Mysterious Universe - 34.22 - MU Podcast - Tomb Raider

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

A cache of looted relics, stolen bones, and vanished cultures sets the stage as we explore the astonishing true story of Don Miller, the Indiana retiree whose quiet suburban home concealed one of the largest illicit artifact collections in U.S. history. From the FBI’s painstaking recovery and repatriation efforts to the worldwide scramble over sacred objects, we trace how one man’s obsession spiraled into an international archaeological scandal. Then for our Plus+ members we crack open old issues of Psychic Australian to uncover tales of Nazi UFO experiments, Hitler’s alleged Antarctic escape, and the shadowy blueprints of a secret Fourth Reich, before shifting closer to home with eerie accounts of hauntings, strange lights, and ghostly encounters echoing through the misty streets and sandstone cliffs of Katoomba. The Grave Robber: The Biggest Stolen Artifacts Case in FBI History and the Bureau’s Quest to Set Things Right Art Crime FBI Seeks to Identify Rightful Owners in Cultural Artifacts Case While seizing thousands of artifacts from an Indiana home, FBI makes "staggering" discovery China claims artifacts FBI seized from Indiana home How the FBI Discovered a Real-Life Indiana Jones in, of All Places, Rural Indiana The FBI’s Repatriation of Stolen Heritage Death of Real-Life Indiana Jones Tomb Raider Don Miller Leaves Massive Artifact Collection in Limbo The Hitchhiker Effect Psychic Australian Magazine Psychic Australian Paranormal and Psychic Australian Vintage PSYCHIC AUSTRALIAN MAGAZINE June 1976 “Paranormal & Psychic Australian” – Rare 1977–78 Collectors’ Items LinksPlus+ ExtensionThe extension of the show is EXCLUSIVE to Plus+ Members. To join. click HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes

and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion.

Welcome to Mysterious Universe, season 34, episode 22. Coming up on the show, we've got the Ghosts of Kutumba, the Third Reich Secrets of Hipsi Lund, and the case of the world's greatest grave robber. I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. I saw this book doing the rounds. You picked it up today, I see.

You saw this one, The Graverober by Tim Carpenter, the biggest stolen artifacts case in FBI history, and the Bureau's quest to set things right. So yeah, Tim Carpenter, FBI agent, well, you used to be the head of the FBI's art crime team. Oh, yes. And that's just like a scattering of agents all around the country. Yep. And, you know, they work on the cases together when they come up.

But this one is just bananas. This guy is 90 years old, lived in some rural part of Indiana. And he had a collection that rivals the world's biggest museums. Was he like a legit collector or did he have artifacts that he probably shouldn't have had? Well, because it's written by the FBI. I know that, but what I'm saying is, was it like really, really far out there kind of stuff? Like, it got to the point where he had so much stuff. You'd be sitting on his couch and you know how you find coins in the couch?

You'd be reaching down and you'd pull out like a shrunken head from Papua New Guinea. Be like, what's this? Oh, don't worry about that. He had skulls all over his place. He had this secret sealed room with a glass container with a full skeleton in there. He had like crazy, the way he treated human remains is the most controversial part of the story. Right. He had like the skulls of babies he was using as fruit balls.

So you're probably a bit unhinged. But stuff from China, stuff from all over the world, you know, stuff from the Americas. He had these Viking like Viking axes. stone axes worth a million dollars. Is he like that guy we covered that was like the kleptomaniac that just like stealing stuff from museums? Yes, it's that by collecting. He said he's been collecting things since he was eight. But it's quickly revealed that collecting means going to a foreign country because he's been all over the world.

And just in the middle of the night digging up graves. Oh my God. And then sneaking it back to Indiana. It's an unreal story. Talk about hoarding. I can't wait to tell you the story. It's insane. I'm looking forward to getting into that coming.

What's the Third Reich story? Well, I saw that you tweeted out because when we were getting ready to ship our entire library to the new boys that are going to be covering Mysterious Universe, because again, we have to tell you. Yes. Let's do the announcement first. Get that all out of the way. So next week is our last week hosting Mysterious Universe. You and me, but Mysterious Universe continues.

Like, I keep on seeing people go, oh, I'm so sad. The show's not ending. I'm going to miss the show. It's not. What are we going to do? Yeah, well, you just keep listening because there's literally no break. It's like our last show is next week on next Friday, usual time. We're going to introduce the boys to you on the show.

We're going to have a quick chat with them live on the show. Oh, by the way, I can tell you right now, it's not Ross Kulthot. So people will be like, can you imagine it? Guys, is it Ross Kulthart? No, no, it's not. Well, Ross Kulthart, we're just going to make him our bitch. But we're not going to give him a show. But maybe like a roving reporter.

kind of thing. Since Linda Kirby left, you know, like there's been that vacuous hole there, so we'll get him to do that. He's got to be like a coffee, a tea boy for a little while. We'll make him think it's like working his way up to 60 minutes again. We're not just going to give him the prime role immediately. No, that's fair enough. You need to make people work for things. Cool Tart's got to work down in the minds for at least 10 years. But yeah, so where our last week is next week, the show is just going to continue. The new guys are going to start on December the 9th for plus, and they're going to do a bunch of shows

before the Christmas break. They're going to take a short Christmas break and be back very quick to continue the new season, season 35. Aaron and I, we're taking a much-deserved long service leave break. After almost two decades, I need a break, as do you.

Yeah, so we're going to come back in mid-February with our new show Inescapable. Now, if you're a plus member, what does this change for you? Well, basically nothing. You're still getting MU, just so stay subscribed to your feed, but when you go onto your dashboard on the site where you copy the feeds,

very soon there's going to be a new feed. There's going to be a new section for you to copy, which will be the inescapable section. You just copy the new inescapable feed, put it in your podcast app so you'll have Mysterious Universe and Inescapable when we start up in February next year. And then you'll just have two shows for the price of one. That's the best way we can put it. So yeah, really looking forward to it. We really do need our break. So yeah, mid-February. where is our target. And yeah, just can't wait to start a new show. I'm looking forward to a fresh start and looking forward to introducing the new guys to everyone next week. Yeah, I'm going to Taiwan, so I'm going to embarrass myself. You're going to Taiwan? Yeah,

just going to touch into Taiwan, see how things go. What, on holiday? Yeah, just straight off with like the next day after the show, maybe a couple of days later. I'm like, just disappear for a little while. Because it's on the way to Japan. So I'm at a quick stop there as well. I'm coming back. So I was leaving the country. I was going. somewhere else, a little bit more exotic than those places. But it's all been delayed because of visa stuff and working conditions. Yeah, it's like, it's always red tape. So maybe for the first six months, you and I will be recording in person. And then after that, we'll see how things go. Well, we're going to have a new studio early next year. We'll probably record in my studio at home,

which is just delightful. It is just such a beautiful space. Love it. I love my, I love my home studio. Your own personal space being invaded. The carpet's so soft. My son comes in and he just, he just, just does angels on the carpet. He just likes to come in and lie on the carpet. It's so soft. Dude, my carpet is so soft. Okay, well, you've sold me, okay? Like, I'm happy. The carpet's that soft. I'll come and record with you. So anyway, Adolf Hitler, uh, Psychic Australian magazine, this was what the May 1977 issue. I tweeted out the cover, Hitler in Australia, shock UFO report. Look, it's not that Hitler's in Australia. It's more that Hitler's in a layover in Australia, heading towards Antarctica. But yeah, you're right. As we were clearing at the

books for the boys to send them overseas. I, uh, which is like, by the way, 600 kilos where the books, it turns out. Um, but I found this. Air freight, $14,000. Yeah. So they're going by ship. So it takes right off. Anyway, so with this particular magazine, like these are old.

