Written by If I missed a scene let me know!
Transcript Of Justin’s comments in Episode 1
Intro: Three million
At about 2:00 minutes: I wanted to let you know. I’ve hidden some clues in that interview setup.
Interviewer: Oh.
Justin: Within all the spaces you guys have filmed in my house.
Interviewer: Clues to what?
Justin. Well, I’m planning on hiding a treasure.
Interviewer: What treasure?
Justin: Well, hopefully, Forrest’s
At about 22:40
In the early days of the treasure hunt, it was the true American adventure… — pets dog — …and it was a beacon of… of hope for so many people, and that’s something that is exceedingly hard to come by in the modern era, is and adventure with (exaggerated hand movements) hopes and dreams.
man: This is fun (As justin walks to clock, This was most likely not originally intended to be in the documentary as the man spoke, but added later due to act of Justin moving the clock arms)
Justin: (As Justin is adjusting arms of the clock) I think, especially to those that knew me pretty well, It was not a surprise that I for wrapped up in the treasure hunt. Most of my family and friends would categorize me as eccentric.
Man: You ready?
Justin: Ready as I’ll ever be.
I have a huge variety of hobbies, uh, and I have a lot of different things that interest me. (location changes to a garage setting) From woodworking to titanium anodizing in the garage (scene changes to Justin sitting at a desk – appears to be soldering led type lights) to just a little experiment around near-infrared wavelengths as a way to create, (angle changes to focus on Justin’s face) x-ray vision, effectively, (scene changes to Just at computer desk with code on a screens and video playing on another) to software engineering, which is my main gig. And a bit of rare-artifact collecting. This is a project I’m working on. (Possibly referring to the treasure hunt) These are actually coins that I’ve gathered from all around the world and from different eras. This one, I think, is pretty special. A 1652 oak-tree shilling. The currency that helped form us, America. I was always really into history. I think that’s something I got from my family. So I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. My grandfather was the fish-and-game warden up in Montana, Wyoming, that whole area.(series of images of Justin’s youth show on screen) I spent a lot of summers up there myself. And my grandfather taught me to get out and explore and camp, hike, all of those things. I got a metal detector, and I must’ve put thousands of hours on that thing. I strongly believe that treasures can and do exist. (video of younger Justin start playing)
That’s been true since I was a kid.
Younger Justin: Happy birthday, love Grandma and Grandpa.
Unidentified voices: Nice and That’s nice
Young Justin: Oh! Guess what it is!
Man: I don’t have a clue.
boy 2: It’s all fisherman.
boy 1: Gold! I told you.
boy 2: Gold books!(Justin holds up two books Unreadable Tombstone and Dutchman’s Gold)
Current Justin: I became the family’s resident treasure hunter. I think the Victorio Peak treasure was the catalyst. You know, at its core, it was just such a cool story. In the ’90s, that treasure hunt was a pretty big deal. It’s like every kid’s most amazing dream ever. Stumbling upon a cavern with that sort of fortune. Who wouldn’t want that? Like who wouldn’t wanna be Indiana Jones? He enters this cave, and he’s going into this room with this idol in the center and swiping it. I mean, fortune and glory. (fortune and glory is said with a little more emphasis and hand gestures, a smile and slight recognition in his eyes before looking away) And so then jump to years later, when I first heard about the Forrest Fenn treasure, it really reignited that spark from my childhood. This was like a needle in a football field. I was ten inches by ten inches by five inches in the vast Rocky Mountain wilderness. I felt myself getting more interested. I think it’s fair to say that, at some point, the treasure hunt culminated into something more that a hobby. I’m still doing my work professionally and everything. Mornings, evenings, weekends, I’m doing treasure hunting. When the hunt started, we had very little to go off of. There was always that thought in the back of my mind that it was buried. If something’s buried, the odds are astronomically low that you’d ever succeed in finding it. I realized that a; bit of scientific process was needed In order to have any sort of chance at finding this. I had read this article that most dogs can detect different precious metals six-plus feet down. My thought was I could train Tucker to specifically sniff out bronze, because the treasure chest is bronze. So we gave it a shot. At first, it was just treats. And then it was treats plus pieces of bronze. And the big switch happened where I removed the treats entirely, and it was just bronze. And I think what we discovered pretty quickly is that he could smell bronze at least four feet down. and that was more than enough. I had an unparalleled level of confidence.
