♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ you go out in the field, and you look up in the sky, and you see the stars, and some of that light that's coming down to your eye has been traveling for millions of years. so you look up, and you're looking at the past, and then you look down, and you're looking at the past. you know, those dinosaur bones are, like, millions of years old, and that light left there maybe at the same time that you're looking. it's just you're kind of sandwiched in that world, and it's really -- really a wonderful place, being out in the field.

♪ >> it was a brilliant story, i mean, if you didn't have to live it, like the larsons did. it's a good american tale. unfortunately, it had a bad ending for a couple real brilliant paleontologists. being ♪ ♪

♪ >> what does that white line mean, susan? >> we'd been digging at the ruth mason quarry since 1979. the 1990 season, i think we were into the third month. we'd been working north actually, not working at the quarry itself anymore. we were actually prospecting and looking for fossils. we were looking for fossils on sharky williams' and his brother morris williams' ranch and findsing some pretty cool stuff. and we get up on august 12, look outside the tent, and it's foggy.

it's kind of a weird thing to have fog on the prairie. so we got kind of a little bit later start. we weren't in any big hurry, because you couldn't see very well, and then went out to start loading up the suburban. we have a 1975 suburban all rusted out. and i look, and the tire's flat. so i say, "oh, crap." well, almost flat. still had a little bit of air in it. so i go in the back to get the spare tire, and the spare tire's flat, so i pull out the tire pump, and the tire pump hose is broken. so we figure, "i guess we better head into town while we still have enough air in the tire to get there. >> we decided, well, we're gonna have to go to town. i'd been out there for four of five weeks. going to town, that's okay. i can take it easy for half an hour, an hour. that's fine with me, but of course, susan, susan just can't handle that. you know, that's a waste of time, right? >> there was the flat tire. i was like, "great. you guys go to town and don't need me. i've got this place i want to look at."

out there, you need landmarks to find your way around, and i said, "okay, it's foggy. you can't see. make sure you don't walk in a circle." and, like, two hours later, i was right back where i started, and i could not believe it. i just couldn't believe it, 'cause i was, like, trying so hard to walk straight. it was like, i felt really stupid. believe it was the next day we went back with the video camera and just kind of re-enacted, you know, how i found her. anybody who had any idea what a fossil versus a rock was would have seen it, because there was a lot of broken bones dribbling down. about eight foot up the side of the cliff, there were three articulated vertebrae and a couple other pieces of bones sticking out. from the debris pile, i picked up scraps that showed the hollowness and took it with, because i knew if i went back to where they were working, they wouldn't believe me. >> we got back after fixing the tire, and we were at the dig site.

we were just finishing up doing stuff, and susan comes up. and she opens her hand, and she's got two pretty small pieces of bone, only about this big, in her hand. and i'd never seen the inside of a t-rex vertebra before, but knew exactly that was what she had in her hand, and i says, "is there more of it?" she said, "there's a lot more." so we ran, literally ran back to the site. crawl up on the cliff face, and i see three articulated vertebrae, and from that point on, i'm absolutely certain this is going to be the best thing we ever found and it's going to be a complete t. rex. he called up and said, "neal, i need you to bring a lot of plaster two-by-fours." well, it took me a day to get everything ready, and i came up, and i got up there with all these materials, and he took me over to this big cliff, and he said, "take a look." and i looked at it, and i looked

at him. i said, "is that t-rex?" he said, "yes, and i think it's all here." >> and we haven't started digging or haven't moved anything around yet. we've just been looking at it and taking some pictures and trying to figure out how to proceed. there's a real mass of bones here. some are caught up in concretion, but most appear to be really excellently preserved. and i believe that the tail's going that way and the skull is going this way, but we're just going to have to dig it up and see. collecting fossils is something that's very timely. fossils are discovered because they're weathering out, because the forces of nature, rain, winds, freezing, thawing, even snowfall, have an effect on that fossil. every day that it's outside is a day that it's going to destruction. we started by picking up all these thousands of fragments of bones and bagging them, labeling

them. well, the plan of attack is to protect the specimen, first of all, and then you go above the specimen and dig down to it so that you can get all the way around it to remove it from the cliff. we basically used these ditch-digging tools, picks and shovels, to dig down that 30 feet from where i thought we could get back into the cliff face far enough to uncover what i thought would be the limits of that skeleton. probably the hardest work i've ever had to do in my life. we were doing this all in temperatures around 115 degrees every day. >> it was very hard work, but it was very easy to put in a lot of energy into it, because we all wanted to see what the skeleton

was going to look like. >> basically, we'd take different sections so we weren't in each other's way and just kind of worked the specimen until we could start removing bones. >> you know, and every time somebody found a bone or fragments, they just said, "the s bone." we wouldn't say, "skull." we didn't want to jinx it. >> pretty early on, i hit something hard, and so, i stopped. "it's the 's' word," i said, thinking, "i bet i hit the skull." when i got down digging and then started really working with the smaller knife, we found, as we were going down, is the back of the skull. and we're getting down, and here's this skull taking shape, and we get out on the side, and i put terry to work on cleaning the side of the skull, 'cause

he's really our best preparator. >> pete let me work on part of the skull in the field, which was amazing. >> he's working and uncovering the teeth one by one by one. >> it was spectacular. teeth like this just sticking right out of the skull. >> we're going, oh my god. look at this thing. look how huge it is. this has gotta be bigger than the one at the american museum. it's huge. it's wonderful. ♪ ♪ we had started a long time ago naming particular dinosaurs, and the name sue, for susan hendrickson, goes down in history, and i think that's a kind of a cool way to reward those amateurs who make these discoveries.

♪ >> we were all experienced diggers. you know, it was just total focused effort. we would just work into the specimen, remove things that we could, protect the rest of it, and then take it out of the ground and get it back into the laboratory, where you can have a more controlled environment to take care of the specimen. the amount of new things that we found and the amount of scientific information that we discovered while finding sue was enormous. >> beautifully preserved. articulated skull, articulated vertebral column up to the pelvis with the tail and shoulder blade and all this stuff, and it's just like, "holy cow." and wonderful preservation. just fantastic bones that were just beautiful surface on them. every time we were ready to take a bone out or every time there was some new discovery, pete would take this butcher paper out, and he mapped each and every bone one on one that we found, that was excavated.

