NEW HAVEN — In the late 1980s, Ned Anderson Sr., then-chair of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, told reporters about an astonishing document he received.
At the time, Anderson was part of a campaign to bring the remains of the famous Apache leader Geronimo to Arizona from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he died as a prisoner of war in 1909 after waging a long campaign against U.S. expansion in the southwest.
There was just one problem. Anderson told reporters he’d received a document that said some of Geronimo’s remains weren’t at Fort Sill.
His skull, it said, was in New Haven — stolen from his grave by members of the Yale University secret society Skull and Bones when they were stationed at Fort Sill during World War I and taken back to their clubhouse in New Haven, which members call the Tomb.
Anderson also reportedly received a picture of the skull in a glass case inside the Tomb.
The alleged thieves included one of Connecticut’s most prominent sons — former Sen. Prescott Bush, whose son and grandson would both one day be president.
Skull and Bones leaders have denied the claims. But others have described seeing what appeared to be human skulls inside the Tomb — including one referred to as Geronimo.
The story gained new life in 2006, when Yale Alumni Magazine published a letter from 1918, found in the university’s archives, in which a member of Skull and Bones, or “bonesman,” as they’re called, describes the theft in detail.
Now, CT Insider has unearthed two previously unpublished letters that were hiding in plain view in the same Yale archive and lend credence to the claims. Written within months of the alleged theft in 1918, they suggest that Skull and Bones members believed their fellow bonesmen had stolen Geronimo’s skull and brought it back to the Tomb.
Additional unpublished letters uncovered by CT Insider in the same collection at Yale corroborate facts in the document Anderson allegedly received and the letter published in 2006.
Two descendants of Geronimo who spoke recently with CT Insider said any skulls and other human remains the group took from Fort Sill should be DNA tested — a process they said they would be willing to participate in.
“If they did actually steal somebody’s skull, if anything, the only way you’re going to find out is doing a DNA test from an actual direct bloodline from Geronimo,” said Hope Gonzales, a direct descendant of Geronimo and a citizen of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico.