and they re basically saying that pete and neal and bob and whoever was out there would go step over the fence, wrongly, knowingly 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 then have conducted an illegal act, which is called interstate transportation of stolen property. they get back to the institute, they would make a phone call, send a fax maybe to japan and say, we found the thing that we were looking for. do you want to buy it? well, that s wire fraud. and then 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
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 maurice williams was through sotheby s. all of us was aware that the auction was taking place. it would probably sell for $1 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, 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 from our area, stan adelstein,