“I was devastated,” Molt said. Schwarz was “my juju, my kryptonite. No one else could get this stuff anymore.”
11
Conservation thru Commercialization
The legal status of the Fiji banded iguana had been less than clear in the 1970s, when Hank Molt smuggled his. The species was protected in Fiji then, but by a statute that was too ambiguous to trigger the Lacey Act, and Molt was never convicted on the charges related to Fijis. By May 1989, however, when Tommy Crutchfield took his Randall knife to Anson Wong’s box, Fijis were among the most illegal reptiles in the world, falling under the unambiguous protections of the Endangered Species Act and CITES.
The Fiji iguanas that Molt had imported in the 1970s were all dead, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Outside Fiji, the only legal colony of Fiji iguanas lived at the San Diego Zoo, cared for by Crutchfield’s friend Thomas Schultz. San Diego had kept Fijis since the 1960s, when the king of Tonga sent three as a gift, but by 1987 the colony had dwindled, forcing Schultz to make three trips to Fiji to eke out more. Fiji gave Schultz six, and Schultz, a very skilled breeder, turned these into a thriving colony of forty. All of them were still, technically, the property of the Fiji government, to which Schultz was obliged to send annual reports.
Very few reptile enthusiasts had ever laid eyes on a live Fiji iguana, except in San Diego. Even Anson Wong had only ever seen a Fiji iguana in the San Diego Zoo, until a Swiss guy showed up in Penang one day with a bag of them. Wong called to share this news with Crutchfield, who was, Wong said, “ecstatic.”
Crutchfield had told friends that the iguanas were a surprise, that he didn’t know a thing about them until Wong phoned on the night of the shipment, telling him to open one particular box first.
Wong said it was no surprise. “Sure—send a $7,000 animal and risk him not accepting it, no way. He wanted them from the word go.”
“We did flirt with the idea,” Crutchfield acknowledged. “But when he actually said, ‘I want to ship them,’ I said no, then quite some time passed and these came in. Originally there were supposed to be six or eight,” he said, and he agreed to send Wong some rhinoceros iguanas in exchange. Later, he said, he thought better of it and changed his mind, but by then Wong had sent four.
Crutchfield soon realized there wasn’t much you could do with four Fiji iguanas. Fiji iguanas were CITES Appendix I, and one of the few foreign reptiles listed by the Endangered Species Act; in the United States, only the San Diego Zoo had permits for them. In hindsight, Crutchfield said, he wished he had simply called Fish and Wildlife and reported the lizards the minute they came in, but he knew it would cost him. “I didn’t want to pay another $4,000 fine,” he said, much less face the criminal charges the agency had so far spared him. And the iguanas, so beautiful with their turquoise bands and red eyes and yellow nostrils, would surely be confiscated, and that would be a waste.
Crutchfield turned to the only person in any position to help: Thomas Schultz. Schultz and Crutchfield shared a close bond. Schultz, like Crutchfield, was short but powerful, and an autodidact in a world that increasingly valued degrees. Both men talked fast, with high, wound-up voices that people found incongruous with their tough looks. “I always admired people who kept in shape and people who weren’t wussies,” Crutchfield said, and Schultz was no wussy. Schultz had dropped out of high school in the 1950s and served in the Panama Canal Zone as a trainer for the army’s jungle warfare school, teaching soldiers which animals to eat and how to catch them, and how to escape ambushes, camouflage themselves, machete their way out of a fix. In 1960, Schultz was back in the United States, serving in the army reserves, when he crushed his elbow, broke his neck and knees, and dislodged his heart in a parachute accident. Schultz took three years to recover, spending long stretches at a hospital across the street from the San Diego Zoo, which he visited almost daily. When Schultz was well enough, the zoo hired him as its gorilla and reptile keeper, though he knew little about reptiles, and nothing about gorillas.
