Ship of Gold explorer Tommy Thompson walks free after 10 years behind bars
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Deep-sea explorer Tommy Thompson, who spent more than a decade in federal custody for refusing to reveal the location of gold coins in a historic shipwreck, has been released from prison.
Thompson, 73, left the federal penitentiary on Wednesday after the judge ruled that he had lost the “compelling effect” of his continued prison sentence.
Thompson remained behind bars for the better part of a decade and claimed to have amnesia as to the whereabouts of 500 missing gold coins recovered from the SS Central America, the “Gold Ship” that sank off the coast of South Carolina in 1857.
“Your Honor, I don’t know if we’ve been down this road before, but I don’t know where the gold is,” Thompson once told the judge in 2020. “I feel like I don’t have the keys to my freedom.”
Tommy Thompson holds a $50 pioneer gold piece recovered from the wreck of the SS Central America, November 1989. (Lon Horwedel/The Columbus Dispatch via AP, File) (Columbus Dispatch via Lon Horwedel/AP, File)
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Thompson’s downfall began long after his victory in 1988, when he used a robotic threshing machine to extract gold from the Atlantic floor.
Although the discovery was a marvel of engineering, investors and insurance companies who financed the expedition sparked a series of lawsuits claiming rights to the treasure.
Tommy Thompson, now 73, was sent to prison in 2015 for not revealing the whereabouts of 500 gold coins on the ship. (Delaware County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
In 2012, Thompson disappeared after being ordered to appear in court to account for missing coins, then worth about $2.5 million. In 2015, he was captured by the US Marshals at a Florida hotel where he was living as a fugitive under an assumed name.
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Thompson had been held in civil contempt since 2015; He faced a $1,000-a-day fine and solitary confinement until he cooperated and “cleaned up” the insult. He has consistently argued that the coins were held in a trust in Belize and that he no longer had the specific records or memory to retrieve them.
Although federal law generally limits prison sentences for contempt of court to 18 months, Thompson remained in prison. In 2019, a federal appeals court rejected his appeal bid.
Although Thompson is now a free man, he is still under court supervision. His release does not relieve him of $3.3 million in accumulated fines, nor does it end civil lawsuits filed by investors who claim they were defrauded.
Dwight Manley of the California gold marketing group examines a gold coin recovered from the steamship SS Central America, which sank in a hurricane in 1857, in the laboratory on Jan. 23, 2018. (AP photo/Jae C. Hong, file.)
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Dwight Manley, the California coin dealer who bought and sold nearly the entire fortune, said Monday that Thompson paid a heavy price for what he said was a business dispute.
“Going to prison for 10 years for a business dispute is un-American,” Manley told the AP. “People kill people and get out in half the time.”
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
