DOC NOSS-Victorio Peak OR The Caballo Mountains

[vastterrain]

I took these pics at a Museum in Apache Junction,AZ

 

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[UncleMatt]

even better! thanks for posting that! Did they happen to have any dates associated with them?

 

[vastterrain]

Didnt have any dates that i recall...they had the breast plate an a sword with this collection. Superstition Mtn Museum in AJ,AZ...

 

[UncleMatt]

Any photos of the breast plate and sword?

 

[somehiker]

Spanish military cabasset helmet, 1600s. - Daniel Frank Sedwick, LLC

[url]http://auction.sedwickcoins.com/Spanish-military-cabasset-helmet-1600s_i17425692
[/URL]

 

[vastterrain]

This is all i could find from my photos

 

[gollum]

That's the problem with everyone being dead - we can't probe those stories for clarification. When Ova suggested retrieving the "pig iron" bar to Doc, was she there at the top of the peak and see him go down the hole and come up with a bar? Or did Doc bring her one to show her later? Lots of nuances and possibilities behind Ova's pig iron bar tale.

Ordinarily, a fair-minded person would take Ova's story to the bank as the unquestioned truth, as you do. However, Noss was a grifter, and these types know what it takes to convince people who have big expectations. Would Noss be deceptive with Ova? Why not? His regard for her apparently didn't prevent him from dumping her in favor of some new babe in Arkansas.

No, I don't think Noss lugged a couple hundred bars up to the top of the peak, but I do wonder if maybe he didn't take a few up there, or a dozen for a "show", prior to the "accidental" closing off of the peak's top end. We've heard testimony about a hundred or so bars that Noss's helpers saw at various places near VP. Dr. Swearigen also thought that the Fiege discovery was another hundred bars that Noss himself put in the cave at the base of the peak. If Noss was paranoid about the gold, it makes more sense to me that he would move gold to VP as a diversion away from, say, the Caballos. This would protect the Caballo location. If the gold came from VP, it seems like he'd hide those recovered bars far away from the peak, not at its base.

SDCFIA,

You are going gangbusters with your theory without listening or reading for content. Both Benny and Jose Serafin saw the bars AND treasure in VP. Benny went all the way inside and saw everything including the skeletons staked to the cave floor. With the bar of gold that Doc gave Benny, he paid cash for his house. When he died on 03 Feb 1970 (61 years old), he left about $73,000 to his widow.



Come on! LISTEN TO OVA! She asked him to get her one of those bars of pig iron. AND I QUOTE:

It must have been in the Spring of '39, I asked him to bring out a bar of that "Pig Iron" that he was telling me about ...................................... but he found a smaller one and he brought it out, and he said "That's the last one of these babies I'm gonna bring out!" and he throwed it on the ground, and there was gravel, and it kind of scooted a little ...............

Now, does that not sound like they were at the peak when Doc brought out the bar? I don't take ANYTHING to the bank (unless I personally know the person), but unless someone can show me hard evidence (or damn good circumstantial evidence), that what the person that was there and witnessed everything said is not true, then I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the EYE WITNESS.

Mike

 

[sdcfia]

Here's some more NM armor on display at the Palace of the Governors that's not a lot different than Samaniego's. Along with the chainmail, this would have been a significant investment for the owner. When I see recovered stuff like Samaniego's, I wonder about the fate of its original owner.


Spanish armor & crossbow (ca 1550) at New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, NM. Photo by Jim Steinhart ©2012, all rights reserved (ref: NMFB255)

 

[sdcfia]

SDCFIA,

You are going gangbusters with your theory without listening or reading for content. Both Benny and Jose Serafin saw the bars AND treasure in VP. Benny went all the way inside and saw everything including the skeletons staked to the cave floor. With the bar of gold that Doc gave Benny, he paid cash for his house. When he died on 03 Feb 1970 (61 years old), he left about $73,000 to his widow.
<cut>
Now, does that not sound like they were at the peak when Doc brought out the bar? I don't take ANYTHING to the bank (unless I personally know the person), but unless someone can show me hard evidence (or damn good circumstantial evidence), that what the person that was there and witnessed everything said is not true, then I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the EYE WITNESS.

Mike

On the contrary, I'm considering options beyond the book answers. Yeah, we're well aware of Benny's money and other payments. However, for all we know, Benny and Jose may have helped Noss move the gold from the Caballos to VP and were told to go along with Doc's VP story in exchange for the gold they were given. Who wouldn't? They were paid extremely handsomely, wouldn't you agree? I wouldn't necessarily call it hush money, but after all, it was the Depression, most people didn't even have a job and gold bar offers didn't come around every day. They don't today either. I know a lot of folks who would take a deal like this one, maybe even me. "Sure, I'll tell 'em it came from VP. Skeletons? Whatever."

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, especially if paid for. You didn't know Benny and Jose, but you are willing to accept their paid testimony. Well, you have recently promoted the Gold House Trilogy books, and I understand that you might feel an obligation to go along with what those books allege, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't be mistaken about things. I don't profess to know the truth, but I do question the dogmatic VP tales, and as an unattached but interested observer, I look at the evidence as if it were a cold case crime. When I do this, I see problems. As I've said before, Noss's sociopathic character spoils this soup.

