out
to the wreck site
and land on the wreck site
and dump something
in the water and come back.
Nobody had ever thought
of having an airplane
that could fly out to the site,
go down 3,000 feet
with a 750-pound robot
shaped like a pyramid
with three parts to it.
It spun, and little legs
came out so that you
It was amazing.
Goofy things,
in my view.
He was hanging out
in the presidential palace
of the president of Colombia
to help explore
for more shipwrecks.
We knew
that the San José,
which is the greatest
wreck ever known,
was off of the coast
of Colombia.
We knew it had 100 cases
of emeralds on board.
It was worth $20 billion,
and we were planning
to go there.
Tommy Thompson was
the Elon Musk of the deep ocean.
He was a visionary.
The focus was on the development
of new technologies to continue
this process of opening up
the deep ocean frontier.
Here's the big problem.
It is one thing
to spend your life
looking for a single wreck site
and working through
and identifying where
you think it might be,
but it is another thing
to essentially take their money
and spend it on these projects
without telling them
that's what you're doing.
But that's
not what happened.
The investors did know
about the airplane,
and they also knew about
the search for the San José.
This was about suspicions
being deliberately cast
on Tommy's character.
Eventually a couple
of the larger investors
start inquiring, and they
start sending letters,
can you send us the financial
records of what happened?
Behind all of this was
a family called the Wolfes.
The Wolfe family
in central Ohio
has been probably
the most influential family
for over a century.
They started out
manufacturing shoes
but then quickly
moved into buying
the two major newspapers
in town.
They then moved into banking.
They then moved
into real estate.
People said we don't
have the Mafia in Columbus
because we had the Wolfes.
Well, that was probably true.
The Wolfe family had
invested $1 million in Tommy,
so they just want to
find out what happened.
And when we talk about
the Wolfe family at that time,
it's really John F. Wolfe.
You know in this
town not to cross the Wolfes.
Everybody knows that.
Tommy knew that.
You don't cross the Wolfes.
John Wolfe became concerned
that others had invested
because the Wolfe family
had invested.
I think he felt an ethical
and moral obligation
to find answers
for the investors.
At this point in time,
I was giving faith to Tommy
that he was looking after us
and our best interests still.
John Wolfe
has his attorneys
send a letter to Tommy, asking,
can you give us
the books and records
so we can see what happened
to all the money?
Tommy doesn't respond.
Mr. Wolfe's lawyers send eight
more letters, one every month.
Tommy ignores
every single one of them.
I mean, why can't you
just respond to a letter?
That's a red flag.
Finally in 2005,
Mr. Wolfe and another investor
authorized the filing
of a lawsuit.
Tommy thought he'd
done the extraordinary, yes.
He certainly didn't think
it would turn out like this.
He didn't know that one man
would go after him.
I can't figure out why on earth
he would try and destroy Tom,
but that's what he did.
That's when life
started changing.
The lawsuit filed
by John Wolfe got me thinking
that something's going wrong
when there's just, you know,
radio silence on what was
going on with the company.
I think at that point in time,
we were grateful for John Wolfe.
They claimed there was
tens of millions
of dollars missing.
I mean, we spent years
just dreaming of getting out
of these litigations,
and now it's been devastating.
Tommy had no money
to pay the investors.
If he had had money to pay
the investors and he kept it,
that would have been
a whole different story.
But it's not
just John Wolfe
who filed suit against Tommy.
To add insult to injury,
even some of his own crew
turned on him.
Williamson came in
and made his facetious claim.
It was my sonar crew,
not all of them;
a dozen people,
something like that.
Tommy owed us percentages
of the gold that
had been recovered,
like 1.9%.
But 1.9% could be a lot
of a lot of money.
We had legal counsel,
and we weren't getting anywhere,
and that's when
we filed our suit.
So, now
we are out of money.
Here's Tommy Thompson
fighting lawsuits every day.
Any relationships he was
developing are now dead.
Well, it was a matter
of principle, I guess.
At this time
in Tommy's life,
all the difficulties
of the past decade and a half
seem to come to a head.
All of the regular stressors
of daily life are magnified
by this enormous
legal quagmire he was in.
I could see
that Tommy was exhausted,
that his health was failing.
His dream was being
taken away from him.
I have been
working on this
since 1985 without stopping.
And I have been
in litigation constantly.
I've pretty much
dedicated my life
to protecting
the partners' interests
and everybody's interests
that are involved in this.
Over the years, you can
see the weight of the burden
that Tommy was carrying.
It was apparent
that something was wrong.
One time,
I couldn't get ahold of him,
he wasn't answering the phone,
so I actually went over.
There were many papers and
things all over the doorstep.
It looked like
nobody lived there.
In several, several hours,
Tommy came downstairs.
He had been throwing up
for like three days.
I mean, this kind of stress
was monumental for Tommy.
It was like turning him
upside down
and hanging him by his feet.
When the world's crashing down
on you, you get sick.
He had no idea that something
like this would ever happen.
We all have breaking points.
You know, at this
point, it's been 20 years
since the first dollars
were invested,
but we're now at 2005.
The lawsuit goes on
for about seven years.
In 2012, the Wolfes,
they still didn't have answers.
And the different judges
get more and more frustrated
with Tommy and his lawyers,
accusing Tommy of not
complying with court orders
to turn over records
to find out what happened.
John Wolfe's lawyers
claimed that there were
tens of millions of dollars
unaccounted for, just missing.
And the whole thing,
if you went through all of it,
court after court after court,
year after year,
it dwindled to a single thing,
and that is 500
commemorative gold coins.
When the treasure
was sold, as part of the deal,
the investors were promised
500 gold coins.
These are newly minted coins
made out of the original
California gold
using the gold press
from the 1850s.
Each coin is 2.5 ounces of gold.
That's a lot of gold.
Altogether they're valued at
the time at about $2.5 million.
They were saying
that each of the investors
could get one
of those restrike coins,
and that would have
been fabulous,
but that never came to be.
At this point, the story
basically is one big question:
Did Tommy steal
these investors' coins?
Thompson would
never steal a mouse.
What a bunch of crap.
I felt bad for Tommy.
At this point, he had not
been paid for several years.
Tommy feels that he was entitled
to the coins for back pay.
But the judge says
that Tommy owes these coins
to the investors to deliver
on some of these returns.
The judge orders Tommy
to come into court
in Columbus, Ohio.
Get out of your house and come
into this federal court.
You get under oath and tell me
where those coins are.
I was actually there
the day of that hearing.
And his lawyer appeared, and I
remember him telling the judge,
"He ain't here."
The judge has had enough.
He turns to the marshal
and says,
"I want you to go
arrest Tommy Thompson."
I remember thinking at the time,
he's, he's really issuing
an arrest warrant.
This is really happening.
The marshals are gonna
go get this guy.
Whoa, everything
was just so unbelievable.
At this point,
now everyone was believing
that Tom was
a criminal, a crook,
that he'd stolen coins.
At that moment,
Tommy Thompson was
a fugitive from justice,
and that's when
the manhunt began.