In the summer of 2020, as the pandemic shut down businesses and confined people to their homes, a group of historical researchers and relic hunters formed a team out of sheer boredom. Not knowing one another other than through social media and their love of history, Michael Karpovage, Kaaren Tramonte, Julia Preast, and Lee Dowdy decided to go after the most enduring legend in American history: the famed gold wagon train robbery of 1865. What they found is historic...

The core of the plot of MAP OF THIEVES (2014) revolves around a legendary hidden treasure and the lengths to which someone will go to in order to find it first. In this article I present several case studies of important treasure discoveries throughout history. We'll get into the allure, the thrill, the excitement, and the sheer adventure that drives people. And of course the accompanying fraud, theft, and major crimes.

The backstory of CROWN OF SERPENTS (2009) involves the tragic scouting mission of Freemason American Lieutenant Thomas Boyd at the end of the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. He was taken prisoner and granted protection from his enemy Chief Joseph Brant - also a Freemason. But another enemy Freemason, British Colonel John Butler, gave Boyd up to the Indians who carried out one of the most heinous torture deaths ever recorded in American military history. Was it a deliberate act of Masonic betrayal?