Like, these are older than me. So I didn't want, I've actually gone through and I've photocopied them and, you know, done all my highlighting through them. Cool. Uh, but there's this really unusual story in there, um, from a woman who got in contact with an Australian, uh, journalist who was working. over in Vietnam or throughout many Asian countries. And when he was there, he was approached by this young woman, you know, 18 years or so. And she's like, yeah, I recently received a letter from a monk

and it basically details the Nazi UFO program in Australia and Antarctica. Wait, she got that in an email. No, sorry, not an email, a letter. A letter. It was 1970-something. So yeah, no, in a letter. Sorry, I've got email on the brain. Yeah, it was in a letter. So we're going to go into that in greater detail. And because I was just flicking through those magazines, it's actually full of some really crazy stories that are very Australian-based. So I thought, well, we're getting towards the end for us. I want to do some Australian stuff. And that's what we'll do coming up. Yeah, awesome.

Looking forward to it. Well, I can't wait to tell you this story. The grave robber, Tim Carpenter, again, FBI agent. And we go back to November 1st, 2013. And he's in the car with a fellow FBI agent who both, they both work at the Indianapolis field office. and he's riding shotgun with Bruce Guider and he's in charge of weapons of mass destruction. And Tim's actual like proper job

because the art investigation thing is like a side thing. Yeah, right? Yeah. So his main responsibility at the FBI is anything related to bomb technique. Like he's the bomb tech coordinator. And so these guys work together closely with anything involving domestic terrorism. But this is not. a typical day. They're in the rural Rush County. It's about 40 minutes outside of Indianapolis.

And not a typical day because he says my true passion was art crime. He said a dozen FBI art crime team members were scattered here and there over the field officers. He said it was because of my art crime role that Bruce and I were going to visit a 90-year-old man named Don Miller. He was on suspicion of looting Native American burial grounds and other archaeological sites. So he had gotten reports from two tipsters who reported that over his life, and he's a pretty long one because he's 90, he had, Miller had repeatedly looted Native American graves, had stolen human remains, burial objects, amassed a vast collection of other artifacts from around the world. Hasn't he seen poltergeist? Like, you know that, like, that's the worst

that you can do to dig up an Indian burial ground. I'm glad you brought that up, because I wasn't expecting this, I just thought this would be a straight, you know, like a true crime story. But this has a serious paranormal element to it that comes up later. It'd have to. Yes. If you're desecrating graves, it's got to have a paranormal element attached to it. And when they get the native, the local Native American tribes involved, they get very explicit warnings about their safety because of the spirits that are obviously going to be angry being kept in the conditions I'll describe later. But yeah, he had a massive collection. from around the world. And according to these tipsters, Miller kept his collection in his house

and other buildings on the farm where he was born and raised. And so Tim takes us through how just a few days earlier he'd gotten this call from his supervisor, letting him know about this tip. And she was like, look, you can pass it on to another division. You can file it away, or you can look at it if you want. And so he's intrigued. So he runs like a check on this guy through the Sentinel system, which is the FBI's main database software. And so he runs Don Miller through it. And immediately he gets a hit. And it's from a 2008 case report from a guy that's like a few cubicles down.

And it's the guy, Bruce, who is riding in the car at the start of the story. And it was this anonymous lead called into the Boston office. It had been then sent to Indianapolis, assigned to Bruce. and amazingly, the tipster said this guy, Don Miller, he's got a nuclear trigger from the Manhattan Project. You need to go check him out. I saw that there's a company called, is it, it's like the company that does mini museums. They sell like pieces of the screen, the glass screen shield. Oh, really?

And they sell actually like a big piece of it. It's like a million dollars or something. But you can buy little pieces as well, but much cheaper. So him having a piece like that. There's not a piece. It's the entire trigger mechanism. Is there any explosives? Why? Because, well, it's illegal to have it.

Oh, it is illegal to have it. Okay. There was an, I think it was put in in like the 1960s that there's certain elements obviously involved with the Manhattan Project that you can't just have. So it's green glass okay, but triggers probably not a good idea. Yeah, little pieces of the glass, which could be just out of someone's bathtub. I mean, you don't know that it's real. But yeah, this is different. So what he noticed, though, when he was looking at this case,

case report was the 2008 tipster and this guy Miller were members of the American Society for amateur archaeology. And more importantly, Bruce, the other FBI agent, had documented seeing a large number of Native American artifacts in this guy's basement himself when he investigated it in 2008. So the report documented that this Miller, this grave robber, he was a U.S. army technician. He was involved in the Manhattan Project and those triggers on the first nuclear bombs were like bridge wire detonators and they would fire when they received a radio pulse and that was his job to set off, I don't know if he triggered the actual bomb, but he was involved in the whole process. That's how I think it worked those early nuclear weapons. It didn't

it fire like a pellet into the other component which caused a chain reaction. So it's probably that's, yeah, like a fully functional piece. Well, they went to his house. They didn't find the trigger. And they did find a small amount of depleted uranium, which is highly illegal, right? Yeah. So the illegality of that came in in the 1960s as well. So he happily handed it over. And the report basically said mission accomplished. We couldn't find the trigger.

He didn't have it. But we got the uranium report filed. Case closed. So since Bruce is in the same office, he goes over to him and he says, do you remember this guy, Don Miller? You went to his house for the nuclear trigger? And Bruce is like, yeah, I remember. He didn't have the trigger, you know, case closed. It's all on the report. And he says, yeah,

what I'm interested in is the artifacts that you saw. Do you remember seeing his collection? He's like, oh, yeah, this guy had artifacts absolutely everywhere. Like, it was insane. He had so many. And he just wanted to talk my ear off about it. So he asks Bruce, was it mostly Native American stuff? And he's like, yeah, but he had everything. Like, World War II stuff, like, stuff from all over the world. He's like, you didn't see any skeletons, did you? He didn't see any skulls or anything. Did you? He's like, no, nothing like that. Why? And so he explains this tip that he's gotten that this guy is actually hoarding remains. So Tim calls the tipster on the phone. His name's Richard. It wasn't anonymous? Well, that was the trigger was anonymous.

Well, he's using a pseudonym. Right. It's like he just says, I'll call him Richard. But he said, Richard told me that Miller had countless skulls and at least two complete skeletons from Native American graves, that he had been part of the Manhattan Project. But he also lived on a 10,000 square foot house on a 720 acre farm with his second wife, Sandra. And he describes all the buildings he has on the farm. So he's got, I think, three or four large buildings, like an old farmhouse and other big building he used to use for his business. And that this guy had been around, the world and all these buildings are full of the remains from his grave robbing from almost every country in the world. Like, he's been to Mexico, Central America, South America, he's got Haitian artifacts. He's been illegally digging up grave sites. He's got he's got everything you can think of. Talk about being committed to it, though. It's one thing to travel the world and collect artifacts from dealers, right? Even if it's like black market kind of stuff, that's one thing. To actually be so driven by it that you dig up graves.

It's a bit nutty. Well, this guy kept on mentioning how big it was. And Tim, by the end of the call, he's like, he keeps saying this is big. Like, what are we talking? How many artifacts do you think he has? And this guy, this informant, says, I would be surprised if it was anywhere under 200,000 artifacts. Whoa. And Tim can't help himself.

He just kind of snorts on the phone and has a bit of a laugh because that is just an absurd number. Well, think about it. How did he get it back into the country and not get caught with at least something? Well, it's just if you compare it. to existing museums. Like in the book, he talks about the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was apparently one of the greatest museums in the world. That has 240,000 objects. On display? Well, I don't know whether it's on display, but just in there. But that's a massive building. That's like 630,000 square feet building. The Indianapolis Museum, close to them,

120,000 square feet, it has 50,000 objects. So how does this guy have, four buildings on his property, and they're quite big, like multi-story, how would he have 200,000 objects? He's like, one guy's wouldn't have that much, like 100,000, 200,000, it's insane. So he said my colleagues and I on the art crime team, we had seen large private collections that had had like several hundred to a thousand objects. And that's like, whoa, this is a lot. Like, this person's obsessed. A hundred thousand to 200,000. objects. Yes, but I'd imagine that most of the people they investigate don't have, what did you say, like 700 acre farms to store the stuff. That's true. So before heading home, he does a Google

search on this guy and Don Miller. He finds a book on Native American artifacts in Indiana that Miller and his previous wife Sue had written. But in general, the guy's like a pillar of the community. He's a philanthropist. He donated a lot of money to restore an old bridge. He looks after historic sites. And he's like, you know, whenever you're investigating someone, you've got to look at their standing in the community because... Well, they often hide in plain sight, though, don't they? Well, but he talks about it in terms of friction for the investigation.

