Treasure hunter’s body identified
Case still under investigation; Randy Bilyeu’s ex-wife ‘disappointed that he lost his life over a treasure hunt’
Police say remains found earlier this month belonged to a Colorado man who disappeared in January while searching for a treasure chest supposedly hidden by Forrest Fenn.
Abody found near the Rio Grande earlier this month was that of a Colorado man who disappeared in January while searching for a treasure chest supposedly hidden in the Rocky Mountains by Santa Fe author and former gallery owner Forrest Fenn, according to Santa Fe police.
Greg Gurule, a Santa Fe Police Department spokesman, said in a statement Tuesday that the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator has confirmed the human remains discovered two weeks ago were those of Randy Bilyeu, 54. A crew with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that was working along the river a few miles north of Cochiti Lake found the body, but police declined to speculate at the time whether it could be Bilyeu.
Gurule said police are still investigating the case and did not provide further comment.
“We’re thankful that he has been found,” said the man’s ex-wife, Linda Bilyeu, who came to Santa Fe to help search for him. “But we’re disappointed that he lost his life over a treasure hunt.”
Linda Bilyeu, who knew her exhusband had gone on a quest for Fenn’s treasure, reported him missing Jan. 14, 10 days after friends last heard from the man. The day after she filed her report, police found Bilyeu’s small brown-and-white dog, Leo, along the river about nine miles downstream from his darkblue 2009 Nissan Murano, which was parked on Old Buckman Road. Leo was tied to an inflatable raft that Randy Bilyeu apparently left along the shore.
“He’s obsessed with looking for treasure,” Linda Bilyeu said at the time. “He had told us on Christmas that he knows the spot.”
She said she knew something was wrong when she learned that her exhusband had left behind his dog, his car and his wallet. He wouldn’t leave the dog, she said.
On Tuesday, Linda Bilyeu thanked all the volunteers and law enforcement officials who had searched for Randy Bilyeu.
Even Fenn was among the searchers in January and February, chartering a helicopter to scour the riverbanks with other volunteers after state police called off their own efforts, citing a lack of clues as snowstorms threatened the area and temperatures reached lows in the 20s.
The volunteer search effort continued for months. Linda Bilyeu and her daughter, Michelle Stoker, visited with the volunteers in April, still maintaining hope that Randy Bilyeu could be alive. They said volunteer rescuers contacted them repeatedly with signs of hope — the discovery of a sneaker, a shirt, a book of matches, for example — only to discover that those items did not belong to Randy Bilyeu.
The mother and daughter said they didn’t judge Randy Bilyeu for taking off on a raft in the Rio Grande in the middle of winter to find a pot of gold.
But Linda Bilyeu did say she wished Fenn would call off the treasure search.
Fenn, 85, gained fame in 2010 after claiming in his self-published autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase, that his bronze chest filled with gold, jewelry and other artifacts was hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe. Countless treasure hunters have looked for the chest, following clues left in a poem in Fenn’s book.
After Randy Bilyeu went missing, critics urged Fenn to call off the hunt. But Fenn said he couldn’t do that to the 65,000 or so people from around the world who have participated in the search.
Still, he was troubled by Bilyeu’s disappearance. “We haven’t given up,” he said one day in late January, when he was on the other side of a search. “We are going to keep looking. … We are still a little bit optimistic, but each day hurts us.”