 

[UncleMatt]

When we lament the lack of information due to people having passed away, we should remember there are still people living who need to be asked questions before they are gone. And those people, in my humble opinion, should be willing to pass down that information to someone, if not the people who bother to ask them. Not just about this specific topic, but many that we discuss here on T-net.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Unc matt, the one point that is necessary was that most of the early soldiers were mercenaries, they 'supplied' their own armor which was quite expensive in those days, so they often scrounged the European stocks.

Since they were fighting Indians, armor wasn't used to identify your opponent. Later of course they standardized.

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Unc matt, the one point that is necessary was that most of the early soldiers were mercenaries, they 'supplied' their own armor which was quite expensive in those days, so they often scrounged the European stocks.

Since they were fighting Indians, armor wasn't used to identify your opponent. Later, of course, they standardized.

 

[UncleMatt]

My goal in trying to date artifacts that Noss claimed were from VP is simply to determine a likely range of time within which articles were being placed and stored there. I am also curious how available old Spanish armor was back in the 1930's. Was it common enough that you could buy something like that and then claim you had removed it from VP?

I will be buying the Gold House books in the near future for my library, and look forward to seeing more artifacts that may be suitable for dating purposes.

 

[sdcfia]

Here are some interesting comments from another source. I understand that rules prevent me from posting the links.

"Alex...we met at the peak in the 90s several times but I don't imagine you remember...I and my long time prospecting friend T.M. were there as guests of Pat Heydt.
I first arrived at then WSPG a young GI on July 6, 1956. I and a few fellow GIs found the "Curse of The San Andres" in the post library. On weekends we often went to the peak as well as other excursions....as I told the ONFP group on my first visit "I couldn't tell them where the gold was but I could sure tell them where it wasn't in 1956"
I got reclassified into Army reserves and went to work with the Bell System on the Nike project in 1959.
I put my name and serial number in the mountain in 1956 as did others...just to show we were there....
I never heard of Fiege till the 70s...I have always thought he was a fraud using his story and tests and the Holloman Air Force PM guy as a way to gain access thinking he could find the way to the gold....at any rate when I was there in the 90s and was shown the Fiege location I can honestly say we were in there several times in 56 and 57 and there was no gold there then....I was privy to a lot of information leaked when Gen. Shinkle, O. B. Swanner and others were digging around...."

This is interesting because this guy claims there was no gold in the Fiege cave two years prior to Fiege's 1958 discovery. It also raises a question about the lie-detector results. Of course, the posted copy of that document are merely two typewritten, unsigned and uncertified pages.

Another:


"Hardluck.....in 56, 57,till early 60s, we crawled through about every crevice in the peak then known as Soledad...we saw nothing.......it was fun tho and it doesn't mean I am ready to give up on the mountain...
Caballos? More stories and caves than you can imagine...take your pick...crooks, shysters, seers, dowsers and frauds abound....but its a fascinating place...we are going up there again soon to poke around....."

Sounds skeptical about VP and realistic about the Caballos. I don't know who he is, bit he posted a number of VP photos from 1956, including one of himself taken from the top

 

[sdcfia]

My goal in trying to date artifacts that Noss claimed were from VP is simply to determine a likely range of time within which articles were being placed and stored there. I am also curious how available old Spanish armor was back in the 1930's. Was it common enough that you could buy something like that and then claim you had removed it from VP?

I will be buying the Gold House books in the near future for my library, and look forward to seeing more artifacts that may be suitable for dating purposes.

I think it would be reasonable to expect that the artifacts themselves could be dated, but to figuring out how long they were in a cave, if they were, might be tough, if not impossible. We know Benny repaired the chainmail, and it's probably reasonable to assume he cleaned up the breastplate and helmet too. For all we know, he might have Naval-Jellied them to remove rust. Forensic work on these things might not yield much.

 

[UncleMatt]

Well, since artifacts couldn't have been placed at VP prior to their verified existence, it helps determine the timeline of things, not just how long something was there.

 

[Not Peralta]

There is a timeline on things supposedly being in VP. stop and think about it,study, what I am saying and it will come to you in a clear light also.its one of the first things bought out in this story
and then it was squashed, have some morn'n np

 

[sdcfia]

Well, since artifacts couldn't have been placed at VP prior to their verified existence, it helps determine the timeline of things, not just how long something was there.

And what do you make of this from the Las Cruces Sun News, October 10, 1940? (Note place of discovery)

 

[UncleMatt]

lol, I also noticed that when I read a book about the Caballos, where the author claimed the origin of the armor Benny showed off was not from VP at all, but a location in the Caballos Mountains...

So exactly when and by whom was the armor first suggested to be from VP? Did that come from Noss, or Benny, or who exactly?

 

[UncleMatt]

I have been looking at other breast plates, and most of them have a much more pronounced lower lip projection than the one Benny had. And the helmet is much more spherical than any other I have seen so far. As well, I can find no other examples of a chainmail veil for the back of the neck. As I looked at the whole ensemble, it occurred to me that this may actually represent something designed specifically for use in New Spain, where you would want to limit the surface area of the helmet to keep heat down, and the chainmail veil for the neck may have been to thwart rear attacks with arrows. The breastplate looks lighter than most I have seen, with less metal used at the bottom and around the arm holes. Most examples have ridges at those locations to prevent blades from sliding off the front into unprotected areas. But against Native Americans, few sword blades would be encountered, and such practicalities could be dispensed with perhaps to lighten the loads for use in high altitude heat.