This is my first posting here (or anywhere for that matter) regarding Victorio Peak and some of the things which are true or believed concerning it. I have no huge axe to grind with anyone who has posted here in any way at all. I am not interested in getting drawn into debates, any type of bad blood, comments about other people or their families and/or beliefs which they know far better than I do, or anything else which may or may not exist here between members on this board. Therefore I will keep my comments focused only on what I know to be true, things I have seen evidence of, and things I have been told directly by my own father. I will not reveal his whole story here, either on the forum, or in private messages. I personally couldn't care less who is looking for what, or if they do or do not ever find it. I do this only because my fathers name has been repeatedly raised here, and as I am his youngest son and suffer from a terminal illness, I am possibly the only person who can set the record straight on his behalf. This I will do only for the sake of historical accuracy. I apologize in advance if I am coming off hard nosed, as that is not my intent. I am just trying to establish a basic framework for understanding my comments, and where my thoughts are at as I write this.
My father was Claude Suddreth. He passed away in 2005 in Colorado of advanced years, at 93 years of age. He was very involved in treasure hunting and prospecting in New Mexico when we lived there. We moved when I was out of the 2nd grade, at about 8 years of age I guess. He worked at Holloman AFB as a civil service welder, and we lived in Tularosa, NM at the time, about 1.5 miles from his friend Harvey Snow who is also mentioned extensively here. We returned one more year in 1976 when I was in the 6th grade, and then we never came back there to live, although he also lived there for nearly 10 years before I was born, beginning sometime in the mid 1950's.
My father was involved in searches for several things, including but not limited to Victorio Peak, an outlaw treasure under a large boulder hidden by vegetation (I saw this cave myself as a boy through binoculars, but not treasure), one he referred to as "Geronimo's gold mine" which had 3 major waypoints, a cache of items hidden by the Apache, and the Adams diggings by the Malpie area. There are some others, but these seemed to enough to hold the majority of his interest. My father was very good friends with many Mescalero Apache's, as well as probably one of the best I have seen at reading and explaining spanish signs and symbols. How he learned to do that he never said, and as a boy I really did not think it was that important at the time.
I can confirm that Dad had a tendency to send people asking too many questions on a wild goose chase. As it has been mentioned, he felt he had put in the sweat, time, and energy to gain knowledge not otherwise known, and was in no hurry to share it. Likely I have heard his stories more than anyone else, at least the real ones. I can remember how I used to try to keep a straight face as strangers would show up out of the blue, and he would send them running in circles around the desert. Yet he loved to talk to anyone who would listen about his stories, just changing details around so they could never find it.
Regarding a gentleman named Oren Swearingen - Dad went to see him when I was about 17 years old I guess, about 1982. I know this for certain as I went with him, mostly to safeguard his person. He was getting older even then, and I did not know anyone we were meeting, or who might be waiting. I was pretty confident in my own ability with a firearm however, and intended that he and I would return, regardless of anything else. We did indeed go out as a group, and Dad showed a cave that had no steps or anything. This was expected however as a couple of soldiers had managed to rappel down an air shaft into a storage room shortly before, and said there was evidence of a cave in above when they explored. Of course like many such claims - they could not find their way back again..... Were they telling the truth? I do not know. I have no way to know if that was the right cave, or a similar cave close to the right cave. I know Dad thought well of Dr Swearingen, so I never got the feeling he was being purposefully deceptive with the gentleman, although with Dad one was never fully certain. However to my knowledge nothing was recovered from it. I will let folks make of that whatever they wish - I really have no answers other than what I have said.
About Victorio Peak itself - I have heard the story of Doc Noss and how the government came and took a truly massive amount of gold out of that mountain for literally my entire life. Was there treasure there? Maybe. Or not. I don't know. The cave Dad knew of as he put it - was not on Victorio Peak itself. Rather it was close to the peak. It was said to have steps going down, and 3 traps on those steps. First a rockfall from above. Second a trap door to cause you to fall to your death. And third another rockfall. It is possible the cave in was one of the rock falls being tripped. Or both. At the bottom was to be 3 rooms for storage, and one for smelting, as well as a vein of gold that was being mined. There were supposed to be bars of gold down there approximately the size of bricks - weighing an estimated 50 to 70 pounds each. Based on the dimensions of the rooms in question, and using a count with mathematical extension, at least 9000 and possibly as many as 12000 bars were said to be there. There was also a smaller amount of spanish armor, arms, and precious stones and items - likely from a church and / or another location. This was all confirmed, independently, by the two soldiers who claimed to have rappelled in through an air vent, as well as "lots and lots" of skeletons. So while Victorio peak may or may not have existed, and may or may not have been recovered, this is a different cache than the one Doc Noss spoke of. Or possibly Doc had the location in his story wrong, and it is the same cache. If Doc Noss had it wrong, it is not for me to say if it was accidental or on purpose. But this cache is not on Victorio peak itself, but rather a different place. I can not say if it is related in any way with any certainty. Nor can I comment about anything that was or was not on Victorio Peak itself as I simply have no knowledge.
That said if I were to guess, and a guess is all it would be, I would think Doc Noss "found" it somewhere else, in case he was followed or compromised in some way, so that in the end nobody but himself would know exactly where anything he found actually was. I know my Dad would do that, as well as most of his associates, so I see no reason Doc Noss would just up and tell the world where billions in gold he had found was at, to be stolen by anyone able to get to it. Would you?
This is all I am going to say on Victorio Peak for the moment. It should be sufficient to set the record straight where my Dad is concerned. Beyond that only, I am unconcerned about this particular cache, as I do not live in New Mexico and do not have the health at present to go there.
La Rue gold bars...... OK now this I did get a laugh from. I can confirm that Treasurehunter is related to Harvey Snow, because of this one thing he said. Something known only to my Dad and Harvey Snow, and I thought, me. Dad and Harvey DID make some "gold bars" out of lead I believe, and scribed La Rue on the top. They painted them with a spray can of gold paint, and then took a photo of them up in a desert canyon. I am not sure why they did this exactly, so it may have had something to do with a treasure magazine for all I know. But I know they are as fake as anything ever was. I remember asking him the first time to see one - and he didn't stop laughing for 10 minutes. Dad had a photo of them for years on his bedroom wall, and got a chuckle at least once a day when he would look at it. He loved making "educated idiots" look foolish. I guess they pulled something off on this one. But only Dad and Harvey Snow would have known this. Or their sons, like myself, and Treasurehunter. So I can confirm that those photos are pure BS. Pure and simple.
I don't believe Dad ever recovered anything of huge value. The life growing up, and how he lived after I left home, would in no way indicate riches. Why would he not recover something? Several. First this cache at least is on military land. If he would be caught there he would have had troubles with the MP's. So when he went in it was usually at night, and in ways that were difficult to track. Second was his age. He was 55 when I was born. 72 by the time we went back to see Dr Swearingen. With artificial knees and after surviving cancer, even by his early 60's he was not really in a position to be recovering too much of anything and covering long desert distances on foot carrying heavy weights. There are other reasons. Does this mean he absolutely found some huge wealth? If he did I never saw it with my own eyes. Does it mean he did not? No. I guess in the end it means nothing too much under the circumstances, other than whatever he might have found, remained there for others to recover in the future.
So beyond this I know nothing other than the things Dad told me privately. I am not sure I would want to reveal them all publicly for obvious reasons. I just wanted to set the record straight for whatever it might be worth to people in the years to come.
Take care all of you.
