April 3, 2020 • 11 mins
In 1990, Theodore Roosevelt's double action revolver—the one he'd used during the Battle of San Juan Heights—was stolen from Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. It wouldn't come back to the museum for another 16 years.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. One morning in early April, rangers at Sagamore
Hill National Historic Site we're walking past a display at
the Old Orchard Museum when they noticed that something was amiss.
The display contained Theodore Roosevelt's uniform from his time with
(00:21):
the Rough Riders in the Spanish American War, as well
as his Coult Model thirty eight caliber double action revolver,
or at least the guns should have been there, but
it wasn't. At the time. It was relatively simple just
to lift the case up without setting any kind of
alarm and taking it. That's Jake Rosson's senior staff writer
(00:44):
at Mental Flaws. That's exactly what someone did. This particular
gun had a fascinating history even before it landed in
t R's hands. It was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut in
March and was sold to the U. S. Government, after
which it ended up on the battleship Maine as ship property.
It was still on board on February when the ship
(01:07):
exploded in Havana, Cuba. Hundreds of men lost their lives
in the blast, which was blamed on the Spanish and
helped to push America into the war. The gun may
have remained in a watery grave if not for Tier's
brother in law, William S. Cowles, who was one of
the commanding officers sent to Cuba after the explosion. As salvage.
Divers brought up what they could from the wreck, and
(01:28):
one of those items was a cold revolver. Knowing that
tr was weapons Officia Nado, he gave it to him
as a gift. When the Spanish American War broke out
in eight Tier quit his job as Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, signed up to fight, and shipped out to
Cuba with his volunteer regiment. With him was the blue
(01:50):
barreled Colt with a checkered wood handle. Roosevelt used the
weapon in the Battle of San Juan Heights. Apparently he
was able to take aim and shoot at at two enemies.
One he missed one, he later wrote, he hit the man,
fell over, and almost assuredly died. Well. Roosevelt, obviously, you know,
(02:11):
treasured the weapon prior to using it. After he used it,
undoubtedly he considered it probably even more signifts again. Eventually
the gun was inscribed on one side. It read from
the sunken Battleship Maine and on the other July one
San Juan carried and used by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Well
(02:34):
he kept it in his personal possession until his death,
and later on when his property as home became a
historic site and part of the National Park Service, it eventually,
like a lot of his possessions went on display, which
brings us back to where we started, the empty display
case at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. I'm your host,
(02:56):
Aaron McCarthy, and in this bonus episode of History Versus,
we're going to explore this strange story which I first
found out about when I visited Sagamore Hill for the podcast.
I knew immediately that we had to write about it,
so I put Jake on the case. So when something
like this goes missing on National park lands, like, what's
the next step? What do they do? When a crime
takes place in a National park or on a National
(03:19):
park site, it's technically federal land, and so the government
usually gets in touch with park rangers UM and they
frequently pass it on to an investigative unit. And in
this case, the museum was able to reach out to
park rangers who conducted an initial investigation, and eventually it
(03:41):
made its way to the FBI. The gun had actually
been stolen once before, back in the nineteen sixties, and
fortunately whoever stole it uh seemed to get cold feet
once they had taken that The gun was found not
far from the museum, but had been discarded. But this
time it was a little bit different in the sense
that the museum really had no practical security features. There
(04:06):
were no surveillance cameras, the glass case wasn't locked. In fact,
as one National Park employee explained it to us, the
case could be lifted and the lock just popped open.
It wasn't going to be that difficult for someone determined
to take the gun if they really wanted to. So
once the FBI got involved, where did they even start
(04:28):
in the search for suspects. When the stuff like this happens,
investigators will often look at employees first, because a lot
of times this can be the result of an inside job.
The FBI eventually realized that no employee was at fault.
With museum employees ruled out and a security system being
installed in the museum, the FBI began going to gun
(04:50):
shows and approaching gun dealers to see if they had
cross paths with someone trying to sell the COLT, but
they weren't necessarily optimistic about finding the gun that way.
The gun one was really distinctive and therefore hard to sell.
I think they probably felt that whoever took it was
probably taking it for their own personal collection, and in
that case, obviously, uh. They really weren't many leads to follow,
(05:16):
which isn't to say that the FBI didn't get tips.
They actually got a ton of them. In the time
before the Internet. They would get phone calls. When email
came about, they got emails, and sometimes the leads would
be worth looking into. There was a rumor it had
been seen in Europe, but really the only promising lead,
which turned out really not to be promising it at all,
(05:38):
was the idea that a gun with the same serial
number had turned up in a buyback program in Pennsylvania.
