Jack Lee Harelson

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right|200px|thumb|Bureau of Land Management photo of Jack Lee Harelson looting Elephant Mountain Cave in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada.]

Jack Lee Harelson (born 1940) is a US insurance agent and archaeological looter who desecrated a Paiute burial site in Nevada.

Jack Lee Harelson was an insurance agent in Grants Pass, Oregon. In 1995, one of his former business partners in an opal mine tipped off police that he had been looting Amerindian sites. In exchange for immunity to prosecution, Harelson's ex-wife Pamela Ralph lead police investigators to an Elephant Mountain Cave in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. She stated that she and Harelson had dug and collected Amerindian treasures in the early 1980s. She had photographs of the cave that had significantly grown after three years of digging. Harelson had built a wall to hide a dirt pile. Digging had totally destroyed the site, which had included various artifacts, including those from the Paiute tribe.

Oregon State Police recovered over 2000 artifacts from Harelson's home in Grant's Pass, including 10,000-year-old sandals. In Harelson's garden, police found two headless bodies of Paiute children wrapped in plastic garbage bags. These bodies were historical, maybe 2000 years old. The heads were not found. Ralph said that bodies were intact when they were found in two large baskets.

The state prosecutor charged Harelson for looting and desecrating the site. He was charged with aggravated theft, abuse of corpses, tampering with evidence and possessing illegal gambling devices. The main witness in the case was Pamela Ralph, but his old business partners also testified.

Harelson admitted only to digging a "test hole" and removing some artifacts and said that he had intended to attract interest of archaeologists and to hand the artifacts over later. He stated that he had reported significant paleontological finds to the Nevada State Museum. The Museum acknowledged that.

Harelson's defense claimed he was a collector who had bought the Amerindian artifacts and was not involved with dealing them. The defense tried to have charges dismissed on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. The prosecutor successfully argued that continued possession of the items constituted continuation of the crime. Harelson was found guilty of abuse of a corpse and possession of state property. He received a fine of $20,000 and spent 30 days in jail.

Harelson lost his insurance agent's licence and began an online business, "Jack's Outback", selling opals and things like petroglyph reproductions and artifact display cases. According to a later police report, he also continued to deal in illegal antiquities and solicited excavation of sites in Oregon and Nevada.

In December 6 2002, a federal administrative law judge in Oregon fined Harelson for $2.5 million for destruction of archaeological resources. Harelson claimed that he had no money and accused the government to turning him into a scapegoat. Behind the scenes, police investigation about his antique dealings continued.

In January 2003, authorities discovered that Harelson intended to kill police sergeant Walt Markee, who had searched his home, County Judge Loyd O'Neal, who had presided over the 1996 trial, his ex-wife and two former business partners. Undercover policeman approached Harelson in a role of a hitman willing to do the murders for a price. Harelson paid him $10,000 in opals after he had shown him a doctored photograph of a corpse of one of the intended murder victims. Transaction was videotaped and police later arrested him in his home with the help of a SWAT team.

In 2004, the state of Oregon charged Harelson with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and for illegal possession of firearm. He was sentenced to jail without bail to await sentencing.

Later in the year Harelson's bid to overturn the $2.5 million fine failed. Further investigation unearthed two skulls that belonged to the two Paiute corpses.

External links

* [http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nevadacave/ "Archaeology" magazine about Harelson]