Police call Methuen treasure story a tall tale
Four accused of plot to steal old currency
LAWRENCE -- The more they told their fantastic tale of unearthing buried treasure in a Methuen backyard, posing with wads of cash and bathing in the lights of prime-time fame, the more their story began to fray.
Barry Billcliff, 26, of Manchester, N.H., and Timothy Crebase, 24, of Methuen, described again and again their amazing luck three weeks ago when, they said, they dug up antique money worth more than $100,000 at a house Crebase was renting. Thursday night, their whirlwind media tour was preempted by an inconvenient legal development: their arrest.
The good-luck tale that bounced from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Grand Forks, N.D., imploded yesterday as police yesterday charged the men with receiving stolen property, conspiracy, and being accessories after the fact. Police say Crebase, a roofer, found the money more than a month ago while repairing a barn in Newbury.
The men pleaded not guilty yesterday to the charges in Lawrence District Court. A third man, Kevin Kozak, 27, of Methuen, who owns the house where the other two said they found the money, turned himself in last night at 8:45, according to Methuen police.
Billcliff and Crebase were supposed to go on ABC's ''Jimmy Kimmel Live" Thursday night, but the show brought in Methuen Police Chief Joseph E. Solomon, who, when he wasn't bantering with actress Fran Drescher, told viewers that police were investigating the men's stories.
''Had they kept quiet . . . they probably could have sold the money and no one would have ever known," Solomon said at a press conference yesterday. ''It just got away from them. Sort of like the snowball rolls down the hill and it keeps going and crushes you."
Police said yesterday that the money -- about 1,800 bills dating from 1899 to 1929 -- was stashed in metal cans in the rafters of the barn, which sits on a 200-acre farm belonging to Sylvia Littlefield.
Dan Iwanowicz, who works on the farm where beef cattle, goats, and chickens are raised, said the owners did not know the money was in the building, which he described as a tractor and tool shed.
''I'm definitely going to be up there tomorrow, poking around the rafters to see what else we can find," said Iwanowicz, who said he is the boyfriend of Kate Quill, Littlefield's granddaughter. Around town, he said, the farm has been known as both the Adams Farm and Milestone Farm.
Yesterday, a woman at the 100-plus-year-old white farmhouse, where a shingled building beside the driveway was surrounded by police tape, didn't identify herself and declined to discuss the case. The family's lawyer, Joseph P. Sullivan, issued a statement saying only that the family believes they may be victims of a crime and are cooperating with authorities.
Methuen police also had issued an arrest warrant for Kozak, who allegedly allowed Crebase and Billcliff to stage the plot at his house; and for a fourth man, Matt Ingham, 23, of Newton, N.H., a friend police say was promised some of the cash, and is visiting Florida.
Bail was set at $5,000 for Billcliff and $1,000 for Crebase. Crebase declined to comment as he posted bail; none of the others could be reached for comment yesterday. Billcliff posted bail later in the day.
Billcliff's lawyer, Alexander Cain, said he denied prosecutors' contention that the two men fabricated the story. ''My client has not committed any crime," he said.
Police said they brought charges after they interviewed Crebase, who allegedly admitted taking the money and trying to cover it up. Crebase's lawyer, Michael Ruane, said he wouldn't comment on Crebase's alleged confession to police. He, too, denied that the men had fabricated their account of finding the money.
The men's story of finding the money was first reported a week ago in the Eagle-
Billcliff told the Globe he and Crebase were digging up a small tree in Crebase's backyard when they discovered a box filled with the money. They took the money to the Village Coin Shop in Plaistow, N.H., he said, where owner Domenic Mangano estimated their find was worth more than $100,000.
No one has disputed that the bills are authentic. Yesterday, Solomon said Secret Service agents were excited about the discovery because many of the bills are so rare they do not think they appear in their archives. Essex Assistant District Attorney Gabrielle Foote Clark said the men had been offered $125,000 by a collector.
Most of the cash has been recovered, Solomon said, and police expect to reclaim the little they believe has been sold. Solomon said he believed the men concocted their story about stumbling upon the money so they could sell it without arousing suspicion.
''Yes, you can keep money when you find it in the middle of the street, but you have to tell me if you find the money when you are working on my house," he said.
He said police were immediately suspicious of the men's story because of the near-mint condition of some of the bills.
''They told us initially they found the tin cans about a foot below the [ground's] surface, but anyone who lives in New England knows the wet conditions [the bills] would have been subjected to," Solomon said. ''Digging the money from the ground doesn't even come close to what happened. The condition of the bills suggests they were stored in another place."
The men's stories began to unravel, police said, after an anonymous tip this week saying the men were lying. When Methuen police did background checks, they learned Billcliff had served two years' probation on a 2000 federal charge of counterfeiting.
Police said that when they asked Billcliff about the varying accounts of how and where the men found the money, Billcliff said he lied to friends and neighbors about how he found the money to keep them from digging up the lawn where the stash was discovered.
Meanwhile, police said Crebase, interviewed separately, confessed that the men did not find the money in his backyard.
Crebase told police he found the money in a barn where he was working on the roof. To take the money from the property, he told police, he hid nine cans holding the currency in his sweatshirt.
Billcliff, Ingham, and Kozak -- who said he did not want any of the money -- later agreed to stick by the story that the money had been dug up in Methuen, Crebase told police.
Caroline Louise Cole can be reached at cole@globe.com; Kathleen Burge can be reached at kburge@globe.com. 