February 7, 2024 • 46 mins
When a teenage astronomy fan is gifted a piece of the moon by NASA, he’s inadvertently pulled into the seedy underground moonrock trade. But don’t worry. With help from H. Ross Perot, NASA secret agents are on the case.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's December nineteen seventy two. Canadian Jamie Matthews, age fourteen,
is sitting comfortably in his airplane seat. It's his first
trip away from home. Jamie's first love is astronomy, and
astronomy has earned him the trip of a lifetime. He's
(00:28):
been to the White House, to NASA's Mission control in Texas,
to the United Nations, and now he's returning home. But
there's a problem, and no it's not the airline food.
Someone is threatening to kidnap Jamie because he has a rock,
(00:50):
and not just any rock, a moon rock, one retrieved
by an astronaut two hundred and forty thousand miles from Earth.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This is your captain speaking, Jamie Matthews. Please come to
the front of the plane. Jamie Matthews to the front
of the plane. Two scary men are here to pick
you up. I repeat, two very serious looking men are
here to take you away.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Jamie takes some tentative steps forward. He's just landed in Detroit.
Two adults in dark suits meet him on the tarmac.
Now these men are not the kidnappers. They're from the
United States Secret Service. They explain to Jamie what's happening.
His parents back in Canada received an alarming phone call
(01:43):
threatening his safety all because of this rock. They want
to escort him to the Canadian border just to be safe.
Because the moon rock isn't exactly a souvenir, it's one
of the most rare and valueable materials on Earth. It
could be worth millions. To Jamie, it's worth even more.
(02:08):
But what the kidnappers don't know is that Jamie doesn't
have it, not yet anyway, but he will. And the
men who called Jamie's parents, they're not the only ones
who want a piece of the moon. Welcome to very
(02:28):
special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz,
and this is Operation Lunar Eclipse. Okay, so you know
how like when kids are like five or six, they
have like hyper fixations. I feel like it's like dinosaurs,
(02:49):
it's like trucks. For me, it was like Greek mythology.
But I feel like for some kids it's also space.
Were you a space kid, Jason or Zarin?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Oh, you're a space kid completely.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I'm still mad that they took planetary status away from Pluto.
I'm one of those space kids.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh my weird. I mean not weird at all. My
like space connection is. I grew up in the suburbs
of Chicago, and when I was in high school, every
Sunday I would drive down to the Adler Planetarium and
volunteer all Sunday to like teach kids science and space demonstrations.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Oh wow, I love you for that. That is awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It was so cool because it's like every kid, I
mean I was not every kid. I as a dork,
loved museums and this idea that I had like a badge,
and I could, like I knew the code to like
get backstage at the museum.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
It was the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
You're a museum insider.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I was a museum insider.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I don't mean to like, you know, big time you
because I'm a huge celebrity.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, no, I understand. I mean you can brag on that.
That's worth it. Sometimes you got a flex on us.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
I taught them about the Moon mission.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I taught them about gravity, but I had no idea
about like the legality of buying and owning lunar rocks.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
They don't want you to know that that's what it is.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Those kids couldn't handle that.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, we're it's all hidden from all of us.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
All right, Well, do you guys want to hear a
story about stealing moonrocks and they the black market for
illegal moon rock commerce.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I am buckled up and ready, Jason, you let's blast
off it.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
Do some kind of countdown now, just let's just go
to the episode.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
For a kid super into astronomy. Jamie Matthews had more
run ins with the law than you might have expected,
not because he was breaking the law, but because police
kept finding him alone in the middle of the night
when he was just eight years old in the last
place you'd expect.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
My parents were not rich, and we had a house
that was close to the cemetery, and so that was
the best place to look at the stars.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
At night, That's Jamie.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
So occasionally the police would come back by and see
this guy. And they would come and see a guy
with a telescope, and so they got me home. I said, yo,
I knew who I was.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
As a kid.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He lived in Chatham, Ontario. It's rural with lots of
farms and lots of stargazing. As an only child, his parents,
Jim and June, bought him a telescope, which Jamie took
to the darkest part of the neighborhood, the graveyard. There
he found ink, black skies, and a galaxy to explore.
(05:44):
Jamie isn't sure where his love of science came from.
His parents were blue collar workers. Neither was a college graduate,
but they recognized their son had a fascination, so they
nourished it any chance they could.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
First memory was at two, looking at the stars, and
from then on I was totally gone with the stars.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Of course, they all watched as Neil Armstrong took Mankind's
first steps on the Moon during the Apollo eleven mission
in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 8 (06:22):
Paul for Man arm By a faf for man.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Everyone remembers that it was a monumental milestone of the
twentieth century, but people tend to forget how quickly the
world moved on, how easily the impossible became routine. NASA
continued to visit the Moon in future Apollo missions, six
(06:52):
of them in all, but each time public interest fell off.
By the time of the Apollo seventeen mission in December
nineteen seventy two, NASA had decided this would be the
last mission for at least a decade to commemorate it.
NASA and the US State Department sponsored what they called
(07:14):
the International Youth Science Tour. It worked like this, Every
country in the UN was invited to send a youth
representative to watch the final Moon mission. Kids aged fifteen
to seventeen were eligible. They'd see everything from the launch
(07:35):
at Kennedy Space Center to the splashdown on TV from
UN headquarters in New York City. The seventeen day trip
would also include Disneyland, and the kids would get something
else besides a front row seat to a Moon mission.
NASA was arranging for each kid to receive a piece.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
Of Moon rock.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They would present it to their country as a good
will gesture from the United States to the world. Gathering
moonrocks was a priority of the Apollo missions. The samples
revealed clues about the age of the Moon and how
it might have been formed. A Moon rock was one
sentence or a sentence fragment in the story of our galaxy.
(08:25):
For Jamie, the chance to hold the rock in his
hand would come later. For now, his objective was seeing
a rocket launch, which was plenty exciting. Canada's Youth Science
Foundation organized an essay contest the topic. The importance of
space exploration to humanity. I mean, obviously two thousand words
(08:49):
in which Jamie brought forth a passionate argument for reaching
the stars and beyond. He and a friend both entered,
both sent their essays off, and then they waited. In
November nineteen seventy two, Jamie received a letter from the
(09:09):
US embassy in Ottawa. There were a few words on
the page, but Jamie just focused on one of them, congratulations.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
It said You're.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Going to the United States. It was somewhat bittersweet. Jamie
winning meant his friend didn't. There was another wrinkle. Remember
that the contest was only open to kids between fifteen
and seventeen. Jamie was thirteen. He lied about his age
when he submitted his essay.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
They found out a little bit before I got there,
but because there are other things that I had to do,
and I guess finally I said that how old I was.
They didn't like it, but by that time it was
too late, so I got to go.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Jamie had just turned fourteen, so they let it slide. Still,
he was the youngest of the eighty kids from around
the world who would see Apollo seventeen touched down on
the Moon. His parents naturally were thrilled.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Oh, they loved it, so they thought it was wonderful
for me.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
The International Youth Science Tours first stop was in Washington,
d C. Where a chartered plane delivered an assembly of
students to the current president, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon was
a proponent of the space program. He had arranged for
moon rock samples to be dispensed from the Apollo eleven
(10:41):
mission and was doing the same for Apollo seventeen. Jamie
met Nixon, but the President didn't leave much of an impression.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
To be honest, I don't remember anything that he did.
I remember shaking his hand, and that's about all I know.
I know, to be honest, that that time. To me,
it was just another guy. So there were other more
people later that I liked, but Nixon nah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
When the tour moved to Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
Jamie was put in a hotel room next to the
man he really wanted to meet, the first human on
the moon.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
We were in a hotel with Neil Armstrong, and in
fact I with Neil Armstrong. His wife and his kids
were in the pool together for the entire afternoon, and
so I got to do Marco Polo with the man
that went on the Moon. There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
All of them went to Kennedy Space Center for the
launch of Apollo seventeen. This launch was notable not only
for being the last manned Moon mission, but the first
Saturn five rocket to take off.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
At night one zero.
Speaker 8 (12:01):
We have a lift dog.
