[CPProt.net] Former astronauts and Cosmosphere workers testified that who owned space memorabilia was often uncertain.

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Artifacts' owners unclear
Former astronauts and Cosmosphere workers testified that who owned space
memorabilia was often uncertain.
BY STAN FINGER
The Wichita Eagle
Pctober 22, 2005

The jury in the Max Ary trial listened Friday to testimony from someone who
walked on the moon, and laid eyes on several artifacts seized from the
Oklahoma City home of the co-founder and former president of the Kansas
Cosmosphere and Space Center -- including a space boot and a control panel
from Air Force One.

Ary, 55, faces 19 federal charges that he stole space artifacts from NASA
and the Cosmosphere and sold them for his own personal benefit. He led the
museum for 26 years before leaving in 2002.

Retired Brig. Gen. Charles Duke, who was an astronaut from 1966 to 1972,
testified that he gave the Cosmosphere 10 small Kansas flags that he carried
to the moon on Apollo 15. Ary has admitted selling one of the
4-inch-by-6-inch silk flags.

Although Duke gave some other flags to family and friends in Kansas, "I did
not donate any flags to Max Ary," Duke said.

The flags had been valued at $7,000 apiece, Duke said. In 2001, Ary sold the
flag and 25 other items at a space memorabilia auction in Beverly Hills for
$51,434, according to court documents.

Duke testified that Ary called him in late 2003 or early 2004 and said he
had lost the letter Duke sent him saying he meant for one of those small
flags to be a personal gift to Ary. Would he mind sending another letter to
that effect?

But Duke said he had no record or memory of writing such a letter, and was
"uncomfortable" with doing it because he had taken a charitable tax
deduction on all 10 Cosmosphere flags on his taxes. Personal gifts can not
be deducted, he said.

Because Ary "was such a good friend," Duke said, he wrote a letter to the
Cosmosphere giving the museum permission to give one of the flags to Ary.
But that wasn't until about three years after Ary had sold the flag.

In his third day of testimony, current Cosmosphere president Jeff
Ollenburger testified that the employee handbook states that workers can be
fired for dishonesty, excessive use of company supplies for personal
purposes and theft of museum property.

Employees must also provide a list of items in any private collection,
Ollenburger said, and Ary had not done that. Under questioning from defense
attorney Lee Thompson, however, Ollenburger acknowledged that no form on
which to list privately owned items had been created.

Roger Launius, former chief historian for NASA and now chairman of the
Smithsonian Institution's space history division, testified that the
Smithsonian transferred ownership of "a large number" of space artifacts
from the institute to the Cosmosphere. The items came from NASA's Johnson
Space Center, with whom the Smithsonian has the right of first refusal when
NASA decides to release items from its warehouses.

But the Smithsonian never transferred ownership of any artifacts to Ary,
Launius said, because regulations forbid the giving of property to
individuals.

Former Cosmosphere employee Steve Garner testified that the museum's
inventory records and database were "in disarray" while he was there between
1993 and 1996. Garner said he spent a lot of time bringing the museum's
paper and electronic inventory lists, which often had gaps, into agreement.
Under cross-examination by Thompson, he said that Ary pushed to make the
inventory database as accurate as possible.

Former Cosmosphere board chairmen Allen Fee and Russ Reinert each testified
that while they were on the board, Ary was never given permission by the
board to sell museum artifacts and keep the proceeds for himself, or to give
himself artifacts from the Cosmosphere.

FBI Special Agent Barry Petru testified about the artifacts and paperwork
seized from Ary's home in Oklahoma City in December 2003, and FBI Special
Agent John Sullivan testified about more artifacts turned over to the FBI by
Thompson, Ary's attorney.

Those artifacts included a Gemini space boot, an Apollo 10 beta cloth patch
and a control panel from Air Force One. Under questioning from Thompson,
Petru read a letter to Ary in which astronaut Tom Stafford gave him a beta
cloth patch from the Apollo flight as a gift.

Patti Ferguson, Ary's executive assistant for the last three years he was at
the Cosmosphere, explained in court Friday how she filled out the paperwork
to remove artifacts from the museum's inventory at Ary's direction in early
2001.

Ferguson also testified that Ary dictated information for an insurance claim
off the top of his head about the value and significance of a mock-up of an
astronaut's watch. The watch belonged to NASA and was reported lost after it
had been loaned out to a museum in the Philippines. Ary is accused of not
reporting the loss to NASA and not relinquishing an insurance settlement of
nearly $54,000 to the space agency.

She also testified that in February 2000, Ary walked into her office and
told her to ship nine boxes he had in his van to Superior Galleries in
Beverly Hills. Ferguson said she remembered the event because it was not
easy to move the large boxes from the van.

Ary is charged with selling NASA and Cosmosphere artifacts at Superior
Galleries' Spring 2000 auction and keeping the proceeds for himself.

http://www.kansas.com/