[MSN] Man could get more prison time for dealing in artifacts.Former Grants Pass insurance agent and amateur archaeologist convicted of trying to hire a hit man now found guilty of illegally attempting to sell American Indian remains

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

October 14, 2006
Man could get more prison time for dealing in artifacts
Former Grants Pass insurance agent and amateur archaeologist convicted
of trying to hire a hit man now found guilty of illegally attempting
to sell American Indian remains
Staff and wire reports

An amateur archaeologist serving a prison sentence for trying to hire
a hit man to kill a former business partner has been found guilty of
attempting to sell American Indian artifacts stolen from public lands
in 2002 and 2003.

Jack Lee Harelson, already serving a 10-year sentence, faces up to two
more years in prison for the most recent conviction, said Assistant
U.S. Attorney Chris Cardani in Eugene. He will be sentenced Dec. 19.

Harelson acknowledged before Judge Ann L. Aiken this week that the
government would be able to prove he hired another man to assist him
in offering to sell archaeological resources dug up illegally on
federal lands in Oregon and Nevada, according to court records.

He had hired a government informant. Harelson, a former Grants Pass
insurance agent, was convicted in 1996 of stealing artifacts and the
mummified remains of two Indian children from Elephant Mountain Cave
in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. He was later fined $2.5 million in a
civil case involving the excavation. Detectives learned that Harelson
was interested in hiring a hit man to kill people involved in his
conviction. An informant told Harelson he knew a hit man, who did not
really exist, and Harelson offered to pay him with opals to do the
job, according to tape recordings.Harelson was tried twice in Oregon
on charges that he had paid an intermediary to arrange murders. He was
acquitted in 2004 on two such charges.

But a Jackson County jury last year found him guilty of trying to hire
a hit man to kill Lloyd Olds of Brookings, Harelson's partner in a
Nevada opal-mining venture. The jury acquitted him of trying to
solicit the murder of an Oregon State Police lieutenant. The local
case will be featured in a Monday program on Court TV. Jackson County
Deputy District Attorney Tim Barnack and Oregon State Police Lt. Walt
Markee were interviewed for the upcoming "Grave Robber" episode of
"The Investigators." The show is scheduled to air at 10 p.m. on local
Charter cable channel 67.

http://www.mailtribune.com/