Elderly US novelist and husband embroiled in scandal involving shipwreck's stolen treasure

Daily Mail​

a day ago

An elderly novelist and her husband embroiled in a scandal over the illegal sale of gold bars plundered from a shipwreck are facing a possible trial in France over their alleged involvement.
Eleonor 'Gay' Courter, 80, and her husband Philip, 82, of Florida, are accused by authorities of helping to sell the bullion online on behalf of a diver who stole it decades ago.
The gold in question had been aboard the Le Prince de Conty, a French ship trading in Asia, that sank off the coast of Brittany in the winter of 1746.
Its wreck wasn't discovered until two centuries later, when divers found it in 1974 in waters near the island of Belle-Île-en-Mer. The gold onboard was looted.
Suspicions of the involvement of the two started in 2019, when the head of France's underwater archaeology department (DRASSM), Michel L'Hour, spotted five gold ingots for sale on a US auction house.
L'Hour told authorities in the US that he believed the precious metal had been onboard the ship, and the gold was seized. It was returned to France thereafter.
Investigators say Courter, an author and film producer, was behind the sales.
A prosecutor in the French city of Brest has requested that the Courters, alongside their alleged accomplice, Annette May Pesty, are tried.
An investigating magistrate still has to decide whether or not to order a trial, but prosecutors said a trial was likely in the autumn of 2026.
The couple have denied any involvement, they had previously been arrested in June 2022 on European warrants in connection with money laundering, organized crime, and the trafficking of cultural stolen goods.
The Courters became involved after meeting fellow sailing enthusiasts Gérard and Annette Pesty when the French couple had been on holiday in Crystal River, Florida, in 1981.
Both families had children of roughly the same ages, and their friendships blossomed. By 1984, they were vacationing together near Great Inagua, an island in the Bahamas known for its flamingos.
The Pestys spent their summers in France, running their pharmacy, allowing them to travel for the rest of the year.
Gay told The New Yorker last year that they were closer with the Pestys than she or Philip were with their own siblings.
She described Gérard, who has since passed away, as a 'crazy guy with so many irons in the fire'. So when he made his impromptu appearance in Crystal River with his briefcase of gold, the Courters were shocked, but not disbelieving.
The couple told the outlet that Gérard had around twenty ingots, which he told them had been recovered from a French shipwreck by Yves Gladu, a renowned underwater photographer, and his wife Brigitte, the sister of Gérard.
Gérard told the Courters that he had already sold three ingots to the British Museum and was looking to offload the rest of his collection to an American buyer.
He asked his friends if they would hold onto the gold while he was in France. The Courters stashed the ingots in their ceiling, before moving it to a safe-deposit box.
Pesty had told the TV series Antiques Roadshow in 1999 that she discovered the gold while diving off the west African island of Cape Verde.
Investigators found this to be unlikely and instead focused on her brother-in-law Yves Gladu.
A 1983 trial had found five people guilty of embezzlement and receiving stolen goods over the plundering of the Prince de Conty. Gladu was not among them.
After being held in custody in 2022, Gladu confessed to having stolen 16 of the bars from the ship over the course of 20 years.
Gladu said he had sold them all in 2006 to a retired member of the military living in Switzerland. He denied ever having given any to the Courters.
He had known the author and her husband since the 1980s and they had joined him on holiday on his catamaran in Greece in 2011, in the Caribbean in 2014 and in French Polynesia in 2015, investigators found.
French investigators concluded that they had been in possession of at least 23 gold bars in total.
They found they had sold 18 ingots for more than $192,000, including some via online sale platform eBay.
The Courters claimed the arrangement had always been for the money to go to Gladu.
It was following his confession that the couple were detained in the UK and placed under house arrest.
They were released when their bail came through and had their arrest warrants dropped almost six months after they were issued.
Their lawyer, Gregory Levy, said the couple had had no idea what they were getting into.
'The Courters accepted because they are profoundly nice people. They didn't see the harm as in the United States, regulations for gold are completely different from those in France,' he said, adding the couple had not profited from the sales.
Courter is the author of five best-selling novels, with over three million copies in print. Her book 'I Speak For This Child' was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
The British Museum still has several of the bars in their collection, a spokesperson told the Daily Mail: 'The Museum has long been keen to find a resolution to this matter, and has worked cooperatively with the relevant authorities.
'Legislation restricts our ability to return objects from the collection, but we have been clear that we are interested in a long term loan and we are hopeful that this offer can be taken forward.'