The San Diego Zoo was among the wealthiest zoos in the country. It was famous for its rare reptile collection even in the 1960s, and twenty years later, as Schultz and Crutchfield got to know each other, it was erecting a cluster of new reptile buildings and eager to fill them. The Bronx Zoo was San Diego’s only real rival as far as reptiles were concerned, and Schultz had little patience for John Behler. “It was a personal thing that we couldn’t get along, and the philosophy of the institutions was different,” Schultz said. “In San Diego we were looking to get things that no one else had. And you had to be willing to get them.” Schultz absolutely was. He traveled to Fiji and Komodo and New Zealand, striking deals for iguanas and dragons and tuataras, deals that Crutchfield suspected involved substantial bribes. Some of Schultz’s trips were funded directly by Crutchfield, who wrote his checks out to Schultz whenever he bought animals from the zoo. That way, Schultz could bypass the zoo’s general fund, and spend the money in his reptile department, or spread it around Southeast Asia—whatever he had to do. The practice “was pretty much sanctioned by the zoo,” Crutchfield said. “Lots of curators did the same thing back then.”
Crutchfield could obtain for Schultz animals that the San Diego Zoo could not, by dealing with people the zoo would rather avoid, like Hank Molt. “I bought animals from Tom that I knew came from Hank. I would not buy them from Hank,” Schultz said. In 1989 alone, Schultz spent $60,000 on animals from Crutchfield.
Such wheeling and dealing was “marginal” behavior for a zoo curator, Schultz acknowledged. “It wasn’t that we couldn’t get permits,” he said. “There is no animal in the world that the San Diego Zoo couldn’t get permits for. It comes down to money. What is it gonna cost to send a keeper to Australia for two months, then try to get a permit, then pay for the shipping and the bonding and hope the animals are healthy? Tom made a lot of money. The San Diego Zoo had the best collection ever in its history. We both profited.”
The Schultz connection also gave Crutchfield access to animals he might not otherwise have had, animals Crutchfield liked to list as “zoo-bred” on his mailings. So prolific were San Diego’s breeding programs that the zoo often had surpluses of animals, even endangered ones; Schultz sold some of his best to Crutchfield. And since Crutchfield never had the heart to kill an animal, particularly a rare one, if he found himself with something too hot to sell he tapped Schultz to give it a home. Once, he sent Schultz back to San Diego with an endangered black caiman in his luggage that another Florida dealer had imported by accident.
Schultz was not entirely comfortable with the way Crutchfield operated; many times, he said, he warned Crutchfield not to have blatantly illegal animals around the shop when he visited. When Crutchfield offered him a gold Rolex, Schultz balked. “It just seemed too much like a bribe,” he said. But then, “Penny convinced me to take it because Tom was very hurt. I sold it after two days and bought a computer.”
“Hell yeah, he took it,” Crutchfield said. “He also took a handmade Randall knife.”
The illegal Fiji iguanas, however, Schultz refused to take. “Hiding a Fiji would be like hiding a panda bear,” said Schultz.
And this left Crutchfield in a pickle.
SCHULTZ HAD not refused the iguanas outright.
What happened was, not long after their arrival, two of the iguanas died. Crutchfield had been keeping both pairs in rolling cages on the pool deck, and the kids who worked for him were charged with rolling them in and out of the sun. The kids left one of the cages in the sun too long, and one pair baked. Crutchfield wasted no time putting the surviving pair on a plane to San Diego, where Thomas Schultz had agreed to take them in, Crutchfield said. “He knew exactly where the Fijis came from, the whole story.”
Schultz claimed Crutchfield sent him only one Fiji iguana, a female, ostensibly to find out whether it was gravid, which it was not.
Schultz hadn’t seen a Fiji iguana in private hands since the 1970s—though it was hardly for lack of searching. He�
��d tried for years to find the remnants of Hank Molt’s storied Fijis for his breeding colony; it was a lot easier to buy one of those than to glad-hand every minister in Fiji. But his effort was in vain; the original Molt Fijis were all dead, as far as anyone knew, and there was no evidence of any progeny. “I had no idea where it came from and didn’t ask,” Schultz said of Crutchfield’s Fiji. “By that time I probably had forty-five young. Why would I want an illegal one?”
Schultz claimed to have returned Crutchfield’s iguana the day after receiving it, but Crutchfield said it was at least a month later. “Another keeper started asking why there were two more Fijis,” Crutchfield said, which forced Schultz to return them.
Crutchfield never did bother to apply for federal permits for the Fijis—he stood no chance of getting them, and he knew it. But he had to explain the iguanas’ presence to his friends and customers, so weeks after Schultz sent them back to Florida, Crutchfield continued to maintain that they were earmarked for the San Diego Zoo. Curators all over the country heard that Crutchfield had imported Fiji iguanas for San Diego, and berated Schultz for snapping them all up, when he had so many already.