♪ ♪ pete and i had quite a few discussions what would be fair. $5,000 is the most that anybody had ever given anyone for a dinosaur, for any fossil in the ground, so pete wrote a check out for him and a contract that he wanted maurice to sign. >> and i showed it to him, and he said, well, we don't need to sign anything. it's just something, a handshake between friends. and $5,000 is fine. i'm happy with that." and, you know, that was the most that any landowner had ever gotten. we shook hands, and he was pretty excited about seeing it set up in the museum.

last phase of getting sue out of the ground, we used basically egyptian techniques to get this large block. >> i mean, we had one of the blocks weighed probably something close to 10,000 pounds. there was probably about ten ton of material, total, that we had to load up. ♪ ♪ >> once we had the skull and pelvic block and the tail vertebrae and everything else, we knew we could haul a lot of the stuff on our bobcat trailer. we had no idea how we were going to be able to get all these other things. well, my brother john had built a tandem-axle trailer earlier that year. >> with that and the other pickup truck that we had there, we were able to load the fossil up. after we had built pallets underneath the fossil, we were able to scooch some plywood underneath them so that we could

move it with chains and come-alongs and get it into the trailers. >> it was and still is today the most exciting, the most wonderful excavation we have ever done, the most incredible thing we have ever done. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

the fbi is here, they're all over the place. >> they've got yellow police tape around the main building. do not cross, police line. do not cross. it's hard to know what was really happening at that point. i go down to the office and there's two fbi agents sitting there. you have stolen this from federal land and we're coming here to seize this. get ready for some german engineered holiday excitement. at the volkswagen sign-then-drive event. right now, for practically just your signature, you could drive home for the holidays in a new volkswagen. like the sporty, advanced new jetta and the precisely engineered passat tdi. ah, the gift of clean diesel. for the new volkswagen on your list this year, just about all you need, is a pen.

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dinosaurs, for me, are still one of the most amazing creatures ever to have lived on the planet. you're touching something that was alive 65, 100, or three or more hundred million years ago. when you pick up a fossil, and you're the first ever human being to touch the remains of that organism, it's a remarkable feeling. >> dinosaurs are iconic animals. they represent paleontology in general. they represent science. dinosaurs lived for 150 million years, and they dominated the world for that long, and yet humans have only been around for three, four, or five. what are our chances? we seem to be approaching these big problems. >> most of what is to be learned about the history of life is yet to be discovered. what's still out there? what's still in the ground? what some kids might find will

-- a hundred years from now will contribute to that greater understanding. >> we know nothing about the history of the planet unless learning it through a paleontologist, and it's that sense of deep time, real deep time, that gives you a sense of who you are and how you fit in to the scheme of things. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> i first fell in love with fossils when i was about four years old. i picked up this small tooth

down on my folks' ranch. from then on, i just was so fascinated with fossils. i just couldn't stop. >> every day that the weather was good and every day that the weather was great that was on a weekend if we were going to school or in the summertime, dad would always say," let's go out rock hunting." ♪ ♪ we ended up starting this little museum, and we'd charge the adults in our family five cents. we had little displays where we set up the things that we had collected, and not just fossils and rocks, but also what we thought were antiques. we had this horrible hobby that started to captivate every part of our life. ♪ eventually i decided to really get into paleontology and so went to the south dakota school of mines and technology in rapid city. junior year, we went to the tucson gem and mineral show and

really saw how specimens are purchased by museums and purchased by private collectors. and by the time we graduated, we started this business called black hills minerals as this earth science supply house. eventually my younger brother neal, who was also a student at the school of mines, and bob farrar, one of his classmates, started working with us as well. with the three of us all going to the school of mines, we were problems there, because all of us chose not to go into industry. >> the first year was terrible, the second year was not so good but it was sort of turning into a business. ♪ >> as we kept going, we kept collecting more and more fossils and had the idea of it probably would work to sell these as display specimens. in 1978, we were going pretty strong. we were selling mostly fossils.

we were going out and doing geological exploration. >> so by 1979, we created this new entity called black hills institute of geological research, incorporated, in the center of the black hills. [ power tools ] we got sue back to hill city. we moved the big blocks into the warehouse, actually built a room around where we had put sue, started working on this wonderful fossil. >> when i was prepping sue, i was cloifterred like a monk in the back corner of the back

building, doing preparation. just leave me alone, right? but everybody was in there. there would be schoolkids in there. or another day, there'd be, you know, some scientist guys coming along in there. i mean, pete had, like, 30 scientists working on a major new monograph on tyrannosaurus rex, so you got to suck it up. pete wants it this way. he wants this specimen available to everybody. >> it was so beautiful. just the preservation was incredible. it was just, wow. >> everybody knew about sue. we hadn't made any secret of the fact that we'd collected her. >> we had 2,000 visitors sign this little guest book that went way in the back in our warehouse to see the skull of sue. >> i was just totally flabbergasted when i saw the specimen. first of all, the size is just so imposing. but what i was more amazed by was what a great job they were doing preparing the specimen. i'd heard inklings that the black hills institute boys had found something. one of the first things i saw was actually, you know, part of the skull of sue still encased in matrix.