Speaker 7 (12:02):
It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
The Battern five is moving off the pad. It lifted
off at mid nate and so it was like the
sun rose. It was really amazing. It really was amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Jamie and the others were situated about three miles from
the Saturn rocket. That may not sound close, but consider
that three miles was roughly the distance any shrapnel would
be able to travel in the event the rocket blew up.
Speaker 8 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Yeah, In fact, it's really loud, but also so loud
that all of your body is shaking at the time.
It's it's really loud. But it was wonderful. It really was.
I had not known what it would be like, and
no one else will ever see it again, so it
(12:53):
was wonderful for me.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Later, Jamie went to mission control at the Manned Spacecraft
in Houston, which is now named for Lyndon Johnson. You've
seen it or a version of it in practically every
movie ever made about space travel. Lots of guys with
flat buzz cuts and short sleeve shirts, sweating over every switch,
flipped and root to the moon. But Jamie got to
(13:19):
see the real thing in person on a screen. Astronauts
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt traversed the lunar surface. Cernan
was the commander, Schmidt the co pilot, and the only
trained geologist to ever visit the Moon.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
There mark gravity okay down to get to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Work, the men leapt between boulders the size of U
haul trailers in the Moon's Taurus litro valley. They rode
a lunar rover over uneven terrain and they chipped away rock,
coming away with one sample, in particular the size of
(14:04):
a brick. But it was when Eugene Sernon spoke to
the camera that the Youth Tour really began to perk up.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
During the moonwalks, we were there at mission control and
then on the last moonwalk just before they left the moon, Sunan,
who was the captain, and Smith, who was the other
person on the moon. They got a big rock, and
they brought it to the camera and said, this is
(14:36):
for you, this is for us. They said, when they
gets back to Earth, they'll you get it into small
places and each of us will get one.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And we did so.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Yeah, the Moon Rock was what we're getting that. It
was wonderful, It really was.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Here's what Eugene Cernan said to the kids that.
Speaker 8 (14:59):
Day, when we return this rock. Are some of the
others like it? The Houston, we'd like to share a
piece of this rock, but so many of the countries
throughout the world. We hope that this will be a
symbol of what our feelings are, what the feelings of
the Apollo program are, and a symbol of mankind that
(15:21):
we can live in peace and harmony in the future.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The tour wound down after that, Jamie and the others
watched on TV from the United Nations Building as the
capsule splashed down, and soon Jamie was headed back home
to be escorted to the Canadian border by Secret Service agents.
But Jamie wasn't yet in possession of the rock.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
No well, because it was on the moot, So they
had to wait until they got back and then they
had this right get into little pieces and then each
one was not in a peaks of plastic. And then
it got to me like in a month or so,
so somebody had held them and said that they were
(16:10):
going to kidnap me and the rock, even though it
wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
The police guarded his house for a few months afterward.
Eventually they grew satisfied that the kidnapping threat against Jamie
would never materialize. This isn't a story, by the way,
about a young Canadian science enthusiast getting kidnapped, but that
young Canadian moonrock. The brick sized moonrock would be analyzed
(16:38):
by NASA scientists before it was divvied up for one
hundred and thirty five countries plus every US state and territory.
A few weeks later, via special delivery, Canada's Peace arrived
on Jamie's front doorstep. The rock fragment was encased in looseight.
Below it was a Canadian flag which had been brought
(17:00):
to the Moon and back. The junior astronomer was in
possession of something very few civilians have ever seen up close,
a moon rock, a little over one gram in size.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
It was very dark. People don't realize that the moon
is really dark. We only see it because it's in
the sky at night. But if you look at it
without that, it reflects only about five six seven percent
of the light from the sun, so it's almost like carcoal.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Jamie didn't put it in a safety deposit box, nor
did he stick it anywhere for safe keeping. It went
in a shoe box under his bed, where it could
be periodically pulled out to show family or friends, or
just to stare at before going to bed. Once it
even wound up in the family car.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
It was in our car without theos locked at all
for about two hours, and it was just there. Somebody
could have done it.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But Jamie had been only a temporary custodian. The moondust
sprinkled over his life for a fleeting period of time.
In early nineteen seventy three, he got a notice it
was time to hand the moon Rock over to its
intended recipient, the country of Canada. During a ceremony at
(18:27):
Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Jamie dutifully but dolefully handed over
the rock to Roland Missioner, the Governor General. Because Canada
didn't want him to leave empty handed, they prepared a
gift for him in return.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
You know what I got in Retune. I got a
book called the Birds of Canada.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Did Canada confuse astronomy with ornithology? Jamie never found out
why he was given a book about birds. Maybe it's
all they had lying around. But Governor General Mishner was
not the final stop for the moon Rock. It was
given to the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa,
and for Jamie it was like being forced to put
(19:13):
it up for adoption. He agonized over the rocks well
being for.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
A few years. I didn't go and see it, but
I would call them occasionally and just say how is it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Then in nineteen seventy eight, Jamie made his customary call.
The museum had some bad news for Jamie.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
I called and it was gone and they said that
it was stolen, And I thought, jeez, if you could
have done that, I should have just kept it in
a jew box in my bed.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There was a reason the US government dispatched the Secret
Service to meet Jamie Matthews at the airport. Of course,
they were concerned for the welfare of a child on
a good will trip to improve foreign relations, but there
was another factor at play. Moon rocks are one of
the great black markets in the world. They're worth millions.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
This moon rock ended up in my pocket for almost
twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
That's Joseph Goudheims. Joseph has one heck of a resume.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
Started off as an Army aviator and intelligence officer and
went to work for the FA. I was recruited away
as a special agent, recruited away from the FA by
US Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. And then
I was recruited away from DOTIG by NASA Origent, where
(20:50):
I served for about ten years a loooover actually as
a senior special agent, which means I headed up task
force investigations.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's right, NASA has special agents. They're armed, they can
make arrests. They look into things like missing NASA property,
people pretending to be astronauts, and cybercrime. How this isn't
a CSI spin off yet is beyond me. But anyway,
In the late nineteen nineties, Joseph took note of the
(21:22):
fact that a number of the moon rocks gifted by
the United States to foreign governments couldn't be accounted for.
Some countries said they had no record of receiving them.
Others said they had been reported missing or stolen, and
sometimes Joseph would get word of a con man who
purported to have a moonrock for sale. Usually they didn't,
(21:47):
it would be a fake, like two brothers who insisted
their father had been given some moon rocks by astronaut
John Glenn. John Glenn was an astronaut, but he never
went to the Moon. For the most part, moon rocks
belong to NASA and the US government. Some have been
retrieved by Russia and China, and some lunar meteorites have
(22:11):
landed on Earth, but most moon samples were from the
Apollo missions. They can only be gifted or loaned out
by NASA. If anyone acquires an Apollo mission moonrock from
anyone other than NASA, well that would be wrong. It
would have to be offered, as in the case of
(22:33):
the Apollo eleven and seventeen missions.
Speaker 9 (22:36):
NASA takes the position, as does the United States, that
nobody can own a moon rock or duns. And so
we gifted to the nations the world one hundred and
thirty five Paull eleven moon rocks on a stand. And
we gifted to the nations of the world one hundred
(22:58):
and thirty five moon rocks on a plaque like this,
And essentially these were our way of saying, hey, look
all the members of the United Nations were all in
on this together. We may be sending the rockets to
and from the boon, but this is a global effort.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
There is one sort of exception.
Speaker 9 (23:18):
The astronauts when they came back from the boom.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
The moon isn't exactly a sterile working environment like coal miners,
astronauts can come home dirty.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
They were allowed to keep their gloves and patches, and
on the patches and gloves was lootered debris. And so
there was one astronaut that would actually bang on his
gloves and cut pieces of his pattions apart and put
him in painting city. And so essentially NASA ruled Okay,
(23:57):
we kind of gifted that away too.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
But for most people who haven't been blasted into space,
being in possession of a lunar rock is suspicious and
it didn't sit right with Joe.
Speaker 9 (24:12):
Risk to our astronauts. Remember we had astronauts guy in
practice and a follow one. These guys were risking their lives.
