Speaker 1: It's December nineteen seventy two. Canadian Jamie Matthews, age fourteen,
Speaker 1: is sitting comfortably in his airplane seat. It's his first
Speaker 1: trip away from home. Jamie's first love is astronomy, and
Speaker 1: astronomy has earned him the trip of a lifetime. He's
Speaker 1: been to the White House, to NASA's Mission control in Texas,
Speaker 1: to the United Nations, and now he's returning home. But
Speaker 1: there's a problem, and no it's not the airline food.
Speaker 1: Someone is threatening to kidnap Jamie because he has a rock,
Speaker 1: and not just any rock, a moon rock, one retrieved
Speaker 1: by an astronaut two hundred and forty thousand miles from Earth.
Speaker 2: This is your captain speaking, Jamie Matthews. Please come to
Speaker 2: the front of the plane. Jamie Matthews to the front
Speaker 2: of the plane. Two scary men are here to pick
Speaker 2: you up. I repeat, two very serious looking men are
Speaker 2: here to take you away.
Speaker 1: Jamie takes some tentative steps forward. He's just landed in Detroit.
Speaker 1: Two adults in dark suits meet him on the tarmac.
Speaker 1: Now these men are not the kidnappers. They're from the
Speaker 1: United States Secret Service. They explain to Jamie what's happening.
Speaker 1: His parents back in Canada received an alarming phone call
Speaker 1: threatening his safety all because of this rock. They want
Speaker 1: to escort him to the Canadian border just to be safe.
Speaker 1: Because the moon rock isn't exactly a souvenir, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most rare and valueable materials on Earth. It
Speaker 1: could be worth millions. To Jamie, it's worth even more.
Speaker 1: But what the kidnappers don't know is that Jamie doesn't
Speaker 1: have it, not yet anyway, but he will. And the
Speaker 1: men who called Jamie's parents, they're not the only ones
Speaker 1: who want a piece of the moon. Welcome to very
Speaker 1: special episodes and iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz,
Speaker 1: and this is Operation Lunar Eclipse. Okay, so you know
Speaker 1: how like when kids are like five or six, they
Speaker 1: have like hyper fixations. I feel like it's like dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: it's like trucks. For me, it was like Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: But I feel like for some kids it's also space.
Speaker 1: Were you a space kid, Jason or Zarin?
Speaker 3: Oh, you're a space kid completely.
Speaker 4: I'm still mad that they took planetary status away from Pluto.
Speaker 4: I'm one of those space kids.
Speaker 1: Oh my weird. I mean not weird at all. My
Speaker 1: like space connection is. I grew up in the suburbs
Speaker 1: of Chicago, and when I was in high school, every
Speaker 1: Sunday I would drive down to the Adler Planetarium and
Speaker 1: volunteer all Sunday to like teach kids science and space demonstrations.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I love you for that. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: It was so cool because it's like every kid, I
Speaker 1: mean I was not every kid. I as a dork,
Speaker 1: loved museums and this idea that I had like a badge,
Speaker 1: and I could, like I knew the code to like
Speaker 1: get backstage at the museum.
Speaker 5: It was the coolest thing in the world.
Speaker 3: You're a museum insider.
Speaker 5: I was a museum insider.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to like, you know, big time you
Speaker 1: because I'm a huge celebrity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I understand. I mean you can brag on that.
Speaker 4: That's worth it. Sometimes you got a flex on us.
Speaker 5: I taught them about the Moon mission.
Speaker 1: I taught them about gravity, but I had no idea
Speaker 1: about like the legality of buying and owning lunar rocks.
Speaker 3: They don't want you to know that that's what it is.
Speaker 6: Those kids couldn't handle that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're it's all hidden from all of us.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, do you guys want to hear a
Speaker 1: story about stealing moonrocks and they the black market for
Speaker 1: illegal moon rock commerce.
Speaker 3: I am buckled up and ready, Jason, you let's blast
Speaker 3: off it.
Speaker 7: Do some kind of countdown now, just let's just go
Speaker 7: to the episode.