65 million years later, this animal really had the power to give you goose bumps. >> to see the look on pete's face and neil's, those guys were just like proud papas. they would inform you. they would go do classes at school for the kids, so it was very educational for all of us, and i learned a lot from that. ♪ ♪ >> ever since we created that little museum on our parents' ranch, it's always been our dream to have a museum here in hill city. and finding sue the tyrannosaurus rex, here's the anchor for the museum. the whole town is behind us. it's going to put hill city on the map in a way that it's never been on the map before. >> didn't matter how many other projects we had going on. with sue, sue took precedence. >> we found out all kinds of cool things about this dinosaur. broken and healed bones all over

the skeleton. this animal had a terrible life, a terrible, rough life. the skull of sue had actually had -- the left side of the lower jaw had been literally ripped out of the socket, still held together here at the symphysis, where the two ends of the lower jaw come together in the front, but it's been torn loose from the socket which allows the jaw to open and close. and the postorbital, the bone directly behind the eye, was broken and pulled outwards and laying at sort of a weird angle, so i think that she actually died from the attack of another tyrannosaurus rex. that was a big job. i mean, it took me a year, literally a year just to, you know, remove individual bones from around the skull and then, and then to take that, the giant hipbones off of the nose. >> we finally were able to lift

the pelvis off of sue's skull in the beginning of may 1992. taking that hip off of sue's skull was critical to doing it right, because you don't have a second chance. you okay there, terry? >> oh! >> okay. >> if you think of two big ships, you know, when you get those kind of weights going on, one little movement, you don't know what's going on. it could be cracking it all the way through inside. >> okay, go. >> go. go, go, go, go, go, go, go. >> yeah, that must be where the weight is. >> yep. >> yep. okay, it's looking good. >> we're free here. >> we're free here. what am i down to? hey, we're loose in the front finally! >> all right. >> yeah!

[ applause ] >> that moment, when we made that separation, that was probably the highest point of my life. >> how was that? >> champagne. hide it. >> hide it. there has to be a toast. >> who toasts? this whole -- >> i don't know. >> cheers. >> just, cheers. >> you ready? >> ready. >> sue. >> to old sue. >> sue. >> sue. >> yeah. yeah. it's very good champagne. look at this. i know. >> we were riding on top of the world. we had everything going for us. less than a week after that, all hell broke loose.

♪ ♪ bob and i were downstairs. we were both in the prep lab. we had a buzzer on our door so that if anybody came in, it would buzz back in the prep lab, and we could go meet them in the front office. it was about 7:00 in the morning when the buzzer went off. we were met by two fbi agents with a search warrant to take sue and all records belonging to sue. >> they showed up expecting to seal off the building and keep anybody from going on. "just wait here. we have to get pete." >> they sent me to get pete, and i was running. i lived in a trailer house behind the institute. >> the fbi's here and they are all over the place. >> they've got yellow police tape around the main building. do not cross. police line. do not cross. >> it was hard to know what was really happening at that point.

i go down to the office, and there's two fbi agents sitting there. "you've stolen this from federal land, and we're coming here to seize this." >> i got a phone call from peter larson, because it wasn't just the fbi. it was personnel from south dakota tech. it was personnel from other federal agencies, and it was the national guard. >> the u.s. attorney at the time, kevin schieffer, got reporters together in the federal building in rapid city and announced that the seizure was ongoing. >> the purpose of our action this morning is to preserve the scientific knowledge and integrity of these fossils. >> then, of course, the entire press corps hopped in their cars and we drove to hill city. >> they were supposed to take things related to sue, but they took everything. they went through all of our offices, all of our desks, all of our mail trays, taking mail opened, unopened. >> somebody called me and said "the fbi's got crime scene tape around the institute, and

they're taking sue." i hung up the phone, and i went as fast as i could down to the institute. i don't know how many agents they had, 30-some people or whatever. it was just insane. i didn't even think about it. i grabbed the tape and go under it. i just went to the specimen. that was my concern. i could just see these idiots, you know, just try to pack up my dinosaur and take it away and ruin it. >> how dare they? how dare these people do this? >> unconscionable. i can't imagine somebody being able to do this here in the united states of america, in a free country. >> in order to ensure that this dinosaur could be carefully packed up, we helped. >> it was pretty clear that they didn't know what they were doing. these people didn't know anything. i mean, most of these guys hardly go out in the field at all. what do they know about preparing a fossil or packing it or anything? >> the larsons were trying to do a little bit of negotiating. put sue under lock and key at our place to prevent damage.

i said to kevin, you just tell me and that fossil won't go anywhere. it's not like it's going to disappear in a briefcase." >> that request was denied. it is clearly a violation under the antiquities act to remove antiquities from united states lands without the permission of the united states. >> the federal government doesn't show up with the national guard and an assistant, or pardon me, an acting united states attorney in pancake makeup with the intention of working things out somewhere down the road. >> after we got over the initial shock, those of us who were packing the dinosaur kind of went into our packing mode, but towards the end of the day, it became obvious that something was going on with the town. >> people around town noticed. they noticed all the cop cars. they noticed the police tape.

>> all a sudden, there were people with signs out in front of our building. it was clear that people were not happy with what was going on. >> the protests developed very quickly, so there were a lot of people on the street. >> i was working for "national geographic," and we were gonna take the skull of sue and put it into a cat scan of what they use for the space shuttles to see if we could see inside the skull of sue. and terry wentz answered the phone, and he said, "well, i don't think so," so i got on the next plane i could, and the place was surrounded by cops. i mean, you thought that there was like a real t-rex loose on the property. >> the next day in they brought reinforcements, a lot more people. the idea was that we were going to load this stuff up and haul it somewhere. and when the director of military support, one of the colonels got down there, he called and said, "hey, general, this is not what we expected. this is a media event. we got schoolkids out here. we got parents out here.

what should we do?" and i said, "well, just go do it." >> don't be cruel, save! don't be cruel! save sue! don't be cruel! save sue! don't be cruel! save sue! don't be cruel! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! >> all day long, the protesters kept arriving. >> protesting about what the government was doing. >> save sue! save sue! save sue! save sue! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you! shame on you!

>> kids protesting, adults protesting. it was not the sort of public relations event that, you know, law enforcement likes, because they are taking away this t-rex from a very small town that really could use it. >> could not have discovered this rex in a worse and potentially legally complicated place. it wasn't tribal land. it wasn't federal land. it was a really -- sue came out from an absolute legal netherworld. ♪ place.

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on the third day, the national guard had brought up large equipment, including forklifts and things, and the crowd had grown by this time. >> leave our sue! leave our sue! leave our sue! >> people were so emotionally involved. >> the amazing thing to me was it wasn't just us. the whole town, entire town of hill city was in mourning when they took that dinosaur away.

