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Tommy Thompson, a marine explorer who spent more than a decade in federal custody for refusing to reveal the location of a cache of gold coins from a historic shipwreck, has been released from prison.
Thompson, 73, was released from a correctional facility on Wednesday after a judge ruled that his continued arrest lacked “coercive power.”
For the better part of a decade, Thompson lived in prison, claiming memory loss about the whereabouts of the missing 500 gold coins found on the SS Central America, the “Golden Ship” that sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina.
“Your honor, I don’t know if we’ve been down this road before or not, but I don’t know where the gold is,” Thompson once told a judge in 2020. “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”
Tommy Thompson holds a $50 gold piece recovered from the SS Central America shipwreck, Nov. 1989. (Lon Horwedel/The Columbus Dispatch via AP, File) (Lon Horwedel/The Columbus Dispatch via AP, File)
SENTENCED IN PRISON JELLOWSTONE HUNRE TREASURE FOR BULLISHING A CEMETERY
Thompson’s downfall began long after his victory in 1988, when he used a robotic fortune teller to find gold on the Atlantic floor.
Although the discovery was a feat of engineering, it sparked a series of lawsuits against investors who financed the expedition and insurance companies claiming rights to the treasure.
Tommy Thompson, now 73, was jailed in 2015 after failing to disclose the whereabouts of the ship’s 500 gold coins. (Delaware County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
In 2012, after being ordered to appear in court to answer for the missing coins, worth about $2.5 million at the time, Thompson disappeared. He was arrested in 2015 by US Marshals at a Florida hotel, where he was staying as a fugitive under an alias.
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As of 2015, Thompson had been held for public contempt, facing a fine of $1,000 a day and jail until he “cleared” the contempt by cooperation. He kept insisting that the coins were kept at a company in Belize and that he had no records or memory of retrieving them.
Thompson remains incarcerated even though federal law generally limits prison terms for contempt of court to 18 months. In 2019, the appeals court rejected his appeal.
Although Thompson is now a free man, he remains under court supervision. His acquittal does not absolve him of the $3.3 million in fines collected, nor does it end lawsuits by investors who claim they were defrauded.
Dwight Manley of the California gold group examines a gold coin, recovered from the steamship SS Central America that went down in a storm in 1857 in the laboratory, January 23, 2018. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, file.)
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Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who bought and sold nearly all of the treasure, said Monday that Thompson paid a large price for what he said amounted to a business dispute.
“Going to prison for 10 years for a business dispute is not American,” Manley told the AP. “People kill people and get out in the middle of time.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
