This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

On January 7, 1998, an envelope landed on the desk of Larry Calloway.

He was a columnist with the Albuquerque Journal.

It was sort of a combination of a press release and a ransom note and a photo.

The photo was a Polaroid. and a photo.

The photo was a Polaroid of a cutoff riding boot with a huge Spanish spur, all in bronze. And I read the note. The note hinted that the bronze foot came from a

statue of a man named Juan de Onyate seated on a horse. It was part of a monument on the

side of a rural highway near where Anjate founded the first Spanish colony

in New Mexico, back in 1598.

Larry figured this was probably a hoax.

This is Stan Alcorn, a reporter with the investigative podcast reveal.

There are collaborators on the story today.

So he handed the tip off to the newsroom,

and a reporter called up the visitor center at the Onyate Monument.

And asked, is your statue missing a right foot?

And the guy said, what?

And he went out and checked came back and he was you know in

shock he said it's gone. Onyate is one of the world's lesser-known conquistadors,

but his name is all over New Mexico.

There are Onyate streets, Onyate schools.

For decades, there was an annual fiesta where one lucky guy would get to be Onyate,

...