[ crowd chanting ] >> here was a dream that the town had. it was our dinosaur. it was our museum. it was our lives that had been just torn to pieces. >> i was in france, and they called me, and, you know, i thought it was a joke. couldn't believe it, and i cried. >> i was highly emotional, but from that moment that i heard that the specimen was going to be taken, my focus was on the specimen. legally and all that other crap, that's not my concern. my concern was make sure that dinosaur was going to transport, everything was going to be safe. >> sue belonged here, and what happened was not right.

>> you know, it was like a funeral, losing a family member. it just felt like a nightmare, like it just wasn't really happening, just. >> the place was a mess. we, all of a sudden, were a mess. and they hauled sue away. >> i don't know how peter did it. one of the hardest things to watch and be a part of was knowing that literally peter was in love with that dinosaur.

♪ and the home of the brave ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

>> i grew up in hill city, and i lived in los angeles at the time sue was discovered. in 1992, i was working at "unsolved mysteries," a tv show on nbc, researching cases where people convicted of crimes insist they were innocent. and that first day the dinosaur was seized, pete called me on the phone in the middle of it all. he said the fbi was here, and it was dramatic and scary, and he needed coverage. he needed support. so i thought, well, i'll go cover the story and take a hiatus and maybe move away from l.a. forever. i didn't know. but i just packed up and bailed back to south dakota by the end of the year to cover the story

and see what was going to happen to it. >> america's indian tribes have fought the white man over many different issues through the years, but the newest fight is over a dinosaur. ♪ ♪ >> it was a big story and a very unusual story. to have the federal government come in and seize sue, everything exploded. >> controversy tonight. >> controversy surrounding the institute and their most famous discovery. >> it may be the custody battle of the century. scientists, indians, the u.s. government. >> you find any fossils, the government may take them away. >> not only has he taken this dinosaur away, but he's taken our research away too, every photograph, every record we had about this dinosaur and the locality where she was found. >> sue was seized pursuant to a search warrant, but there was never a crime charged. >> pat and i talked about filing suit. you know, we sued the federal government for return of our property. >> the black hills institute said it purchased the fossil

from maurice williams. originally maurice williams said that too, but then he changed his claim, and he said he had not sold the fossil and that he owned it. >> mr. williams. >> pete and neal had made a deal with maurice williams for $5,000. on that saturday, the day before we finished getting sue out of the ground, that we gave maurice williams a check for $5,000, that said for "theropod sue" on the bottom of the check. even though $5,000 may not seem like a lot, it was a lot of money for our company to spend, and no one had ever paid that much for an undiscovered fossil before. we had lots of conversations with maurice williams about what was happening to the dinosaur. he knew that we were going to bring it back to hill city. he was completely in favor of that. he knew about the museum we were building. he knew we were going to be preparing the fossil. >> that's about the only ones that we have. >> how are you going to title this? the blah, blah, blah dinosaur?

[ laughter ] >> well, it's not the only one. >> almost. >> almost. >> and it's not -- not completely -- maurice williams never intended to sell that fossil. maurice williams knew exactly what he was doing. numerous people said, had we known you were on his ranch, we would have warned you. >> i had known people who knew maurice and sharky, and they were colorful and controversial figures in their own right on the cheyenne river reservation. >> there began to emerge some controversy about sue being collected from indian land and the ownership issue.

>> you could not have discovered this rex in a worse and potentially legally complicated place. it was discovered within the exterior boundaries of the cheyenne river sioux tribe on land which was held in trust for the benefit of maurice williams, the landowner. wasn't tribal land. it wasn't federal land. it was a really -- sue came out from an absolute legal nether world.

indian people were given --- heads of household were given 160 acres in what we call the allotment acts. and that was to try and make people who didn't understand land ownership be owners of land, but they really didn't own the land. so there became this concept of trust responsibility, and nothing ostensibly is supposed to happen to that land without the approval of the federal government through the bureau of indian affairs. >> on the reservations, the united states holds that land in trust for the individual indian as the beneficiary. and the united states has a fiduciary responsibility to individual indians and/or their families. that they get the highest and best use out of it. >> all across the west, it is a patchwork quilt of laws and regulations concerning what can and can't be harvested.

you can be all right in this quarter section, but if you get off a little bit -- remember, this is before gps. if you get off a little bit to the wrong place, you might be dealing with a whole another set of regulations. >> the tribe claimed that because maurice williams, being a member of the tribe, had not purchased a $100 permit to sell something, the fossil should be forfeited and therefore they owned the fossil. and of course the government said that it was government property and that that was because of the trust land issue. >> the seizure and the subpoena were the brainchild of acting u.s. attorney kevin schieffer. >> he was a controversial figure, as a u.s. attorney, because he hadn't had a lot of experience practicing law. he had the ability to drive some people crazy. >> i do have a fair amount of litigation experience. i have not had courtroom experience.

>> it's a little unclear as to why schieffer decided to seize sue or decided to become interested in this at all. whether it began with maurice williams or a complaint from the tribe. ultimately, the decision was kevin schieffer's, though, to decide that this was something that they wanted to do. >> also was shocking from a scientific standpoint, that anybody would behave so recklessly with the greatest paleontological find of all time. >> if that dinosaur seizure wasn't a publicity stunt, then i don't know what is. there could have been a gang in this town with a warehouse holding a ton of cocaine and human bodies hanging from the rafters and the federal government would not have sent 35 agents and the national guard. >> sue wasn't a part of what we were looking at or what was being looked at as far as potential criminal violations. there were so many bones, so

many animals, invertebras that were taken off of public lands, taken internationally, sold internationally. there was way more than we could have ever investigated. the case was never wanting for lack of evidence. [ male announcer ] it's a warning.

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♪ ♪ >> you want bumper stickers? there's some on every vehicle. >> we would like to gain public support for our cause of getting sue back to hill city. >> when you get the big foot of the government come in and do something like that, you better answer in a way that people can understand that this is wrong. you know, they just protested for three straight days in front of the institute during the raid. they weren't done. we want to protest. okay. let's go protest. ♪ ♪

>> everyone, stay back! stay back, you'll be thrown to the ground and arrested. we've got everything under control here. we don't want any trouble. >> we had people from all over the community, all over the black hills trying to help. it was amazing the support that we had. >> we were fighting on everything we could think of from the sue freedom run, to petitions that we took, to the state capitol. i would talk in front of groups anywhere. >> terry was so involved in this case. he lived it. one of the most moving things in my life to see was this wonderful group of people here, supported us getting sue back. ♪ ♪ >> the u.s. attorney, mr. kevin schieffer, made a terrible error.

to come in that tragic day on may 14th, hill city. the right thing to do in this case would be to return the dinosaur to hill city. mauz plauz [ applause ] >> we've got now over 20,000 signatures on the one petition, the first petition to bring sue back. and they're from all 50 states and from 14 other countries. >> a lot of people didn't have a lot of money around here, so they wanted to contribute any way they could do that. so there were a lot of fund-raisers, parades, buttons, posters. a show of maybe there is justice. because i think to me it was just a huge injustice the fact they could even do what they'd done. >> the custody battle was in full swing and it was very dramatic and scary for people. and as i interviewed pete and talked with him, i realized at the time i'd never met anybody like him. in his single-minded pursuit of what he believed was right and also in the flurry of emotions, i thought that meant that he was the perfect guy for me. and so despite the fact that i

was writing about him and he should be my subject, i broke the first rule of journalism and fell in love with my subject. so we started dating and in our emotional ridiculousness, got married really quite quickly, within months of my moving here. but, it was okay. it was okay for what was going on there. and so we traversed this together and i had created for myself the additional burden of trying to be a journalist and separate my personal feelings from my job. ♪ ♪ two federal courts have sided with the government, saying sue should stay in the box, because there's no proof the dinosaur is being damaged there. in another federal court, they're still arguing over who actually owns the bones. >> the intensity reaction, while

the court case was going on, really surprised me. there were people that i thought were quite reasonable people, who basically said things about black hills that just were not true. >> there's a difference between the academic perspective of fossil collecting and the commercial perspective. >> there are some people in this profession that really, truly believe that it is, there's something morally wrong with selling a fossil. >> i was indoctrinated as an undergrad, that if you don't that if you don't have a ph.d. you have no right to collect fossils. and i heard about them. they were collecting these fossils and i was told, these are pirates! and i visited pete larson and i

visited the black hills institute. and they weren't pirates at all. they had techniques they taught my crew. they were better than my crew. >> you have academias and these -- in these fights and now here's these really great paleontologists who don't need that system. >> back in the day in the early 1900s, collectors were, quote unquote, filling museums with specimens and working hand in hand, quote, academic people. that was an okay relationship. around in the '70s and '80s, that changed. >> 1980s, we're already seeing this schism between professional commercial collectors versus professional research collectors. >> this race to discover the earth's past is a very exciting one and people want a piece of it. >> sue had become a living entity to me after all our work in the field and what we were finding out about her life. and i really missed her when she was gone. so one way that i was able to sort of help that was to go and visit her and to talk with her through the window, looking at

the container, so i could see her, see that that container was still there. not moved to some other place in tim-buck-tu or something. and just have some little conversations with her. is. >> it was precious. it was, it was sweet. she, she was his person. and later, i would realize, she's more of his person than any other person has ever been. and ever will be. i got to say, that dinosaur and pete larson were made for each other. and so he had to go talk to her, and that was how it should be.

>> mostly, i was trying to reassure her that she wasn't going to rot in that case. that i was going to spring her free. somehow i was going to get her out of there. ♪ >> as that whole custody battle unfolded, firstly, the tribe lost its own case in tribal court, which is pretty surprising, but evident that it was a bad claim.

the government actually retracted its claim, because it realized it couldn't claim trust property. so then it comes down to two people. is it morris' fossil or black hills institute's fossil. it was so clear they had purchased it. he had accepted the check. he had been on videotape, talking about it. it was very clear that he thought he had sold the fossil at the time. ♪ >> judge batty held that the bones had become mineralized. therefore, the fossil was land. an individual indian cannot sell land that the government holds

in trust for him without permission of the federal government to begin with. so that's what ended it. fossils are land. >> judge batty said, actually in his filing that the sale was null and void. >> he took the position that he had no authority himself to enter into agreement with the black hills institute. >> peter realized he could not have this fossil back. he was devastated. >> the judge decided that sue was real estate, sue, the fossil, was real estate. ♪

i had first got involved in the dinosaur case as we called it, sometime late 1992, early 1993. of course, they're not going to like what we're doing. that's the nature of what we do. but hopefully, in a broader spectrum, people can look at it and say, well, i'm glad people just can't go out onto the forest or into the parks and take these fossils or in this tech case or steal stuff off land and somebody's going to do something about it. well, we're the somebody that does something about it. >> after the seizure of the sue specimen, we continued to look at this issue, not from a park service jurisdiction perspective but more from the circumstances of business practices in terms of collecting on public lands.

>> really can't do anything in any kind of a business without money. what monetary transactions happened during the time that this epts prize had that fossil and what they did with that money, fossil, and what happened to that money and how we can assemble the evidence around that fossil to see whether there's something there that's wrong, chargeable, what more needs doing investigated. >> fbi agents arrived and committed a court order. that order demanded the release of more information. but people at the institute have another name for it. they call it harassment. ? should not be allowed to happen. this is the united states of america. >> so far, no criminal charges have been filed in the case. members of the institute say they're innocent and they're hoping that a new administration will put an end to their legal

fight over sue. >> officials thought their problems were over when kevin schieffer was replaced. >> enormous amount of money the government is spending to put one group of people out of business that's so vital to the community. >> it's been nearly 18 months since sue was seized from this warehouse. >> allow us some rights. charge us with something, let's go to court and let 12 people decide. ♪ >> i couldn't give them any information to help them incriminate people at black hills institute. they thought i was going to be able to tell them all sorts of terrible things the institute did. they didn't do anything wrong. >> they talked to my attorney

