by Steve Fiffer
December, Kristin D o n n a n , a writer w h o worked on the television show
Unsolved Mysteries, had come to Hill City from Los Angeles looking for
a story. Instead, D o n n a n , an attractive w o m a n in her thirties with long
brown hair, found love—during her first interview with Larson. A whirl-
wind courtship had ensued and the two had married four m o n t h s later.
There was other good news besides the marriage. Over the last 12
months, the Larson brothers had moved closer to realizing their lifelong
dream of building a natural history m u s e u m . Their not-for-profit cor-
poration had contracted to purchase a 10-acre site for the m u s e u m for
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TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
$50,000. Event organizers h o p e d that the day's events would raise the
$7000 needed to make the first year's contract payment on the proper-
ty. They exceeded that figure by almost $3000.
Almost 500 people t u r n e d out for the festival. Hill City youngsters
began the day with a bike-a-thon that raised m o r e than $150. That
event's top fund raiser, Arlo Holsworth, received a cast of a T. rex tooth
as his prize. An all-day bake sale raised additional money, as did the sale
of a limited edition of 300 color prints of artist Mitch McClain's rendi-
tion of the m u s e u m . Casey Derflinger bought print n u m b e r 1 for $250
a n d p r o m p t l y displayed it in his office at First Western Bank. As expect-
ed, an auction of fossils and jewelry raised the most money, almost
$9000. A m o n g the 119 items sold were a cast of an adolescent mastodon
skull with tusks, a cast of the world's largest shark's tooth, and a cast of
one of Stan's teeth (Stan the T. rex, not Stan Sacrison).
Other activities contributed to creating a pleasant time-out from
the Contentious Period. The popular Rushmore G e r m a n Band from
Rapid City provided music on the front porch of the Alpine Inn.
According to the Hill City Prevailer, "The [potluck] supper crowd filled
the Senior Citizens Center three times over as the line kept going and
going and g o i n g . . . . No one went away hungry."
The highlight of the festival was the m u s e u m site dedication ceremo-
ny on a hill north of town. The Boy Scouts raised the flag. The Fife and
D r u m Corps gave their first show of the season. And Larson broke
ground by digging a shovel full of dirt. "Pete and Neal gave it a quick look-
over for any potential fossils it might contain!" reported the Prevailer.
The Larsons also spoke at the dedication. They reiterated the under-
lying philosophy of their efforts: that rather than being storage space for
old fossils, a m u s e u m should be for the living—a place to uplift and
educate. T h r o u g h all the turmoil of the previous year, the Larsons had
never stopped their education outreach programs. Most popular was
their Dinosaurs on Wheels program, which featured a juvenile duck-
billed dinosaur that had been specially m o u n t e d to facilitate its porta-
bility. The Larsons took Dinosaurs on Wheels to n u m e r o u s schools
a r o u n d the state, including schools on Indian reservations.
W h e n , in mid-May, Larson brought the exhibit to the grade school
he had attended as a child in Mission, South Dakota, the local Todd
County Tribune covered the two-day event:
J U R A S S I C F A R C E 1 3 5
Complete with a dinosaur skeleton, Larson's presentation fasci-
nated the youngsters, w h o asked such questions as, " H o w m a n y
eggs do they lay?" and "Why are their arms so short in front?"
In his talk, Larson explained that the creatures were really birds,
told about methods of collecting and cleaning the fossils, a n d
about what scientists do to learn about dinosaurs. "I love for
t h e m to ask questions," he said. " T h e only stupid question is the
one you don't ask." He added that because so little is k n o w n
about dinosaurs and the fossils are so plentiful, anyone can dis-
cover and contribute to paleontology.
The time-out ended about three weeks later. "Sue II: Hill City Ire
and Federal Agents Return," the Journal reported on June 8. At 7:30 the
previous m o r n i n g , some 30 FBI agents, again led by Charles Draper a n d
William Asbury, had descended on the institute with a search warrant.
The agents had spent seven h o u r s collecting fossils and d o c u m e n t s ,
loading them into m o r e than 50 boxes, and carrying everything out to
two rental moving trucks. Ted McBride, interim U.S. attorney following
Schieffer's resignation, explained that the raid was part of an "ongoing
investigation."
Again, a portion of the institute was cordoned off with yellow evi-
dence tape. And again Hill City residents rushed d o w n Main Street to
protest. Journal reporter H u g h O' Gara noted that by 10:00 AM, the near-
by Heart of the Hills Convenience Store was out of cardboard delivery
boxes. "Residents had c o m m a n d e e r e d the boxes to fashion i m p r o m p t u
protest signs."
"IS THIS AN ANNUAL EVENT?" read one sign. "YOUR TAX D O L -
LARS AT WORK," read another.
O'Gara reported the following conversation between two of the
protesters:
"How do you spell 'seizure'?"
"You would think you would k n o w by now."
