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hi I'm Charlie LeSueur we're and I'm host of Mysteries of the Superstition
Mountains and we're going to take you up into those mountains come the fall but
right now we're going to be telling some of the great stories with people like
Larry Hedrick Hank Scheffer and some of the legendary people who have actually
been up in those mountains so join us right here for those tales and mysteries
of the Superstition Mountains let me tell you why I'm here we're here because
we're talking about the Superstition Mountain is what we're talking about
they've been people coming out here for years and years and years for different
reasons they're all looking for gold or looking for wealth looking for treasure
or whatever that might be I came out for much the same reason
but my reason was a
little more focused on the history rather than the gold itself I've never
really put too much credence in the gold itself I've seen it I've seen gold from
lots of different places none of its shiny and pretty out of the ground.
As they think but my story started when I was 14 as a trumpet player and I met a
fella by the name of Rafael Mendez who was the virtuoso he was the guy he was
the best that was on the planet
I was fortunate enough to meet him and talk to
him one time at a concert
and what was interesting was we talked about music
for a little bit but then we started talking about his heritage because I was
young I'd started it I just turned 14 he had played somewhere
around that age his family became friends with Pancho Villa
They were a musical family and Pancho Villa took a shine to
young cornet player named Raphael and he became Pancho Villa's bugler
he traveled the family traveled
but then Pancho Villa traveled with him. what we talked about
after talking about music and trumpet things was the old days the gold the.. the
people, Pancho Villa, the histories and we won't go into that because it's it's
quite extensive
with all the regimes that Mexico went through.
many of the people that he mentioned came about later on a
television show that I saw the names were Peralta, Gonzalez of course Pancho Villa
his gold was is now supposed to be over in New Mexico he his head was
missing but his body is buried with the gold wherever that is
but the Peralta's and the Gonzalez now all of a sudden I come to find out the
Peralta's were of if you will an aristocracy in Mexico City.
Gonzalez was
actually Gonzalez and Peralta are like Smith and Jones
they're very prevalent you find them everywhere I've got a great analogy for
that but we'll let that go but at any rate we now have Pancho Villa raiding ah..
into the United States not only in Texas but also in Arizona there are there are
stories that his people came across here supposedly from some pretty reputable
sources there were pictures I saw some of the pictures where they were actually
shot is hard to say when you have a close frame in a picture you can't tell
where it was shot but supposedly some of the Pancho Villa people were on this mountain
so anyway he's raising havoc. there are maps and one of the fellows
who gets a map lo and behold is Adolf Ruth and he gets the
Gonzales maps
and that's because he is part of a..
massacre that took place here
on the mountain where the Peralta's were supposedly getting gold before
the United States took over this property
so now we have the link from me talking to
a Mexican trumpet player through Gonzales through Adolf Ruth we're back
up to gold Ruth is looking for gold whether it's Peralta gold or what later
became part of...
the... let's say the legendary history
Jacob Waltz
Jacob Waltz is a guy who gets here in much of what was going on through what I
just told you was through the late 1800s into the early 1900s we have Adolf Ruth
now going up into the mountain in 1931 he is one of the first who winds up dead
and he has a bullet hole in his head he died of natural causes he gets shot in
the head and naturally died that's just the way that goes
so for me
so for me the intrigue
was in how did all these things come together what created why were these
things created that we call legends and Jacob Waltz, this... this little old guy who
comes over on a boat to get away from all the history that was going on in
Germany and the French Revolutions and all that we won't go there so now we
have this guy and I'm wondering why is he so important why is he why is he the
guy that finds all this gold and nobody else has.
if it's that problem and it's
that rich they said they found $16,000 with a rich gold ore in a candle box
under his bed when he died
now if we look back at the time
and you figure out how much gold was worth when he died in 1891 sixteen thousand dollars
of rich gold ore not rich gold, rich gold ore has to be a pile of gold the size of
Cincinnati that's quite a bit the way I look at it
but be that as it may he
always did have gold he was seen down on in the little Baro
of Washington or Washington the street he'd go to the bars he always had a poke of gold
I never believed that he found that gold himself my thoughts were that
he was part of
how can I say it
he was part of the scheme to make Arizona
become a state
you need to have population in a territory to become a
state California proved it worked with the 49ers and after that happened with
that Gold Rush and all that who struck gold. it only took them six months to
write their constitution and become a state California was a state.
I honestly believe that the politics played a great, great measure in the
story of Jacob Waltz whether he was a dupe. I don't know he could have been a
drunk for all I know. he had money all we know is that supposedly he killed all
these people which nobody knew anything about they just said he killed all these people.
and if I can interject right there there's been a bugbear there that
really bothers me we have a guy who supposedly kills 27 people that nobody
know and he knows anything about population of Phoenix was somewhere over
400 he didn't count Mexicans and he didn't count Indians in those days
So he killed 27 people of a population of 450 you can do the math and figure out that
percentage is that be like you going into Mesa with an ak-47 and a box of
ammunition and shooting 1700 people but nobody knows anything about it
we also at the same time we're talking to 1860 to 1880s late 1880s at the same time
that.. that was all going on there was a guy over in Europe who was killing
prostitutes he killed six or eight of them I forget what it was and we knew
everything about Jack the Ripper because we forget that at that time we had
telephones we had newspapers we had communication we know about those poor
ladies over there who were killed s 8,000 miles away but we don't know
anything about these 27 poor souls it's supposedly chase Jacob Waltz.
Thank you for joining us for this edition of Mysteries of the Superstition
Mountains and join us next time for some more great tales and remember we're
actually going to be going up there and we're going to be seen a lot of these
places so stick around we're just waiting for it to cool down a bit right
here on mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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