Speaker 1: For a kid super into astronomy. Jamie Matthews had more
Speaker 1: run ins with the law than you might have expected,
Speaker 1: not because he was breaking the law, but because police
Speaker 1: kept finding him alone in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: when he was just eight years old in the last
Speaker 1: place you'd expect.
Speaker 6: My parents were not rich, and we had a house
Speaker 6: that was close to the cemetery, and so that was
Speaker 6: the best place to look at the stars.
Speaker 5: At night, That's Jamie.
Speaker 6: So occasionally the police would come back by and see
Speaker 6: this guy. And they would come and see a guy
Speaker 6: with a telescope, and so they got me home. I said, yo,
Speaker 6: I knew who I was.
Speaker 5: As a kid.
Speaker 1: He lived in Chatham, Ontario. It's rural with lots of
Speaker 1: farms and lots of stargazing. As an only child, his parents,
Speaker 1: Jim and June, bought him a telescope, which Jamie took
Speaker 1: to the darkest part of the neighborhood, the graveyard. There
Speaker 1: he found ink, black skies, and a galaxy to explore.
Speaker 1: Jamie isn't sure where his love of science came from.
Speaker 1: His parents were blue collar workers. Neither was a college graduate,
Speaker 1: but they recognized their son had a fascination, so they
Speaker 1: nourished it any chance they could.
Speaker 6: First memory was at two, looking at the stars, and
Speaker 6: from then on I was totally gone with the stars.
Speaker 1: Of course, they all watched as Neil Armstrong took Mankind's
Speaker 1: first steps on the Moon during the Apollo eleven mission
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 8: Paul for Man arm By a faf for man.
Speaker 1: Everyone remembers that it was a monumental milestone of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, but people tend to forget how quickly the
Speaker 1: world moved on, how easily the impossible became routine. NASA
Speaker 1: continued to visit the Moon in future Apollo missions, six
Speaker 1: of them in all, but each time public interest fell off.
Speaker 1: By the time of the Apollo seventeen mission in December
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, NASA had decided this would be the
Speaker 1: last mission for at least a decade to commemorate it.
Speaker 1: NASA and the US State Department sponsored what they called
Speaker 1: the International Youth Science Tour. It worked like this, Every
Speaker 1: country in the UN was invited to send a youth
Speaker 1: representative to watch the final Moon mission. Kids aged fifteen
Speaker 1: to seventeen were eligible. They'd see everything from the launch
Speaker 1: at Kennedy Space Center to the splashdown on TV from
Speaker 1: UN headquarters in New York City. The seventeen day trip
Speaker 1: would also include Disneyland, and the kids would get something
Speaker 1: else besides a front row seat to a Moon mission.
Speaker 1: NASA was arranging for each kid to receive a piece.
Speaker 5: Of Moon rock.
Speaker 1: They would present it to their country as a good
Speaker 1: will gesture from the United States to the world. Gathering
Speaker 1: moonrocks was a priority of the Apollo missions. The samples
Speaker 1: revealed clues about the age of the Moon and how
Speaker 1: it might have been formed. A Moon rock was one
Speaker 1: sentence or a sentence fragment in the story of our galaxy.
Speaker 1: For Jamie, the chance to hold the rock in his
Speaker 1: hand would come later. For now, his objective was seeing
Speaker 1: a rocket launch, which was plenty exciting. Canada's Youth Science
Speaker 1: Foundation organized an essay contest the topic. The importance of
Speaker 1: space exploration to humanity. I mean, obviously two thousand words
Speaker 1: in which Jamie brought forth a passionate argument for reaching
Speaker 1: the stars and beyond. He and a friend both entered,
Speaker 1: both sent their essays off, and then they waited. In
Speaker 1: November nineteen seventy two, Jamie received a letter from the
Speaker 1: US embassy in Ottawa. There were a few words on
Speaker 1: the page, but Jamie just focused on one of them, congratulations.
Speaker 5: It said You're.
Speaker 1: Going to the United States. It was somewhat bittersweet. Jamie
Speaker 1: winning meant his friend didn't. There was another wrinkle. Remember
Speaker 1: that the contest was only open to kids between fifteen
Speaker 1: and seventeen. Jamie was thirteen. He lied about his age
Speaker 1: when he submitted his essay.
