[imagesource: Lon Horwedel / The Columbus Dispatch]

Research scientist Tommy Thompson, pictured above, has quite a story to tell.

But before we hear his, we should talk about the SS Central America, a steamship that sunk off the coast of South Carolina in 1857, after battling through a hurricane.

It is still America’s worst passenger ship peacetime disaster, with an estimated 425 of the 578 people on board dying.

What has made the ship so legendary, however, is the bounty that it was said to be carrying, with an estimated 3 tons of gold being commercially shipped from the California Gold Rush.

It’s also rumoured that a similar amount was being carried by the passengers themselves, along with rumours of another 15 tons of gold in a secret Army shipment.

Fast forward to 1988, and Thompson’s discovery of the SS Central America, which has since brought him immense headache.

The Guardian reports:

[Thompson] is about to mark his fifth year in jail for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of 500 missing coins made from gold found in a historic shipwreck.

Image: The Mariners’ Museum and Park

Tommy Thompson, a research scientist, isn’t incarcerated for breaking the law. Instead, he’s being held in contempt of court for an unusually long stretch – well past the normal maximum limit of an 18-month internment in cases of witnesses refusing to cooperate…

Thompson has been ordered by a federal court to cooperate with authorities, but refuses to do so, and he’s also being sued by 161 investors who paid him $12,7 million to find the ship, but never saw any proceeds after he did just that.

A judge, who found him in contempt of court, said of Thompson in 2017 that he “creates a patent for a submarine, but he can’t remember where he put the loot”.

Back in 2012, a different federal judge ordered Thompson to appear in court to disclose the coins’ whereabouts. Instead, Thompson fled to Florida where he lived with his longtime female companion at a hotel near Boca Raton. US marshals tracked him down and arrested him in early 2015.

Image: Associated Press

Thompson pleaded guilty for his failure to appeal and was sentenced to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson’s criminal sentence has been delayed until the issue of the gold coins is resolved.

On December 15, 2015, Thompson was first incarcerated.

His most recent legal appearance was in October, when he again denied knowledge of the whereabouts of the coins, thus remaining housed in a federal prison in Milan, Michigan:

Thompson, 68, has said he suffers from a rare form of chronic fatigue syndrome that has created problems with short-term memory. He’s previously said, without providing details, that the coins were turned over to a trust in Belize.

The government contends Thompson is refusing to cooperate and that there’s no connection between his ailment and his ability to explain where the coins are.

There are those who say the ship’s gold came with a curse, and some of the 13 individuals who, along with Thompson, used high-end sonar equipment to locate the shipwreck in 1988 may well agree.

Three decades of litigation has followed, with those 161 investors wanting their bounties, and accusations and counter-accusations causing acrimony.

Gold was recovered in two separate tranches. In 1988, two tons were hauled up, which is worth around $76 million today in pure metal form.

However, as part of a historical treasure, it’s worth considerably more, but what happened to the money from the recovery isn’t known.

This via the Seattle Times:

The second time was in 2014, this time with a court receiver in charge.

Image: Professional Coin Grading Service

Over 10,600 gold coins, 577 gold ingots, over 14,000 silver coins, and over 100 pounds of gold dust and nuggets were recovered, according to Bob Evans [pictured above], chief scientist in both expeditions.

The group marketing the gold puts the value of that haul at $50 million. It is from that haul that the 13 litigants and investors have been paid.

Given the size of the bounty that was found, sharing $678 000 between the 13 individuals responsible for its recovery left a sour taste in some of their mouths.

Mike Williamson, a geophysicist who was 40 when his oceanography firm started the work that helped find the steamship, put it quite bluntly when he said that “Tommy screwed all of us”.

You can read the full Seattle Times feature for more details.

[sources:guardian&seattletimes]