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August 18, 2008

The Case of the Mummified Arm

Filed under: Mystery — anne @ 9:03 am

Here’s a detective story:

First the background: 60 years ago, a chartered Northwest Airlines plane left China and crashed into a mountain side in Alaska — and was never heard from again.

Well, that’s not quite true; back in 1999, a couple of Northwest pilots were intrigued by the story — oh, did I mention this?

The plane was thought to be carrying a load of gold.

Anyway, these modern day pilots decided to see if they could find the wreckage. They did find it. They didn’t find any gold, but they did find a mummified arm. It took 9-years of sleuthing, but experts eventually identified its owner — a 36 year old merchant marine named Francis Joseph Van Zandt. He and some of his fellow merchant marines had just delivered an oil tanker to Shanghai, and it was thought to have been paid for in gold.

If it was — the gold is still out there — somewhere. Any takers?

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