Speaker 6: They found out a little bit before I got there,
Speaker 6: but because there are other things that I had to do,
Speaker 6: and I guess finally I said that how old I was.
Speaker 6: They didn't like it, but by that time it was
Speaker 6: too late, so I got to go.
Speaker 1: Jamie had just turned fourteen, so they let it slide. Still,
Speaker 1: he was the youngest of the eighty kids from around
Speaker 1: the world who would see Apollo seventeen touched down on
Speaker 1: the Moon. His parents naturally were thrilled.
Speaker 6: Oh, they loved it, so they thought it was wonderful
Speaker 6: for me.
Speaker 1: The International Youth Science Tours first stop was in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Where a chartered plane delivered an assembly of
Speaker 1: students to the current president, Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon was
Speaker 1: a proponent of the space program. He had arranged for
Speaker 1: moon rock samples to be dispensed from the Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: mission and was doing the same for Apollo seventeen. Jamie
Speaker 1: met Nixon, but the President didn't leave much of an impression.
Speaker 6: To be honest, I don't remember anything that he did.
Speaker 6: I remember shaking his hand, and that's about all I know.
Speaker 6: I know, to be honest, that that time. To me,
Speaker 6: it was just another guy. So there were other more
Speaker 6: people later that I liked, but Nixon nah.
Speaker 1: When the tour moved to Kennedy Space Center in Florida,
Speaker 1: Jamie was put in a hotel room next to the
Speaker 1: man he really wanted to meet, the first human on
Speaker 1: the moon.
Speaker 6: We were in a hotel with Neil Armstrong, and in
Speaker 6: fact I with Neil Armstrong. His wife and his kids
Speaker 6: were in the pool together for the entire afternoon, and
Speaker 6: so I got to do Marco Polo with the man
Speaker 6: that went on the Moon. There you go.
Speaker 1: All of them went to Kennedy Space Center for the
Speaker 1: launch of Apollo seventeen. This launch was notable not only
Speaker 1: for being the last manned Moon mission, but the first
Speaker 1: Saturn five rocket to take off.
Speaker 6: At night one zero.
Speaker 8: We have a lift dog.
Speaker 7: It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center.
Speaker 6: The Battern five is moving off the pad. It lifted
Speaker 6: off at mid nate and so it was like the
Speaker 6: sun rose. It was really amazing. It really was amazing.
Speaker 1: Jamie and the others were situated about three miles from
Speaker 1: the Saturn rocket. That may not sound close, but consider
Speaker 1: that three miles was roughly the distance any shrapnel would
Speaker 1: be able to travel in the event the rocket blew up.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, In fact, it's really loud, but also so loud
Speaker 6: that all of your body is shaking at the time.
Speaker 6: It's it's really loud. But it was wonderful. It really was.
Speaker 6: I had not known what it would be like, and
Speaker 6: no one else will ever see it again, so it
Speaker 6: was wonderful for me.
Speaker 1: Later, Jamie went to mission control at the Manned Spacecraft
Speaker 1: in Houston, which is now named for Lyndon Johnson. You've
Speaker 1: seen it or a version of it in practically every
Speaker 1: movie ever made about space travel. Lots of guys with
Speaker 1: flat buzz cuts and short sleeve shirts, sweating over every switch,
Speaker 1: flipped and root to the moon. But Jamie got to
Speaker 1: see the real thing in person on a screen. Astronauts
Speaker 1: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt traversed the lunar surface. Cernan
Speaker 1: was the commander, Schmidt the co pilot, and the only
Speaker 1: trained geologist to ever visit the Moon.
Speaker 8: There mark gravity okay down to get to.
Speaker 1: Work, the men leapt between boulders the size of U
Speaker 1: haul trailers in the Moon's Taurus litro valley. They rode
Speaker 1: a lunar rover over uneven terrain and they chipped away rock,
Speaker 1: coming away with one sample, in particular the size of
Speaker 1: a brick. But it was when Eugene Sernon spoke to
Speaker 1: the camera that the Youth Tour really began to perk up.
