CRAZY JAKE

[cactusjumper]

Recently saw a question over on DUSA about "Jacob's Clues". No one answered Ashton,
so I thought we might want to start a discussion over here. If anyone has any comments,
this is the place.

Some information can be found here:

Lost Dutchman Gold Mine - Arizona Superstition Mountain Wilderness - Gold Mining • View topic - Crazy Jake

Tom Kollenborn wrote this:

http://superstitionmountaintomkollenborn.blogspot.com/2009/12/crazy-jakes-camp.html

I will add more history later, unless someone beats me to it.

Joe Ribaudo

 

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[cactusjumper]

This was written by Kraig (Matthew) Roberts on a now defunct forum:
___________________________________
[To most people, Robert Simpson Jacob aka. Crazy Jake, was little more than a con man who swindled unsuspecting city dwellers out of their life savings with tales and stories of gold and buried treasure, the location of which Jake held the key and offered them fabulous wealth if they would invest in his schemes to recover it.
Jake did not swindle these people based on a lie, per se, he did so on a half truth, or to be more to the point, a belief Jake held that he just hadn't had time to be able to prove yet.

Crazy Jake was without a doubt, one of the most complex men I had ever met. His story, and the story of his dealings with investors in his schemes all came together and collided head on with history and destiny at a place called Peters Mesa in the winter of 1983-84.

Sometime in the fall of 1983, two men appeared atop Squaw canyon on the west end of Peters Mesa. Crazy Jake had a camp at the head of that canyon overlooking LaBarge canyon and Marsh Valley below. These two men set up camp there and would remain for the next three months. Their names were Ellis Schmidt and Mike Hill and they worked for crazy Jake. As far as Jake's employees went, they were mild by comparison but not two men you would have wanted to turn your back on for very long. Neither man were accomplished outdoorsmen and neither man knew much about Arizona or the deserts and mountains and the many dangers that are always present in the wilderness. They had been dropped off at Jake's camp by Jake's packer, Jerry Sherwood, and Sherwood would continue to drop them supplies and water on a regular basis over the next 90 days. I learned the men had come from Washington State and had been referred to Jake by two of Jake's former employees, Jesus and Sanchez Gurrerro. The Gurrerros and Hill and Schmidt had all met in various jails and prisons in and around Seattle. Jake had warned Hill and Schmidt I would be on the mesa and had given them orders to do their best to drive me off Peters Mesa and the mining claims Jake had filed in his girlfriend, Nancy Cochran's, name.

In conversations with these two, I gained a certain amount of their confidence and learned Jake had sent them to his camp to guard his mining claims and look specifically for what Jake called a "drop hole" in the mountains that led to an underground passage into the Lost Dutchman mine.
Jake had told Hill and Schmidt that he had located a cave filled with gold bars, some 20 tons of gold and needed investors money to finance a scheme to remove the gold from this hidden cave, pack it out of the mountains and get it out of the country to the Bahamas where he would convert it into cash and make himself, his employees and investors, fabuously rich.

Jake's urgency for raising money from investors was prompted by the Wilderness Act deadline of December 31, 1983. On that date the Superstition Mountains officially became wilderness and Jake's plans of mining claims, treasure caves and schemes to extract gold and treasure from the mountains would become much more complicated if not impossible.

No one knows for sure exactly how much money Jake took from investors in his cave of the gold bars scheme, but the unofficially tally was some 2.3 million dollars.

The ironic thing about the scheme is, Jake actually believed the cave existed, he just could not locate the entrance that he knew was somewhere on Peters Mesa. Some years before Jake had been given a gold bar by an acquaintance of Bill Barkley who told him of the cave and it's rich treasure in gold bars. The man told Jake if he could locate the cave and retrieve the gold, he would split the wealth with him. The man died a few years after he told Jake about the cave but could not direct Jake to the cave because the man had never himself been to the location. He had been given the gold bar by a man named -------.

