ST. LOUIS — An Illinois woman who set out on a treasure hunt for buried gold coins after finding a cryptic note in an antique rocking chair may have been the victim of a prolific prankster who died more than 30 years ago.
With help of a donated backhoe, Patty Henken tore up a vacant lot in Springfield, Ill., where a typewritten note signed by “Chauncey Wolcott” — found in an old chair she bought at auction last year — suggested she would find a chest containing more than $250 in U.S. gold coins.
The dig turned up nothing but bricks and old bottles. Henken planned to return Tuesday with a man using ground-penetrating radar, but the note’s promise may be debunked.
An Iowa woman who read news accounts of the hunt said she knows Wolcott’s true identity: John “Jay” Slaven, a notorious practical joker and coin collector who often used a typewriter in his pranks.
Slaven used the pen name “Chauncey Wolcott” and lived for decades at the location where the dig took place, until his 1976 death, according to Betty Atkinson Ryan of Mason City, Iowa. She e-mailed a columnist for the State Journal-Register of Springfield to set the record straight.
“He wouldn’t play a practical joke without leaving me something,” said Henken, 48, a clerk at the post office in Mount Sterling, Ill.