Speaker 6: During the moonwalks, we were there at mission control and
Speaker 6: then on the last moonwalk just before they left the moon, Sunan,
Speaker 6: who was the captain, and Smith, who was the other
Speaker 6: person on the moon. They got a big rock, and
Speaker 6: they brought it to the camera and said, this is
Speaker 6: for you, this is for us. They said, when they
Speaker 6: gets back to Earth, they'll you get it into small
Speaker 6: places and each of us will get one.
Speaker 3: And we did so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Moon Rock was what we're getting that. It
Speaker 6: was wonderful, It really was.
Speaker 1: Here's what Eugene Cernan said to the kids that.
Speaker 8: Day, when we return this rock. Are some of the
Speaker 8: others like it? The Houston, we'd like to share a
Speaker 8: piece of this rock, but so many of the countries
Speaker 8: throughout the world. We hope that this will be a
Speaker 8: symbol of what our feelings are, what the feelings of
Speaker 8: the Apollo program are, and a symbol of mankind that
Speaker 8: we can live in peace and harmony in the future.
Speaker 1: The tour wound down after that, Jamie and the others
Speaker 1: watched on TV from the United Nations Building as the
Speaker 1: capsule splashed down, and soon Jamie was headed back home
Speaker 1: to be escorted to the Canadian border by Secret Service agents.
Speaker 1: But Jamie wasn't yet in possession of the rock.
Speaker 6: No well, because it was on the moot, So they
Speaker 6: had to wait until they got back and then they
Speaker 6: had this right get into little pieces and then each
Speaker 6: one was not in a peaks of plastic. And then
Speaker 6: it got to me like in a month or so,
Speaker 6: so somebody had held them and said that they were
Speaker 6: going to kidnap me and the rock, even though it
Speaker 6: wasn't there.
Speaker 1: The police guarded his house for a few months afterward.
Speaker 1: Eventually they grew satisfied that the kidnapping threat against Jamie
Speaker 1: would never materialize. This isn't a story, by the way,
Speaker 1: about a young Canadian science enthusiast getting kidnapped, but that
Speaker 1: young Canadian moonrock. The brick sized moonrock would be analyzed
Speaker 1: by NASA scientists before it was divvied up for one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five countries plus every US state and territory.
Speaker 1: A few weeks later, via special delivery, Canada's Peace arrived
Speaker 1: on Jamie's front doorstep. The rock fragment was encased in looseight.
Speaker 1: Below it was a Canadian flag which had been brought
Speaker 1: to the Moon and back. The junior astronomer was in
Speaker 1: possession of something very few civilians have ever seen up close,
Speaker 1: a moon rock, a little over one gram in size.
Speaker 6: It was very dark. People don't realize that the moon
Speaker 6: is really dark. We only see it because it's in
Speaker 6: the sky at night. But if you look at it
Speaker 6: without that, it reflects only about five six seven percent
Speaker 6: of the light from the sun, so it's almost like carcoal.
Speaker 1: Jamie didn't put it in a safety deposit box, nor
Speaker 1: did he stick it anywhere for safe keeping. It went
Speaker 1: in a shoe box under his bed, where it could
Speaker 1: be periodically pulled out to show family or friends, or
Speaker 1: just to stare at before going to bed. Once it
Speaker 1: even wound up in the family car.
Speaker 6: It was in our car without theos locked at all
Speaker 6: for about two hours, and it was just there. Somebody
Speaker 6: could have done it.
Speaker 1: But Jamie had been only a temporary custodian. The moondust
Speaker 1: sprinkled over his life for a fleeting period of time.
Speaker 1: In early nineteen seventy three, he got a notice it
Speaker 1: was time to hand the moon Rock over to its
Speaker 1: intended recipient, the country of Canada. During a ceremony at
Speaker 1: Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Jamie dutifully but dolefully handed over
Speaker 1: the rock to Roland Missioner, the Governor General. Because Canada
Speaker 1: didn't want him to leave empty handed, they prepared a
Speaker 1: gift for him in return.
