Golden Opportunity

at all. For their loved ones, the time they are away is harrowing and stressful. Just ask John Perry. In sixteen sixty, Perry was working as a man servant for a gentleman named William Harrison. Harrison and his wife lived in Chipping Campton, a town in England just a few miles south of Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford upon Avon. Harrison was an older fellow around seventy or so, and he liked to go on long walks to a neighboring village. One day in August of that year, Harrison set off on

one of his two mile walks into town. Hours passed by, and when it was time for him to come home. Harrison was nowhere to be found. This was very unlike him, so his wife asked Mr. Perry to go look for her husband, and Perry did as he was told, venturing out to search for the man when he also failed to return to the house. Several hours later, Mrs Harrison asked her own son, Edward, to search for them both. Eventually Edward found John Perry, but Mr Harrison was still missing.

The two men kept walking until they reached the town of Ebrington. Mr Harrison had been on his way there to speak with a tenant of his when he disappeared. According to that tenant, his landlord had indeed stopped by the not before, but hadn't been seen since. Edward and John continued their search around the other towns where the elder Harrison might have conducted business, but no one had seen Hyde nor hair of him in days. The two men eventually called it quits and started on their journey

back home. Not long after, though, they got word of some items found along the road that had belonged to mister Harrison. Those items were a bad sign too. A bloody shirts and neck band had been recovered, as well as a hat that had been cut with something sharp. Based on the evidence, it appeared as though William Harrison had been attacked, but there was nobody to be found. John Perry suddenly became the prime suspect, as he had been the last person to have seen William Harrison before

his disappearance, and Mr Perry didn't hold anything back. He quickly confessed in knowing who had murdered his master. In fact, it was his mother Joan and his brother Richard who were the culprits. They had wanted the man's money, and poor John Perry had gotten caught in the crossfires. No matter how often they deny the claims, Perry was adamant that his family was responsible for Mr Harrison's death and had hidden the body by dumping it in a nearby

mill pond. Unfortunately, that accusation didn't hold up. Authorities dredged the pond and came up empty. William Harrison's body was still missing, and without a body, they couldn't be tried for murder, but all the Perry's, including John, were charged with premeditated robbery. During the trial, John came forward with even more evidence of his family's misdeeds. He had been the one who suggested they steal from his master in

the first place. His brother had also stolen a large sum from Mr Harrison one year earlier, so they were familiar with his home as well as his comings and goings. In the end, the entire Perry family pled guilty, but they were pardoned under a recent law meant to benefit

offenders of non murderous crimes. After a full year went by without a sign of William Harrison's body, though, the Perry's were brought back and tried for or his murder, and this time their previous guilty pleas worked against them. Now they had prior records and the jury was ready to deliver a verdict one year in the making. A short while later, all three of them were found guilty of the murder of William Harrison and hanged for their crimes.

Everything was quiet for another year until sixteen sixty two, that is, when a ship from Portugal docked in England, and on board that ship was a man with a wild story. He'd been taken from his hometown at knife point by smugglers who had beaten him, stripped him of his clothes, and sold him into slavery to the Ottoman Empire. For almost two years he served a cruel master. But when that master died, the man made his escape. He stuck aboard a ship and made his way back home

to England. And who was that man? The missing Gentleman William Harrison. During World War two, the Jewish people were stripped of everything, their property, their identities, and in most cases, their lives. Their homes were raided by Nazi forces and whatever valuables they might have owned were confiscated. Family heirlooms, silverware, jewelry, all of it was taken and stored away in German coffers.

Banks in German occupied territories were also subjected to having their assets ceased, and much of the stolen loot was stashed in the reichs Bank in Berlin. As the war raged and certain areas grew less secure, some assets were moved into the bank's branches throughout Germany, but by February of the Nazi banking system was essentially no more. Bombings had destroyed the main branches, as well as the printing

presses they used to make the money. When it became clear that their gold reserves were at risk of being lost or captured, the Nazis had it all shipped out and stored in underground bunkers. The Allies may have been closing in, but Germany still had an a stuff as sleeve in the form of its seemingly endless supply of gold. American and British forces knew that if they didn't repossess all of it, Germany could keep the war going indefinitely,

or worse, try to start another war. Later in nineteen forty one, the United States and Great Britain formed a joint task force to locate the hidden Nazi assets. The idea was to send everything to humanitarian organizations prepared to reunite each item with its original owner. In early April of nineteen forty five, General George Patton's Third Army had crossed the Rhine River and marched straight through Germany to

the town of Murkers. It was a town that resided almost dead center in the middle of the country, and it was a hotbed for access activity. Once they've taken control, Allied soldiers started interviewing displaced French persons who had been captured and brought there to perform manual labor for the Nazis. Two women who had been walking down the street were stopped by MPs from the ninetieth Infantry. The soldiers asked them what they knew. The women, it turns out, knew

quite a lot. They'd heard rumors about a large shipment of gold recently sent out of Berlin. It had allegedly been smuggled into a potassium mine right there in town. This information lined up with what others in town had already told the soldiers. The following day, the same two French women were on their way to a nearby village. After being stopped again, one of the women explained how she was pregnant and on her way to visit a

midwife in the town. She and her companion were driven back to Mrkers, but on the way, the driver noticed a particular sight, an entrance to a mine. He asked them about it, and they repeated their story from the day before, how she and many other displaced persons had been tasked with storying a massive shipment of Nazi gold inside, and not just gold, but works of art as well. This information worked its way up the chain of command. A tank Italian was called in to secure the mind's entrance.

The soldiers stepped inside and took an elevator over two thousand feet down. Once they reached the bottom, they were surprised by over five hundred bags of German currency lining the walls. But they kept walking the length of a tunnel until they reached a steel door, the kind found protecting most bank vaults. It was impenetrable. They phoned General Patton, who ordered them to blast it open. All it took was half a stick of dynamite to blow a hole

in the surrounding brick wall. Once inside, the men saw what had been so well protected. Over seven thousand bags of gold, bullion and paper currency million francs, as well as mark's silver and platinum bars, and even gold fillings that had been stolen from victims of the concentration camps, and of course priceless works of art. Millions of dollars in assets were recovered that day. Oddly enough, much of it was brought right back to where it had all started,

the reichs Bunk. The Frankfurt branch had been commandeered by the Allies to use as a storage facility while everything was cataloged. Unfortunately, the records on the disbursement of the gold disappeared shortly after the war, and it languished unclaimed for decades, but then in a group of countries came together to donate the remaining loot to a Nazi persecution Relief fund, which would benefit Holocaust survivors and their families, and in the process finally giving a fifty year old

debt a chance to be repaid. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show and you can learn all about it. Were at the World of Lore dot com and until next time, stay curious. Yeah h