They got it, they accomplished something. The world united seeing
Gil Armstrong take that first step down the boom and
the idea that petty thugs would be stealing these moon
(24:33):
rocks for their own wealth something that I never could
understand and it seemed wrong. It's something that I wanted
to accomplish when I was an agent.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So in nineteen ninety eight, Joseph decided to take a
closer look at the illicit moon rock market. His idea
was incredibly simple. He would invite criminals to come to him.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
And essentially what we did was we put an ad
in USA today moon Rocks wanted with an astronaut jumping
on the moon, and I was looking for con artists
to approach me so that we could do the sting operation.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Moon Rocks wanted send asking price. What Joseph expected were
a series of calls from con artists, and he did
get some of those, but then he got a call
from someone named Alan.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
What we didn't expect guy by the name of Alan
Rosen to call me and say, hey, look, get all
those other guys that are calling you. That's bogus. You're
not you know, nobody's allowed to own a moon rock.
But guess what I've got and it's for sale. And
I said, what's the asking price? He said five billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Alan didn't sound like the others. For one thing, he
had proof he was in possession of a moon rock.
He sent Joseph ado of the very same plaque used
in the Goodwill Moonrock Tour, the wooden plaque with the
country's flag and Nixon's dedication. Alan, however, had taken one
(26:12):
measure to make a positive identification of which country it
was from a little more difficult.
Speaker 9 (26:19):
The center of the flag was blocked out, as was
the recipient country. We contacted one country after the next,
and we found out, guess what, nobody knows where their
moon rocks are. We gifted the moon rocks, and they
don't know where they are. Some thought they never even
received them.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Joseph later learned that the rock belonged to Honduras. So
began the plan for the world's first ever sting operation
to recover a stolen moonrock. But there was another problem.
Alan knew what he had was very rare and very valuable.
His asking price was five million dollars. In order to
(27:01):
provide Alan with proof of funds, Joe needed five million
dollars and Nasaid didn't pay him that well. So he
went to the FBI, who, according to Joseph, told him
they couldn't help. So he went to the CIA, and
they couldn't help either. Finally, Joseph called his father, a
(27:22):
former marine. His father didn't have the money, but he
had something more valuable, some fatherly advice. His dad told
him to make a phone call to one person in particular.
Speaker 9 (27:37):
And so what we did was we contacted the guy
by name of h Ross Brung, the billionaire who ran
for president nineteen ninety two, and got through to his
secretary and I said, hey, look, I need a need
a favor I'm looking for somebody. Can't really talk about it,
(27:58):
but if h Ross broke all life, I'll convey that
information to him.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
H Ross Proro was one of the great characters of
the nineteen nineties, an excitable Texas billionaire who ran for
president in nineteen ninety two as an independent. He got
almost twenty million votes and lost to Bill Clinton, but
that didn't affect his patriotism.
Speaker 9 (28:24):
Ten seconds later, the phone rings and h Ross pros
on the other side and he goes, hello, Joe, how
can I help you? I said, mister prow what we
need is five million dollars to get back a moon rock.
He goes no problem, and with the money in hand
(28:44):
and the bank willing to give a letter saying that
we had the money, and so forth we set up
staying at a bank in Miami where he had the
moon rock in a vault, and so we put in
an undercover agent in the bank to pretending be an
official that's going to photograph it.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Alan agreed to meet in Miami and have a bank
official photographed the moon rock so Joseph could verify that
Alan had it. Only the bank official was an undercover agent.
Joseph and his colleagues were waiting for Alan outside. It
turned out Alan had acquired the rock from Colonel Argucia Ugarte,
(29:28):
who claimed he'd been given it in the nineteen seventies
during political unrest in Honduras. Alan had agreed to buy
it for fifty thousand dollars. A judge had approved a
warrant to seize the rock, But now Joseph had to
get it back to NASA, which brings us back to
(29:48):
his pocket.
Speaker 9 (29:50):
And so I fly back from Miami to Houston, and
the boot rocks in my pocket, got a briefcase I've armed,
and the whole nine yards and what I was thinking was,
if someone's going to steal anything, they're going to steal
the briefcase. They're not going to steal what's in my pocket.
And so then we brought that back immediately to Space
(30:14):
Center's Lunar Lab, where it was tested.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
The sting, which was dubbed Operation Lunar Eclipse, was successful.
Alan Rosen tried to get the rock returned to him
in court, arguing he obtained it legally, but a judge
sided with NASA and ruled the rock had to be
forfeited to the US government. The Space Agency then returned
it to Honduras, but NASA didn't have the resources to
(30:42):
make a hunt for missing moon rocks an ongoing project.
When Joseph retired from the Space Agency in two thousand,
he decided to outsource the search to a group he
knew would be very devoted to the cause, his students
at the University of Phoenix.
Speaker 9 (30:59):
But again, NASA Office of Inspector General is very, very small.
We have under one hundred agents, and so I could
not sell them with the idea of expending resources to
look for moon rocks that we gifted away. And so
when I retired from NASA, i started telling my graduate
(31:24):
criminal justice graduate students, I've got this really great investigative
rill that i want you to go through. It's called
the Moon Rock Project. And here are all the moon
rocks that we're trying to account for all over the world.
I want you to go out and try to find it.
And what we did not realize at the time was
that so many were actually stolen and missing, and that
(31:46):
virtually no country had it in an inventory control system,
that even if they had it, they knew where they were.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Systematically, He and his students tried to chase down as
many leads as they could for the missing rock, which
turned up in some surprising places. The Apollo seventeen rock
gifted to Arkansas was found in the archives of former
Governor Bill Clinton. His predecessor, David Pryor, had received it
(32:14):
in nineteen seventy six, and it was probably just packed
up when Clinton lost reelection in nineteen eighty. He was
one of three governors who happened to be in possession
of a rock in Cyprus, the American ambassador had been assassinated.
A diplomat's relative grabbed the rock and held on to
(32:35):
it until she read about the missing rocks. In two
thousand and nine, some rocks were in storage, at least
one probably wound up in a landfill. Joseph and his
team found seventy eight of them, but many are still missing.
Speaker 9 (32:52):
And those are just and again one hundred and fifty
are missing. Some of the states are missing them, the
Orcs missing their Paul Levin. Delaware's missing their apoul eleven.
New Jersey's missing their Poulo seventeen, and a lot of
the nations the world are missing them. No doubt, there's
no doubt in my mind that there is a black market.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
But what about Canada's Goodwill Rock, the Jamie Matthews Rock.
By the time Joseph began his Moon Rock project in
two thousand and two, Jamie's rock had been missing for
well over two decades, and it carried a significant price tag.
Speaker 9 (33:31):
One of a kind and to a collector, that's in value.
When we in Operation Lunar Eclipse, and remember this goes
back sometime the seller Alan Rosen offered it to be
for five hundred dollars and I said, oh well, let
me research that and talk to you. And I talked
to some experts in Nassa. Prices that's what they said.
(33:55):
But along the lines of priceless, five million dollars could
be a re.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And as Jo's students began diving into the story, they
discovered something odd.
Speaker 9 (34:08):
In two thousand and two, they started finding the story
that he's recounting that it was stolen in nineteen seventy eight.
And I'm going to my students, I go, that's not acceptable.
It's not acceptable that you're getting a story that says
it was stolen. Where's the police report, where's the newspaper stories.
(34:30):
You know, this is a piece of Canadian history and
NASA history. Where is the trail? And so they kept
cracking it.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
There was no police report and no news stories. Jamie's
Moonrock was nowhere. For years afterward, Jamie had kept on
calling the museum asking if the Moonrock had reappeared.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
I kept calling back like every year to find out,
and they said, we don't know. And finally, after like
ten years, I just said, Okay, it's never gonna get back.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
The nineteen seventies turned into the nineteen eighties. Jamie attended
the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.
He got a job. He sometimes forgot about the rock
the nineteen eighties turned into the nineteen nineties and then
the two thousands. When something is missing for decades, the
(35:31):
odds of ever finding it again are slim. The moon
Rock had officially wound up on the proverbial milk carton.