Like, if you're investigating someone and everyone loves them, it just makes things more difficult. A few days later, he calls the other informant, Joan, another woman that knows him. She told him the same things Richard had, he said, but she added some intriguing details. She said that Miller had recently moved many items from the White Farmhouse to the Wyman Research Building, which is like on his property. It used to be where he did all his radio work. She says that includes a bunch of the Indian bones he's got. She says, I took pictures of some of the bones.

So he's like, I've got to get those pictures. Send me those images. So he gets an email from her, two color photographs, six human skulls just like sitting on the guy's shelves. And he's like, okay, it's on. I can do it in investigation. He goes to his supervisor. He shows her the photos and she's like, this is amazing. Follow it up. And this is where Bruce comes in, the other FBI agent. He says, look, let's pretend you're, we'll say that you're FBI, but he knows I'm FBI because I've been there before, but we'll say you're just super interested in archaeology. And I'll call him up and I'll

say, hey, I remembered seeing your collection. I've got a friend from the FBI. He's just personally interested. He'd love to see it. Let's see if he goes for it. And so they do this. He calls him and Don Miller is like, yeah, that's come over. That sounds great. I want to show you everything. So they turn up and, well, before he goes out, he starts thinking about the potential risks of this type of potential case.

One of the things he mentions is Operation Cerberus Action, which took place from 2006 to 2009. And it's like a sting operation that the FBI ran of people selling Native American artifacts. Sure. Yeah. And it turned out to be a PR disaster for the agency because when they served up the subpoenas and arrested everyone. They probably arrested people that were rightfully in possession of them, did they? Well, 24 people were indicted, but two of them committed suicide. and to make matters worse,

one of the dealers who had cooperated with the feds also committed suicide. And there were really popular people and everyone that was arrested was really popular in the community. And they're all very tight-knit

and it just, everyone just ended up hating the FBI. It's like, why are you going after these guys? These guys are, you know, good people. So he called an agent who worked on that operation and the agent, the first things out of his mouth

were don't do it. Just don't start the case, don't get involved. Just leave it, pass it on to someone else. It's a shame though, isn't it? Because it's like there are cases that clearly like this one, they do need to be investigated. But because it's like the concern about how it will be viewed by the community, it's like, well, we're not going to do anything about it.

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing that was on his mind was, if the informants were correct, most of the artifacts would predate the laws that would make it illegal to have them. So they would get complicated. And the other thing was if he had stuff from all over, the world, it'd be like a paperwork nightmare. He'd have to work out the treaties and laws of multiple different countries to figure out

what was late. Like, it's just to repatriate them. Yeah, just a nightmare of work. But he's like, I'll get to go see it because of the skulls and, you know, these are human remains. So they drive out to his home. It's November the 1st, 2013. This is like the start of the story. And when he's walking up to the front door, he notices that lined up like along the

pathway to the front door, are 12 of these things called Tates. I don't know if you've seen these before. But they're like circular stone tablets that Native Americans would use to ground their grain. Oh, they look like mortar and pestles. Yeah, yeah. And there's six of these on each side. And he's looking at them, he's like, he's using them to line his driveway, basically. He says he's using them like garden gnomes. Yeah. And these things are obviously rare. And priceless. The ones that he had in like just sitting. outside were like museum quality, extremely rare artifacts. And he's thinking, what does this guy have where he's just got these sitting outside? He noticed that with the guy's landscaping,

he has so many Indian arrowheads. He uses them for landscaping instead of pebbles. What? Yeah, he's got so many of them. He's just like sprinkling around the garden for mulch. He's got so many arrowheads. And it's a big house at 75,000 square feet. And then to the right of the front door is a Chinese terracotta warrior. And he's like... You mean, as in like a real one? Well, no, he's like, obviously that's a fake. And then it occurs to him, it's like, I've never seen anything like this before. Because usually these hardcore

archaeology collector guys, everything obviously has to be genuine. Otherwise... Of course. Why is it important having it? It's an affront to the whole field. And he's like, this guy's a bit different because he's got a fake thing here. And they ring the bell and the door opens to reveal a thin, a thin, a thin, a thinn, he's about five foot ten, greasy, thinning hair, hair swept back on the sides on top of his head, but he's got pleasant regular features. Just looks like your average old white guy in Indiana. And Bruce says, Mr. Miller, it's good to see you. He was like, welcome. No Geiger counter today I see. It's good to see you, old friend. The fact that he even says that means that,

like, obviously they've been interested to see what radiation he's got. Well, they came earlier to find that nuclear trigger. So that's why he's making the joke. But he says Mr. Miller, this is Agent Carpenter. He's the archaeology enthusiast I mentioned. He's like, oh, yes, young man, come in and let me show you around. And so they just, this old guy, he's just happy to show them his collection. So he takes them in and inside is like a fake European armor, warrior's armor.

So he's like, what's the deal with this guy? You've got saying fake, though. Like, why is that fake? Why has he got to this fake stuff? One of the things he says, are these fake guardians for the real treasure? Now, another weird thing is he's got this giant black dog who just shits everywhere because it's so old, it must be incontinent. So he looks over and there's this dog just with a pile of shit and piss everywhere.

And everywhere they go, the dog's pissing everywhere. He's super eccentric. So he's got a giant organ in his living room. And he actually built the house around the organ. So you know those big church pipe organs? It's like one of those in his living room. So he's like Dracula playing on the bloody pipe organ. And the whole house smelled like like musty old man.

So obviously he's pretty old. It's obviously that a hoarder's house though. Like regardless of what he's hoarding, it's like that's what hoarders are like. It stinks and it's filthy. It's not filthy though. Like everything's, dogs pooping everywhere. Well, yeah.

I mean, everything's in its right place though. Like everything's neat. It's not, he's not exactly, well, he is hoarding, but not in the way you think. So he takes them to the Wyman Research Building. This is where he ran his business for years, doing TV repairs and stuff. He takes them down this staircase. And the first thing he sees is all these pots. And they're like the Anasazi pots.

And the first thing that strikes Tim Carpenter is the condition of them. So, you know, the Anasazi, the people that hid in the, they lived in the side of the rock. Yes. They climbed up in the caves. Yeah, there's a lot of superiors. supernatural phenomena associated with them as well. Yeah. And so immediately he's like, these artifacts look too good. And the only reason these pots would look so new is if they were taken directly from a grave. Because their burial practice was you would make a new pot for the burial.

Right. So the fact that it's not worn, they're not used, they're not cracked. He's like, these have probably been taken for a grave. So that's the first red flag. And he says, look, I hoped Miller would open up with stories about different pieces. And that's exactly what the guy does. He just starts telling stories. He's talking about digging in Kentucky, digging in India, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota. He says he sometimes uses backhose to excavate sites, like gets heavy equipment in there. And while they're talking, each of them, when the guy's not looking, they're taking snaps with their phones. They're like taking little snaps. And he said, there was no sign of tens of thousands of burial objects though there was no signs of human skulls there was no skeletons

so he's like i wonder where this guy's got them and they were kind of looking around you know reasonably impressed by the pots and the things that he had and the old man suddenly says well i've got some better things out back up in the house if you're interested they're like oh we'd love to yeah let's go see it and so they led down to the main house and then into the basement And Tim says he walks down to the basement and he's like, holy shit. This is unbelievable. Let me put you one of the images up on the screen. This is just a quick look at just one part of this room.