But when they looked into it more more thoroughly, they
realized even though that done had the same serial number,
it was a different model gun, and so they were
essentially back to square one. As the reward kept creeping up,
(05:58):
and eventually I think it it reached them. We're around
eight and there's still no concrete leads. There's no one
being enticed by a monetary compensation. And once you get
ten or twelve years into the gun being missing again,
this was back in you know. I imagine the FBI
eventually felt like it was time to maybe put this
(06:20):
on the back burner. But fifteen years after the gun
went missing, there was finally a break in the case,
one that may have been made possible by a divorce.
We'll be right back. More than fifteen years after Theodore
Roosevelt's Colt Revolver went missing from the Old Orchard Museum
at Sagamore Hill, one of the park rangers began receiving
(06:41):
phone calls from a man who said he knew where
the gun was. That wasn't necessarily unusual, They had gotten
many similar calls before. What was unusual was that the
man kept calling. He wouldn't give his name, but he
said he knew where the gun was, that he had
seen it wrapped in a sweatshirt. He was able to
disc ribe it's engravings. He said that he wanted it
(07:03):
returned to the museum, but he didn't want to get
anyone in trouble. The park ranger who tried to plead
with him and even told him, look, just put it
in a box and drop it in the mail and
that will be that. But he couldn't really get through
to the guy. Eventually, though, I think the man realized
that he had to do something with the gun and
(07:23):
he agreed to make contact with the FBI. The man
who had been calling was named Andy, and he lived
in Florida. It turns out he had been seeing a woman,
and the woman, who knew that Andy was a history buff,
approached him one day and said, look, I've got this gun.
I belonged to Teddy Roosevelt, and you know, you might
(07:45):
want to take a look at it. And essentially Andy
came to realize it was stolen, came to realize that
actually didn't belong to his girlfriend, but her ex husband
and her husband had essentially kept it around the house,
sometimes wrapped up in a sweatshirt, sometimes I tucked under
(08:05):
the seat of a car. So basically, if that woman
and her husband had not gotten divorced, the gun might
still be missing. He's very possible. Yeah, The FBI approached
Andy and asked him to retrieve the gun from his girlfriend. Again,
he wanted to drag his seat a little bit and
was reluctant about revealing the identity of his girlfriend, but
(08:27):
being the FBI, they were rather persuasive with him. The
gun was retrieved and authenticated, and in two thousand and six,
sixteen years after it disappeared, it was returned to Sagamore Hill.
Eventually it took its place back in a case in
the museum, one that was now much more secure. As
for the man who took the gun, we'll call him
(08:48):
Anthony T. He was charged with misdemeanor theft, which perhaps
feels like a light sentence for someone who took something
that belonged to a former president. Well, it's interesting because
if you look at high involving valuable items, rare items, paintings,
things of that nature, the punishment can be pretty severe.
But with something like Roosevelt's gun, even though there has
(09:11):
been evaluations placed on it that reached into the hundreds
of thousands, I don't know that there's any definitive way
of placing a price on it. And additionally, the federal
government doesn't really ensure, uh these kinds of things. So, uh,
it seems like the prosecutors looked at Anthony t. T
(09:31):
situation and realized that he was not, by any means
a professional thief, a career criminal um and decided to
uh really let him off rather easily. He got a probation,
he had to pay a sign and he had to
perform a fair amount of community service. So the gun
(09:52):
is back where it belongs. Questions still linger. No one
seems to know why Anthony took the gun, although investigators
have paused at it that it was an impulsive act.
So Anthony t was at the museum and saw the gun,
saw that there really probably wasn't any employee around, saw
that the case could be easily manipulated, and uh, it
(10:17):
was a crime of opportunity. Actually, one of the investigators
essentially described it as a kind of artifact shoplifting. Was
something done on impulse, and obviously something he came to regret.
I think the irony really is the fact that Anthony,
(10:38):
when he was charged with a crime, was charged with
violating the American Antiquities Act in nineteen o six, which
is basically a law stating that, hey, you know, he
can't steal government property items of this sort artifacts. The
president who signed the American Antiquities Act until law, Theodore Roosevelt.
(11:05):
We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another
bonus episode of History Versus History Versus is hosted by
Me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by me, with
fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowe Berlante.