Then one day in two thousand and eight, Jamie decided
to use the single best investigative tool of them all, Google.
(36:01):
In two thousand and eight, Jamie wasn't really looking for
the rock fragment, but for the rock itself. He was
hoping to find a picture of the larger piece, the
one the astronauts of Apollo seventeen had returned to Earth
with before it was segmented into smaller sections. But when
he tried googling, he found something else instead.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
And I wanted to get a thing before it was
gotten into all those passes, so the big thing the
first time. So I was looking there, I figured somebody
must have it, and then I found my thing.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
What Jamie found was a photo of a man holding
his moon rock, really Canada's moon rock, but still it
was on the plaque. The digital photo had a visible
watermark with the date. The photo was from two thousand,
eight years prior. Jamie was able to trace the origin
(36:58):
of the photo to a storage facility in Aylmer, Quebec,
one that belonged to the museum. He phoned the curator and.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
I said, wait what And so I looked and I
found out that it was in a warehouse in a
place in Quebec for thirty five years and nobody knows
how it got there. But as soon as I knew it,
I called the curator and I said, hey, you've got
(37:31):
my room rock. It took me a while to say
because he didn't believe me at first.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
As more of the story came out, it seemed increasingly
unlikely the rock had ever been stolen. The museum had
no record of a theft, Joseph Goudheinz had never found
a police report. More than likely it had been clinton
and misplaced for decades. Here's Joseph Goodheinz again.
Speaker 9 (38:03):
What my guess is, and only having dealt with these
all over the world is because nobody accounted for these
that after they were done with their lou tour, they
they said, okay, where do we put them over in
storage over here? They did and it was sort of
like you know in box three thousand and five, who knows,
(38:27):
But they just lost bracket it over the decades.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
But why had the museum told Jamie the rock had
been stolen instead of misplaced?
Speaker 6 (38:39):
And nobody knows how it got there. So it's a
little bit like Indiana Jones at the Last movie, except
for me. It's like Indiana Jamie and the Lost Run Rock.
It was just there and nobody knows how it got there.
Nobody knows because if you go back to that time,
nobody is around anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Maybe they simply wanted him to stop calling. But there's
another wrinkle to the story. Remember that Joseph and his
graduate students were looking into the rock as early as
two thousand and two. Jamie found the photo in two
thousand and eight.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
My students actually tracked it down in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Then, according to Joseph, his students had actually located the
rock five years earlier, in two thousand and three in Aylmer,
not through Google.
Speaker 5 (39:29):
But through detective work.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
They called every museum and museum associated building in the area.
The problem was, no one told Jamie.
Speaker 9 (39:39):
Well, here's the thing, He's not wrong two thousand. He
probably did discover it two thousand and eight because the
problem with that Boon Rock is. It was never into
an inventory control system, and maybe there was somebody that
discovered it nineteen ninety five, but to discover it, there
(39:59):
it is, and then you forget about it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Jamie didn't realize they had it until two thousand and eight,
and it wasn't until two thousand and nine when Boy
and Rock were reunited. The National Museum of Natural Sciences
now known as the Canadian Museum of Nature wasn't able
to put the Moon Rock back on display, so it
went to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa
(40:26):
on loan. There, Jamie was able to see it for
the first time in over thirty years. Fittingly, it was
the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing. Canada's
goodwill Moon Rock is now with the Canadian Museum of Nature,
where it periodically goes on display. The rock's journey had
(40:48):
been a little murky. Jamie's wasn't. A love of astronomy
turned into a love of astrophysics. He became doctor Jamie
Matthews and then Professor Jamie Matthews, an astrophysicist at the
University of British Columbia, where he measures the vibrations of
stars too far away to be seen by a telescope
(41:11):
on Earth, not even a telescope in a cemetery. A
stroke has resulted in some expressive aphasia, a little trouble
finding words, but it hasn't slowed his work.
Speaker 5 (41:23):
Or his love for it.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Bearing witness to the Apollo seventeen mission, caring for a
piece of lunar rock set him on a path for life.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
Oh no, it was really good for me. So after
this I did lots of things after that with space
and astronomy and so on. So no, this was like,
come on, how many people have their own moonlock? I mean,
it's wonderful for me, and so that will always be
(41:55):
one of the things that I'll like is the fact
that I actually am had a real moon rock. And
so yeah, I couldn't expect anything more than that, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
There was a study released in late twenty twenty three
the Apollo seventeen lunar lander module, which was left behind
on the Moon, may be causing tiny moonquakes small changes
to the lunar surface from the materials expanding and contracting
with temperature changes. But Apollo seventeen has been causing those
(42:31):
tremors For a long time. The mission reverberated through dozens
of teenagers who were invited to witness history in nineteen
seventy two, Through people like Joseph Goodheitz, who want to
protect the legacy of those missions, missions that were only
possible because astronauts sacrificed themselves in our pursuit of lofty goals,
(42:55):
And through Jamie Matthews, who for a brief time owned
a tiny piece of it all and got a book
about birds in return.
Speaker 6 (43:05):
And I still have it, of course, So no, now
it's it really is nice for me, But at the
time it was like birds.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Nah, okay, I have to feel like coming back that.
Playing Marco Polo with Neil Armstrong is like maybe the
biggest flex of all time.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh are you kidding me? He touched the moon? You
got touch him playing Marco Polo. I mean, not to
be weird about it, but you're like, Neil Boom got you.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
He touched the moon and so if you touched him,
it's like you've touched the moon.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, it's like two degrees of Kevin Bacon but the moon.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
And in that story he just casually mentions like, oh, Yeah,
I met Richard Nixon, but nah didn't do anything for him.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yeah, so good.
Speaker 6 (43:50):
I love Jamie.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I have to say, though, like living in LA and
like pitching TV constantly, you're always like talking to network
executives who are just like we're looking for like the
next procedural we really want, just like a crime procedural.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
And I'm like, where is NASA's Special Agents? Where's that show?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I mean that is like CBS written all over it.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
Oh God, right CSI, NASA?
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 9 (44:13):
Now?
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Did you guys have a very special character of this
episode that was your favorite?
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Do you have one that just jumped out for you? Hmm?
Speaker 7 (44:19):
Jason, I was thinking about going with Neil Armstrong and
his wife and kids splashing around the pool, which.
Speaker 6 (44:26):
Just was a cool cameo.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
But did we just talked about Neil?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I actually think the very special character in this episode
is me, Dana Schwartz, the volunteer at the Adler Planetarium,
tangentially related to the story, just devoted to educating the
next generation of space loving kids.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Actually, I have a different character.
Speaker 6 (44:47):
Let me just is it awesome? Me?
Speaker 7 (44:51):
How about the guy at the museum who, after fielding
these calls for several years, just decides like, I know
how to put an end to this.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
This.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
I'll tell him it's stolen. What a great way to
get someone off your back.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yeah, that is one hundred percent a great way to
get someone off your back. In fact, I think I've
done that. They're like, oh, I don't know where it
is your carb has stolen? Man to stop calling me now, Dan,
I gotta say, in all honesty, you were also my
favorite Special Episode characters. So I don't know what you
know why Jason was thinking, but I went with you too.
Speaker 5 (45:23):
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (45:25):
Top five, Top five.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, come on, volunteers. We got to support the volunteers.
Do it for love.
Speaker 7 (45:34):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our producer, editor
and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Additional editing by John Washington,
Mixing and mastering by Behead Fraser. Very Special Episodes is
hosted by Danis Schwartz, Sarah Burnette and me Jason English.
(45:58):
Original music by Lise McCoy. Our story editor is Marisa Brown.
Research in fact checking by Marissa Brown Austin Thompson and
Jake Rawson. Show logo by Lucy Kntania. Our executive producer
is me Jason English. Go to see you back here
next week after our first Very Special field trip Very
(46:22):
Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
It's December nineteen seventy two. Canadian Jamie Matthews, age fourteen,
is sitting comfortably in his airplane seat. It's his first
trip away from home. Jamie's first love is astronomy, and
astronomy has earned him the trip of a lifetime. He's
(00:28):
been to the White House, to NASA's Mission control in Texas,
to the United Nations, and now he's returning home. But
there's a problem, and no it's not the airline food.