Stuff absolutely everywhere. Here's like a composite image of his basement. Wow, but all of his walls are just covered in artifacts. It's just artifacts everywhere. He said, I was overwhelmed by red. Red carpet. on the four floor, red felt backing display cases, red cloth covering tables. It was everywhere. Pots, arrowhead, stone tools, weaponry dating from the Bronze Age to the Revolutionary War to

the Civil War, World War II stuff, countless other artifacts. He said the number of objects was absolutely staggering. He said after a few minutes of trying to comprehend what I was seeing, I was thinking maybe 10,000 artifacts, he said, were on display. And I've got a couple more images here. I see what you mean. Like, it's cluttered, but it is relatively clean. It's ordered, and it's like a museum. He's got little tags for everything and sometimes a history of the artifacts. Catalog somewhere, I take it. And that's the close-up of, God, that's from Polynesia or something. Is that like bone that's being carved? Orns? Yeah, he couldn't believe it. He said the stairs led to the center of the basement, so there's more stairs going down. He said, I spun around. The other half of the

second area was also packed with artifacts. The entire room spanned roughly 50 by 35 feet. And I quickly revised my estimate. There had to be at least 20,000 artifacts down here. I'd never seen anything like it. It looks like in the background of that picture, it's like some cobra that he's taxidermied in the top left-hand corner there. No one goes to Hank's for spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks co-pilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs to help him see if he can afford it. Co-pilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work.

Now, Hank says, line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Co-Pilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at M365 copilot.com slash work. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin. Way better.

in points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. And some of it's more like this image where it was just thrown on shelves.

Like old things scattered around. But I'll show you more images later. He said a good general rule of thumb is that collectors typically display only half. of what they have. And so that meant that this guy must have had a ton more hidden away. And he thought, this guy's collection could easily be 40,000 artifacts. 40,000. Yeah. But wasn't it predicted there's going to be 200,000? Well, that's what the informant said. And remember he scoffed at it, like, that's impossible. But now he's only been there for 10 minutes and he's like, okay, well, 40,000 is already a real possibility. He said, the variety was astonishing. The guy had dinosaur,

eggs, pre-Columbian weapons, Danish Celtstone axes, ancient Chinese ceramics. He had so many display cases of arrowheads that they look like wallpaper. He had an axe head from Neolithic China and had a date on it, 7,000 BC. The funny thing was, it was written on the axe in black sharpie. Black pen. Oh my, he literally wrote Neolithic China

7,000 BC in Sharpie on it. So that's the thing. It's like while he's collecting these things, it seems like there's not the kind of care that you would expect from a collector. It's more about just acquiring it than actually keeping it. Well, yeah, yes, but it's almost like he does show a great amount of care and organizes things.

But to write a Sharpie on it. But you would need a team of 20 people to look after a collection so large. So it's almost like he just has so much stuff that obviously you have to cut corners. How is it that he has the means to do this, to travel, like, did you run a, like, you said he ran a business, but was that business so successful that he was completely self-funded?

So he worked on the Manhattan Project. He worked for Raytheon for years. He developed some kind of radar system for them. So he had a lot of money. And he ran his own successful business for decades and would just travel constantly. He had this giant canoe as well, a South American canoe, stone figurines, other the loot. I've got an image of the axes there, the Celtic axes, all numbered, organized. And he said everything the guy had was museum worthy. All of it was in amazing condition.

And he just starts telling stories about everything. He's like, oh, I dug this there and I found that and then I dug it out. And he's like, I found those on an Indian reservation. I'm just talking out of the ground. It sounds like that it's not like he's necessarily malicious. It's just almost like he hasn't even given thought to, you know, the desecration, to him stealing. It's just like it was in the ground and I needed it. Yes. It's almost like a combination if he doesn't care. And he's also from a different generation.

Like he, you know, he's 90 years old. Yeah. Well, he's from the generation where the British would just, you know, like blow up tombs to get stuff out of the Egypt. Yeah, exactly. Like, this is before everyone got indoctrinated with the whole, you can't other people and you can't culturally appropriate and everything has to be returned. Like, yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm just, I'm being obnoxious. Like, there is some validity to that, but it's really...

I think human remains, that they should always return to wherever they were buried. But, you know, other things, I'm like, well, if it's being like shown to future cultures and to future generations, they need to see this. But I'm mocking it because, I mean, look what's happening in our own country. Oh, I know. With the Aboriginal remains being destroyed, people can't research them. They're not allowed to touch them. It's the same thing with Native Americans.

Americans. They're not allowed to do any DNA testing on remains because they believe that harms their ancestors. And so I think it's just like it's a little bit of a brainwashing that's happened over our generation. Absolutely. I think it's gone to an extreme. But he didn't come from that generation. He's just like, it's in the ground. You take it out of the ground. This is our country. We're just going to take it. So yeah, I mean, whether that's right or wrong, that's up for debate, but that's how he views it. And he said he said he, He'd begun collecting artifacts when he was eight years old and he'd conducted digs in more than 220 countries, which Tim found amusing because there's not 220 countries in the world.

Well, is he saying that countries that no longer exist? Is that what he's suggesting? Maybe. The guy was... Like, was he in Czechoslovakia before it... Yeah, maybe. Anyway, the guy was obsessed. He took him to this case that showed him, he showed Tim his most valuable arrowheads. And he said that He and Sue were digging them up with friends on a riverbank in South Dakota, and apparently the landowners found them and ran them off the property. And so he's just freely admitting this. He just, and again, he doesn't know that the FBI thinking about investigating him, but he's just, obviously if they're running him off his property because he's digging up

artifacts, he's not allowed to be there. Like, he's breaking the rules. The same was true for a collection of Chinese artifacts from the Ming Dynasty. Miller proudly told us Tim said that he and Sue had personally dug them up in China and obviously China has some of the strongest Was this before the cultural revolution? I mean, how did he get them out?

He just bribed people according to some of his stories. He would hire locals and he would just go like, the guy, like when the early press came out of this guy, it said he was a real life Indiana Jones. And they're not wrong. No, he is. Yeah. Like the only difference is in the movies,

Indy would be like, this belongs in a museum. This belongs in my museum. Exactly. It was his museum that belonged in. And obviously China has these really strong laws about patrimony of things. Absolutely. And so anything he had from China was obviously illegal.

Because they've had those laws for like 150 years. But where were the skulls? He's like, where are the human remains? Where are the skulls? There was nothing really there. But eventually, on a shell, lay a four and a half inch fragment of a human frontal bone. Embedded in the skull fragment was a min A ball, a mid-19th century bullet.

And once again, Tim discreetly snaps a photo with his iPhone. Oh, but how macabre to keep something like that in your collection? Yeah, like still in there. Eventually, they thank him for the visit. They make their way back to the car. And as soon as they get in the car, Tim turns to Bruce, the other agent and says, holy shit, what are we going to do? Like this is insane. What the hell am I going to do now? I actually have to investigate. I have to start a case. So he starts thinking about it. He's like, there's no way the DOJ is going to prosecute the guy because he's too old. He's too old. A search and seizure of the property with the four buildings would take incredible resources and resources outside of the FBI. So it's like, this is not going to be popular. No one's going to want this. But he did need help. So he reaches out to an

expert, and this is where we're introduced to Holly Cusack McVeigh. She's an assistant professor at the Native American Studies Unit at Indiana University, Purdue, the University of Indianapolis. She agrees to discuss it, and one of the first things he does is just show her the photos that he had snapped. First words out of her mouth are, okay, this is an amazing collection, and I'm guessing most of it's illegal. So she picks up straight away that the pots and things. That was just the garden. Yeah, they're taken straight from a grave. And when he shows her the images of the skulls that he got emailed, immediately she's pissed off. She's like, this, obviously, this guy's a grave robber. We have to stop him. And so Tim says to a, look,

I've just got suspicions so far about these skulls. I haven't seen them yet. But he says, look, this is a man that soaks up attention like a sponge. He loves. talking about his collection. Let me wire you up, take you down there. We'll come up with a story. We'll say we were just passing through and, you know, I told him about the collection. And let's see if we can get him to talk. I need probable cause.