Speaker 6: You know what I got in Retune. I got a
Speaker 6: book called the Birds of Canada.
Speaker 1: Did Canada confuse astronomy with ornithology? Jamie never found out
Speaker 1: why he was given a book about birds. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: all they had lying around. But Governor General Mishner was
Speaker 1: not the final stop for the moon Rock. It was
Speaker 1: given to the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa,
Speaker 1: and for Jamie it was like being forced to put
Speaker 1: it up for adoption. He agonized over the rocks well
Speaker 1: being for.
Speaker 6: A few years. I didn't go and see it, but
Speaker 6: I would call them occasionally and just say how is it.
Speaker 1: Then in nineteen seventy eight, Jamie made his customary call.
Speaker 1: The museum had some bad news for Jamie.
Speaker 6: I called and it was gone and they said that
Speaker 6: it was stolen, And I thought, jeez, if you could
Speaker 6: have done that, I should have just kept it in
Speaker 6: a jew box in my bed.
Speaker 1: There was a reason the US government dispatched the Secret
Speaker 1: Service to meet Jamie Matthews at the airport. Of course,
Speaker 1: they were concerned for the welfare of a child on
Speaker 1: a good will trip to improve foreign relations, but there
Speaker 1: was another factor at play. Moon rocks are one of
Speaker 1: the great black markets in the world. They're worth millions.
Speaker 9: This moon rock ended up in my pocket for almost
Speaker 9: twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: That's Joseph Goudheims. Joseph has one heck of a resume.
Speaker 9: Started off as an Army aviator and intelligence officer and
Speaker 9: went to work for the FA. I was recruited away
Speaker 9: as a special agent, recruited away from the FA by
Speaker 9: US Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General. And then
Speaker 9: I was recruited away from DOTIG by NASA Origent, where
Speaker 9: I served for about ten years a loooover actually as
Speaker 9: a senior special agent, which means I headed up task
Speaker 9: force investigations.
Speaker 1: That's right, NASA has special agents. They're armed, they can
Speaker 1: make arrests. They look into things like missing NASA property,
Speaker 1: people pretending to be astronauts, and cybercrime. How this isn't
Speaker 1: a CSI spin off yet is beyond me. But anyway,
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen nineties, Joseph took note of the
Speaker 1: fact that a number of the moon rocks gifted by
Speaker 1: the United States to foreign governments couldn't be accounted for.
Speaker 1: Some countries said they had no record of receiving them.
Speaker 1: Others said they had been reported missing or stolen, and
Speaker 1: sometimes Joseph would get word of a con man who
Speaker 1: purported to have a moonrock for sale. Usually they didn't,
Speaker 1: it would be a fake, like two brothers who insisted
Speaker 1: their father had been given some moon rocks by astronaut
Speaker 1: John Glenn. John Glenn was an astronaut, but he never
Speaker 1: went to the Moon. For the most part, moon rocks
Speaker 1: belong to NASA and the US government. Some have been
Speaker 1: retrieved by Russia and China, and some lunar meteorites have
Speaker 1: landed on Earth, but most moon samples were from the
Speaker 1: Apollo missions. They can only be gifted or loaned out
Speaker 1: by NASA. If anyone acquires an Apollo mission moonrock from
Speaker 1: anyone other than NASA, well that would be wrong. It
Speaker 1: would have to be offered, as in the case of
Speaker 1: the Apollo eleven and seventeen missions.
Speaker 9: NASA takes the position, as does the United States, that
Speaker 9: nobody can own a moon rock or duns. And so
Speaker 9: we gifted to the nations the world one hundred and
Speaker 9: thirty five Paull eleven moon rocks on a stand. And
Speaker 9: we gifted to the nations of the world one hundred
Speaker 9: and thirty five moon rocks on a plaque like this,
Speaker 9: And essentially these were our way of saying, hey, look
Speaker 9: all the members of the United Nations were all in
Speaker 9: on this together. We may be sending the rockets to
Speaker 9: and from the boon, but this is a global effort.
Speaker 1: There is one sort of exception.
