New Book Series, THE GOLD HOUSE, is Released

It was the 4th of July in 1948 when Doc Noss and a close friend stood in front of a drug store in Hot Springs, New Mexico to pose for a photograph. Nine months later an April 6, 1949 Las Cruces Sun-News article confirmed Doc was slain by his business partner, Charley Ryan, over a fortune in gold bars he and Ryan had planned to sell in Mexico. The gold came from a vast treasure trove Doc and Ova Noss had discovered on November 7, 1937. Authors John Clarence and Tom Whittle's painstaking research has captured the historic background of this amazing saga, a true story that has been featured in over 9,000 newspapers and other media coverage worldwide.

Ryan's murder trial began on May 25, 1949 in Las Cruces. Strangely, as authors Clarence and Whittle recount in The Gold House books, the presiding judge in Ryan's trial had a prior contractual business agreement with Doc to do the legal work Doc's Cheyenne Mining Company needed to remove and claim the treasure. Ryan's defense attorney, who handled Doc's personal and business affairs as well, was part of that agreement. Ryan was acquitted.

The authors allege the U.S. Government had presented Doc and Ova as con artists, but in November 1973 all doubts were dismissed that the treasure trove was a myth; Clarence and Whittle uncovered a well-guarded secret the U.S. Government protected and coveted. The authors allege that over the 1973 Thanksgiving weekend 37 tons of gold bullion was stolen from the Noss treasure by military personnel and others. That event, however, was not the only removal; over the years military officials and others had plundered the gold and denied its true discoverers any hope of recovering it and claiming ownership in a court of competent jurisdiction. The Gold House trilogy presents a December 13, 1973 FBI report that names a Washington D.C. attorney who reported the weekend theft to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army the day after the theft occurred. Clarence and Whittle allege that agreements to launder the cash from the sale of the gold were struck at an Albuquerque, New Mexico bank and that a subsequent agreement provided for a Washington D.C. bank to serve as escrowee for the funds; the bank was directly across the street from the Nixon White House.

Until these records were obtained, Terry Delonas, grandson of Doc and Ova Noss, had no proof of what he had long-suspected. He said in a recorded interview: "The research Mr. Clarence has done explains exactly why the government was afraid of a full excavation of the chambers beneath Victorio Peak."

"The Gold House takes the legend way beyond two earlier books, several 'Unsolved Mysteries'-style TV features, and countless magazine and newspaper articles done on Victorio Peak in the past 75 years. It's an outrageous tale to be sure, but then so was Watergate and the White House Plumbers' dirty tricks."--Orange County Register

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