America's Strangest History

In 1987 two men were arrested in Tallahassee with six children. Within days the evidence was seized, the headlines faded and the case all but disappeared. Decades later, declassified FBI documents and FOIA releases reopened the mystery: who were the Finders, who was Marion Pettie, and why did the story go silent?

On November 2, 2000, someone logged onto a small internet forum and described, in technical detail, a machine that could move a human being through time. Over four months and 151 posts he called himself John Titor, a soldier from 2036 sent back to retrieve a 1975 IBM 5100 with a hidden function almost nobody knew existed. Then he typed one last sentence and vanished. Four years later, an IBM engineer confirmed the hidden function was real.

In 1982 a twelve-year-old paperboy vanished from West Des Moines, Iowa. No body, no note. Four decades later the evidence points toward a hidden network behind legitimate institutions, with patterns that echo the Franklin scandal, the Finders investigation and the Epstein files. This is Noreen Gosch's decades-long search for answers.

In July 1996 a family of four German tourists drove a rented minivan into the most remote corner of Death Valley and never came out. Ninety-one days later a ranger spotted the van buried in sand in Anvil Spring Canyon, and the largest search in the park's history found exactly one beer bottle. Thirteen years on, a volunteer with eight months of experience asked the question 250 professionals never did.

Ponce de Leon never searched for it, yet he became the most famous name attached to a magic spring that nobody has found in 500 years. From a 1521 arrow wound in Florida to a Soviet scientist who promised 150 years and died at 65, to the Silicon Valley fortunes being spent on the same hunt today, this is the story of the oldest obsession money can buy. Three empires, one refusal to die.