Speaker 9: The astronauts when they came back from the boom.
Speaker 1: The moon isn't exactly a sterile working environment like coal miners,
Speaker 1: astronauts can come home dirty.
Speaker 9: They were allowed to keep their gloves and patches, and
Speaker 9: on the patches and gloves was lootered debris. And so
Speaker 9: there was one astronaut that would actually bang on his
Speaker 9: gloves and cut pieces of his pattions apart and put
Speaker 9: him in painting city. And so essentially NASA ruled Okay,
Speaker 9: we kind of gifted that away too.
Speaker 1: But for most people who haven't been blasted into space,
Speaker 1: being in possession of a lunar rock is suspicious and
Speaker 1: it didn't sit right with Joe.
Speaker 9: Risk to our astronauts. Remember we had astronauts guy in
Speaker 9: practice and a follow one. These guys were risking their lives.
Speaker 9: They got it, they accomplished something. The world united seeing
Speaker 9: Gil Armstrong take that first step down the boom and
Speaker 9: the idea that petty thugs would be stealing these moon
Speaker 9: rocks for their own wealth something that I never could
Speaker 9: understand and it seemed wrong. It's something that I wanted
Speaker 9: to accomplish when I was an agent.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety eight, Joseph decided to take a
Speaker 1: closer look at the illicit moon rock market. His idea
Speaker 1: was incredibly simple. He would invite criminals to come to him.
Speaker 9: And essentially what we did was we put an ad
Speaker 9: in USA today moon Rocks wanted with an astronaut jumping
Speaker 9: on the moon, and I was looking for con artists
Speaker 9: to approach me so that we could do the sting operation.
Speaker 1: Moon Rocks wanted send asking price. What Joseph expected were
Speaker 1: a series of calls from con artists, and he did
Speaker 1: get some of those, but then he got a call
Speaker 1: from someone named Alan.
Speaker 9: What we didn't expect guy by the name of Alan
Speaker 9: Rosen to call me and say, hey, look, get all
Speaker 9: those other guys that are calling you. That's bogus. You're
Speaker 9: not you know, nobody's allowed to own a moon rock.
Speaker 9: But guess what I've got and it's for sale. And
Speaker 9: I said, what's the asking price? He said five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Alan didn't sound like the others. For one thing, he
Speaker 1: had proof he was in possession of a moon rock.
Speaker 1: He sent Joseph ado of the very same plaque used
Speaker 1: in the Goodwill Moonrock Tour, the wooden plaque with the
Speaker 1: country's flag and Nixon's dedication. Alan, however, had taken one
Speaker 1: measure to make a positive identification of which country it
Speaker 1: was from a little more difficult.
Speaker 9: The center of the flag was blocked out, as was
Speaker 9: the recipient country. We contacted one country after the next,
Speaker 9: and we found out, guess what, nobody knows where their
Speaker 9: moon rocks are. We gifted the moon rocks, and they
Speaker 9: don't know where they are. Some thought they never even
Speaker 9: received them.
Speaker 1: Joseph later learned that the rock belonged to Honduras. So
Speaker 1: began the plan for the world's first ever sting operation
Speaker 1: to recover a stolen moonrock. But there was another problem.
Speaker 1: Alan knew what he had was very rare and very valuable.
Speaker 1: His asking price was five million dollars. In order to
Speaker 1: provide Alan with proof of funds, Joe needed five million
Speaker 1: dollars and Nasaid didn't pay him that well. So he
Speaker 1: went to the FBI, who, according to Joseph, told him
Speaker 1: they couldn't help. So he went to the CIA, and
Speaker 1: they couldn't help either. Finally, Joseph called his father, a
Speaker 1: former marine. His father didn't have the money, but he
Speaker 1: had something more valuable, some fatherly advice. His dad told
Speaker 1: him to make a phone call to one person in particular.
Speaker 9: And so what we did was we contacted the guy
Speaker 9: by name of h Ross Brung, the billionaire who ran
Speaker 9: for president nineteen ninety two, and got through to his
Speaker 9: secretary and I said, hey, look, I need a need
Speaker 9: a favor I'm looking for somebody. Can't really talk about it,
Speaker 9: but if h Ross broke all life, I'll convey that
Speaker 9: information to him.