Someone is threatening to kidnap Jamie because he has a rock,
(00:50):
and not just any rock, a moon rock, one retrieved
by an astronaut two hundred and forty thousand miles from Earth.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This is your captain speaking, Jamie Matthews. Please come to
the front of the plane. Jamie Matthews to the front
of the plane. Two scary men are here to pick
you up. I repeat, two very serious looking men are
here to take you away.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Jamie takes some tentative steps forward. He's just landed in Detroit.
Two adults in dark suits meet him on the tarmac.
Now these men are not the kidnappers. They're from the
United States Secret Service. They explain to Jamie what's happening.
His parents back in Canada received an alarming phone call
(01:43):
threatening his safety all because of this rock. They want
to escort him to the Canadian border just to be safe.
Because the moon rock isn't exactly a souvenir, it's one
of the most rare and valueable materials on Earth. It
could be worth millions. To Jamie, it's worth even more.
(02:08):
But what the kidnappers don't know is that Jamie doesn't
have it, not yet anyway, but he will. And the
men who called Jamie's parents, they're not the only ones
who want a piece of the moon. Welcome to very
(02:28):
special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz,
and this is Operation Lunar Eclipse. Okay, so you know
how like when kids are like five or six, they
have like hyper fixations. I feel like it's like dinosaurs,
(02:49):
it's like trucks. For me, it was like Greek mythology.
But I feel like for some kids it's also space.
Were you a space kid, Jason or Zarin?
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Oh, you're a space kid completely.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
I'm still mad that they took planetary status away from Pluto.
I'm one of those space kids.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Oh my weird. I mean not weird at all. My
like space connection is. I grew up in the suburbs
of Chicago, and when I was in high school, every
Sunday I would drive down to the Adler Planetarium and
volunteer all Sunday to like teach kids science and space demonstrations.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Oh wow, I love you for that. That is awesome.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It was so cool because it's like every kid, I
mean I was not every kid. I as a dork,
loved museums and this idea that I had like a badge,
and I could, like I knew the code to like
get backstage at the museum.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
It was the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
You're a museum insider.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
I was a museum insider.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
I don't mean to like, you know, big time you
because I'm a huge celebrity.
Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, no, I understand. I mean you can brag on that.
That's worth it. Sometimes you got a flex on us.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
I taught them about the Moon mission.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I taught them about gravity, but I had no idea
about like the legality of buying and owning lunar rocks.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
They don't want you to know that that's what it is.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Those kids couldn't handle that.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, we're it's all hidden from all of us.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
All right, Well, do you guys want to hear a
story about stealing moonrocks and they the black market for
illegal moon rock commerce.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I am buckled up and ready, Jason, you let's blast
off it.
Speaker 7 (04:15):
Do some kind of countdown now, just let's just go
to the episode.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
For a kid super into astronomy. Jamie Matthews had more
run ins with the law than you might have expected,
not because he was breaking the law, but because police
kept finding him alone in the middle of the night
when he was just eight years old in the last
place you'd expect.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
My parents were not rich, and we had a house
that was close to the cemetery, and so that was
the best place to look at the stars.
Speaker 5 (05:00):
At night, That's Jamie.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
So occasionally the police would come back by and see
this guy. And they would come and see a guy
with a telescope, and so they got me home. I said, yo,
I knew who I was.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
As a kid.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He lived in Chatham, Ontario. It's rural with lots of
farms and lots of stargazing. As an only child, his parents,
Jim and June, bought him a telescope, which Jamie took
to the darkest part of the neighborhood, the graveyard. There
he found ink, black skies, and a galaxy to explore.
(05:44):
Jamie isn't sure where his love of science came from.
His parents were blue collar workers. Neither was a college graduate,
but they recognized their son had a fascination, so they
nourished it any chance they could.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
First memory was at two, looking at the stars, and
from then on I was totally gone with the stars.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Of course, they all watched as Neil Armstrong took Mankind's
first steps on the Moon during the Apollo eleven mission
in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 8 (06:22):
Paul for Man arm By a faf for man.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Everyone remembers that it was a monumental milestone of the
twentieth century, but people tend to forget how quickly the
world moved on, how easily the impossible became routine. NASA
continued to visit the Moon in future Apollo missions, six
(06:52):
of them in all, but each time public interest fell off.
By the time of the Apollo seventeen mission in December
nineteen seventy two, NASA had decided this would be the
last mission for at least a decade to commemorate it.
NASA and the US State Department sponsored what they called
(07:14):
the International Youth Science Tour. It worked like this, Every
country in the UN was invited to send a youth
representative to watch the final Moon mission. Kids aged fifteen
to seventeen were eligible. They'd see everything from the launch
(07:35):
at Kennedy Space Center to the splashdown on TV from
UN headquarters in New York City. The seventeen day trip
would also include Disneyland, and the kids would get something
else besides a front row seat to a Moon mission.
NASA was arranging for each kid to receive a piece.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
Of Moon rock.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
They would present it to their country as a good
will gesture from the United States to the world. Gathering
moonrocks was a priority of the Apollo missions. The samples
revealed clues about the age of the Moon and how
it might have been formed. A Moon rock was one
sentence or a sentence fragment in the story of our galaxy.
(08:25):
For Jamie, the chance to hold the rock in his
hand would come later. For now, his objective was seeing
a rocket launch, which was plenty exciting. Canada's Youth Science
Foundation organized an essay contest the topic. The importance of
space exploration to humanity. I mean, obviously two thousand words
(08:49):
in which Jamie brought forth a passionate argument for reaching
the stars and beyond. He and a friend both entered,
both sent their essays off, and then they waited. In
November nineteen seventy two, Jamie received a letter from the
(09:09):
US embassy in Ottawa. There were a few words on
the page, but Jamie just focused on one of them, congratulations.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
It said You're.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Going to the United States. It was somewhat bittersweet. Jamie
winning meant his friend didn't. There was another wrinkle. Remember
that the contest was only open to kids between fifteen
and seventeen. Jamie was thirteen. He lied about his age
when he submitted his essay.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
They found out a little bit before I got there,
but because there are other things that I had to do,
and I guess finally I said that how old I was.
They didn't like it, but by that time it was
too late, so I got to go.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Jamie had just turned fourteen, so they let it slide. Still,
he was the youngest of the eighty kids from around
the world who would see Apollo seventeen touched down on
the Moon. His parents naturally were thrilled.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
Oh, they loved it, so they thought it was wonderful
for me.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
The International Youth Science Tours first stop was in Washington,
d C. Where a chartered plane delivered an assembly of
students to the current president, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon was
a proponent of the space program. He had arranged for
moon rock samples to be dispensed from the Apollo eleven
(10:41):
mission and was doing the same for Apollo seventeen. Jamie
met Nixon, but the President didn't leave much of an impression.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
To be honest, I don't remember anything that he did.
I remember shaking his hand, and that's about all I know.
I know, to be honest, that that time. To me,
it was just another guy. So there were other more
people later that I liked, but Nixon nah.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
When the tour moved to Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
Jamie was put in a hotel room next to the
man he really wanted to meet, the first human on
the moon.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
We were in a hotel with Neil Armstrong, and in
fact I with Neil Armstrong. His wife and his kids
were in the pool together for the entire afternoon, and
so I got to do Marco Polo with the man
that went on the Moon. There you go.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
All of them went to Kennedy Space Center for the
launch of Apollo seventeen. This launch was notable not only
for being the last manned Moon mission, but the first
Saturn five rocket to take off.
Speaker 6 (11:59):
At night one zero.
Speaker 8 (12:01):
We have a lift dog.
Speaker 7 (12:02):
It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
The Battern five is moving off the pad. It lifted
off at mid nate and so it was like the
sun rose. It was really amazing. It really was amazing.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Jamie and the others were situated about three miles from
the Saturn rocket. That may not sound close, but consider
that three miles was roughly the distance any shrapnel would
be able to travel in the event the rocket blew up.