By the end of 1983 Crazy Jake felt certain he had pinpointed the area where the cave with the gold bars lay hidden, in fact he believed he knew the very hill and canyon where the cave was located. But he could not find the entrance he was sure was there. In an elaborate attempt to try and lay claim to the area, he had his 24 year old girlfiend, Nancy Cochran, file about a dozen mining claims, blanketing Peters Mesa from Charley-Boy canyon in the south to Pistol Canyon in the north. Jake became desperate to find the entrance And as the wilderness deadline closed in on him, his desperation became fanatical. This was the period when he took the most amount of money from his investors, the time when he openly declared war on everyone who had a camp on Peters Mesa, Chuck Kenworthy and Jake got into a shooting scrape up there that could have easily turned deadly. Walter Gassler was caught in the middle of Jake's fanatical attempts to clear the mesa of everyone else and claim the treasure for himself. It was an intense and dangerous period, a time when Jake truly earned his nickname of, "crazy".

The thing that always struck me the hardest about Jake was he truly believed the cave and mine were there. He swindled investors out of their money but not with an outright hoax, because Jake actually believed he was on the verge of finding the cave and treasure. Maybe people can believe so deeply in something that it clouds all reality from their thinking. If so, that fit Crazy Jake in the fall and winter of 1983. Even after Jake had been convicted and spent 8 years in prison, in ill health and dying, he had Jerry Sherwood pack him back into his camp in the mountains to make one final last attempt to locate the cave and mine. That is not the act of a man who created a hoax and did not believe in what he was telling his victims.

Robert S. Jacob believed in the cave of the gold bars not simply because someone gave him a gold bar and told him a story. Jake was to intelligent to fall for that and invest his life in the endeavor of trying to locate this dream.
He believed in the cave because of things he found that fit with that gold bar. In one of my last conversations with Jake before he passed away at his home in Phoenix, he showed me a photo of the gold bar and a photo of a small symbol carved in a rock in a remote area of the mountains. The symbol on the rock was the exact same symbol that had been stamped on the gold bar. Jake, or one of Jake's men had found the symbol on the rock many years after Jake had been given the gold bar, and the man who had given Jake the gold bar, never mentioned the rock or the symbol to him.]
_____________________________________________________

While I don't give much credence to much of what Aurum writes, I believe there is some very good information on Crazy Jake in this post. I suggest everyone do their own research into the man.
Three people who probably have the most accurate information on Crazy Jake will be at the Rendezvous. That would be Tom Kollenborn, Greg Davis and Bob Corbin, who was involved in the prosecution of Jake. I believe there will be many people at the event who knew Jake personally, including Kraig Roberts and Clay Worst.

Joe Ribaudo

 

[cactusjumper]

Ashton,

I have been following your posts over on DUSA.

Perhaps a copy of Crazy Jakes manuscript is something that would help you. I will bring my copy to the Rendezvous, and let you look through it.

Good luck,

Joe

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Listening, X steak provider.

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[Al D]

Hello Joe
Are the Crazy Jake notes available? and if so where?
I would love to read them
Best Regards
Alan

 

[cactusjumper]

Alan,

I believe you are being taken care of.

See you soon,

Joe

 

[Cubfan64]

Wow - I started re-reading Jake's 625 page manuscript the other day. It's been so long I completely forgot about the thousands of pounds of gold bars he found along with the skeletons of the soldiers wearing breastplates, chainmail and robes and the swords and pikes he discovered in the same cave/tunnel system along with the gold. All of this within a few weeks of coming out to the Superstitions for the first time.

So far Jake has professed to be an expert on just about everything he does - being a hired gun/mercenary assassin in foreign countries, being the ultimate "ladies man" desired by all the young ladies and even being able to decipher where the Stone Maps led to the first time he looked at a topographic map side by side with them.

There doesn't seem to be anything he isn't able to do, and I still have 500+ pages to read!

 

[natchitoches]

where do one go to read Jake's 625 page manuscript ?

 

[cactusjumper]

Natchitoches,

I have been told that Jake had some good information, but you would need supernatural powers to pick out the truth from 625 pages of his writings. I have the 136 page edition, and I have not been able to seperate the wheat from the chaff.....yet.

That's the problem with most books/manuscripts on the LDM.....Too much fiction from writers who had too much imagination. Jake was at the top of that food chain, as far as I'm concerned. My mother's uncle, Obie Stoker, as well as my uncle, Chuck Ribaudo, had both warned me to stay as far away from Jake as possible. His known history, explains their warnings.

Good luck,

Joe

 

[Cubfan64]

There are copies out there of both the 136 page work as well as the 625 page work. It's been even longer since I've read the 136 page work so I can't comment on that one, but the 625 page "manuscript" definitely does not read like a "journal" of what Jake did or believed - it reads way more like a novel of fiction.