(11:26):
If you want to find out more about this episode
and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flaws dot com. Slash History
Versus History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio
and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(11:49):
you listen to your favorite shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. One morning in early April, rangers at Sagamore
Hill National Historic Site we're walking past a display at
the Old Orchard Museum when they noticed that something was amiss.
The display contained Theodore Roosevelt's uniform from his time with
(00:21):
the Rough Riders in the Spanish American War, as well
as his Coult Model thirty eight caliber double action revolver,
or at least the guns should have been there, but
it wasn't. At the time. It was relatively simple just
to lift the case up without setting any kind of
alarm and taking it. That's Jake Rosson's senior staff writer
(00:44):
at Mental Flaws. That's exactly what someone did. This particular
gun had a fascinating history even before it landed in
t R's hands. It was manufactured in Hartford, Connecticut in
March and was sold to the U. S. Government, after
which it ended up on the battleship Maine as ship property.
It was still on board on February when the ship
(01:07):
exploded in Havana, Cuba. Hundreds of men lost their lives
in the blast, which was blamed on the Spanish and
helped to push America into the war. The gun may
have remained in a watery grave if not for Tier's
brother in law, William S. Cowles, who was one of
the commanding officers sent to Cuba after the explosion. As salvage.
Divers brought up what they could from the wreck, and
(01:28):
one of those items was a cold revolver. Knowing that
tr was weapons Officia Nado, he gave it to him
as a gift. When the Spanish American War broke out
in eight Tier quit his job as Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, signed up to fight, and shipped out to
Cuba with his volunteer regiment. With him was the blue
(01:50):
barreled Colt with a checkered wood handle. Roosevelt used the
weapon in the Battle of San Juan Heights. Apparently he
was able to take aim and shoot at at two enemies.
One he missed one, he later wrote, he hit the man,
fell over, and almost assuredly died. Well. Roosevelt, obviously, you know,
(02:11):
treasured the weapon prior to using it. After he used it,
undoubtedly he considered it probably even more signifts again. Eventually
the gun was inscribed on one side. It read from
the sunken Battleship Maine and on the other July one
San Juan carried and used by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. Well
(02:34):
he kept it in his personal possession until his death,
and later on when his property as home became a
historic site and part of the National Park Service, it eventually,
like a lot of his possessions went on display, which
brings us back to where we started, the empty display
case at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. I'm your host,
(02:56):
Aaron McCarthy, and in this bonus episode of History Versus,
we're going to explore this strange story which I first
found out about when I visited Sagamore Hill for the podcast.
I knew immediately that we had to write about it,
so I put Jake on the case. So when something
like this goes missing on National park lands, like, what's
the next step? What do they do? When a crime
takes place in a National park or on a National
(03:19):
park site, it's technically federal land, and so the government
usually gets in touch with park rangers UM and they
frequently pass it on to an investigative unit. And in
this case, the museum was able to reach out to
park rangers who conducted an initial investigation, and eventually it
(03:41):
made its way to the FBI. The gun had actually
been stolen once before, back in the nineteen sixties, and
fortunately whoever stole it uh seemed to get cold feet
once they had taken that The gun was found not
far from the museum, but had been discarded. But this
time it was a little bit different in the sense
that the museum really had no practical security features. There
(04:06):
were no surveillance cameras, the glass case wasn't locked. In fact,
as one National Park employee explained it to us, the
case could be lifted and the lock just popped open.
It wasn't going to be that difficult for someone determined
to take the gun if they really wanted to. So
once the FBI got involved, where did they even start
(04:28):
in the search for suspects. When the stuff like this happens,
investigators will often look at employees first, because a lot
of times this can be the result of an inside job.
The FBI eventually realized that no employee was at fault.
With museum employees ruled out and a security system being
installed in the museum, the FBI began going to gun
(04:50):
shows and approaching gun dealers to see if they had
cross paths with someone trying to sell the COLT, but
they weren't necessarily optimistic about finding the gun that way.
The gun one was really distinctive and therefore hard to sell.
I think they probably felt that whoever took it was
probably taking it for their own personal collection, and in
that case, obviously, uh. They really weren't many leads to follow,
(05:16):
which isn't to say that the FBI didn't get tips.
They actually got a ton of them. In the time
before the Internet. They would get phone calls. When email
came about, they got emails, and sometimes the leads would
be worth looking into. There was a rumor it had
been seen in Europe, but really the only promising lead,
which turned out really not to be promising it at all,
(05:38):
was the idea that a gun with the same serial
number had turned up in a buyback program in Pennsylvania.
