the indictments were an avalanche of charges. and it was just a massive document and it looked like a death blow to the institute. the government went just nuts or something, you know? i guess they just threw everything in and hoped something would stick. if you add up the time served for each of those counts, it comes to 353 years for me, which is longer than jeffrey dahmer was sentenced to prison for. and he killed and ate like 13 people. you know, it doesn t make sense. a lot of these accusations are things 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 the indictments, 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 moment 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
$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
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?
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.