ASBURY PARK - Elaine Palmer nestled away 13 Civil War-era gold certificates, knowing at some point the antique money would be a safety net for her family.

Use them to fix up the family's Asbury Park home, Palmer told her granddaughter, Lisa Linder. It was supposed to provide stability for Linder and her adult daughter with special needs after Palmer died in 2004.

In reality, it wasn't that simple. The home, at 1602 Fourth Ave., was hoarded and had fallen into disrepair. By the time ownership transferred to her in 2012 after her mother died, Linder decided her only option was to sell the two-story colonial.

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She couldn't afford to fix it. She couldn't afford the taxes to hold onto it either. Plus, she planned to move to Florida where her lifelong best friend is a doctor.

Linder sold the home to Burke Development in the spring of 2013. That deal, she said, also included all of the items cluttered inside.

Unbeknownst to anyone, however, was that the gold certificates were in a safe that Linder didn't know sat in the basement.

And no one realized those certificates — four of which were sold at auction for nearly $3.5 million — would spark a years-long battle in Monmouth County criminal and civil courts that centers on one question.

Who owns the gold certificates found in an Asbury Park basement?

Jury selection is underway in the case of Keith Schaefer, who is accused of breaking into a safe and stealing the certificates, and Thomas Surina, a rare currency dealer who is accused of buying and then selling the certificates, even though he knew they were stolen.

And that criminal trial has to proceed before a civil case, which was first filed in 2014, can be heard. Burke Development, which owned the home as 1602 Fourth Ave LLC, and the estate of Elaine Palmer are suing Schaefer, Surina and Heritage Auction, a Dallas-based auction house that is believed to have sold the gold certificates.

Attorneys for Schaefer, Surina and Heritage Auction did not return calls for comment. The story of the gold certificates is based off interviews and court records filed in the civil case.

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Golden ticket

Gold certificates were created by federal lawmakers in 1863 as a way to accumulate gold coin in the U.S. Treasury during the Civil War when gold was scarce, according to the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Owners could deposit their gold with the treasury and get the certificate as record of their ownership.

While they weren't actually issued until after the Civil War, the gold certificates became easy ways for merchants and banks to move large sums of gold, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The gold certificates were taken out of circulation after the United States moved off the gold standard during the Great Depression. It became illegal for citizens to hold gold certificates for 30 years, until 1964 when collectors were allowed to trade them again.

The certificates found in Asbury Park were issued in 1882, the fourth of nine gold certificate series that the U.S. Treasury issued during the roughly 70 years they were in use.

The certificates can't be cashed in for gold now, but still can have significant value as a rare collectible.

A $500 gold certificate issued in 1882 — one that attorneys believe was among those found in Asbury Park — sold at an Orlando currency auction in January 2014 for more than $1.4 million.

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At that same auction, three more 1882 gold certificates believed to be those from Asbury Park sold. Each were $1,000 denominations. Two sold for $881,250 a piece while the remaining certificate sold for $293,750.

Less than a dozen of these certificates still exist, according to an interview Heritage Auction's director of currency Dustin Johnston gave Heritage Magazine for the Intelligent Collector in 2013 after the firm announced the auction of the four gold certificates.

"It's interesting to see how economic challenges created numismatic rarities, but it is odds-defying to see a new example turn up, let alone four," he told the magazine. "The notes in this collection are a once-in-a-generation discovery."

The house and everything inside

There were a couple of items Lisa Linder asked Keith Schaefer to keep an eye out for when she agreed to pay him $2,800 in spring 2013 to clean out the clutter so she could sell the house at 1602 Fourth Ave.

But when push came to shove, all Linder, 49, of Eatontown, really wanted were her family pictures. The only existing photo of Linder and her twin sister, who died in infancy, was in the house.

There would have been pictures and albums of her mother and her grandparents, all of whom are dead now. Linder and her daughter are the only living family members.

Soon after, Schaefer introduced Linder to the Burke brothers, who own and operate Burke Development LLC.

The brothers started Burke Development after superstorm Sandy when it flipped houses. Bill Burke, a stockbroker, is the company's president and finances. John Burke is the vice president and manages day-to-day operations.

Schaefer had done demolition work for John Burke on previous projects. Schaefer told John Burke about the house and Linder about a potential buyer.

Linder decided to sell for $34,000. The Burkes took over responsibility for the items still inside the house. John Burke said in court records he kept Schaefer on the job, paying him hourly to clean out the house. Schaefer also got a $2,000 finder fee.

Linder said she explained to Schaefer that all of the items belong to the Burkes. She couldn't give him permission to scrap items rather than throw them away.

John Burke said he told Schaefer all items in the house were to be thrown in the dumpster. If Schaefer wanted to keep something, John Burke was going to sign off on it first.

"I was thinking that if (Schaefer) found a toaster and he can sell it for five bucks, he could have the five bucks. If he found an encyclopedia that was worth 10 bucks to somebody, he could take the 10 bucks," he said.