about you better get your guy in and bring him on in or, last chance happening pretty soon, and my attorney says, he just doesn't have anything to tell you. >> for three years, i had no contact with the institute. it's horrible. i mean, i consider them best friends, and i couldn't call them up. >> sue was probably the impetus for the government following up with a criminal prosecution. >> sue wasn't a part of what we were looking at or what was being looked at as far as potential criminal violations. there were so many bones, so many animals. so many invertebrates that were taken off of public lands, taken internationally, sold internationally. >> way more than we could have ever investigated. >> the case was not ever wanting for not having sue. >> because so much material had been seized, i think everybody thought that there would be a massive indictment. >> tell me a little bit about

today's indictment. what activity are we talking about? >> this indictment charges the theft of fossils off a number of different types of federal land. there are also charges in there that pertain to money laundering, structuring of currency transactions, false statements made to various government agencies. >> the indictments were an avalanche of charges. it was just a massive document, and it looked like a deathblow to the institute. >> the government just went nuts or something. i mean, i guess they just threw everything in and hoped something would stick. >> if you add up the time served for each of those offenses is 353 year for me, which is longer than jeffrey dahmer was sentenced for, and he killed people. >> it doesn't make sense. a lot of these accusations are things that we know were legal. >> 38 felony indictments for collecting fossils?

>> it totally blew me apart. i'm used to fixing things, and this was unfixable. it was so stupid. >> once you start to understand indictment, basically, this is what they said. pretend we're in wyoming, and we're standing in the middle of the prairie. and let's assume for a minute that the fence is in the right place. you're standing on this side of the fence. the government says right over there on the other side of the fence is this fabulous fossil. and they're basically saying that pete and whoever was out there would step over the fence, wrongly pick up the fossil that they're not supposed to pick up, carry it back over the fence, put it in their car. when they drive from wyoming to south dakota they have conducted an illegal act, which is the international transportation of stolen property. they would say we found the thing that you were looking for.

do you want to buy it? well, that's wire fraud. and if the japanese museum were to purchase that fossil and the guys would put that money in the bank, that's money laundering. so basically, the guys were called conspirators who were creating this very elaborate scheme to intentionally steal things and sell them illegally. >> what struck me about the prosecution's case was how complex it was. people had to understand the arcane ins and outs of bringing travelers' checks into the country. and latitudes and longitudes on public lands, and i think they did it in an organized way, but it was a very, very complicated argument. the volkswagen golf was just named

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♪ at months went by, things seemed to get darker and darker and darker. >> for quite a while, we hoped that they'll gain their senses, and this will just go away. >> because it was so hotly

contested along the way, i didn't think there would be any chance that this case would settle before trial. >> by late summer of '94, there was serious discussions that were going on with the u.s. attorney's office for a possible resolution. >> i go out on my step one morning and bring the journal innage have a cup of coffee, and right on the front page is a plea agreement announced. somebody spilled their guts in front of hugh o'gara. >> the article itself speculated capitulation on the part of the government. >> anybody who would publish that should know better. so i called hugh o'gara, and i just said, what were you thinking? how could you do that? and he was near tears on the phone, he would not answer me. >> hugh would never, obviously would not tell me who that source was. i wouldn't even ask him.

sght next morning, the judge called all the attorneys into chambers. >> he went down the line and made each of us say that we were not responsible for the leak. >> he felt like the principals at least needed to go to jail. >> he had pre-judged the case. and under two federal statutes, a judge is obligated to remove themselves from hearing the rest of the case. >> so we filed immediately our second recusal motion asking the judge to step down. sght thing that seems to have upset judge battey the most is not whether he's fair but to be challenged that he's not fair. so he immediately denied that motion. >> i knew this case was going to trial. the day the hugh o'gara article was published in the rapid city

journal. ♪ >> i'm not afraid of 12 people, a jury of 12 people of our peers. i know that they'll look at this case, and they'll see the ridiculous way in which the government is behaving, and they will vindicate us. we're innocent of all the things that we're charged with. ♪ >> so in the courtroom, of course right in front is judge battey in the bench. off to the left is the jury, 12

jurors, two alternates. a large space in between where the lawyers get to walk and pace and show exhibits and things. and then we have the prosecution which had at times two or three lawyers. on our side, there was a lawyer for each defendant, so there are six lawyers and five defendants. the sixth defendant, of course, being the black hills institute. our trial is and still is the largest criminal case that's ever been tried in south dakota. >> you cannot say the word sue in the trial. i mean, the jurors are going, what happened to sue? that's why they got these guys in the court system, right? >> the logistics of this trial were incomprehensible. >> institute has collected maybe a million fossils. this indictment covers 14 of them. and those 14 fossils were collected from seven sites in

seven cases, in all the years these guys have been out in the field, they are accused of being in the wrong place. >> the government would simply have their officials come in of whatever agency was going to be taking the lead for that particular site and would say i found where the specimen was collected. i knew therefore it was on government land. >> to me, it emphasized the ridiculous nature of this whole thing. if it's 200 feet over and you don't know where you are, it would have been okay? >> his job had been to appraise the fossils that had been seized in the case. and his evaluations would be incredibly important, because they determined whether a given count was a misdemeanor or a felony. it was pretty easy in cross examination to discover that the man had not opened the field jackets. he was telling us the values of things he had not even looked

at. ♪ >> pete and i, on one of our trips to peru, we were taking $15,000 in cash because down there you can't use credit cards and anything else. and he withdrew $15,000 from the bank, and we split it up, just in case one person got robbed, at least we wouldn't lose everything. >> she carried $8,000, i carried $7,000 down. we were building a museum, paying for the bricks and mortar and doing the work ourselves with our swiss colleagues. >> in japan, the museums pay in cash.

they always have. and when i carry bundles of cash on the plane. we went to the bank and put them in travelers' checks. >> they were all stamped for deposit only, deposited in bank, pay taxes on them. the prosecution had four witnesses. all of them testified that restrictively endorsed travelers' checks don't need to be declared. >> what struck me was how complex it was. people had to understand the arcane ins and outs of bringing travelers' checks into the country. and latitudes and longitudes on public lands. and i think they, they did it in an organized way, but it was a very, very complicated argument. >> when the prosecution rested, i felt we had put on the evidence that we had. we had their own pictures of them taking these fossils. we had their own field notes of them collecting these fossils.