Speaker 8 (12:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Yeah, In fact, it's really loud, but also so loud
that all of your body is shaking at the time.
It's it's really loud. But it was wonderful. It really was.
I had not known what it would be like, and
no one else will ever see it again, so it
(12:53):
was wonderful for me.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Later, Jamie went to mission control at the Manned Spacecraft
in Houston, which is now named for Lyndon Johnson. You've
seen it or a version of it in practically every
movie ever made about space travel. Lots of guys with
flat buzz cuts and short sleeve shirts, sweating over every switch,
flipped and root to the moon. But Jamie got to
(13:19):
see the real thing in person on a screen. Astronauts
Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt traversed the lunar surface. Cernan
was the commander, Schmidt the co pilot, and the only
trained geologist to ever visit the Moon.
Speaker 8 (13:35):
There mark gravity okay down to get to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Work, the men leapt between boulders the size of U
haul trailers in the Moon's Taurus litro valley. They rode
a lunar rover over uneven terrain and they chipped away rock,
coming away with one sample, in particular the size of
(14:04):
a brick. But it was when Eugene Sernon spoke to
the camera that the Youth Tour really began to perk up.
Speaker 6 (14:13):
During the moonwalks, we were there at mission control and
then on the last moonwalk just before they left the moon, Sunan,
who was the captain, and Smith, who was the other
person on the moon. They got a big rock, and
they brought it to the camera and said, this is
(14:36):
for you, this is for us. They said, when they
gets back to Earth, they'll you get it into small
places and each of us will get one.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
And we did so.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Yeah, the Moon Rock was what we're getting that. It
was wonderful, It really was.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Here's what Eugene Cernan said to the kids that.
Speaker 8 (14:59):
Day, when we return this rock. Are some of the
others like it? The Houston, we'd like to share a
piece of this rock, but so many of the countries
throughout the world. We hope that this will be a
symbol of what our feelings are, what the feelings of
the Apollo program are, and a symbol of mankind that
(15:21):
we can live in peace and harmony in the future.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
The tour wound down after that, Jamie and the others
watched on TV from the United Nations Building as the
capsule splashed down, and soon Jamie was headed back home
to be escorted to the Canadian border by Secret Service agents.
But Jamie wasn't yet in possession of the rock.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
No well, because it was on the moot, So they
had to wait until they got back and then they
had this right get into little pieces and then each
one was not in a peaks of plastic. And then
it got to me like in a month or so,
so somebody had held them and said that they were
(16:10):
going to kidnap me and the rock, even though it
wasn't there.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
The police guarded his house for a few months afterward.
Eventually they grew satisfied that the kidnapping threat against Jamie
would never materialize. This isn't a story, by the way,
about a young Canadian science enthusiast getting kidnapped, but that
young Canadian moonrock. The brick sized moonrock would be analyzed
(16:38):
by NASA scientists before it was divvied up for one
hundred and thirty five countries plus every US state and territory.
A few weeks later, via special delivery, Canada's Peace arrived
on Jamie's front doorstep. The rock fragment was encased in looseight.
Below it was a Canadian flag which had been brought
(17:00):
to the Moon and back. The junior astronomer was in
possession of something very few civilians have ever seen up close,
a moon rock, a little over one gram in size.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
It was very dark. People don't realize that the moon
is really dark. We only see it because it's in
the sky at night. But if you look at it
without that, it reflects only about five six seven percent
of the light from the sun, so it's almost like carcoal.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Jamie didn't put it in a safety deposit box, nor
did he stick it anywhere for safe keeping. It went
in a shoe box under his bed, where it could
be periodically pulled out to show family or friends, or
just to stare at before going to bed. Once it
even wound up in the family car.
Speaker 6 (17:57):
It was in our car without theos locked at all
for about two hours, and it was just there. Somebody
could have done it.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
But Jamie had been only a temporary custodian. The moondust
sprinkled over his life for a fleeting period of time.
In early nineteen seventy three, he got a notice it
was time to hand the moon Rock over to its
intended recipient, the country of Canada. During a ceremony at
(18:27):
Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Jamie dutifully but dolefully handed over
the rock to Roland Missioner, the Governor General. Because Canada
didn't want him to leave empty handed, they prepared a
gift for him in return.
Speaker 6 (18:43):
You know what I got in Retune. I got a
book called the Birds of Canada.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Did Canada confuse astronomy with ornithology? Jamie never found out
why he was given a book about birds. Maybe it's
all they had lying around. But Governor General Mishner was
not the final stop for the moon Rock. It was
given to the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa,
and for Jamie it was like being forced to put
(19:13):
it up for adoption. He agonized over the rocks well
being for.
Speaker 6 (19:18):
A few years. I didn't go and see it, but
I would call them occasionally and just say how is it.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Then in nineteen seventy eight, Jamie made his customary call.
The museum had some bad news for Jamie.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
I called and it was gone and they said that
it was stolen, And I thought, jeez, if you could
have done that, I should have just kept it in
a jew box in my bed.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There was a reason the US government dispatched the Secret
Service to meet Jamie Matthews at the airport. Of course,
they were concerned for the welfare of a child on
a good will trip to improve foreign relations, but there
was another factor at play. Moon rocks are one of
the great black markets in the world. They're worth millions.
Speaker 9 (20:18):
This moon rock ended up in my pocket for almost
twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
That's Joseph Goudheims. Joseph has one heck of a resume.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
Started off as an Army aviator and intelligence officer and
went to work for the FA. I was recruited away
as a special agent, recruited away from the FA by
US Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. And then
I was recruited away from DOTIG by NASA Origent, where
(20:50):
I served for about ten years a loooover actually as
a senior special agent, which means I headed up task
force investigations.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
That's right, NASA has special agents. They're armed, they can
make arrests. They look into things like missing NASA property,
people pretending to be astronauts, and cybercrime. How this isn't
a CSI spin off yet is beyond me. But anyway,
In the late nineteen nineties, Joseph took note of the
(21:22):
fact that a number of the moon rocks gifted by
the United States to foreign governments couldn't be accounted for.
Some countries said they had no record of receiving them.
Others said they had been reported missing or stolen, and
sometimes Joseph would get word of a con man who
purported to have a moonrock for sale. Usually they didn't,
(21:47):
it would be a fake, like two brothers who insisted
their father had been given some moon rocks by astronaut
John Glenn. John Glenn was an astronaut, but he never
went to the Moon. For the most part, moon rocks
belong to NASA and the US government. Some have been
retrieved by Russia and China, and some lunar meteorites have
(22:11):
landed on Earth, but most moon samples were from the
Apollo missions. They can only be gifted or loaned out
by NASA. If anyone acquires an Apollo mission moonrock from
anyone other than NASA, well that would be wrong. It
would have to be offered, as in the case of
(22:33):
the Apollo eleven and seventeen missions.
Speaker 9 (22:36):
NASA takes the position, as does the United States, that
nobody can own a moon rock or duns. And so
we gifted to the nations the world one hundred and
thirty five Paull eleven moon rocks on a stand. And
we gifted to the nations of the world one hundred
(22:58):
and thirty five moon rocks on a plaque like this,
And essentially these were our way of saying, hey, look
all the members of the United Nations were all in
on this together. We may be sending the rockets to
and from the boon, but this is a global effort.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
There is one sort of exception.
Speaker 9 (23:18):
The astronauts when they came back from the boom.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
The moon isn't exactly a sterile working environment like coal miners,
astronauts can come home dirty.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
They were allowed to keep their gloves and patches, and
on the patches and gloves was lootered debris. And so
there was one astronaut that would actually bang on his
gloves and cut pieces of his pattions apart and put
him in painting city. And so essentially NASA ruled Okay,
(23:57):
we kind of gifted that away too.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
But for most people who haven't been blasted into space,
being in possession of a lunar rock is suspicious and
it didn't sit right with Joe.
Speaker 9 (24:12):
Risk to our astronauts. Remember we had astronauts guy in
practice and a follow one. These guys were risking their lives.