But Schaefer was adamant in court records that all of the property in the house belonged to him. He claims Linder gave him everything, however he had nothing in writing saying so.

"John didn't have to give me permission to sell anything. It was my property," Schaefer said in court records.

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'Don't touch the safe'

It's not clear exactly who found the safe — both Schaefer and another worker claim in court records to have found the rusty 4-foot-by-4-foot safe — but John Burke said he was clear to Schaefer about what was to happen with it.

"When he told me about the safe, I said, 'Don't touch the safe, and I'll get somebody to open it up,'" he said.

But on a warm afternoon in May 2013, carpenters who were working to repair a detached two-car garage could hear banging noises coming from the basement of the Fourth Avenue home.

Court records show Schaefer and Justin Byers, a then-high school student helping on the clean out, took turns swinging small sledgehammers and prying with crowbars at the steel safe.

Byers said he didn't know John Burke said not to touch the safe. Schaefer had been telling Byers all along that everything in the house was his.

At first, the two men only found hundreds of canceled checks dated 1942 from Abrams & Son, a scrap metal company that operated in Neptune.

But Schaefer looked again into the safe. This time he found a little box with a false door. Thirteen tannish-gold pieces of paper were rolled up and clipped to the back of the wood door.

Aside from pinholes in the corners, the certificates, each more than a century old, were in good shape, the men said in court records.

Get into my truck, Schaefer told Byers. The two men drove to Antique Emporium on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park.

'What thief takes checks?'

Rudolph Valentino didn't know what he was looking at when Schaefer presented him with the gold certificates. Valentino, who owned the Antique Emporium before dying in 2017, assumed it was Confederate money.

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He pointed the men to Tom Surina, an antique currency dealer who happened to be working that day in his booth at the antique mall. After some negotiating, Schaefer agreed to sell Surina the certificates for $35,000 — paid in seven $5,000 checks.

But Valentino said his "Brooklyn instinct" told him something was off, according to a deposition he gave in December 2014. And he told Surina as much.

"I said to him, 'Tom, what makes you sure that these guys own these bills?' He said to me, he said they want to take checks for these bills. He said, 'What thief takes checks?'" Valentino said in court documents.

Byers went back to work cleaning out the house the next day. He said Schaefer pulled up in front of the house and handed Byers $2,500, saying the money came from John Burke as a thank you.

Schaefer said he gave Byers $1,200 to share in his windfall because the high school student had done a good job helping him. Schaefer said he never claimed the money came from Burke.

Byers said he continued working that week cleaning out the Fourth Avenue home by himself. But when the week ended, Byers didn't hear from Schaefer. Schaefer stopped showing up at work.

Byers said he was hoping to continue working and tried to text and call Schaefer to no avail. Thinking Schaefer's phone was broken, Byers showed up at Schaefer's home to ask if there was any more work.

Byers claimed Schaefer came out "ranting and raving." Schaefer said the money was his. Go ahead. Tell John, Byers said Schaefer told him.

Confused, Byers texted John Burke.

"I think I put, 'Hey, John, did Keith tell you what we found in the safe," Byers said.

John Burke called him immediately. He only knew about the canceled checks. The certificates weren't Schaefer's to sell, John Burke told Byers. They were stolen.

John Burke reported the alleged theft to Asbury Park Police Department in late May 2013. Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office charged Schaefer and Surina, and a grand jury indicted them in January 2016.

But in the interim, four gold certificates that the plaintiffs claim are the same as those found in an Asbury Park basement went up for auction.

Heritage Auction announced in June 2013, less than a month after the Asbury Park certificates were removed from the safe, it was putting up for auction four very rare gold certificates.

'I would have gotten them out'

Linder said she wasn't thinking of the gold certificates her grandmother had mentioned years earlier when she sold the house. When her mother told her they were in a safe, Linder assumed she meant a bank safe deposit box.

In fact, Linder said she didn't know the safe, which was tucked beneath stairs in the basement, existed. Linder said she was terrified of the basement in her grandmother's home. She avoided going down there. If she had to, she was running in and out.

"I would have gotten them out before I sold the house if I knew they were there. I would have gotten them way before," Linder said, according to court records.

The gold certificates, she said, would have allowed her to set up a trust fund that would provide for her daughter if anything happened to her.

But she believes that the gold certificates now belong to the Burkes. She sold everything inside 1602 Fourth Ave. to them. That included the safe and the certificates, she said.

The Burkes, however, have agreed to share some of the gold certificates' value with Linder if they every recoup them.

Ultimately, all Linder recovered from the house was a ceramic turtle that belong to her grandmother. The family pictures and the albums were all thrown away.

Susanne Cervenka covers Monmouth County government and property tax issues, winning several state and regional awards for her work. She's covered local government for 15 years, with stops in Ohio and Florida before arriving in New Jersey in 2013. Contact her at @scervenka; 732-643-4229; scervenka@gannettnj.com