Duffy was out of town for the raid. On his return he claimed that
the raid was illegal. He called the search warrant "Jurassic Farce," a play
on the title of the just-released blockbuster movie about dinosaurs,
Jurassic Park. Continuing the m o t i o n picture theme, he called the agents
the "Keystone Cops of paleontology."
1 3 6 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
Larson, w h o had been in Japan on business when the FBI came,
could only scratch his head. "I can't understand why the Department of
Justice feels it necessary to spend all this m o n e y simply to destroy our
business," he said.
Mayor Vitter was equally confused. Were the Larsons and Farrar, as
most people in Hill City thought, scientist-entrepreneurs w h o were
committed to uplifting and educating while making a living? Or were
they felons? At times it seemed that the U.S. attorney was treating them
as if they were mafiosi r u n n i n g s o m e sinister criminal enterprise with
the institute as a front. Larson seemed like a nice guy with his visits to
schools, but, then again, D o n Corleone had been a loving grandfather as
well as a godfather.
"I feel either we have the three worst criminals in South Dakota or
the federal government is wasting its time," the mayor said following the
raid. "It would be best for the town of Hill City to either charge these
people and get it d o n e or leave the case alone."
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Y O U C A N I N D I C T A
H A M S A N D W I C H
"Four million eight hundred thousand."
Unlike Peter Larson, Dr. Dale Russell was not amazed by the
numbers. He and his colleagues from the North Carolina State
Museum of Natural History had come to New York prepared to
spend considerably more to win Sue.
No one had ever paid anywhere near this m
uch for a fossil.
Why wasn't Russell surprised? The specimen was superb, he
would later explain. But there was more than that: "All t h e
attention. All the lore. All the stories. Even though they aren't
happy, they are stories. [They made Sue] like poor King Tut in
his tomb."
While the government continued to search for fossils at the institute,
Peter Larson continued to search for t h e m in the field and through, for
lack of a better term, his field representatives. The affidavits supporting
the government's search warrants alleged that the Larsons were operat-
ing a multistate criminal enterprise. T h e institute's activities did extend
beyond the borders of South Dakota. Institute crews conducted digs in
nearby states as well as South America. Specimens were sold to institu-
tions a r o u n d the c o u n t r y a n d a r o u n d the world. And Larson periodi-
cally traveled across state lines to buy fossils from a m a t e u r and profes-
sional collectors. Was there any criminal activity involved in Larson's
"collection" business?
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1 3 8 TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
Larson didn't seem to be hiding anything. In the midst of the gov-
ernment's investigation, he invited journalist Greg Breining to accom-
pany h i m on one of his multistate business trips. Breining later chroni-
cled the trip in an article for Wyoming Wildlife magazine. On a wintry
day, reporter and subject climbed into Larson's rusting Chevy Suburban
and headed west. They sped across the open highway into Wyoming,
where Larson pointed out the Morrison Formation, in which Othniel C.
Marsh had found brontosaurs, a n d the Lance Creek Formation, where
one of Larson's heroes, John Bell Hatcher, enjoyed remarkable success in
the late nineteenth century.
Hatcher grew up in Iowa. To earn m o n e y for college, he worked in
a coal mine. Fossils were plentiful there, a n d he soon became fascinated
with things paleontological. After graduating from Yale in 1884, he
asked Professor Marsh for a job. Marsh sent h i m to Kansas to work with
Charles H. Sternberg. Soon, however, Hatcher became an independent
collector for Marsh.
Hatcher is perhaps best k n o w n for his discoveries of the skulls of
the h o r n e d dinosaurs, such as Triceratops. He found the first such skull
on record while digging in M o n t a n a in 1888. In Wyoming the next year,
Hatcher ran across a rancher w h o told h i m of a strange, huge, horned
skull he had found. The rancher had tried to lasso the fossil and drag it
back to his h o m e , but the h o r n had broken off. Hatcher sent the h o r n to
Marsh in New Haven and p r o m p t l y received instructions to find the rest
of the skull. He did, and the fossil became the type specimen of the
dinosaur Marsh called Triceratops horridus ("terrifying three-horned
face"). F r o m 1889 to 1892, Hatcher m i n e d the Wyoming formations for
m o r e dinosaurs. He found about 50 h o r n e d skulls in all, most of them
complete.
Hatcher could find the small as well as the large. Near Lance Creek
he found over 800 teeth of small m a m m a l s of the Cretaceous period. On
o n e day alone, he found 87 teeth as he sifted t h r o u g h the dirt.
T h e sheer n u m b e r of specimens wowed scientists. Some years later
Hatcher revealed the secret of his success: He looked for the small fos-
sils near anthills. Red ants apparently cleared the bones out of the way
before building their homes. They then stacked t h e m (as well as gravel)
on top of the hills, perhaps to protect against the rain or wind.
Y O U C A N I N D I C T A H A M S A N D W I C H 1 3 9
Like m a n y of Marsh's collectors, Hatcher eventually grew u n h a p p y
with their business arrangement. He left Wyoming for New Jersey in
1893 to become curator of vertebrate paleontology at Princeton. Later,
after a stint at the Carnegie M u s e u m in Pittsburgh, he went looking for
m o r e prehistoric m a m m a l s in South America.