Jim Hatt once said that Jake likely did have SOME good information, but none of it would be found in his "manuscripts," and that Jake worked, reworked, edited and added to his "manuscripts" almost up until the day he died in the hopes that one day he WOULD find something significant out there and he'd have an already worked up story to be sold for movie or book rights.

I seriously doubt there are any real clues in his writings - he seemed to be too secretive and shrewd in his dealings to put anything of substance into print.

It makes for a fairly fun read though so far.

 

[Quinan Bear]

All i would like to know is. Did Jake accually find a cave full of gold and dead soldiers? Is it documented somewhere on what exactly he found and where? Is that the same treasure that was found at the northern tip of the superstitions mountains, valued at $40 million?

 

[cactusjumper]

QB,

There is no documentation for anything you mentioned in your post, including a treasure valued at $40 Milliion
being found at the northern tip of the Superstition Mountains.......that I have ever heard of.

Good luck,

Joe

 

[Cubfan64]

As far as I know, there aren't ANY documented treasure troves found in the Superstition Mountains (please anyone correct me if I'm wrong). There are a number of claims of having found gold bars, spanish armor and weapons, etc... but I think the best you'll find is 3rd hand information (at best).

I think Gollum (Mike) has mentioned in the past that he knew someone who Chuck Kenworthy had showed a car trunk full of gold ore to. Joe has told the story a number of times of his uncle telling him about the gold bar he had seen from Harry LaFrance.

Beyond those stories, there are others less "famous," but still I doubt very much that there is what any of us would consider to be documented evidence of any treasures found out there. Prior to 1984, if anything of significance was found, it's likely it was carefully and secretly removed from the mountains to avoid any publicity - after 1984, if anything of significance was found, it's likely it was.... well, it's likely it was EVEN MORE carefully and secretly removed.

 

[Quinan Bear]

Hmmmm; Maybe I said something that I shouldn't have? I was just inquiring if Crazy Jake found anything during his time in the mountains?

So, I take it, that it's best to just remove what is found in the superstitions? ,other than to document it and try to get a treasure trove permit for it? This is the conclusion that i am getting.

 

[Cubfan64]

So, I take it, that it's best to just remove what is found in the superstitions? ,other than to document it and try to get a treasure trove permit for it? This is the conclusion that i am getting.

Mr. Muise - If you are interpreting my comment in such a way that you think I'm advocating removing items from the Superstition Mountains Wilderness Area in the dark of the night and in secret, you couldn't be more wrong. What I was stating was my personal opinion as to one reason why there are no documented treasure finds from the area. Of course another reason could be that nothing truly treasure related has ever been found out there.

I'll be crystal clear - I neither encourage nor condone doing anything illegal on Federal Lands. There isn't enough gold in the world for me personally to risk breaking a Federal Law, but I'm sure there are people out there willing to risk things I wouldn't.

Greed and lust can be strong temptresses, and while there ARE legal ways to obtain a treasure trove permit, clearly it's a long, expensive and involved process and I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to hypothisize that greed and lust could tempt some folks to bypass legal avenues.

As for me, I'm happy to hike, explore and take photographs.

Oh, and as far as whether Robert Jacob Simpson found any treasure in the Superstition Mountains - the only documented "treasure" I know of is the $9 million (possibly up to $40 million) he fraudulantly took from "investors" in his projects out there. Other than that, I never met the man and wasn't there to know whether he ever really found anything or not.

 

[natchitoches]

what ever happen to Gollum (Mike) he use to hang out here too?

 

[Quinan Bear]

Mr. Muise - If you are interpreting my comment in such a way that you think I'm advocating removing items from the Superstition Mountains Wilderness Area in the dark of the night and in secret, you couldn't be more wrong. What I was stating was my personal opinion as to one reason why there are no documented treasure finds from the area. Of course another reason could be that nothing truly treasure related has ever been found out there.

I'll be crystal clear - I neither encourage nor condone doing anything illegal on Federal Lands. There isn't enough gold in the world for me personally to risk breaking a Federal Law, but I'm sure there are people out there willing to risk things I wouldn't.

Greed and lust can be strong temptresses, and while there ARE legal ways to obtain a treasure trove permit, clearly it's a long, expensive and involved process and I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to hypothisize that greed and lust could tempt some folks to bypass legal avenues.

