[meteorite-list] Moon-Rock Peddler Sentenced To 6 Years

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:16:37 2004
Message-ID: <200308271600.JAA07566_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-locmoonrock27082703aug27,0,5343002.story?coll=orl-news-headlines

Moon-rock peddler sentenced to 6 years
By Henry Pierson Curtis
Orlando Sentinel
August 27, 2003

Advertising moon rocks for sale on the Internet and then skipping trial cost a
Utah man almost six years of freedom Tuesday.

Gordon Sean McWhorter's family continued to proclaim his innocence after
U.S. District Judge Anne C. Conway sentenced him to 70 months in prison for
a crime that shook NASA's research community.

"I'm proud of him," his mother, Riki Thoreson, said after the afternoon
hearing in federal court in Orlando.

"Why should he take a plea [bargain] when he didn't steal anything?"

In June a jury convicted McWhorter, 27, in last year's theft of lunar
specimens and meteorites from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The rocks were stolen by three summer interns working for NASA, including
McWhorter's close friend, Thad Roberts, who planned the crime.

Roberts, 26, and interns Shae Saur, 20, and Tiffany Fowler, 23, broke into a
locked laboratory and stole a 600-pound safe containing about four ounces of
moon rock specimens.

For the purposes of this case only, the U.S. Attorney's Office and defense
lawyers stipulated the lunar specimens and a Martian meteorite were worth at
least $5.1 million in 1973 dollars. The 2003 value would have been $21
million, if inflation had been included.

A true market value was not established.

McWhorter, a self-described "vagabond," did not take part in the theft but
offered the specimens for sale on the Internet, prosecutors said.

He tried to protect himself from arrest by creating a false identity on an
Internet e-mail service.

A Belgian rock collector spotted McWhorter's offer on a Web site and alerted
the FBI in Tampa. Agents lured Roberts, Fowler and McWhorter to Orlando, where
they were arrested and the specimens were recovered.

Saur was arrested later in Texas.

All but McWhorter pleaded guilty.

Originally scheduled to stand trial in April, McWhorter did not show up in
Orlando. When he was arrested three days later in Utah, McWhorter claimed he
was the biblical figure Job. His mental competence was not an issue
during his trial.

On Aug. 6, Saur and Fowler were sentenced to six months of house arrest and
three years of probation. They received terms that were less than what are
recommended by federal sentencing guidelines because Conway ruled that both
women had never been in trouble before and played minor roles in the crime.

After Tuesday's sentencing, McWhorter's mother and Corinne Sullivan, a family
friend, said that he would not knowingly take part in a crime.

They described him as a gentle intellectual who wrote stories for children and
helped the homeless wherever he went.

The two blamed Roberts, a fellow Utah native, for duping McWhorter.

Roberts, who remains held without bail in the Lake County Jail, awaits
sentencing on Oct. 29.

Henry Pierson Curtis can be reached at 407-420-5257 or hcurtis_at_orlandosentinel.com.
Received on Wed 27 Aug 2003 12:00:11 PM PDT