potential criminal violations. there were so many bones, so many animals, so many vertebrates that were taken off public lands, taken internationally, sold internationally. there was way more than we could have investigated. the case was never wanting for not having sue. if yand you re talking toevere rheumyour rheumatologiste me,
up and bailed back to south dakota by the end of the year to cover the story and see what was gonna 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
the federal government took the position that he had no authority himself to enter into an agreement with the black hills institute. peter realized that he could not have his fossil back. he was devastated. the judge decided that sue was real estate. sue the fossil was real estate. i first got involved in the dinosaur case, as we call 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 the broader spectrum, people can look at it
really wanted to help get sue back to south dakota. in visiting with pete, i was fascinated with the possibility that we d have 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 are hopes sue will come back home. stanford adelstein will bid on sue. sue has travelled a rocky road since she was found. right now larson s heart is broken. he s lost his most important find and cannot even see her sold because larson is under house arrest. i m still only on work release. so they ask me to go out there. so they flew he out to new york and i helped them kind of unpack some of the bones. so much was still in jackets. we left those in jackets. we thought that was first of all the right thing to do for scientifically. but also, it looked fascinating.
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