Justin speaking to Tucker: We’re gonna find it. Yeah, we’re gonna find it, It’s gonna take some time,
Justin: After Tucker did a pass, I never had to go back. So now that we had a secret weapon, the next question was where do we start? You know, you gotta… you gotta start at the beginning. You start “where warm waters halt,” and that kicks off the adventure. There was so many different interpretations of “where warm waters halt,” (scene changes to Justin in a garage or workshop) The first time that I went out searching for the treasure, I had done a lot of research ahead of time. I would scour all the Rocky Mountains for place names that would resemble anything kinda warm. What warms the water? Well, the sun. Or, more specifically, the sunlight. So I found Sunlight Basin in Wyoming. And we had sunlight Creek that comes off the mountain, and it ends at Dead Indian Pass. So the warm water halts as those two come together. The cherry on top, in the summertime, the snow melts, and an X appears on the side of the mountain, like, at least 100 by 100 feet, just… (sputters) If we “take it in the canyon down,” well, in Sunlight Basin, there’s Sunlight Gorge. A gorge is a canyon. That’s the solution to the second clue. So that was going to be our starting point. What’s the third clue? “Not far, but too far to walk.” There’s some place you need to go that isn’t far, but you can’t walk it.
Man in video: There we go
Justin: And so I found the only place in Cody that would rent ATVs.
Brief sections of videos from other searchers –
Around 30:30 back to Justin
Justin: “Home of Brown” was hard. I couldn’t figure it out, and it just so happened, as you traverse Sunlight Basin, you can’t help but pass by the JD Salinger ranch. (Scene changes to Justin in a room) Forrest talked about Catcher in the Rye in his book. Several times, he talked about Catcher in the Rye. Publisher for Salinger was Little, Brown and Company. So as far as I was concerned, Salinger Ranch is the home of Brown, right? I mean, how fitting. It’s like, okay, from here, “It’s no place for the meek.”
Man In video: I guess I’ll turn it off. (turn off ATV)
Current Justin: So you go off into the woods. Like, you gotta be brave.
Man in video: Whoa, there’s a bear. For reals.
Justin in video: Shit
Woman in video: We gotta go.
Justin in video: Just keep talking in a low voice. Get your bear sprays at the ready.
Current Justin: Everything started lining up even stronger and stronger, and then you get “The end is ever drawing nigh,”
Man in video: Make sure you keep your eyes open. Anywhere through here is fair game.
Current Justin: It’s somewhere in this immediate vicinity.
Goes to other searchers
Back to Justin about 37:30 in the garage or workshop
Justin: I think he just reveled in saying things that could be interpreted in any number of ways. It was fun for him. It was a game. But it’s also, like, really serious. The stakes were extremely high, and searchers were doing anything they could to give themselves an edge. I was still looking for a new way through the poem, so I was paying close attention to everything Forrest was saying. There were thousands of solutions that I considered.
Man in a video: Let’s look at this.
Current Justin: Over the years, I searched Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and I realized over time the poem could be made to fit a plethora of locations. Hundreds and hundreds of days searching, and it just wasn’t working.
Justin in video: Didn’t sleep well last night.
Current Justin: I was very sleep-deprived. There has to be a different way of approaching this. This trial and error… just doesn’t work. (Scene change to another room) And thus the idea was born of using facial recognition, where you could actually look at all the interviews that Forrest did and analyze those. There’s a series of what’s called micro-expressions or action units that form. There’s relative eyebrow movement, Pursed lips, parted lips, and I’m jus scratching the surface. If you can unlock for a person a set of micro-expressions that indicate something suspicious, that’s gold. There was a Lorene Mills interview that happened early in the chase. There were a few times during that interview where the micro-expressions strongly suggested a fear response. That happened when Forrest was asked something about Yellowstone. After I created that software, I had a strong belief that the treasure was located in the Yellowstone National Park.
Goes through other searchers. Returns to Justin briefly at around 52:16
Justin: How do you come back from losing a life? And that’s… that’s the crux of this. It’s a double-edged sword. I certainly couldn’t fault him for ending it based o how things had transpired. Uh, it was… He was really stuck between a rock and a hard place. He really was.
Several rapid scenes of other searchers, Justin returns briefly at about 53:25
Justin: I had this driving obsession to find this before anyone else.
Few more rapid scenes , the Just returns about 53:49
Justin: The treasure hunt was like someone offering you a ticket and saying, “You wanna take the ride?” I took the ticket. My advice is, if someone gives you a ticket to ride, you take the ride.