Josh Gates Goes on a Treasure Hunt for John Dillinger’s Fortune! | Expedition Unknown

You think there might be something
significant hidden here at the farm?
Yes, we do.
We do. Yes, I think the best source is a
legend from the Dillinger family themselves.

Mike Thompson is Dillinger’s nephew,
and Travis is his great-nephew.
Really? I’m the closest living relative,
other than my sister, that can say,
you know, John’s father is our grandfather.
Wow. You’re not going to rob me, are you?
Not yet.

Okay. This was a family story
that there was money hidden here at the farm.
Yeah. There were always stories
amongst the family that there definitely could have
been money hidden, with generations of family
reports that loot was buried on the farm.

The team begins to search the property.
Stuart’s shovel smashes a buried mason jar.
What they found inside may rewrite the story
of public enemy number one.

Are you kidding me?
A 1934 Shell road map.
This was inside this jar?
Inside the jar.
And do we know anything about the jar?
It’s also from the same time period.
It was manufactured between 1923 and 1933.
And you dug this up where?
Just a few feet from here on the property.

This is so crazy to me.
Be prepared to look back in the history.
You ready?
Oh, look at this.
Yep. It’s marked up.
It is. So we’ve got this blue line that goes
all over.
I mean, really top to bottom.
Yes. Across the middle part of the country here.

And it goes through where?
That’s Great Falls, Montana, up into Canada,
Winnipeg, Canada, south through Iowa,
Kansas City, Wichita.
And then a bunch of things coming out of Little Rock
that seem to form an arrow.
Oh, this—you mean you can see it really well?
And then are these all dates?
Yes. August 4th, July 29, July 14th, June 22nd.

I mean, do these dates line up to robberies
or significant events?
June 22nd—that’s his birthday.
That can’t be an accident.
But the other dates do not match up
to any known bank robberies.

Could this have been a future route
of banks they wanted to hit or something?
Possible.
It was buried for a reason.
He didn’t want this found.
Right. So what is it hiding?
What’s its meaning?

This is an astounding artifact.
It is.
But how do we know it’s his?
The same weekend that John and Billy came here,
John took a trip with his brother Hubert.
Hubert, who was driving, fell asleep
and wrecked the car.
When the FBI and the Indiana State Police found the wreck,
they recovered a 1934 Indiana Shell road map
that had strange numbers written on it.

There was another shell map with weird markings on it?
Yes, found in a Dillinger car?
Yes, it was a car.
I mean, you’re home.
Yes, you’re home.
Yes.

That’s amazing.
This really has an excellent chance
of being an authentic part of this Dillinger story.
Yes. This is really, really cool.
It’s an untold story.
And especially with the stories that money
was buried on this farm.
That may mean that there’s more here to find.

That’s actually the next stage of our investigation,
is to scan with our ground penetrating radar,
metal detect it, and really do a thorough search.
I’m ready to work. Let’s go.
Everybody pick up a shovel.
Come on.

Stewart and his team continue to search
with metal detectors,
working their way into a gully
the bulky radar can’t reach,
while I run tracks on the flat ground.

We flag more anomalies with the radar?
Hit something.
Huge rock and unearth more buried boulders.
Is that possible?
Sure. Appreciate that.

Meanwhile, in the ravine.
All right. What do we got here?
Oh, is that a bee?
That is a bee. Look at that.
Oh, yeah.

Stuart, for Josh.
Come in.
Go for Josh.
Josh, can you come down to the gully?
We found something really exciting.
You’ve got to see it.
We’ve got an intact mason jar.
Okay, I’m coming down. I’ll be right back.
Okay, I’m coming. I’ll be right.

Josh, you got to see this.
Look. Oh, look at that.
It’s the exact same thing.
Exact same one. Look.
That’s incredible.

We want to be as delicate as we can to pull this out.
So we’re going to dig around it very, very carefully
and brush as we go and remove this dirt.
We got another jar,
and there’s another jar beside it.
It looks to be substantially intact as well.
Look right here. We got a lid on this.
Oh, wow.

The team has uncovered a cache of ball jars
from the Dillinger era, mere feet from
where the mysterious map was discovered.
It looks clear.
Underneath. Yeah.
Come on.
Like pulling a fish out of the water.
Come on. You got it. Got it.

Oh, there it is.
Look at that.
That’s just awesome.
Isn’t that great?
That’s awesome that it’s the same color as the map jar.
That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so I’m going to hand this to you very carefully.
That jar could have been down there at least 87 years.
You see anything in there?
No. But there’s a lot of compacted dirt still in there.
Right? But it doesn’t look like anything significant.
No, no.
We got another one next to it here.
That’s a lot looser.
Smaller. Yeah.

Intact with the lid on,
it’s a little bit of debris in the bottom.
It almost looked like two pieces of metal.
Oh, I can’t believe you can turn that.
Yeah. Yeah.

The fact that it’s in this kind of condition
is just absolutely remarkable.
See what else is in this hole?
Beneath the first three jars, we find shattered glass
and compelling evidence that something was hidden inside cloth here.

Oh, wow. Look at this.
Is it inside a jar?
Yes. Yes, it was in glass.
So this is the bottom of a jar.
This was potentially in a jar like—
Stuffed down in a jar.
There’s metal right beneath it.

Oh, hold on. I got metal.
Metal, metal, metal.
Coin.
Oh, we got a coin.
I think that’s it right there.
That’s unbelievable.
No, it’s not a coin.
It’s too wide to be a coin.
You know what that is?
That is a shotgun shell.
That’s the back of a case.

Exactly. That primer cap has been dented in,
which means this was fired on the Dillinger property.
This isn’t a modern shotgun shell.
Exactly.
What does it say on the head stamp?
Winchester repeater 20 gauge.
20 gauge right there in the middle.
20 gauge. That is insane.

This style shotgun shell was produced from 1896 to 1938,
which puts us right in the heart of the Dillinger era.
When you think Dillinger.
Yeah. You think guns.
You think… I mean, you do.

You did Dillinger himself and his father
may have shot this.
Well, it makes it personal.
The closest thing to shaking their hand
is pulling this out of the ground.
He is this criminal villain,
mastermind, whatever you want to call him.
But he also was a kid out at this farm.
I mean, he was a teenager out here.
That’s right.

I have to ask the two of you,
especially as family members,
Dillinger kind of has this reputation
sometimes as like a Robin Hood character.
How do you see him if he got such a raw deal
the first time he went to jail?
Because he did almost ten years, right?
Took his young adult life away from him.
Right.

The sentiment that Dillinger got a raw deal
or a strict sentence for what he did
was felt in the town.
So much so that they signed a petition
to try to lower his sentence.
So you see him as kind of a product of the system?
Yeah, basically, he came out hardened from jail.
Exactly.

Newsreel footage of Dillinger’s father
from after John’s visit to the farm
reveals the emotional toll
the crime spree took on the family.
I don’t know where my son John is at.
If John could be exonerated from this crime
and come back home,
I think he’d make a good citizen there.
A good officer of some kind.

This is something really special.
It is.
So there you go.
A little piece of family history right there.
Pretty cool.

This farm is like—it’s like a history book.
It is. And we’re just peeling one page at