fair warning. $7,600,000. up here? [ cheers and applause ] once the bidding was done, you didn t know immediately who it was. everyone 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. i 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 was thinking, okay, this is a statement about black hills institute and the people. you guys did a good job. your new home on the shores of lake michigan. that is, of course, in chicago,
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.
realized it couldn t claim trust property. so then it comes down to two people. is it morris fossil or black hills institute fossil? every single filing the institute made, i really believed would win, because 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 a fossil, unlike an archaeological find, had become 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 the
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 at 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 chance. we had dreams, after the auction started developing, that perhaps we could buy her back.
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 in which he was convicted was 0 to 6 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 0 to 6 months, he sentenced me to two years in prison and two years probation.