Prison for Gold – The Weird Side of the Internet

Prison for Gold – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Gold. This brilliant, enduring metal, aside from being the economic bases of countries and kingdoms for millennia, has been at the heart of some of our culture’s favorite crime stories, and, if the devil in Georgia is to be believed, favorite fiddles. How many adventure stories involve a land or city of gold? What is it that dragons hoard? And every ring and every magic pendant, gold. People would do anything for ir.

But would they go to jail?

The obvious answer is yes. People would go to jail for it if they would kill for it, if they would get weird with a Klondike bar for it. But for 73 year-old treasure hunter Tommy Thompson, a prison sentence was worth holding on to a little missing gold – about $300 million dollars of it, in a week ago’s dollars; probably worth a couple mil today.

Three hundred mil of gold, and ten years in prison. And they asked, and they asked, and he knew what was up and just kept saying no. I bet he had one of two prison experiences; one, people believed him, and he was running a bank in there, living large, or nobody believed him, and he had to hunt for cigarettes for some much bigger dude named ‘Mo.’

He was a treasure hunter, so this was less like a dashing robbery, and more like a business dispute gone wrong. But I would definitely do ten years for that much gold.

Or would I?

You could get the gold at the end, sure, but you have to get to the end. And I’m sure I’d get people threatening me all over to tell them where it is. My fellow inmates wouldn’t admire my ssteadfastness. They’d sharpen the shanks.

So I’m not sure after all. Which is good, because I have no idea where any gold is.

 

 

 

More from Liam Sweeny…