New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020nypost.comTreasure hunters hot on the trail of late mobster’s stash
Getty Images; Shutterstock; NY Post Illustrationtwo 1903 gold coins near the creek.
Still they’re adamant that they’re
within a football field of the fortune. Au-
thor Hendley, however, sounded skepti-
cal.
“I [am] not hugely optimistic,” he said.
“Finding a treasure when no one knows
where it is, that’s haphazard at best.
Gangsters did not keep memos or min-
utes from their meetings and they are
not known for careful deliberation.
Dutch might have thrown a bunch of
money in a paper bag and told a guy to
bury it. It could all be dissolved by now.”
The two gold coins have encouraged
Zazulyk and Fazekas. Mark Schimel, of
Stack’s Bowers Rare Coins in Manhattan,
valued the pieces at around $950 each,
and Fazekas viewed them as “bread-
crumb[s] leading us down a trail to the
big hit.” Though temporarily slowed by
COVID-related travel restrictions, he
and Zazulyk are ready to break out their
scuba gear and start digging around the
water’s edge.
“We not only need to search this area,
but we need to do it fast, before other
people find out,” Zazulyk declared in the
documentary. “The hunt is on!”splashed all over the screen. It came via
a photo touted by Alterman — and of-
fered by the director’s brother, Tim Tro-
jian. He owns property in the Catskills
and concurred with Elizabeth that their
grandfather provided “muscle for Dutch
Schultz.”
Tim Trojian produced what looks like a
fairly innocuous shot of a wooded area
alongside Stony Clove Creek in Phoeni-
cia, with a car parked nearby. Not one to
underestimate a potential lead, Fazekas
read into the image.
“People [in the 1930s] didn’t take scen-
ery photos and waste their film,” he said.
“And this is not scenic; it had to mean
something.”
Intimating in the documentary that it
is a shot of the burial spot, snapped for
future reference, he added, “My conten-
tion is that they transported the heavy
steel box and buried it alongside Stony
Clove Creek.”
Alterman said the picture provides “a
link like no other. If we can match up the
creek in that picture with a present-day
location, I will say let’s break out the
metal detectors.”
So far the Canadians have only foundSchultz died a day later, on Oct. 24,- But about two hours before he
passed, the gangster left an important
clue as to the whereabouts of his stash.
“Lulu, drive me back to Phoenicia,” he
said, referring to his bodyguard/chauf-
feur. “Don’t be a dope, Lulu, we better
get those Liberty Bonds out of the box
and cash ’em.”
His ramblings were transcribed by a
police-appointed stenographer and
formed the spine of William S. Bur-
roughs’ book titled “The Last Words of
Dutch Schultz.”
C
ONSIDERING that Zazulyk and
Fazekas are more about commerce
than art, it’s easy to wonder why
they are courting TV exposure. “[The
show] can work to our benefit,” said
Zaz ulyk. “All of a sudden, someone
[who sees it] could come from out of
the woodwork with information that
we could never have imagined.”
Plus there was promised discretion:
“We would allow only one camera with
us and the guy [shooting] was sworn to
secrecy.”
Nevertheless, a major clue isThe road to Dutch Schultz’s loot
ISlaNd hIdEOuT: Located on Klein
Island in the middle of the Seneca River,
treasure hunters Ross and Grace Getman
believe Schultz and his band of thugs used
this isolated, ramshackle cabin as a secret lair
to avoid the cops.ISlaNd hIdEOuT: Located on KleinPhOENIcIa: It’s claimed
that Schultz told his
bodyguard when he was
near death, “Lulu, drive me
back to Phoenicia,” leading
enthusiasts to believe his
treasure is hidden
somewhere nearby. The
claim was boosted
recently when Canadians
Steve Zazulyk and Ryan
Fazekas discovered two
gold coins (one left) near
Stony Clove Creek in the
Catskills town.PhOENIcIa:
that Schultz told his
bodyguard when he was
near death, “Lulu, drive me
back to Phoenicia,” leading
enthusiasts to believe his
treasure is hidden
somewhere nearby. The
claim was boosted
recently when Canadians
Steve Zazulyk and Ryan
Fazekas discovered two
gold coins (one left) near
Stony Clove Creek in the
Catskills town.ThE bRONx:
Dutch Schultz was
a gangster who
made a fortune
selling bootlegged
liquor in The Bronx
during Prohibition in
the 1920s. He
earned the
nickname the Beer
Baron of The Bronx,
and is said to have
accumulated
millions of dollars
worth of gold, diamonds and
bonds that he hid in upstate
New York.ThE bRONx:
Dutch Schultz was
a gangster who
made a fortune
selling bootlegged
liquor in The Bronx
during Prohibition in
the 1920s. He
earned the
nickname the Beer
Baron of The Bronx,
and is said to have
accumulated
millions of dollarsYONKERS: The treasure hunters’
winding journey took them through a
heavily wooded area in Yonkers, and
to a house in Bronxville.The “finder” of a treasure buried in the
Rocky Mountains claims to be a millennial
who found the cache of gold coins and
jewelry in Wyoming, but dozens of fortune
hunters in the decade-long search are not
convinced by his story.
In a recent article published in Medium,
an online “open” publishing platform, the
anonymous writer said he figured out the
general location of the treasure buried in
2018 by Forrest Fenn
(inset), an eccentric
art collector based in
Santa Fe, NM, but
took “many months”
to home in on the ex-
act spot.
Fenn, who died in
September at age 90,
had announced in
June that the $2 mil-
lion treasure he bur-
ied somewhere in the
Rockies in 2010 had been found “by a man
from out East.” Fenn would not identify
the person by name and refused to dis-
close the location of the treasure.
“It just doesn’t add up,” said Miriam
De Fronzo, a massage therapist and mother
of two from St. Petersburg, Fla., who spent
four years poring over clues that Fenn, a
prolific writer, inserted in a poem that he
said would lead people to the treasure.
“We need verification,” said Barbara An-
dersen, a Chicago lawyer, who claims she
spent thousands of dollars on 20 trips to
New Mexico and communicated her find-
ings to Fenn over the years. She says her
e-mails and texts were hacked and is suing
Fenn’s estate to demand answers.
De Fronzo and Andersen are among
350,000 people who set off in search of
Fenn’s El Dorado. Over the years, five men
died trying to find the 42-pound chest.
De Fronzo was on her fourth expedition to
New Mexico when Fenn announced the
treasure had been found.
In his essay, the “finder” provides scant
details about the location, and says he
plans to sell the coins and jewelry to pay
off student loans. “When I finally found it,
the primary emotion was not joy but
rather the most profound feeling of relief,”
he writes. “When I got back to my rental
car after the find, I put my hands on the
steering wheel and bawled my eyes out.”
But the essay has raised more questions
than answers, De Fronzo says. She told
The Post that a poll she took among a
Facebook group devoted to treasure seek-
ers, Treasures Galore, found that 86 per-
cent of its more than 4,000 members do
not believe the anonymous writer.
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if For-
rest actually wrote the article before he
died,” said De Fronzo. “It sounds like an
epitaph.” Isabel Vincent‘You found
ar t dealer’s
buried loot?
Let’s see it!’