They got it, they accomplished something. The world united seeing
Gil Armstrong take that first step down the boom and
the idea that petty thugs would be stealing these moon
(24:33):
rocks for their own wealth something that I never could
understand and it seemed wrong. It's something that I wanted
to accomplish when I was an agent.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
So in nineteen ninety eight, Joseph decided to take a
closer look at the illicit moon rock market. His idea
was incredibly simple. He would invite criminals to come to him.
Speaker 9 (24:58):
And essentially what we did was we put an ad
in USA today moon Rocks wanted with an astronaut jumping
on the moon, and I was looking for con artists
to approach me so that we could do the sting operation.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Moon Rocks wanted send asking price. What Joseph expected were
a series of calls from con artists, and he did
get some of those, but then he got a call
from someone named Alan.
Speaker 9 (25:30):
What we didn't expect guy by the name of Alan
Rosen to call me and say, hey, look, get all
those other guys that are calling you. That's bogus. You're
not you know, nobody's allowed to own a moon rock.
But guess what I've got and it's for sale. And
I said, what's the asking price? He said five billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Alan didn't sound like the others. For one thing, he
had proof he was in possession of a moon rock.
He sent Joseph ado of the very same plaque used
in the Goodwill Moonrock Tour, the wooden plaque with the
country's flag and Nixon's dedication. Alan, however, had taken one
(26:12):
measure to make a positive identification of which country it
was from a little more difficult.
Speaker 9 (26:19):
The center of the flag was blocked out, as was
the recipient country. We contacted one country after the next,
and we found out, guess what, nobody knows where their
moon rocks are. We gifted the moon rocks, and they
don't know where they are. Some thought they never even
received them.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Joseph later learned that the rock belonged to Honduras. So
began the plan for the world's first ever sting operation
to recover a stolen moonrock. But there was another problem.
Alan knew what he had was very rare and very valuable.
His asking price was five million dollars. In order to
(27:01):
provide Alan with proof of funds, Joe needed five million
dollars and Nasaid didn't pay him that well. So he
went to the FBI, who, according to Joseph, told him
they couldn't help. So he went to the CIA, and
they couldn't help either. Finally, Joseph called his father, a
(27:22):
former marine. His father didn't have the money, but he
had something more valuable, some fatherly advice. His dad told
him to make a phone call to one person in particular.
Speaker 9 (27:37):
And so what we did was we contacted the guy
by name of h Ross Brung, the billionaire who ran
for president nineteen ninety two, and got through to his
secretary and I said, hey, look, I need a need
a favor I'm looking for somebody. Can't really talk about it,
(27:58):
but if h Ross broke all life, I'll convey that
information to him.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
H Ross Proro was one of the great characters of
the nineteen nineties, an excitable Texas billionaire who ran for
president in nineteen ninety two as an independent. He got
almost twenty million votes and lost to Bill Clinton, but
that didn't affect his patriotism.
Speaker 9 (28:24):
Ten seconds later, the phone rings and h Ross pros
on the other side and he goes, hello, Joe, how
can I help you? I said, mister prow what we
need is five million dollars to get back a moon rock.
He goes no problem, and with the money in hand
(28:44):
and the bank willing to give a letter saying that
we had the money, and so forth we set up
staying at a bank in Miami where he had the
moon rock in a vault, and so we put in
an undercover agent in the bank to pretending be an
official that's going to photograph it.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Alan agreed to meet in Miami and have a bank
official photographed the moon rock so Joseph could verify that
Alan had it. Only the bank official was an undercover agent.
Joseph and his colleagues were waiting for Alan outside. It
turned out Alan had acquired the rock from Colonel Argucia Ugarte,
(29:28):
who claimed he'd been given it in the nineteen seventies
during political unrest in Honduras. Alan had agreed to buy
it for fifty thousand dollars. A judge had approved a
warrant to seize the rock, But now Joseph had to
get it back to NASA, which brings us back to
(29:48):
his pocket.
Speaker 9 (29:50):
And so I fly back from Miami to Houston, and
the boot rocks in my pocket, got a briefcase I've armed,
and the whole nine yards and what I was thinking was,
if someone's going to steal anything, they're going to steal
the briefcase. They're not going to steal what's in my pocket.
And so then we brought that back immediately to Space
(30:14):
Center's Lunar Lab, where it was tested.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
The sting, which was dubbed Operation Lunar Eclipse, was successful.
Alan Rosen tried to get the rock returned to him
in court, arguing he obtained it legally, but a judge
sided with NASA and ruled the rock had to be
forfeited to the US government. The Space Agency then returned
it to Honduras, but NASA didn't have the resources to
(30:42):
make a hunt for missing moon rocks an ongoing project.
When Joseph retired from the Space Agency in two thousand,
he decided to outsource the search to a group he
knew would be very devoted to the cause, his students
at the University of Phoenix.
Speaker 9 (30:59):
But again, NASA Office of Inspector General is very, very small.
We have under one hundred agents, and so I could
not sell them with the idea of expending resources to
look for moon rocks that we gifted away. And so
when I retired from NASA, i started telling my graduate
(31:24):
criminal justice graduate students, I've got this really great investigative
rill that i want you to go through. It's called
the Moon Rock Project. And here are all the moon
rocks that we're trying to account for all over the world.
I want you to go out and try to find it.
And what we did not realize at the time was
that so many were actually stolen and missing, and that
(31:46):
virtually no country had it in an inventory control system,
that even if they had it, they knew where they were.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Systematically, He and his students tried to chase down as
many leads as they could for the missing rock, which
turned up in some surprising places. The Apollo seventeen rock
gifted to Arkansas was found in the archives of former
Governor Bill Clinton. His predecessor, David Pryor, had received it
(32:14):
in nineteen seventy six, and it was probably just packed
up when Clinton lost reelection in nineteen eighty. He was
one of three governors who happened to be in possession
of a rock in Cyprus, the American ambassador had been assassinated.
A diplomat's relative grabbed the rock and held on to
(32:35):
it until she read about the missing rocks. In two
thousand and nine, some rocks were in storage, at least
one probably wound up in a landfill. Joseph and his
team found seventy eight of them, but many are still missing.
Speaker 9 (32:52):
And those are just and again one hundred and fifty
are missing. Some of the states are missing them, the
Orcs missing their Paul Levin. Delaware's missing their apoul eleven.
New Jersey's missing their Poulo seventeen, and a lot of
the nations the world are missing them. No doubt, there's
no doubt in my mind that there is a black market.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
But what about Canada's Goodwill Rock, the Jamie Matthews Rock.
By the time Joseph began his Moon Rock project in
two thousand and two, Jamie's rock had been missing for
well over two decades, and it carried a significant price tag.
Speaker 9 (33:31):
One of a kind and to a collector, that's in value.
When we in Operation Lunar Eclipse, and remember this goes
back sometime the seller Alan Rosen offered it to be
for five hundred dollars and I said, oh well, let
me research that and talk to you. And I talked
to some experts in Nassa. Prices that's what they said.
(33:55):
But along the lines of priceless, five million dollars could
be a re.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
And as Jo's students began diving into the story, they
discovered something odd.
Speaker 9 (34:08):
In two thousand and two, they started finding the story
that he's recounting that it was stolen in nineteen seventy eight.
And I'm going to my students, I go, that's not acceptable.
It's not acceptable that you're getting a story that says
it was stolen. Where's the police report, where's the newspaper stories.
(34:30):
You know, this is a piece of Canadian history and
NASA history. Where is the trail? And so they kept
cracking it.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
There was no police report and no news stories. Jamie's
Moonrock was nowhere. For years afterward, Jamie had kept on
calling the museum asking if the Moonrock had reappeared.
Speaker 6 (34:55):
I kept calling back like every year to find out,
and they said, we don't know. And finally, after like
ten years, I just said, Okay, it's never gonna get back.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
The nineteen seventies turned into the nineteen eighties. Jamie attended
the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.
He got a job. He sometimes forgot about the rock
the nineteen eighties turned into the nineteen nineties and then
the two thousands. When something is missing for decades, the
(35:31):
odds of ever finding it again are slim. The moon
Rock had officially wound up on the proverbial milk carton.