And so she agrees. She said, I'll be glad to help. But wouldn't mere possession of the artifacts be enough of probable cause? Yes and no. Like he goes through all the nitty, greedy details of the FBI procedures and why they need what they need. It's very detailed, like, crime. Okay, yeah. It's like a case book for people that are interested in how crimes proceed and how the case proceeds. But he ends up speaking to those two informants again. And one of the key details they tell him is that Tim has, no, not Tim, Dom Miller,

this grave robber, has instructed close family members that if he dies to destroy everything. Wow. Why? Because he knows it's not. illegal. But he knows it, they can't sell it. But even then, like, why would you destroy it? Why not donate it? It's, like, is he protecting his legacy? I think that's it. I think it's like, he's this, you know, pillar of the community. He doesn't want to be remembered as this illegal grave robber. Do you see how contradictory that is? He's just got random people that he's allowing through to talk about his artifacts, but then he's, he wants them destroyed if he passes away. And, well, it's almost like the what he showed them, he doesn't think is a

problem. Right. Even though Tim is like, yeah, that's a problem. That's a problem. Of course, I'm not, yeah, I'm not thinking he's got a lot more somewhere. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's other buildings that haven't even looked in yet, and he's got secret basements. So, it's Thanksgiving the next week and they agree they're going to drop into Miller unannounced and just see if they can get in there. They've got wired up cameras and microphones, so they're going to record everything. So they get there. They wire themselves up. and he knocks on the door, Miller answers. He says there's like organ music playing, like doodoo as they go up to the door.

And he introduced himself. He's like, remember me? I was here a couple of weeks ago. And he says, I'm sorry to drop by, but this is my friend Holly. And I've been raving about your collection. We're just driving back from Cincinnati. And I was hoping maybe she could take a look. She loves this stuff.

And he's like, oh, yes, come on in. I'd love to show you. Go come through, young lady. when Holly sees his connection, she had the same reaction. Her jaw hit the floor. She could not believe it. And when Miller hears that she studied anthropology, he immediately he lights up.

He's like, oh, an expert. Like now he wants to talk to the expert. And all he does is talk. He takes her through the whole thing and just gives her the history of like everything is found. He talks about those little union. balls, those little bullets from the Civil War or the Revolutionary War. Masked shot. He says, oh, you can just fire nose with a metal detector.

You just dig him up straight from the battlefield. I just get this image of him at Gettysburg with a metal detector. Oh. And she talks about, you know, there's a wooden cradle on the floor and there's a small cannon. And he's like, oh, we got that from the Gulf of Mexico. And she's like, where in the Gulf of Mexico? oh, I just got a dive team and we got him straight from the wreck.

And she's like, what was the wreck? He's like, I don't know. We just took it. He's like admitting just raiding ships in shallow water and just like, it's, but part of me, I'm reading it going, that's fucking badass. Yeah, it is. It's like, that's like the uncharted video game with Nathan Drake, just traveling the world and finding treasures.

It's freaking awesome. There has to be a line though, Ben. Well, yeah. Are baby skulls as fruit bowls in your kitchen? That's definitely the line. That's the line. Yeah. Well, I think significantly before that is the line.

But it's like, yeah, I mean... But going to China and like busting into some ancient tomb and taking some figurine, it's like, yeah, it's... There's something super based about it. You know what I mean? It's like, it's yes, you're stealing from their culture. Yes, you're stealing from their culture. Yes, it belongs in their country. But also, it's...

kind of cool to just go and take it. Well, you know why? It's because he just doesn't give a fuck. It's like that's why. It's kind of awesome. Again, it's like the old school archaeologists, the French, the British, going into Egypt. This is ours now. But we lost. Put it on a big ship and ship it to New York.

But look at how much, how many artifacts we lost through that process, how stuff wasn't documented correctly, how it's just like there's things that are now lost to history because it was blown up. Oh, we don't have a tag for this mummy. Who cares? Let's get it where it belongs. Yeah, and most of them died from a curse, where they blew open Tutankhamans too. Let's get it in the Smithsonian so I can pay a small fee and go and look at it on the weekend.

But that's just the thing, the Smithsonian hide stuff. That's true. And so stuff that actually is important and will change the course of history is hidden. That's true. I'm just playing devil. I know. Yeah, of course. I'm just running up.

There's still something cool about it. Like just going and getting stuff from a shipwreck. And then there's these Papua New Guinea artifacts, which he claimed he'd collected in 1946. Is that the shrunken heads? I think they're Peruvian. But I'll come to that later. He talks about the Marshall Islands visiting with his wife.

And he admits that he would just take cartons of cigarettes. And he would just bribe the locals to either give him artifacts or he would pay them with cigarettes to go and dig stuff up and just take it. Maybe he paid for it, I guess. I know. Like, I'm listening to that and I'm like, who's to blame? Because the local people in an agreed upon exchange gave him the artifacts for cigarettes. They got potentially cancer. He got a curse. It works out perfectly. It's like if I'm in charge of my ancestors didgeridoo, not that my ancestors have a digi-dif. If I'm in charge of my ancestors' billy can that's buried on our property and some Chinese guy wants to buy it.

Or your Bush Rangers helmet. Yeah, Bush Rangers helmet. For 10,000 UN and I'm like, sure, I'll sell you that. Is that like, is that some kind of immoral act? No, I mean, it's probably very low class, but it's not, I don't think it's immoral. Yeah, like it is a bit dirty to sell your ancestors things, but that's what they did. It was a free exchange. And so he talks about, yeah, getting stuff out of Papua New Guinea.

He talks, she sees this Anasazi effigy pot. And she's like, hmm, I can't believe you found something like that intact and in such good condition as if like she's gently, gently prodding, right? And he's like, oh yeah, that was six feet down. We just got the backhoe out and dug it up. We always didn't that in the southwest. We just went down there and got what we want and fucked off with it. It's hilarious.

I've got the image. That's one of the things they eventually recovered one of the pots. And so the whole time Tim is like, probable cause, probable cause, probable cause, and it's all being recorded. And so eventually he admits that he used a metal detector at Custer's last stand to find all those bullets, which is obviously illegal. And he was getting all these skull fragment. That skull fragment with the bullet on it, he got that at the battlefield, which was tribal land, the wounded knee site. So he is just out there on reservation land just digging stuff up and taking it home.

Oh, not good. And then Tim notices this giant crocodile skull on the wall, which I don't have a picture of. And he's like, what is that? And he says, oh, yeah, he's like, dug that up in Morocco. It's an extinct alligator species. Probably 200 million years old. He's got the freaking dinosaurs in there.

But wait, you just go and start digging up stuff in Morocco? How based is this dude? You just go to Morocco and just start taking shit out of the ground. You just start digging in your hotel room. Just hire some locals with some cigarettes and just get a backhoe. Just start digging it up. Ship it back to America. Take it back to the empire.

You have to wonder, though, how much stuff, and obviously we're going to get there, but how much stuff has he found that never would have been found if we had adhered to, I guess, more moral ways of collecting this stuff? Well, you think Morocco, like, you know, probably easy to bribe in Morocco. Yeah, it is. You wouldn't see law enforcement as tightly controlled as in the West, maybe. But then... There's no baby about it.