we had given it 100% of our effort to show what they did. he. >> as the defense proceeded to present many fewer witnesses to say, look, it's not that complicated. we collecting fossils. we thought we had permission to be there. in this case we weren't where you thought we, in this case we were. it's that simple. >> as we were approaching the end of the trial, neil and i both felt that it was important for him to testify. >> three and a half days i was on the witness stand. and for three and a half days i swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me god. >> pete ended up not testifying. >> the state had not proven its case. the state doesn't prove their case, your client doesn't take the stand, period. >> so, on the advice of counsel, i did not testify.

jury came back today in the fossil criminal trial. the jury said over and over again, either not guilty or no unanimous verdict could be reached. of over 150 charges, the jury agreed to convict only 13 times, and five of those convinces are for misdemeanor crimes. pete larson, co-owner and founder of the institute is convicted on two counts of ms. demeanor theft. and transporting money. neal larson, a misdemeanor he

theft. bob farrar, false statements to customs. the jury also found the institute guilty of bringing goods into the states by making a false statements. defendants eddie cole and terry wince were not convicted on any charges. >> as the verdict was announced, it was almost impossible to believe that the defense had scored a great victory. however, there were some fairly significant felony convictions. >> the expression you could have knocked me over with a feather, you could have knocked me over with a feather. >> i talked to some jurors after the trial. some of them were near tears when i interviewed them about how they had hoped they could acquit on every single charge. >> i believe they had to have something to take this to trial. and i spent the whole trial

waiting for that something. without a doubt, the majority of the jurors wanted this whole case dropped and put away. ♪ the guard who was there filling out the paperwork said, have you seen this? and i said seen what? and he said come here. and i looked at the piece of

paper and it said reason for incarceration, it said failure to fill out forms. and he said, man, you must have really pisseed somebody off. are you sure you're not ignoring them in your body? even if you're treating your crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, an occasional flare may be a sign of damaging inflammation. and if you ignore the signs, the more debilitating your symptoms could become. learn more about the role damaging inflammation may be playing in your symptoms with the expert advice tool at crohnsandcolitis.com. and then speak with your gastroenterologist. with the expert advice tool at crohnsandcolitis.com. ♪ (holiday mhey! is playing) i guess we're going to need a new santa ♪(the music builds to a climax.) more people are coming to audi than ever before. see why now is the best time.

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several papers. since sue was seized in 1992, the fossil has been stored at the school of mines. >> he came to aberdeen for a series of meetings to discuss what he should do with this fossil. the idea that i had was to convene, like, a panel of paleontologists to do an in depth study of this fossil with the hope it would end up in a museum somewhere. but in the meantime, while this is being discussed, mr. williams decided that he would rather sell the fossil. >> morris williams had a stack of proposals from all sorts of people all over the place. everybody wanted it. i called up morris and said i'm going to come out to south dakota if you want, and i'll visit with you. and he said great, and actually

visited the boxes in which sue was located in the south dakota school of mines. >> with morris's family, who had never actually been there, this is the first time they'd actually seen sue. what one really saw inside that sort of garage area was extraordinary, almost citizen kaine vision of boxes and boxes and boxes. we talked about the responsibility involved in doling with this extraordinary fossil. nothing quite like it had ever been sold before. it had to go to the right place. but adjudicating which place was the right place was complicated. and the auction process could help resolve that. >> we're going into court. we'd already had an indication

that the judge wasn't too pleased with us, because we asked him to recuse himself. >> it was pretty clear that judge battey was irritated by the defense. we had to go back to the same tables with our attorneys and sit there and then stand up as judge battey sentenced us. he also wanted to hear that we were sorry for what we had done. ♪ >> for peter larson, recommended guideline range for the two felonies of which he was convicted was 0 to six months. >> it really looked like the sentence would be minimal, probably probation. >> when he did come down with the sentence, he enhanced it so instead of zero to six months, he sentenced me to two years in prison and two years probation.

>> to send him to jail, to prison for two years for this offense was absolutely no justification for it. >> it was indefensible. ugly behavior. it just took my breath away. >> how could they do that? >> this is america. this is justice? this is, you know, the country we live in? >> every geographic photographer in the last 30 years would be in jail. you come back in with money, do you report it? they had not countersigned. >> he had been convinced by guys with ph.d.s it had to be done for the safety of our science and our fossils. and it was so totally wrong. >> peter larson was made an example with that sentence.

i don't have a real good recollection of those next few hours, i guess you might say. >> federal judge in rapid city today sentenced peter larson to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine. larson was found guilty last year of charges connected to his commercial fossil hunting business in hill city. it's the final chapter in the case that began with sue.

♪ >> i was to turn myself in at the gate of the same prison that timothy mcvey was, and john gotti. and i was using a cane. i could barely walk. just a few months before that i had broken my leg quite badly. when i surrendered at the gate, they said we're going to take your cane. and i said if you take my cane i'm going to fall over. >> he was stumbling around. it was pitifupitiful, so insult. i felt so bad for him. and i was totally powerless. nothing you can do. >> she was not next to tears.

she was way past that. it broke my heart. >> there was finally a time when the man said "get out of here." so i drove around him, then i couldn't see anymore. and the only choice you have is to go out the driveway and turn on the desolate road and drive ten hours. you know. home. i think i screamed for about ten minutes. driving. it was wild. i didn't have any other choice. i had to get it out. it was hard. it was the hardest thing i ever did. ever. >> the guard who was there filling, filling out the paperwork, said, have you seen this? and i said seen what? and he said come here. and he looked at the piece of paper. and it said reason for incarceration, failure to fill out forms.

he said, man, you must have really pissed somebody off. ♪ >> prison was very surreal. the thing about prison is not the fact that you're in prison so much as you are kept from your family and your friends.