Schultz was furious—Crutchfield couldn’t keep his mouth shut about anything. He phoned Crutchfield and chewed him out.
Crutchfield found himself stuck with two rare and exquisite animals that he couldn’t really keep, and couldn’t easily sell. It occurred to him that the smartest thing to do would probably be to kill them, but that was out of the question.
THAT FALL, the Crutchfields decided to go into business with some very wealthy friends. The decision came suddenly, almost impulsively.
The Crutchfields and the Dietleins had known each other for more than a decade. Don Dietlein had been general curator of the National Zoo in the 1960s; Nora Dietlein was a Canadian-born biochemist with a vast oil inheritance that she liked to spend on the most extraordinary animals—lemurs and Galapagos tortoises and a clouded leopard that walked freely around her home. In the 1970s and ’80s, the Dietleins had run an art gallery on Sanibel Island, just across the causeway from Fort Myers, and, since animal people tend to find each other, had gotten to know the Crutchfield family well. They’d traveled with the Crutchfields to Haiti once, and Nora Dietlein was among the first of the Crutchfields’ friends to view the new Fiji iguanas from Anson Wong. Penny had invited her to take a look at some “highly illegal” lizards one afternoon, “the most beautiful animals you’ve ever seen,” she promised. Nora was impressed.
Not long after the iguanas arrived, the Dietleins announced that they were moving. Their animal collection had become too big for Sanibel, so they’d purchased a pristine, 120-acre plot in the town of Bushnell, in central Florida, and were just deciding what to do with the rest of it. They considered raising ostriches or catfish, or starting a mushroom farm, but had yet to settle on anything until they joined the Crutchfields for a farewell dinner in Fort Myers. The Dietleins parked their car in the Herpetofauna lot and piled into Crutchfield’s Mercedes.
Crutchfield, Nora Dietlein recalled, was in a horrible mood. “He was very emotional. Very depressed. He said the business was getting to be too much for him. He couldn’t handle it. He needed more time for his family.” Crutchfield drove erratically, unnerving the Dietleins by looking into the backseat at them while he drove, but they said nothing.
It had been a lousy week for Crutchfield. Anson Wong had flown in from Malaysia more or less unannounced in an attempt to collect some $100,000 Crutchfield wasn’t paying. Crutchfield had told Wong he was withholding payment because too many of Wong’s animals were dead on arrival, but Wong wasn’t having it. “About five minutes after I arrived,” Wong said, “Tom opened his freezer and all these dead frogs came out.” But then Crutchfield put business aside and treated Wong as his guest. He took Wong on a road trip to Silver Springs, home for decades of the late Ross Allen. “Tom was being the ever-gracious host, buying meals, tickets, getting to go behind the scenes and stuff, and it was making me feel guilty bringing up the topic of money,” Wong said. “We did the Silver Springs thing Tuesday or Wednesday, and we returned on a Thursday, and I said, ‘Tom, about this little money you owe me.’ He says, ‘Yes, I’ll have Penny do it,’ but on Friday the subject hadn’t come up, and I was leaving Monday. It hit Saturday and I’ve got nothing.” Wong was by now sick of the Crutchfield experience, sick of “the knives in the bathroom and guns in the bedroom. It was all so uncivilized,” he said. Crutchfield, Wong concluded, “is loud, basically empty, and when I got stiffed for that $100,000 I decided I’m just not going to make an issue about it because he doesn’t have it.” They would never do business again.
Now, at dinner with the Dietleins, Crutchfield was an emotional wreck. The Dietleins claimed that Crutchfield offered them his entire business, then and there, begging them to take it over. Crutchfield said the Dietleins made the offer to him, relentlessly and insistently. One way or another, they decided to go into business together.
When the two couples returned to Crutchfield’s from the restaurant, an alarm was flashing in the warehouse. Dozens of Crutchfield’s boa constrictors had escaped from a holding cage and were hanging spookily from the rafters. The Dietleins and the Crutchfields caught every last one of the snakes. They were in this together now.