As for me, I'm happy to hike, explore and take photographs.

Oh, and as far as whether Robert Jacob Simpson found any treasure in the Superstition Mountains - the only documented "treasure" I know of is the $9 million (possibly up to $40 million) he fraudulantly took from "investors" in his projects out there. Other than that, I never met the man and wasn't there to know whether he ever really found anything or not.

Thanks for clearing that up for me Cubfan;

I was just wondering if there was ever anything found in the superstitions. I did however read a segment on the internet a few years back, that said there was a treasure found on the northern end of the first part of the superstitions, in a cave just east of Siphon draw on the northern edge of the mountains. Valued at $40 million and consited of jewels,swords,artifacts and gold. I don't remember the site, but if i ever do? i will post it for you to see.

 

[Chisos]

Don't want to break in here, but I had sent a pm to a guy who had one of these LDM posts. When I was very young( 1969-1970) I had worked at a place that employed musicians. There was an old, old man named Jerry who, if I remember, was the piano player. He told me about him and his partner having a sheelite(tungsten) ore mine in the superstitions(1920's-1930's) and he drew me a map. The map had three canyons and he marked his mine in the third canyon and the LDM in the first or second, just don't remember). A few years later a friend and I went out there. Using the map I found Jerry's mine. That was all I looked for. I put the map away and never thought about it again. I told him I would look for it. I searched everything I still have(I'm 64), but could not find it. I tried to remember and then it came to me. One of my female high school students had to do a project in another class and she picked the LDM. She asked me if I could help. I had kept files from all western states I had visited and I had a fake, tourist map of the LDM. I gave her that and the map Jerry had drawn and told her someday she could get rich if she followed the map because it was supposed to be real. I also gave her some pyrite, a little vial of gold flakes and a tourist story about the mine. She got an A, I got a hug and I just forgot the whole thing. Anyway, if you are the guy I was pm'ing with, I'm sorry. I think Weaver's Needle was in back of Jerry and a little to the left, but I can't really remember. The canyons aren't big, I went into the third(far right), but the country was just too rough, Jerry said that Indian guards working for the government guarded the mine and ran people off and we were headed to Las Vegas anyway and then on to Cal. We were both hippies, loved life and cared nothing for wealth. Again, if you are the guy I spoke with, sorry I don't have the map.

 

[markmar]

This was written by Kraig (Matthew) Roberts on a now defunct forum:
___________________________________
[To most people, Robert Simpson Jacob aka. Crazy Jake, was little more than a con man who swindled unsuspecting city dwellers out of their life savings with tales and stories of gold and buried treasure, the location of which Jake held the key and offered them fabulous wealth if they would invest in his schemes to recover it.
Jake did not swindle these people based on a lie, per se, he did so on a half truth, or to be more to the point, a belief Jake held that he just hadn't had time to be able to prove yet.

Crazy Jake was without a doubt, one of the most complex men I had ever met. His story, and the story of his dealings with investors in his schemes all came together and collided head on with history and destiny at a place called Peters Mesa in the winter of 1983-84.

Sometime in the fall of 1983, two men appeared atop Squaw canyon on the west end of Peters Mesa. Crazy Jake had a camp at the head of that canyon overlooking LaBarge canyon and Marsh Valley below. These two men set up camp there and would remain for the next three months. Their names were Ellis Schmidt and Mike Hill and they worked for crazy Jake. As far as Jake's employees went, they were mild by comparison but not two men you would have wanted to turn your back on for very long. Neither man were accomplished outdoorsmen and neither man knew much about Arizona or the deserts and mountains and the many dangers that are always present in the wilderness. They had been dropped off at Jake's camp by Jake's packer, Jerry Sherwood, and Sherwood would continue to drop them supplies and water on a regular basis over the next 90 days. I learned the men had come from Washington State and had been referred to Jake by two of Jake's former employees, Jesus and Sanchez Gurrerro. The Gurrerros and Hill and Schmidt had all met in various jails and prisons in and around Seattle. Jake had warned Hill and Schmidt I would be on the mesa and had given them orders to do their best to drive me off Peters Mesa and the mining claims Jake had filed in his girlfriend, Nancy Cochran's, name.

