Sunken treasure? Is part of $17M Selby gold loot at bottom of the bay?

"I committed the greatest robbery of the century and I did it alone."

So bragged Jack Winters, a.k.a. Buck Taylor, after he stole gold bullion worth $283,000 — the equivalent of about $17 million today — from the Selby Smelting Works in Contra Costa County on Aug. 5, 1901.

As it turned out, it was no idle boast. In terms of current dollars, Winters' heist was the biggest gold robbery in American history. Of course, for a robbery to be truly great, the thieves must get away with it, at least for a while.

Winters was pinched by the coppers within two days.

The Selby Smelting Works was located on the bay between Crockett and Rodeo. The smelter did a brisk business at the turn of the century converting gold ore — much of it from the Yukon — to bullion. It was once the largest gold, silver and lead refiner on the West Coast.

Early in August 1901, the smelter received a shipment of over a half ton of gold bullion. The massive shipment was too large to fit in the smelter's new vault, so some of the bars were placed in an old walk-in vault in the lead-smelting building. Three watchmen guarded the vault as 50 men worked the furnaces around the clock.

After more than six weeks of tunneling through dirt and the building's brick foundation, Winters, a former employee of Selby, finally reached the vault — an iron box 10 feet long by 5 feet wide by 6 feet tall. It took him all night to drill through the metal floor and open a hole, "the hardest work of my life," he said.

Drowned out by the ambient noise of the factory, the sound of his drilling went unnoticed. Once inside the vault, Winters immediately got to work hauling out the gold, bar by bar. He knew he was racing the clock.

"I made fourteen trips from my tunnel to the wharf where I lowered the bullion into the bay," Winters told reporters in an Aug. 12, 1901, Chronicle article. "I made a mark on the wharf where I dropped each bar, so that I could readily find them."

The Aug. 5, 1901, gold heist at the Selby smelter made headlines across the country. In today's currency, about $17 million in bullion was stolen. The Aug. 5, 1901, gold heist at the Selby smelter made headlines across the country. In today's currency, about $17 million in bullion was stolen. Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close Sunken treasure? Is part of $17M Selby gold loot at bottom of the bay? 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

By then dawn was breaking, and Winters was running out of time. He left behind $130,000 of gold, and in his haste, dropped two bars on the beach. Still, he was able to submerge more than $283,000 in bullion in the bay and make his getaway.

When Selby employees opened vault the next morning, they found the hole in the floor and almost 900 pounds of gold missing. No one suspected a one-man job: the prevailing theory was that a gang of crooks tunneled to the gold, hauled it through a railroad tunnel and loaded it on a boat moored in the bay off Vallejo Junction.

The daring heist made headlines across the country.

"In the history of crime this robbery will surmount all its predecessors. In conception, in design and in execution, it will stand as a landmark in criminology," gushed the San Francisco Call.

A.J. Ralston, the president of Selby Smelting, offered a $25,000 reward — an unprecedented amount at the time — for the capture of the thieves and the recovery of the gold.

Winters had already figured out how he was going to get away with his crime.

"I planned how I would get rid of the bullion without bringing suspicion on myself long before I committed the robbery," he said. "I planned to remove the gold from the bay a bar at a time. I had intended to melt the gold, to mix it with alloy, and to dispose of it in quantities that would bring me about $10,000. It would have been a very easy matter, at intervals of several months, to sell the gold at different places. I intended to take several years in disposing of the bullion."

There was only one problem. He had left his pistol and a package of tacks in his cabin about a quarter mile from the works, "which spoiled it all."

While it's not clear how he was implicated by those items, police and a private detective hired by the company — supposedly acting on a tip that Winters had been acting suspiciously — searched the cabin. They found the handgun, muddy clothing, shovels, a wheelbarrow and personal letters. The latter led officers to the home of Ida Spencer in San Rafael, where Winters was hiding out. He was arrested immediately.

Winters insisted detectives did not have "the dope on me" and that he had thrown the shovel he used to dig the tunnel in the bay. But after three days of constant interrogation by legendary San Francisco detective Isaiah Lees and his colleague John Seymour, Winters confessed and eventually told the gumshoes where he had dumped it in the bay.

Reports that Winters negotiated to be paid the $25,000 reward in return for leading the cops to the gold were denied, but the Chronicle reported that "ex-Chief of Police Lee (sic) did admit that certain concessions were made to him."

Seymour, quoted by Chronicle, gave a blunt assessment of the execution of the crime.

"Up to the time he secured the gold, [Winters] acted with wonderful clearness and nerve," he said. "The moment he fastened his hands on the bullion he acted like an idiot."

Winters pleaded guilty, and on Aug. 21, 1901, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was paroled after serving seven years.

And the gold?

By some reports, it was all recovered, mostly by divers who combed through the bay mud for the sunken bullion bars.

Treasure hunting sites, including Legends of America, naturally suggest otherwise, saying only part of the gold was fished out of the bay, not the full $283,000 worth, with the rest still buried under the bay muck.

A San Francisco Call article from Aug. 14, 1901, confuses the issue. It reported that one of the bullion bars found bore a mark that was not on the Selby list, which, it said, changed the total of Winters' loot to $320,000, not $283,000. Winters was accused of hiding about $50,000 in bullion in a place other than where the rest of the gold was found.

"It is believed by the detectives that Winters did not place all the gold bars in one spot," the Call reported. "The sleuths are of the opinion that Winters has hidden some of them on land and he (Chief Bookkeeper Arthur Beam) hopes to secure them in the future, at the same time accounting for the non-recovery of all the gold from the bay by the excuse that some of the bullion slipped down through the mud into deep water."

In the December 1920 edition of the Mining and Scientific Press, a W.A. Middleton of Martinez wrote in a letter to the publication that he was assistant to the head refiner of the Selby operation at the time of the Winters robbery:

"The gentleman who called at your office to ascertain where he could buy a divining rod to use in finding some gold buried near Vallejo is probably under the impression that the gold Winters stole from the Selby smelter several years ago was not entirely recovered and still lies buried near Vallejo. If this is his opinion, I can assure him that every ounce of gold bullion and four bars of refined gold were entirely recovered."

As proof, Middleton offered the account of "three divining-rod men" who two days after the robbery showed up the bank within 30 feet of where Winters threw the gold into the bay and brandished their witching rods. Despite several days of dowsing between the Selby plant and Vallejo, none of the men found any gold, and therefore could not claim the $25,000 reward, Middleton wrote.

Of course, dismissing claims that any unrecovered gold exists based on divining-rod performance is what one might expect from someone who doesn't want people snooping around the site. Maybe Mr. Middleton wanted whatever gold remained all to himself.

For more information about Jack Winters' daring heist, see the Contra Costa Historical Society's video "The Great Selby Gold Robbery."