IN JANUARY 1990, long lists of assets were exchanged and a contract was signed. Don and Nora Dietlein now owned 50 percent of Herpetofauna, Inc. Crutchfield owned half the Dietleins’ art collection, a third of their 120-acre parcel in rural Bushnell, and had use of an incredible structure in which to build the business of a lifetime. The building, which everyone called the barn, straddled the line between the two couples’ properties. It was no ordinary barn, but the size of an airplane hangar and wired to the hilt because it had been constructed to conceal a previous owner’s marijuana farm. The barn would house all of Herpetofauna’s lizards and turtles and snakes. The property’s naturally swampy grounds were perfect for crocodiles, so Crutchfield decided to expand into crocodile farming as well. Crutchfield dug crocodile ponds, and sent up trailers for himself and Penny to live in, another for Penny’s mother, and one more for an office.
Just before their final move to Bushnell, Penny packed up the two Fiji iguanas into pet carriers and handed them to their veterinarian for safekeeping. She didn’t want them getting jostled around during the move, she explained, but she never called to ask for them back, either.
THE DIETLEINS had no children, but somewhat curiously supported a twenty-five-year-old man named Adamm Smith, whom they were taking with them to Bushnell. For two years, Smith had lived rent-free on the first floor of the Dietleins’ Sanibel home. The Dietleins had recently paid off all Smith’s credit cards, deeded him twenty acres of their new property, provided him the engagement ring for his new wife, who was moving along with them, and changed their wills to make Smith their sole heir. Already, Smith owned a tremendously valuable art collection, given to him by the Dietleins. Smith would renovate the barn and help Crutchfield manage the business.
Crutchfield hired a number of new employees, from handymen to crocodile keepers. For the first time in his life, his budget was nearly unlimited. The only hitch, for Crutchfield, were the Dietleins themselves. Don Dietlein was effeminate and timid, but Nora Dietlein was tough, demanding, as much of a control freak as Crutchfield. In the past, Crutchfield’s managers and partners had been his stooges, but now all of Crutchfield’s decisions had to be made in consultation with Nora, a situation neither of them ever really adjusted to.
IN THE winter of 1990, the Crutchfields’ veterinarian called to say he could no longer care for the Fiji iguanas. He drove the iguanas up to Bushnell, where the Dietleins agreed to keep them as the compound was being assembled.
The Dietleins technically owned half the iguanas, since two Fijis had been listed among the Crutchfields’ assets when their business plans were drawn up. They kept the lizards in a large aquarium, feeding them fruit and adjusting their heat lamps all win
ter. They knew the iguanas had come from Anson Wong, but were still unaware, they claimed, that Crutchfield had failed in his plan to legalize them through some sort of arrangement with the San Diego Zoo.
That February, state wildlife officers stopped by on a routine inspection of the Bushnell property. Only Adamm Smith was there at the time, and he knew to make sure the iguanas were hidden.
WHEN HANK MOLT and his girlfriend Colette Hairston showed up in Bushnell in the spring of 1990, on their way to a crocodile conference in Gainesville, they were amazed by Crutchfield’s new place. Reptile people did not generally live on pristine 120-acre estates, but rather crammed themselves and their animals into whatever space they had, resigned to the omnipresent musky smell of snakes. Crutchfield’s new Herpetofauna compound was, by comparison, “fucking paradise,” Molt said. “There were flight cages and sprinkler systems and lemurs. Horses and crocodile ponds. The kind of industrial kitchens they have in zoos for feeding animals.” To get around the grounds, you had to drive golf carts.
It was important to Crutchfield that his compound be finished within six months. The first-ever National Reptile Breeders’ Expo was coming up that August. The expo was a new concept, a showcase for the commercial reptile trade at a time when the zoos’ changing politics had forced the reptile dealers to seek new markets.
It had all begun at the 1989 reptile symposium in Phoenix, when the symposium’s board voted to ban sales of live animals at the event. This caused bitter feelings among the reptile dealers. Ever since the reptile symposiums had started, in the 1970s, dealers had arrived with live animals to sell—it was part of the fun and half the point. Wayne Hill, an Orlando snake and turtle breeder, was so infuriated by the ban that he decided to start a convention just for the trade. The rising class of reptile breeders, the herpetoculturists, had already turned away from the zoos, looking to private collectors instead for their high-end animals. The expo would formalize the switch. Hill worked all year to publicize the expo, determined that it be a triumph, the biggest gathering of snake people under one roof, and, he hoped, a comeuppance to the zoo community.
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