Undercover agents received an e-mail tip in May and started communicating with a person offering moon rocks, FBI agent James Jarboe said. Undercover agents set up a meeting in Orlando this past weekend to complete the purchase. According to the complaint, Roberts said Fowler and Saur helped him steal the safe and load it into a sports utility vehicle. Conway, in closing, stated she believed Roberts knew of the location of Gibson's records despite Roberts' testimony to the contrary.
Goldstein spoke with Thad Roberts and Gordon McWhorter, who are both serving multi-year prison sentences, their families, and their colleagues to arrive at a more complete timeline of the theft then previously published.
Whether it was for love or money, or just the thrill of it all, Roberts' audacious scheme was sheer lunacy — and it worked. The safe yielded a uniquely American treasure: grams of lunar samples collected on the six Apollo moon landings, with the curatorial forms that confirmed their authenticity. The safe also contained a Martian meteorite that hinted at life on the red planet. They had hit the jackpot.
But with moon rocks on their minds, and dollar signs in their eyes, they didn't see the obvious craters on the landscape. In addition to jail time, Roberts will serve three years probation and perform hours of community service. Gordon McWhorter's mother upheld his innocence, saying he would never knowingly take part in a crime and that Thad Roberts must have duped him into participating.
Roberts still awaits sentencing on October Also today, the court sentenced Tiffany Fowler and Shae Saur to three years probation. Fowler and Saur will each serve the first days of their sentence in home detention and will be required to complete hours of community service. Gordon McWhorter will be sentenced in late August. Thad Roberts' sentencing will be combined with another case in September, for his theft of dinosaur fossils.
The Orlando Sentinel provides additional details:. A hearing planned by the U. Both Saur and Fowler were astronaut hopefuls. With felony convictions, both are now ineligible. The court must determine the value of the stolen goods: in this case, Apollo-recovered moon rocks and samples of ALH "Martian life" meteorite.
This is the first time lunar rocks will be appraised. The roles of the four defendants is now clearer: Roberts, the ring leader, and his mistress Roberts' was married Fowler, joined by fellow NASA intern Saur, stole the safe. McWhorter, Roberts' friend, served as the broker. The heist had lifted a total of Roberts, Fowler, and Saur will be sentenced Aug. McWhorter, who was the only one of the four defendants not to plead guilty, will be sentenced on Aug.
McWhorter's attorney says he plans to file an appeal. Attorney Rachelle DesVaux Bedke to establish "that the pair had planned to find buyers for the moon items months ahead," according to the Orlando Sentinel. Although Roberts has pled guilty, he's been held without bail for the past days. He has used the time to write a novel based on his experiences.
He plans to make it available online for prospective publishers. The trial against McWhorter ends today. Gordon McWhorter, the only one of the four not working as a student intern at NASA at the time of the theft, is also the only defendent not to have plead guilty.
His friend and alleged ring leader Thad Roberts, along with Shae Saur and Tiffany Fowler, are expected to testify as witnesses for the prosecution. While the theft of the lunar and martian samples made headlines last summer, the missing clothbound journals, the work of NASA Senior Scientist Everett K. Gibson Jr. Roberts, who has been held without bail for several months, has spent his time preparing a manuscript about the theft.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, he told the prosecutor "he wanted it to be like a movie that he could interest people in at some later date. Gordon McWhorter. Apprehended for failing to appear in a federal court for the theft of moon rocks, McWhorter intially told authorities he was Job from the bible. She never said anything directly, either, but it was more about the symbol of what we were doing - you know, basically having sex on the moon.
Thad Roberts Or just plain dumb? All kinds of questions come to mind, some more basic than others. It was about the expression. But the FBI doesn't buy that Roberts did it all for love. And then this one greedy event, you know, he threw his life away in one fell swoop. He never again saw the woman he says he stole the moon rocks for.
He says he doesn't know how he ever could have pulled the heist off Because there's just no reason to do it, you know? No reason to go through with it. Sure, parts of it are exciting, parts of it are a good story. But yeah, I mean, your whole life, the chance of being an astronaut? Anything's possible," he said. The private industry is still maybe going on. This might be the big thing of our lifetime and if it is, I'm gonna try to find a way to go.
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