warehouse and still no charge have been filed against the institute. allow us some rights. charge us with something. let s go to court. let 12 people decide. i couldn t give them any information to help 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. well, they didn t do anything wrong. they talked to my attorney about, you better get your guy in, or 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. that s horrible. i mean, i considered 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
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. 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
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
$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
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