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Consumer Reports


Man sentenced to nearly 6 years in prison for peddling moon rocks

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | (KRT) ORLANDO 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 4 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.

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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.

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© 2003, The Orlando Sentinel Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services