Wilford calls the expedition "the stuff of which legends are m a d e —
and Hatcher is legendary in vertebrate paleontology." T h e Hatcher party
once spent five m o n t h s in the hinterlands without seeing anyone else.
W h e n m o n e y ran out, Hatcher would venture into the closest town and
find or start a game of poker. Invariably, he w o n enough m o n e y to keep
the expedition afloat. The locals didn't always appreciate his success at
the table. After one particularly fruitful evening, Hatcher had to draw
his gun to make a safe exit with his winnings.
Hatcher eventually returned to the United States. In 1904 he went west
to finish a book on the horned dinosaurs. There he contracted typhoid
fever from which he never recovered. He died that year at the age of 43.
Larson did not expect to find any h o r n e d dinosaurs on his trip to
Wyoming. Instead, bats and birds were on his wish list. After several
h o u r s on the road, he stopped in Rock Springs. There, he hoped to buy
a rare bat from a m a n and his sons w h o collected in the sediments of the
Green River. W h e n Breining looked at the specimen, he observed, "The
bat is simply the hint of a shape in a slab of limestone, a little l u m p bare-
ly larger than a walnut. Few people would think anything of it at all." But
Larson had.
W h e n first shown the fossil a year earlier, Larson had borrowed it
and arranged for X rays. The wings were clearly visible in the negatives.
Unfortunately, on this day, the o w n e r wanted m o r e for the bat than
Larson was willing to pay. Larson a n d Breining left e m p t y - h a n d e d .
In Thayne, Wyoming, Larson called on a h u s b a n d a n d wife team
that also collected in the Green River sediments. The couple owned a
rock shop and sold fossils to m u s e u m s a r o u n d the world, including the
Smithsonian. They showed Larson another slab of limestone, this one
containing a fossil of a bird. Again, the fossil was barely visible. W h e n
Larson held it up to the light, however, Breining observed that "shadows
accentuate the wispy edges of feathers." Larson told the reporter that
without skilled collectors like this couple, scientists would never get the
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TYRANNOSAURUS S U E
o p p o r t u n i t y to see n u m e r o u s quality fossils like the bird. Unable to
strike a deal for the bird, Larson drove on.
In Kemmerer, Wyoming, Larson did acquire a specimen—at least
temporarily. A collector there had found a large slab with the remains of
a creature the size of a small cat. Larson asked h i m where he had found
it. On private land with the permission of the owner, the finder told
him. Assured that it had been collected legally, Larson agreed to take the
piece back to Hill City, where he would remove the skeleton from the
rock and try to identify it. At that point, he and the finder would try to
agree on a purchase price.
Before leaving Kemmerer, Larson also paid a visit to Ulrich's Fish
Fossil Gallery. Breining reported that tension existed between the
Ulrichs a n d other collectors in the area because the
Ulrichs opposed lib-
eralization of regulations governing commercial collecting on private
lands. "I don't agree that any of the rare species should be sold," Wallace
Ulrich told Breining. "They are the property of the schoolchildren."
Breining wrote that Larson "snorted in disgust" after leaving the gallery.
T h e collector w h o gave Larson the slab to take h o m e was subse-
quently arrested for and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft of gov-
e r n m e n t property for collecting "minifish" on BLM property. He was
fined $1025. Larson had nothing to do with this incident, but it d e m o n -
strated the danger inherent in his line of work and also in his way of
conducting business. As a m i d d l e m a n , he ran the risk of acquiring ille-
gally collected fossils. This risk was c o m p o u n d e d by his willingness to
accept the word of those selling h i m specimens. He trusted them to be
honest when they told h i m where they found their fossils. It remained
to be seen whether the government would hold him responsible for
unknowingly purchasing illegally collected fossils and then reselling
t h e m or would allege that he had d o n e so knowingly.
Bakker describes Larson as a "contemporary Billy Budd, totally
without guile." T h e Larson that Bakker, Hendrickson, and many others
knew refused to see the potential for malfeasance or even misfeasance in
others. He knew his word was good, so he assumed the word of others
was good as well. As a result, he almost always sealed deals with a hand-
shake rather than a contract. This practice did not always serve him
well, as the failed deal for the duck-bill with the Viennese m u s e u m and
the debacle with Maurice Williams so clearly demonstrated.
Y O U C A N I N D I C T A H A M S A N D W I C H 1 4 1
Larson's apparent faith in the goodness of his fellow h u m a n s was
usually well placed. The painful experience with Sue was the exception,
while the joyous experience with Stan was the rule. Thus, when Stan
Sacrison called a few weeks after the Sue II raid to say he'd discovered
some bones, Larson h o p p e d in his truck and headed to Buffalo. Soon he
had an a n n o u n c e m e n t .
"We welcome back Duffy to the land of the living," Larson told the
Journal. No, Patrick Duffy had not died a n d c o m e back to life. This