But when they looked into it more more thoroughly, they
realized even though that done had the same serial number,
it was a different model gun, and so they were
essentially back to square one. As the reward kept creeping up,
(05:58):
and eventually I think it it reached them. We're around
eight and there's still no concrete leads. There's no one
being enticed by a monetary compensation. And once you get
ten or twelve years into the gun being missing again,
this was back in you know. I imagine the FBI
eventually felt like it was time to maybe put this
(06:20):
on the back burner. But fifteen years after the gun
went missing, there was finally a break in the case,
one that may have been made possible by a divorce.
We'll be right back. More than fifteen years after Theodore
Roosevelt's Colt Revolver went missing from the Old Orchard Museum
at Sagamore Hill, one of the park rangers began receiving
(06:41):
phone calls from a man who said he knew where
the gun was. That wasn't necessarily unusual, They had gotten
many similar calls before. What was unusual was that the
man kept calling. He wouldn't give his name, but he
said he knew where the gun was, that he had
seen it wrapped in a sweatshirt. He was able to
disc ribe it's engravings. He said that he wanted it
(07:03):
returned to the museum, but he didn't want to get
anyone in trouble. The park ranger who tried to plead
with him and even told him, look, just put it
in a box and drop it in the mail and
that will be that. But he couldn't really get through
to the guy. Eventually, though, I think the man realized
that he had to do something with the gun and
(07:23):
he agreed to make contact with the FBI. The man
who had been calling was named Andy, and he lived
in Florida. It turns out he had been seeing a woman,
and the woman, who knew that Andy was a history buff,
approached him one day and said, look, I've got this gun.
I belonged to Teddy Roosevelt, and you know, you might
(07:45):
want to take a look at it. And essentially Andy
came to realize it was stolen, came to realize that
actually didn't belong to his girlfriend, but her ex husband
and her husband had essentially kept it around the house,
sometimes wrapped up in a sweatshirt, sometimes I tucked under
(08:05):
the seat of a car. So basically, if that woman
and her husband had not gotten divorced, the gun might
still be missing. He's very possible. Yeah, The FBI approached
Andy and asked him to retrieve the gun from his girlfriend. Again,
he wanted to drag his seat a little bit and
was reluctant about revealing the identity of his girlfriend, but
(08:27):
being the FBI, they were rather persuasive with him. The
gun was retrieved and authenticated, and in two thousand and six,
sixteen years after it disappeared, it was returned to Sagamore Hill.
Eventually it took its place back in a case in
the museum, one that was now much more secure. As
for the man who took the gun, we'll call him
(08:48):
Anthony T. He was charged with misdemeanor theft, which perhaps
feels like a light sentence for someone who took something
that belonged to a former president. Well, it's interesting because
if you look at high involving valuable items, rare items, paintings,
things of that nature, the punishment can be pretty severe.
But with something like Roosevelt's gun, even though there has
(09:11):
been evaluations placed on it that reached into the hundreds
of thousands, I don't know that there's any definitive way
of placing a price on it. And additionally, the federal
government doesn't really ensure, uh these kinds of things. So, uh,
it seems like the prosecutors looked at Anthony t. T
(09:31):
situation and realized that he was not, by any means
a professional thief, a career criminal um and decided to
uh really let him off rather easily. He got a probation,
he had to pay a sign and he had to
perform a fair amount of community service. So the gun
(09:52):
is back where it belongs. Questions still linger. No one
seems to know why Anthony took the gun, although investigators
have paused at it that it was an impulsive act.
So Anthony t was at the museum and saw the gun,
saw that there really probably wasn't any employee around, saw
that the case could be easily manipulated, and uh, it
(10:17):
was a crime of opportunity. Actually, one of the investigators
essentially described it as a kind of artifact shoplifting. Was
something done on impulse, and obviously something he came to regret.
I think the irony really is the fact that Anthony,
(10:38):
when he was charged with a crime, was charged with
violating the American Antiquities Act in nineteen o six, which
is basically a law stating that, hey, you know, he
can't steal government property items of this sort artifacts. The
president who signed the American Antiquities Act until law, Theodore Roosevelt.
(11:05):
We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another
bonus episode of History Versus History Versus is hosted by
Me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by me, with
fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Lowe Berlante.
(11:26):
If you want to find out more about this episode
and Theodore Roosevelt, visit Mental Flaws dot com. Slash History
Versus History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio
and Mental Flaws. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(11:49):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.