Well, she sees this case on the wall and it's got all these Roman spear tips in it. And she just casually is like, oh, you've got Roman artifacts as well. And he's immediately like... I just took those out of the loo. Literally, he says, oh, yeah, I've dug a couple of graves up in Rome. Yeah, and it's... Well, yeah, the Italian authorities would not be happy about that at all. Tim says it's almost like he's just reminiscing about a vacation he took years ago.

Oh yeah, I'm sure he just thoroughly indulges in telling the stories. He's going to the Coliseum and just in the middle of the night digging stuff up. Well, that's what you have to ask the question. How did no one see him? How did no one ask? Is it just that he's bribing the Italian authorities? He's just a crafty grave robber. He's most valuable artifacts with these I showed earlier, these Danish ax heads worth around $700,000 US dollars back then.

Oh, he had this... And they must be ancient, Ben. He had this woven sewing kit excavated from a woman's grave near Lima and he also had cloth that was once wrapped around a mummy. So it's like he literally unwrapped mummies. Why don't just serve them up

like they used to with the Egyptian mummies? Well, he then sees, she sees this culture, sorry, this case of Chinese stuff, ancient Chinese stuff. I don't think this is the one she's referring to but she says, what's that bracelet? There's like a bracelet? And she's like, what?

It looks like there's something in there. And he pulls it out. He's like, oh, yes, there's a bit of bones still in there. So he's obviously got this like tongue dynasty bracelet literally out of a grave, probably still attached to a skeleton. It's still got a bit of bone wedged in the dirt. He's like, yes, right. Hey, look, there's still a bit of bone.

What's the word for his demeanor here? It's like this laissez-faire, like, completely, like, he, it's like, again, like, there's nothing malicious about him. It's just like he clearly has no understanding of how wrong it is what he's done. Well, another thing he has is these little houses I've got on the screen here. And these are very specific things from China where they make them, yeah, they make them and they bury them with people because that becomes your house in the afterlife. Oh, my God. So they're obviously directly from graves. They're directly from grave sites.

I just picked up a couple from the shop. He's got a ton of these. He's got like shelves of them. So is it only one buried? So does that mean that he's dug up a ton of graves? Yeah, like multiple graves in China. He's just like hacked open and just taken everything. So I try to bring like a collection of wooden coasters back into the country here.

And obviously you declare it. It gets taken off you. Yet this guy has somehow managed to just like bring back in like these ancient artifacts and no one's gone, oh. Again, another example of why we've got to go back. Things were just better. I don't know. I'm not so sure about that, Ben. He probably traded some, I don't know, some cigarettes to a TSA agent.

Yeah, some cigarettes. So they get back to the car. She's so thankful. She's like, oh, this is amazing, sir. Thank you for showing me. This was so amazing. They get back to the car and she's pissing. off. And she says to Tim, rightly so. You can't let him keep these things. This is absolutely

outrageous. These belong in a museum. This is the worst thing I've ever seen. You have to do. You've got to stop him. We've got to stop this guy. Well, they actually belong back in their graves. Well, they have a meeting back at the FBI, and he gets a team together. And the head of his field office is like, what are you doing? I don't want to spend any money on this. I don't want to give any resources of this. For artifacts, this is crazy. But he eventually brings them around. And he, convinces them, he says, look, I don't think we're going to need a warrant for this. Let's get one just in case, but I think he'll cooperate. And his whole pitch to the guy was going to be, look, if you want to keep your legacy,

cooperate with us, and we'll make sure their artifacts go to their right homes, get them in museums, repatriate them, you'll get to keep your reputation. And you don't get charged. You won't get charged. And it doesn't cost the FBI a huge amount of money. And he was sure this guy was going to cooperate. I'm sure he won't. Well, then he starts to think about the complexity of the operation.

So they need, for example, here's just a couple of things that I listed on marked down in my notes. They need a special guy to make the cases that house the artifacts. You can't just put it in an Amazon box. They need to shut down the roads, create checkpoints so that people aren't coming in. Safe handling. Like, how do you ensure that the artifacts are going to be? like you can't just send in the regular guys to pick it up. It's like some stuff's going to be so fragile you need trained professionals to gather it.

Well, also, if anything at this 16 year journey has taught us about psychometry and like cursed items, how do you protect people dealing with that? Exactly. And that comes up when he speaks to the tribes. And I'll get to that in the moment. Arsenic was another one. Where would the arsenic be in the wood or something? In the first half of the 20th century, collectors treated textiles and other things with arsenic.

for bugs. Yeah, so just to keep it preserved. So a lot of the stuff is going to have arsenic. So they have to bring a specialist from some university with a specialized spectrometer, portable x-ray machine to scan everything. As a little bit of like a history side note, right? So there used to be, particularly in Europe when tuberculosis or consumption went through, right? This idea used to be that a change of air would help you recover from some type of malady that you're having. So people thought they were suffering from tuberculosis or like consumption. But they would go and they would be like in this particular room and they would leave the room and they would go and stay like more wealthy people, would go and stay in a location that

was on a cliff top or something where there was fresh air. And they'd miraculously recover, right? And like, oh, you've recovered from tuberculosis. Well, it wasn't that at all. It was that wallpaper used to be heavily coated in arsenic. Oh, really? So these rooms that people used to sleep in because you have to pay, obviously you had to be more upper class to have arsenic or sorry to have wallpaper.

but because it was kind of an arsenic, there was never any bedbugs, there was no insects in the room. So people are like, oh, this is wonderful, not realizing that the arsenic was slowly poisoning them. Yeah, just slowly being poisoned. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Well, they're worried about his health as well because he's so old.

So they're thinking, we're going to have to have an ambulance on standby when we tell him this. They started to look at the classification system they would need for all the artifacts, like red, yellow green, red items are clearly illegal, yellow, maybe and green probably okay. And then the paperwork. The paperwork. Because the FBI uses several forms to document the seizure of evidence.

And he goes through like the FD-192 forms you need. Oh, I know. Every single thing. People think that policing is this fun, you know, like you're something different every day. It's like it's paperwork after paperwork after paperwork every day. And he's like, he starts to calculate how many green sheets they're going to need for each item.

It's just, months and months of paperwork. It's like a ream of paper. But he says, despite the countless obstacles by early March, we had an operational plan. And they end up getting the warrant anyway, just in case. But they arrive at his home, him and a team, 9 a.m. April the 1st, it's now 2014. They knock on his door and he's like, oh, the sheriff's here. There's like four FBI agents there.

The irony, though, of April the 1st. Yeah, that's true. And he says, Mr. Miller, I told you I'm an archaeology. enthusiast, and that's true. I'm passionate about art and archaeology. Your collection is truly spectacular. But he said, but you and I both know there are serious problems with it. Some of what you have you bought. Some of it you looted. You've desecrated graves. You've taken objects that don't belong to you. And he doesn't dispute anything. He looks at his wife and they have this moment of like nodding as in we knew this day would come. And he didn't sugarcoat it. He basically said there's two

possible versions of his legacy. He could either cooperate, help them repatriate much of the artifacts, get them to where they needed to go, and he would retain some of his reputation and his legacy, or he was going to be fully prosecuted, drag through the media and the courts, and he was going to be made to look like an evil old grave robber, you know, stealing skulls and skeletons of Native Americans. So what does he say? He calls his lawyer. See, I got this feeling like I didn't mean to be so arrogant in my belief about what he would do. But if he's willing to destroy everything after his death, I don't think he's going to easily part with any of this stuff. Well, it's obvious that he didn't really want to cooperate, but his lawyer obviously could read what was going on. The lawyer speaks to

the agents and the lawyer says, you've got to, you've got to cooperate or you're effed. And so as soon as he says, I'm going to cooperate, Tim's like, all right, calls in the convoy. And this There's been waiting at the end of the street. In comes this huge convoy. I think I've got a photo of it later. Okay, so that's the convoy. I live it on the screen. A mobile command post RV.