In conversations with these two, I gained a certain amount of their confidence and learned Jake had sent them to his camp to guard his mining claims and look specifically for what Jake called a "drop hole" in the mountains that led to an underground passage into the Lost Dutchman mine.
Jake had told Hill and Schmidt that he had located a cave filled with gold bars, some 20 tons of gold and needed investors money to finance a scheme to remove the gold from this hidden cave, pack it out of the mountains and get it out of the country to the Bahamas where he would convert it into cash and make himself, his employees and investors, fabuously rich.

Jake's urgency for raising money from investors was prompted by the Wilderness Act deadline of December 31, 1983. On that date the Superstition Mountains officially became wilderness and Jake's plans of mining claims, treasure caves and schemes to extract gold and treasure from the mountains would become much more complicated if not impossible.

No one knows for sure exactly how much money Jake took from investors in his cave of the gold bars scheme, but the unofficially tally was some 2.3 million dollars.

The ironic thing about the scheme is, Jake actually believed the cave existed, he just could not locate the entrance that he knew was somewhere on Peters Mesa. Some years before Jake had been given a gold bar by an acquaintance of Bill Barkley who told him of the cave and it's rich treasure in gold bars. The man told Jake if he could locate the cave and retrieve the gold, he would split the wealth with him. The man died a few years after he told Jake about the cave but could not direct Jake to the cave because the man had never himself been to the location. He had been given the gold bar by a man named -------.

By the end of 1983 Crazy Jake felt certain he had pinpointed the area where the cave with the gold bars lay hidden, in fact he believed he knew the very hill and canyon where the cave was located. But he could not find the entrance he was sure was there. In an elaborate attempt to try and lay claim to the area, he had his 24 year old girlfiend, Nancy Cochran, file about a dozen mining claims, blanketing Peters Mesa from Charley-Boy canyon in the south to Pistol Canyon in the north. Jake became desperate to find the entrance And as the wilderness deadline closed in on him, his desperation became fanatical. This was the period when he took the most amount of money from his investors, the time when he openly declared war on everyone who had a camp on Peters Mesa, Chuck Kenworthy and Jake got into a shooting scrape up there that could have easily turned deadly. Walter Gassler was caught in the middle of Jake's fanatical attempts to clear the mesa of everyone else and claim the treasure for himself. It was an intense and dangerous period, a time when Jake truly earned his nickname of, "crazy".

The thing that always struck me the hardest about Jake was he truly believed the cave and mine were there. He swindled investors out of their money but not with an outright hoax, because Jake actually believed he was on the verge of finding the cave and treasure. Maybe people can believe so deeply in something that it clouds all reality from their thinking. If so, that fit Crazy Jake in the fall and winter of 1983. Even after Jake had been convicted and spent 8 years in prison, in ill health and dying, he had Jerry Sherwood pack him back into his camp in the mountains to make one final last attempt to locate the cave and mine. That is not the act of a man who created a hoax and did not believe in what he was telling his victims.

Robert S. Jacob believed in the cave of the gold bars not simply because someone gave him a gold bar and told him a story. Jake was to intelligent to fall for that and invest his life in the endeavor of trying to locate this dream.
He believed in the cave because of things he found that fit with that gold bar. In one of my last conversations with Jake before he passed away at his home in Phoenix, he showed me a photo of the gold bar and a photo of a small symbol carved in a rock in a remote area of the mountains. The symbol on the rock was the exact same symbol that had been stamped on the gold bar. Jake, or one of Jake's men had found the symbol on the rock many years after Jake had been given the gold bar, and the man who had given Jake the gold bar, never mentioned the rock or the symbol to him.]
_____________________________________________________

While I don't give much credence to much of what Aurum writes, I believe there is some very good information on Crazy Jake in this post. I suggest everyone do their own research into the man.
Three people who probably have the most accurate information on Crazy Jake will be at the Rendezvous. That would be Tom Kollenborn, Greg Davis and Bob Corbin, who was involved in the prosecution of Jake. I believe there will be many people at the event who knew Jake personally, including Kraig Roberts and Clay Worst.

Joe Ribaudo

Crazy Jake searched for Someo Montana mine . His camp was close , but his searching afar .

 

[pippinwhitepaws]

ah...1983...a good year in those mountains...if you avoided everyone...
I think it was '85 when I saw the migration of tarantulas...
never met anyone who has seen such a sight...was I blessed or what?