In a 2016 interview with As It Happens,Bilyeu's ex-wife Linda Bilyeu speculated the whole enterprise was a hoax and that her former husband had died in vain.įenn has denied those allegations, but has never provided any evidence of the treasure's existence and still hasn't disclosed its location or the name of the person he says found it.
Several people have died hunting for it, including Colorado's Randy Bilyeu, whose body was found in 2016 after he went missing along the Rio Grande. Some people quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the search, and others depleted their life savings. Hundreds of thousands of people have scoured remote corners of the western U.S. in search of the treasure. His ex-wife Linda Bilyeu told As It Happens in 2016 that she believed he was misled by a hoax. Randy Bilyeu, left, died while searching for Fenn's treasure. In a 2013 interview on As It Happens, Fenn evaded Off's attempts to glean information about the treasure's whereabouts, saying: "I'm not going to give any more clues." He posted clues to its whereabouts online and in a 24-line poem that was published in his 2010 autobiography The Thrill of the Chase.įenn, who lives in Santa Fe, N.M., said he packed and repacked his treasure chest for more than a decade, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets, pre-Columbian animal figures, with prehistoric "mirrors" of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewelry with rubies and emeralds. The 89-year-old claims he hid a bronze chest of items worth $1 million US in 2010. The story of Fenn's treasure goes back a decade. "I accept that it's over and that I was not the victor." A popular and sometimes deadly endeavour "There's a lot of emotions that go with something like this ending," Dent, an amateur treasure hunter from Junction City, Kan., told As It Happens host Carol Off.
#THE THRILL OF THE CHASE TREASURE MAP FULL#
That's because the famed art and antiquities collector says the bronze chest full of gold, jewels and ancient artifacts that he claims to have buried 10 years ago has finally been found. Sacha Dent estimates she has spent 10,000 hours scouring the Rocky Mountains for Forrest Fenn's hidden treasure - but now she has to get a new hobby.