A mobile photography studio RV starts rolling down his driveway. A semi-truck with a 53-foot flatbed trailer. Another semi-truck with multiple ATVs on it. Following the trucks are a fleet of evidence response team vehicles, half a dozen marked FBI police cruises and SUVs, several sized pickup trucks with towed trailers, drash tents that they're going to serve as work spaces, bringing up the rear is a dozen or so cars,

and FBI personnel. It's like 30, 40 vehicles arriving in this entourage and see the tents down the bottom. It's like a scene out of ET. That's exactly what it is. So they built connected to his house, who is garage, a series of constructed, tents and like structures. And they spent the first stage

just building this where they had processing, safe processing areas where they would take the artifacts and then screen them and freeze them and then take them to the next area. It's this insane setup. And most of the book, like a good chunk of it, is just him setting up

the case. And it's not really show worthy, but if you're interested in that stuff, it's just like a project manager's I don't know, dream or nightmare. Because to me it sounds like like a nightmare. It's just insane amounts of organizing. They had... Logistics for it would be just incomprehensive. They had a team that was looking after him and his wife. They basically did grocery shopping for them, fed his dog that kept

shooting everywhere, and just basically treated them like almost like witness protection program clients. And then they get to work. So here was their thing, four categories they were looking at. Number one, human remains. We've got to get the human remains first. Number two, sacred funerary objects. Number three, objects of cultural patrimony. So things from another country, another tribe, another group that had to go back. And then four was after that, everything else. Let's look at everything else. So they start looking for the remains. And the first place they look for is those original informants said that there was a locked basement with the skeletons. Under that house that you just showed?

Under the house, yeah. And they find it. they find this locked sealed basement. And what's in there? Inside the room is a nearly complete skeleton lying on a red cloth inside a raised wooden display case. It's glass on each side, just like you would see at a museum. The remains have been adorned with artifacts. There's metal armbands. There's a dozen thin bracelets, clearly like a great king or chief or warrior.

There's a stone and bone chess plate across his ribs. there's bones alongside axe heads, there's a knife blade, and a ring forced onto the finger bone with a handwritten, there's a handwritten card in front of the display case. And the handwritten card says that this is Crazy Horse. Wow. The famous Sue Warrior from the 19th century. Yep.

So the fact that he could potentially have Crazy Horse sealed in his basement, is insane, right? And there's a whole story behind Crazy Horse. I won't go into it. But one of the things that was said was that Crazy Horse's family very specifically made his burial secret and hid him away

because they knew that people would try and find him because he's such a famous figure. So if he does actually have Crazy Horse, that would be unreal. That would be unbelievable? Well, how would he know that it was Crazy Horse anyway unless he maybe got some connection or something? Dude, you have enough cigarettes.

You get all good. Yeah, that's true. Bring in a pallet. Then the skulls start turning up. A shelf above to the left of the display has 25 skulls. A couple of paper sacks with bones on other shelves. He said we found bones scattered throughout the house. In rooms adjoining the main basement area.

Among them were several adult skulls with arrows hammered into them. Skulls turned up in unusual places. There was one tucked between books on a high shelf in his radio room. The more we looked, he said, the more bones we found. It wasn't just that. We kept finding more human remains. It was that we kept finding them in increasingly appalling conditions that worried us. Arrowheads hammered into a skull for a dramatic effect.

A baby's skull repurposed as an apple bowl. And the static accumulations of bones sometimes mixed with animal remains were scattered throughout the compound. So they went in there thinking, okay, we're going to maybe find four or five remains. maybe a dozen at the most. But they started to find just skeletons all over this house. Do you see how it also highlights what I was saying earlier

about the Sharpie pen? It's like he's got these things but he continues to desecrate them. It's not just enough that he took them. Yeah, you're right. The fact that he's hammering nails into skulls and it's like... You're absolutely right

because the condition they were in was just atrocious. There were bones thrown across shelves stuffed into tote bags like shopping bags with bones in them, plastic garbage bags, cardboard boxes just with bones and skulls in them, all filthy with grime, black mold, infested with insects and mice. There was nests inside a lot of them. Nests of what? Is it like

mice or rats? Yeah, mice and rats, vermin. Now Jake, one of the other agents that was there, he recalled later, whenever we found another cache of bones, it seemed like a new low in how Miller had treated the remains. Every time we said to ourselves, okay, can't get any worse than this, but he said it kept getting worse. Every new room was full of horror, he said. So they go eventually to the dilapidated farmhouse. This is where he grew up. This is the oldest building on the compound.

And there's multiple doors down to this basement and, you know, there's boxes with tote bins and there's bones down there. But everything is just disgusting, black mold everywhere. The power's out. So they've got their torches out. It's just super creepy, right? And that Holly, the woman from the university who got wired up for him, she's there as well going through it. And she hears like a little scuffle at the side on one of the shelves.

And she's like, what is that? She turns with a torch. And there's this giant large black garbage bag crammed under the lowest shelf. And she's like, what is this? And they all gather, there's like four agents down there. They all gather around the bag. And they're like, what the hell is going to be? here. And they all brace themselves and they open this black bag and this giant raccoon just goes,

just like leaps out at them and then skitters off and disappears out of a hole in the wall. And he said we almost got our guns out to try and shoot it, but we, you know, held it back. This bag was full of bones. It had a dozen skulls in it mixed with insulation, cardboard and twigs. it was the raccoon's nest. Oh my God. The raccoon was living in a nest of skulls in this guy's basement. Disgusting. They were just like, this is unbelievable that he was treating the dead like this.

He's like a kid though, because it goes back to what I was saying before. He's like he hasn't obviously developed the mental, I guess, capabilities of what an adult would. But it's like he just has to have it. He doesn't need it for any purpose. It's just like wanting it. But once he's got it, it's not enough. It doesn't satiate. Well, they had gone in the...

there expecting, again, like I said, a dozen remains. When he spoke to some of the agents on that first day, or that second day, actually, because they had built everything first, and they'd actually gone through a full sweep to gather as much human remains as they could, one of the lead agents, he asked him, like, how many do you think we have? And he says, at least 350 plus remains of human beings. The deal's got to be off now, doesn't it? Well, no, because it still doesn't change the fact that he's too old to be prosecuted. Right. So, and, you know, they don't want to drag out the warrant. But does that mean that, like, once you get into your 80s, you could just start committing crimes because you're too old to be prosecuted?

Pretty much, yeah. There's a bunch of things I'd love to do. But if you start in your 80s, it's hard to go on grave rob or all around the world. That's true. Yeah. Get in early with that stuff. Oh, I'm just thinking embezzlement or something, you know, like, just start there. Like, one anthropologist said our training did not prepare us for what we found. No, for example, we'd go into a room and see, you know, like a grocery sack on the shelf.

You'd take the sack. off the shelf and open it up and there'd be like a children's bones in there, like a child inside there. He said Miller's treatment of the remains was so callous. It was one of the most horrific things I've seen in nearly 30 years of law enforcement. Yeah, it is callous. That's actually a really perfect way to sum it up. It's callous. So they quickly set up a meeting because they realized the scope of the human remains. They set up an emergency meeting with the local tribe, one of the local elders actually a couple of tribes in the area and they explain everything that's happening and obviously their reaction they're horrified yeah um but they they want to just keep them

in the loop of everything that's going on and and in the end the tribe some of the elders are very appreciative and they come up to tim afterwards and thank him for what they're doing to try and set things right one of these old guys pulls him aside and gives him a warning and actually says to him you know thank you for what you're doing but you and your and agents have to be careful. He says the spirits of those whose graves have been desecrated, they're angry, especially the spirits of children. And that might bring something bad to you and to your families. He said, I'm serious. You have to be careful. The hitchhiker effect. And Tim was like, you know, I didn't want to ignore him. I didn't, like, it doesn't say whether he

believes or doesn't believe in paranormal things. He said, I was just too busy. Like it was, it was, insane the amount of work we realized we had because they didn't plan for so much stuff. He said, I just didn't have time to even think about that. Yeah, but that's folly, isn't it? So they go on, and the funny thing is, it took them like 10 days to clear the place out. And remember he has an organ? The FBI agents were going insane because they're finding like bones and skeletons of children, like Native American children.

