Tommy Thompson, the deep-sea explorer who became an American hero for finding one of history's most storied shipwrecks, walked out of federal prison on March 4 - a free man at 73, but leaving behind a mystery the courts spent a decade trying to crack: the location of 500 missing gold coins that may never be found.
Thompson was hailed as a hero after finding the S.S. Central America - known as the "Ship of Gold" - and its thousands of pounds of sunken treasure sitting more than 7,000 feet below the Atlantic Ocean. The ship sank in September 1857, along with 425 passengers and crew members and 30,000 pounds of federal gold from the new San Francisco Mint.
Thompson's downfall began years after his triumph. Investors who funded the nearly $13 million expedition sued him in 2005, saying they never received their share of the $50 million generated from the sale of gold bars and coins recovered from the wreck. After being ordered to appear in court in 2012 to account for 500 missing coins valued at approximately $2.5 million, Thompson vanished. He was captured by U.S. Marshals at a Florida hotel in 2015, living under an alias.
A federal judge held him in contempt and sent him to prison at the end of 2015 for refusing to answer questions about the coins' location. Thompson maintained the coins had been turned over to a trust in Belize and claimed the $50 million in gold sales mostly went toward legal fees and bank loans. He remained locked up even though federal law generally limits contempt jail time to 18 months.
Thompson's account never changed. "Your honor, I don't know if we've gone over this road before or not, but I don't know the whereabouts of the gold," he told U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in 2020. "I feel like I don't have the keys to my freedom."
Just over a year ago, Judge Marbley agreed to end the civil contempt sentence, saying he was no longer convinced that keeping Thompson imprisoned would produce an answer. The judge then ordered Thompson to serve a separate two-year sentence for skipping the 2012 court hearing.
University of Florida law professor Ryan Scott, who researches contempt law and worked toward Thompson's release, called the decade-long imprisonment a "miscarriage of justice," noting the underlying case had been dismissed since at least 2018.
The 500 coins - and the full truth of what happened to them - remain unaccounted for. Meanwhile, the wreck itself continues to command extraordinary prices at auction. A single S.S. Central America gold ingot sold for $2.16 million through Heritage Auctions in Dallas in 2022, and a 2019 sale of relics from the ship topped $11 million.
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