Then one day in two thousand and eight, Jamie decided
to use the single best investigative tool of them all, Google.
(36:01):
In two thousand and eight, Jamie wasn't really looking for
the rock fragment, but for the rock itself. He was
hoping to find a picture of the larger piece, the
one the astronauts of Apollo seventeen had returned to Earth
with before it was segmented into smaller sections. But when
he tried googling, he found something else instead.
Speaker 6 (36:23):
And I wanted to get a thing before it was
gotten into all those passes, so the big thing the
first time. So I was looking there, I figured somebody
must have it, and then I found my thing.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
What Jamie found was a photo of a man holding
his moon rock, really Canada's moon rock, but still it
was on the plaque. The digital photo had a visible
watermark with the date. The photo was from two thousand,
eight years prior. Jamie was able to trace the origin
(36:58):
of the photo to a storage facility in Aylmer, Quebec,
one that belonged to the museum. He phoned the curator and.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
I said, wait what And so I looked and I
found out that it was in a warehouse in a
place in Quebec for thirty five years and nobody knows
how it got there. But as soon as I knew it,
I called the curator and I said, hey, you've got
(37:31):
my room rock. It took me a while to say
because he didn't believe me at first.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
As more of the story came out, it seemed increasingly
unlikely the rock had ever been stolen. The museum had
no record of a theft, Joseph Goudheinz had never found
a police report. More than likely it had been clinton
and misplaced for decades. Here's Joseph Goodheinz again.
Speaker 9 (38:03):
What my guess is, and only having dealt with these
all over the world is because nobody accounted for these
that after they were done with their lou tour, they
they said, okay, where do we put them over in
storage over here? They did and it was sort of
like you know in box three thousand and five, who knows,
(38:27):
But they just lost bracket it over the decades.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
But why had the museum told Jamie the rock had
been stolen instead of misplaced?
Speaker 6 (38:39):
And nobody knows how it got there. So it's a
little bit like Indiana Jones at the Last movie, except
for me. It's like Indiana Jamie and the Lost Run Rock.
It was just there and nobody knows how it got there.
Nobody knows because if you go back to that time,
nobody is around anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Maybe they simply wanted him to stop calling. But there's
another wrinkle to the story. Remember that Joseph and his
graduate students were looking into the rock as early as
two thousand and two. Jamie found the photo in two
thousand and eight.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
My students actually tracked it down in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Then, according to Joseph, his students had actually located the
rock five years earlier, in two thousand and three in Aylmer,
not through Google.
Speaker 5 (39:29):
But through detective work.
Speaker 1 (39:31):
They called every museum and museum associated building in the area.
The problem was, no one told Jamie.
Speaker 9 (39:39):
Well, here's the thing, He's not wrong two thousand. He
probably did discover it two thousand and eight because the
problem with that Boon Rock is. It was never into
an inventory control system, and maybe there was somebody that
discovered it nineteen ninety five, but to discover it, there
(39:59):
it is, and then you forget about it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Jamie didn't realize they had it until two thousand and eight,
and it wasn't until two thousand and nine when Boy
and Rock were reunited. The National Museum of Natural Sciences
now known as the Canadian Museum of Nature wasn't able
to put the Moon Rock back on display, so it
went to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa
(40:26):
on loan. There, Jamie was able to see it for
the first time in over thirty years. Fittingly, it was
the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing. Canada's
goodwill Moon Rock is now with the Canadian Museum of Nature,
where it periodically goes on display. The rock's journey had
(40:48):
been a little murky. Jamie's wasn't. A love of astronomy
turned into a love of astrophysics. He became doctor Jamie
Matthews and then Professor Jamie Matthews, an astrophysicist at the
University of British Columbia, where he measures the vibrations of
stars too far away to be seen by a telescope
(41:11):
on Earth, not even a telescope in a cemetery. A
stroke has resulted in some expressive aphasia, a little trouble
finding words, but it hasn't slowed his work.
Speaker 5 (41:23):
Or his love for it.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Bearing witness to the Apollo seventeen mission, caring for a
piece of lunar rock set him on a path for life.
Speaker 6 (41:34):
Oh no, it was really good for me. So after
this I did lots of things after that with space
and astronomy and so on. So no, this was like,
come on, how many people have their own moonlock? I mean,
it's wonderful for me, and so that will always be
(41:55):
one of the things that I'll like is the fact
that I actually am had a real moon rock. And
so yeah, I couldn't expect anything more than that, to
be honest.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
There was a study released in late twenty twenty three
the Apollo seventeen lunar lander module, which was left behind
on the Moon, may be causing tiny moonquakes small changes
to the lunar surface from the materials expanding and contracting
with temperature changes. But Apollo seventeen has been causing those
(42:31):
tremors For a long time. The mission reverberated through dozens
of teenagers who were invited to witness history in nineteen
seventy two, Through people like Joseph Goodheitz, who want to
protect the legacy of those missions, missions that were only
possible because astronauts sacrificed themselves in our pursuit of lofty goals,
(42:55):
And through Jamie Matthews, who for a brief time owned
a tiny piece of it all and got a book
about birds in return.
Speaker 6 (43:05):
And I still have it, of course, So no, now
it's it really is nice for me, But at the
time it was like birds.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Nah, okay, I have to feel like coming back that.
Playing Marco Polo with Neil Armstrong is like maybe the
biggest flex of all time.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Oh are you kidding me? He touched the moon? You
got touch him playing Marco Polo. I mean, not to
be weird about it, but you're like, Neil Boom got you.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
He touched the moon and so if you touched him,
it's like you've touched the moon.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
Yeah, it's like two degrees of Kevin Bacon but the moon.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
And in that story he just casually mentions like, oh, Yeah,
I met Richard Nixon, but nah didn't do anything for him.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yeah, so good.
Speaker 6 (43:50):
I love Jamie.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
I have to say, though, like living in LA and
like pitching TV constantly, you're always like talking to network
executives who are just like we're looking for like the
next procedural we really want, just like a crime procedural.
Speaker 5 (44:02):
And I'm like, where is NASA's Special Agents? Where's that show?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
I mean that is like CBS written all over it.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
Oh God, right CSI, NASA?
Speaker 3 (44:12):
Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 9 (44:13):
Now?
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Did you guys have a very special character of this
episode that was your favorite?
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Do you have one that just jumped out for you? Hmm?
Speaker 7 (44:19):
Jason, I was thinking about going with Neil Armstrong and
his wife and kids splashing around the pool, which.
Speaker 6 (44:26):
Just was a cool cameo.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
But did we just talked about Neil?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I actually think the very special character in this episode
is me, Dana Schwartz, the volunteer at the Adler Planetarium,
tangentially related to the story, just devoted to educating the
next generation of space loving kids.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Actually, I have a different character.
Speaker 6 (44:47):
Let me just is it awesome? Me?
Speaker 7 (44:51):
How about the guy at the museum who, after fielding
these calls for several years, just decides like, I know
how to put an end to this.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
This.
Speaker 7 (45:00):
I'll tell him it's stolen. What a great way to
get someone off your back.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yeah, that is one hundred percent a great way to
get someone off your back. In fact, I think I've
done that. They're like, oh, I don't know where it
is your carb has stolen? Man to stop calling me now, Dan,
I gotta say, in all honesty, you were also my
favorite Special Episode characters. So I don't know what you
know why Jason was thinking, but I went with you too.
Speaker 5 (45:23):
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 6 (45:25):
Top five, Top five.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, come on, volunteers. We got to support the volunteers.
Do it for love.
Speaker 7 (45:34):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
This episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our producer, editor
and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Additional editing by John Washington,
Mixing and mastering by Behead Fraser. Very Special Episodes is
hosted by Danis Schwartz, Sarah Burnette and me Jason English.
(45:58):
Original music by Lise McCoy. Our story editor is Marisa Brown.
Research in fact checking by Marissa Brown Austin Thompson and
Jake Rawson. Show logo by Lucy Kntania. Our executive producer
is me Jason English. Go to see you back here
next week after our first Very Special field trip Very
(46:22):
Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
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