This account remained internal to Skull and Bones until various researchers and journalists began investigating it, and it gained significant public attention through the work of various writers including Alexandra Robbins, whose 2002 book “Secrets of the Tomb” discussed the Geronimo legend in the context of the society’s broader practices.

But the account might have remained entirely in the realm of legend and speculation if not for a discovery made in 2005 by historian Marc Wortman.

Wortman was at Yale’s Sterling Library, researching a book about Yale men who became pilots in World War I, when he came across a letter in the university’s archives that he had not been looking for.

The Letter