And this guy is in his house playing the organ the whole time. Like he's in there jamming on this dark organ music. He's just beyond eccentric though, isn't he? I said there was going bananas. Like a couple of agents snapped. Because it would make, I was saying macabre before, but adding this to it, like the entire scene as you're digging through bones. Like, talk about being macar.

Yeah, he said one agent snapped because his breakfast burrito didn't have lettuce on it. And then... Because it just pushed him out of air. It's like, I'm at breaking point with this. fucking organ music going on and these these bones everywhere. The local news started to run articles that he was like a local, he was an Indiana Jones and the FBI was persecuting him. But he said back at the office on April the 9th, 2014, three days after the conclusion of the search, we held our second tribal consultation. I reported the successful completion of the

search and the seizure of approximately 5,000 artifacts and 2,000 human bones. At that point, we estimated that a third of the artefacts were Native American, a third were foreign, and the rest remained unidentified. Do you know what I'm surprised about it? I'm surprised that the local tribes are giving them advice, but why didn't they like have a medicine man or someone like a shaman? They did.

They did. Yeah, they did do that. They did, like in all the human remains that were coming out, they put little tobacco pouches in there as veneration to the ancestors, and they had some tribal guys. do ceremonies as everything was shipped out in trucks. So it was all shipped out on that flatbed truck in stages over this 10-day period. And again, they only took artifacts, which they knew were 100% an issue.

So he still had a ton of stuff. So the green and yellow category ones were still. Yeah, they still like those Danish axes, for example. Like the archaeologists were there were saying things like, we have to take these. But he said, look, there's no clear case for them. So we just can't. They're probably stolen. But we just can't take it.

They should have asked him for it. Maybe, I mean, I was insistent that he wouldn't, but maybe he would give them over. Well, that was the moment where he tells the anecdote of, he remembered seeing that shrunken head that was in a case, but when they went back for the search, it was gone. So he hid stuff. And he later, he found it. It was like wedged, not behind a couch, but it was wedged behind a bookshelf or something. Like, he'd just stuffed it behind there.

And so there was all this stuff. He had still, like, hidden around all his little trinkets. And so it ended up being the, you know, the. the largest case that the FBI ever had of stolen artifacts. Yeah, I can imagine. I think it's actually the biggest in the United States. We don't know the full figure of what his total collection was. He passed away in 2015, and again, he was never persecuted for it, never prosecuted, sorry.

I take it that the collection that wasn't destroyed. Well, I want to talk about that because the story started to get, very mysterious universe when he went to a conference in New York. The case was still going. They were still figuring out what to do with all the artifacts, you know, contacting other countries and talking to Native American tribes. And he's in New York to give a talk to, I can't remember what university, but it was a bunch of either law students or archaeologists in training. So he gives this talk on the case. And as he's exiting the building, he gets a call from his wife. And his wife is frantic. when he had left home, he's married, he's got three young daughters. His youngest daughter is four years old.

And his wife is panicking because their four-year-old had developed a cough. And then he's thinking, oh, you know, kids get sick. He flies to New York. His wife's on the phone going, Tim, I can't wake our girl. I can't wake her up. And their youngest daughter, they couldn't wake her up. this morning, that morning, I think they had given her, like, cough medicine the night before, she could not wake her daughter. And he starts to think, like he thinks back to that warning he'd been given about the angry spirits, the restless spirits. And it starts to occur to him that maybe there's something to that because not only is it his young daughter that's afflicted, but there's a series of deaths that take place immediately preceding the conclusion

of the case. Wow. Yeah. And I want to share that with you in the plus extension coming up because there's some pretty scary stuff that starts to happen. And he talks about not only him and his family, but other FBI investigators that were responsible for handling the artifacts and getting them out of the house also had a string of bad luck, strange deaths and coincidence.

occurring. And so, yeah, I want to talk about that in our plus extension coming up. But props to Tim Carpenter, the FBI agent, that's him on the screen there. He just looks like an FBI agent. It's a really incredible story. And overall, just, and you start to appreciate how proficient the FBI really can be. Like can be. Can be. You know, they make themselves out to be the good guy, obviously in this book. But it's really impressive what they did to get them all out and get them repatriated. Because the second half of the book is like getting the stuff back to China, like getting it back to Peru and calling the Colombian embassy and saying, hey, do you want this shrunken head we found? Did we ever find out? Did he ever reveal, like, did he had any diaries or logs? I mean, I know he kept

a catalog, but is that like, how did they find out where all this stuff came from? I'm so glad you brought that up because I would have forgotten that. They find his, old film. He had this 8mm film. Right. And they get it digitized. And when they roll the film, it's like him in some South American country dancing in a grave with a skull in his hand. And like taking photos with his wife like, yay, look what we got. And doing like a, you know, there's a photo of him lying down in a grave. He's just dug next to a skeleton. Like he's taking happy snaps, like selfies for Instagram. There's footage of him. him like traveling through all these exotic places with the locals, like with all these

tools that just start digging up the ground. It's crazy, man. So yeah, that's the grave robber by Tim Carpenter. There's tons more in there. I'll link to it in the show notes at Mysterious Universe.org. It was really fantastic. But coming up in the break, I want to tell you what happened to his family. Yeah, I want to hear this because, I mean, I referenced the curse of Tutankhamun there earlier.

And, you know, people say, oh, that's, you know, just a rumor or all. that's just a superstitious kind of nonsense, and it was the mold that was in the tomb. It was like, no, when you actually look into the stories, it's uncanny what happened to not only the people that were directly involved in excavating that tomb, but also financiers and people that were offering support to that particular expedition.

It makes you think that there's something energetically going on that we can't understand from our modern materialist perspective. Absolutely. Spirits get angry. They do. When they're being treated unjustly, they get angry. And there's no difference between a spirit and a human being. A human being, when they're tired and angry, they will lash out. And it's no different with spirits.

And so the idea that there would be angry spirits involved in that, I think, is obvious. I would have run a mile. I wouldn't have wanted anything to do with it. There would be clear repercussions. So, yeah, we'll look at that coming up. That's coming up after the break for plus. And also, Hitler in Australia. Hitler's layover.

Shock UFO report, the exclusive inside scoop from Hipsilun. Hipsi Lund with Ken Snell. Oh, Snell. Yeah, Ken Snell is the journalist. Schnell, yeah, well, no, there's no German connection there, but it's close. It's funny you should say that. No, he's the journalist who has been traveling throughout Asia, who was the one who got the story back in the late 60s, early 70s, I believe. Yeah, cool.

You want to get access to that? head to mysterious universe.org forward slash plus sign up today. Help support your favorite show. If you sign up for the plus, MU Max tier, you'll get access to our massive back catalog going back nearly two decades. And of course, if you sign up for MU Max or MU Plus before the end of the year, you'll get two for one deal. Yeah, you get the two for one deal. You'll get our new show coming in February next year and you'll get the new Mysterious Universe starting after next week. So yeah, really good time because we're not going to keep that deal going. Like once we start our new show, there'll be like two separate entities.

So this is your chance to get both shows for the price of one. Yeah, sign up before the end of the year. Sign up before February. We'll keep it going until February. Sign up before February and you'll get both shows as a Plus member. So sign up today, Mysterious Universe.org, forward slash, plus. That's a wrap for this free edition of the show. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for watching. If you're on Plus, stick around for the good stuff. after the break for everyone else we'll catch you next week welcome back to your plus extension great to have ambition comes in all shapes and sizes at first citizens bank we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building fit for your ambition for citizens bank