after a couple of weeks, i said, i have an idea. they used to have a little thing here that they called saturday morning lectures, and people would give lectures. they aren't doing that anymore. i'd like to start that up again. we've got lawyers, doctors, physical therapists, realtors and drug dealers too, and counterfeiters and all sorts of things like that. but these drug dealers who've never had a different job in their life, i think would be helpful for them to learn how to do these other things. >> we went down there, he got clearance. you're surrounded by, he's got a uniform with numbers on it and stuff. he says i'm leading the debate club, and i have a paleontological group. he was teaching the prisoners how to do paleontology right there on the prison grounds. he'll find the beauty in everything around him. >> other inmates loved him.

and it was very clear that they protected him. not in a movie where they beat people up for him. >> but they took care of him. they felt a proprietary interest, like i was special. and it was very sweet to see that they saw who he was. ♪ >> when finally the day came, i'm riding all night long on this bus that stops every five minutes. >> i couldn't go pick up pete. he to get on a bus, a public bus. >> because you're still technically in prison. i'm still serving my sentence. riding in the bus, even though it was riding all night long, it was great. it was my first taste of freedom

for 18 months, where i'm out of this prison. it was great. >> it was great. he was back home. i mean, he was under house arrest. but he was back home. we could see him. >> eventually, i'm released from the halfway house to home confinement. soy get to walk across the alley every night, and that's it. >> when pete got out of prison, he was not the person he was when he left. he was very reclusive. he was very withdrawn. >> he had to reorient to normal interactions with people. >> the institute was a little gloomier. we didn't, still didn't know how the long-term effects of this would leave us. we just had to keep plugging along and try to cope as well as we could.

♪ >> while i was in prison, sue was also still in prison. and there were rumors that sue was going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. >> it really was obvious to me by that time that the only way to get her away from morris williams was through sotheby's. >> all of us were aware that the auction was taking place. it would probably sell for a million or $2 million. >> the big fear was that it was going to be sold to some private individual. >> i know there were a lot of people concerned that it might be bought by an institution in a foreign country. ? that was a big concern with the media was that it was going to be sold and lost to science and sold and put in a private room someplace. >> we always felt an extraordinary obligation to get this fossil to the right home. clearly there were a lot of really interested parties that were hoping and praying they had a shot. >> we had dreams, after the auction started developing, that

perhaps we could buy her back. >> a wonderful philanthropist wanted to help get sue back to south dakota. >> in visiting with pete, i was fascinated with the possibility that we had this fantastic dinosaur back in the state where she belonged. >> stan came ready and willing to spend $1.2 million of his own money. >> i just had hopes we could make it work. >> there's still hope sue will make it back home. >> sue, the dinosaur who is on the auction block tomorrow has traveled a rocky road. >> cannot even see her sold because larson is on house arrest. >> i'm still on work-release. so they asked me to go out there. and i helped them unpack some of the bones. >> so much was still in jackets. we left those in jackets. we thought that was, thirst of

a -- first of all, the right thing to do. but it looked fascinating. the centerpiece of it all was that astonishing skull, absolutely amazing. >> iscontinue and stan adele stein are there. and susan hendrickson is there. everybody's anticipating this auction thinking we have a chance. we have a chance. >> sotheby's had arranged for one of the people who would normally be taking bids to give me a running detail on the telephone about what was happening at the auction. >> i was at the institute, too. i could not bear to listen to the phone. it was too much. >> good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to sotheby's. (vo) nourished.

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the day of the auction, the place is just absolutely full inside. television cameras everywhere. a lot of reporters. the room was completely full. >> morris williams was in a

private room up above the auction area. so he could watch everything going on. sotheby's had arranged for one of the people who would normally be taking bids to give me a running detail on the telephone about what was happening at the auction. >> i was at the institute, too. i could not bear to listen to the phone. it was too much. >> good morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to sotheby's. we have for auction today, the fossil of an at that ran saur us rex named sue. property of the united states of america in trust of morris williams of south dakota. and now we will begin the competition for sue, at that transaw russ rex. anybody give $500,000? $600,000?

$700,000? now 7, $800,000, $900,000. nobody at 9? at $900,000. at $900,000. two bids at $1 million. one in the center, one in the back. $1 million. at $1 million. now $1 million. now $1.1 million. 7.4. 7.4. is there any advance over 7.4. $7.4 million. $400,000. fair warning, $7 million. [ applause ] $7.5 million.

$7.6 million? $7.6 million. fair warning, $7.6 million. up here. [ applause ] >> you didn't know immediately who it was. everybody's looking around saying okay who's going to come forward. >> the bidding was exciting, despite the fact that i was horrified that it was happening. >> raised my paddle twice, and then i was out of it. there it went. >> completely shocking. sue sold that fast, and the price went that high. >> i wasn't shocked that it went that high. i think it's worth more than that. >> it's the most by far any fossil had ever sold for, and although i'm sad. i'm very sad we couldn't get it. i'm thinking, okay, this is a statement about black hills institute and the people. you guys did a good job. >> new home on the shores of

lake michigan. that is, of course in chicago at the renowned museum. >> sue's bones went on the auction block at sotheby's. it ended at $7.6 million but totaled $8.4 million after a fee to the auction house. mcdonald's and walt disney helped fit the bill. south dakotans say she should have stayed here. ♪ >> morris williams was there in the building. and i glanced up at him, this man supported by our government, and receiving 7 poi$7 point wha

it was million dollar, but that fossil should have stayed here. >> this was just the kind of place that we felt sue had to go to. >> my reaction was relief that that specimen wound up where the public and the scientific community would have access to it. >> i think it's probably the second best place she could have been. it's going to go where millions of people would see her. she's not going to be in prison anymore. she is free, and they can see her and get the same excitement that i have for her, and they can love her just like i do. ♪ >> to me, the dinosaur still belongs in hill city. pete's the kind of guy that can go out and find another half-dozen t-rexs. but there was only one sue.

>> in your lifetime, you don't hope to find something that good, but we did. and it's still unbelievable to me. >> it was time for sue's unveiling, finally, which of course you can imagine, pete's most exciting moment to be able to be reunited with sue. he wasn't invited. >> three, two, one! [ applause ] >> we go through what happened and the negative of that, but there's another negative. it's negative of what never happened and what could have

happened. and it's a damn shame. chicago has a wonderful dinosaur. they love it, but they don't love it the way south dakotans would have loved that dinosaur. ♪

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