DEATH VALLEY CAVE FIND DEFIES EASY EXPLANATION 'GOLD-SEEKER' TRUNK OLD BUT STILL A HOAX, HISTORIAN SAYS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - The mysterious trunk Jerry Freeman hauled down from a cave in the Panamint Mountains remains am enigma.

While some people continue to believe it is authentic, National Park Service staffers say they have no doubt the trunk wasn't left by a lost forty-niner - even if they don't know who did leave it.

``We're not sure who put it there or why,'' Death Valley National Park museum curator Blair Davenport said recently.

If the trunk is fake, whoever planted it went to the trouble of collecting dozens of early 19th-century items, forging a convincing letter in the name of a historic gold seeker who died fleeing Death Valley, and abandoning antique coins that alone are worth more than $2,000.

Then the hoaxer hauled 30-plus pounds of stuff miles up a barren ridge, leaving it in a remote spot where no one was likely to find it.

Death Valley historian LeRoy Johnson believes the trunk was placed in the cave more than 20 years ago, perhaps by someone trying to fool another historian or to put a hoax over for posterity.

``It had been in the cave for quite some time, which would eliminate Jerry Freeman as the perpetrator,'' Johnson said in a telephone interview last week from his Bishop home.

Johnson believes it dates from the late 1970s - long enough to gather the dust Freeman described and to account for weathering on a board that supported the trunk, but before the 1980s' jump in gold prices made abandoning gold coins too expensive for a prank.

Johnson, who authored a well-regarded book on the lost forty-niners' route and last year wrote a historical paper on Freeman's find, said he compiled a list of 12 people, including himself and his wife, with the knowledge to pull off such a stunt.

Since then, he said, he has narrowed the suspects to two, including one man who was not on the list - a deceased member of the historical society E Clampus Vitus. He won't name his suspects.

Regardless of why it was placed in the cave, Johnson says the evidence is overwhelming that ``the trunk is bunk.''

A $1 gold piece bears an 1853 date, even though the ``5'' is partially scratched off. The coin also bears traces of solder, he said, indicating it was once used as jewelry.

Glue around the edge of the trunk is unmistakably 20th century, probably Borden's white glue, he said. A doll authority dated a doll found in the trunk to around World War I.

A china bowl bore the label ``Made In Germany,'' although Germany didn't exist as a unified nation until the late 19th century and the U.S. law requiring labels of national origin on merchandise wasn't passed until the 1890s, Johnson said.

Freeman, who invited Johnson to inspect the trunk before he turned it over to the Park Service, says he thinks the Park Service experts' were mistaken in dating objects as post-1849. He suspects the visitor center exhibit was put on in the hope a visitor would come forward and link at least one item to him.

``Nobody would have the wherewithal to put together such a trunk, certainly not a guy like me, who's a $20,000-a-year substitute teacher,'' Freeman said. ``That stuff belonged to William Robinson.''

Freeman wants to track down Robinson descendents and conduct a DNA test to compare with hair in a locket found in the trunk.

Freeman has at least one published author on his side.

John Southworth, who like Johnson, wrote a book on the lost forty-niners' route, says it is inconceivable that a hoaxer would plant the trunk at the remote spot where Freeman found it.

``If you planted something up there with the off chance that somebody's going to find it, you might as well throw your money and time away,'' Southworth said. ``Nobody is going to find it - nobody. Nobody is ever going to go up there to find it.''

Southworth's theory for the presence of the anachronistic items discounted by Johnson is that the letter Freeman found had been delivered by a surviving forty-niner to his family.

His family later returned it to the trunk, and periodically came back to the desolate place to leave the tintype photographs, the doll and other objects.

``The original cache, diluted as it is, is all legitimate,'' Southworth said.