Speaker 1: H Ross Proro was one of the great characters of
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, an excitable Texas billionaire who ran for
Speaker 1: president in nineteen ninety two as an independent. He got
Speaker 1: almost twenty million votes and lost to Bill Clinton, but
Speaker 1: that didn't affect his patriotism.
Speaker 9: Ten seconds later, the phone rings and h Ross pros
Speaker 9: on the other side and he goes, hello, Joe, how
Speaker 9: can I help you? I said, mister prow what we
Speaker 9: need is five million dollars to get back a moon rock.
Speaker 9: He goes no problem, and with the money in hand
Speaker 9: and the bank willing to give a letter saying that
Speaker 9: we had the money, and so forth we set up
Speaker 9: staying at a bank in Miami where he had the
Speaker 9: moon rock in a vault, and so we put in
Speaker 9: an undercover agent in the bank to pretending be an
Speaker 9: official that's going to photograph it.
Speaker 1: Alan agreed to meet in Miami and have a bank
Speaker 1: official photographed the moon rock so Joseph could verify that
Speaker 1: Alan had it. Only the bank official was an undercover agent.
Speaker 1: Joseph and his colleagues were waiting for Alan outside. It
Speaker 1: turned out Alan had acquired the rock from Colonel Argucia Ugarte,
Speaker 1: who claimed he'd been given it in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: during political unrest in Honduras. Alan had agreed to buy
Speaker 1: it for fifty thousand dollars. A judge had approved a
Speaker 1: warrant to seize the rock, But now Joseph had to
Speaker 1: get it back to NASA, which brings us back to
Speaker 1: his pocket.
Speaker 9: And so I fly back from Miami to Houston, and
Speaker 9: the boot rocks in my pocket, got a briefcase I've armed,
Speaker 9: and the whole nine yards and what I was thinking was,
Speaker 9: if someone's going to steal anything, they're going to steal
Speaker 9: the briefcase. They're not going to steal what's in my pocket.
Speaker 9: And so then we brought that back immediately to Space
Speaker 9: Center's Lunar Lab, where it was tested.
Speaker 1: The sting, which was dubbed Operation Lunar Eclipse, was successful.
Speaker 1: Alan Rosen tried to get the rock returned to him
Speaker 1: in court, arguing he obtained it legally, but a judge
Speaker 1: sided with NASA and ruled the rock had to be
Speaker 1: forfeited to the US government. The Space Agency then returned
Speaker 1: it to Honduras, but NASA didn't have the resources to
Speaker 1: make a hunt for missing moon rocks an ongoing project.
Speaker 1: When Joseph retired from the Space Agency in two thousand,
Speaker 1: he decided to outsource the search to a group he
Speaker 1: knew would be very devoted to the cause, his students
Speaker 1: at the University of Phoenix.
Speaker 9: But again, NASA Office of Inspector General is very, very small.
Speaker 9: We have under one hundred agents, and so I could
Speaker 9: not sell them with the idea of expending resources to
Speaker 9: look for moon rocks that we gifted away. And so
Speaker 9: when I retired from NASA, i started telling my graduate
Speaker 9: criminal justice graduate students, I've got this really great investigative
Speaker 9: rill that i want you to go through. It's called
Speaker 9: the Moon Rock Project. And here are all the moon
Speaker 9: rocks that we're trying to account for all over the world.
Speaker 9: I want you to go out and try to find it.
Speaker 9: And what we did not realize at the time was
Speaker 9: that so many were actually stolen and missing, and that
Speaker 9: virtually no country had it in an inventory control system,
Speaker 9: that even if they had it, they knew where they were.
Speaker 1: Systematically, He and his students tried to chase down as
Speaker 1: many leads as they could for the missing rock, which
Speaker 1: turned up in some surprising places. The Apollo seventeen rock
Speaker 1: gifted to Arkansas was found in the archives of former
Speaker 1: Governor Bill Clinton. His predecessor, David Pryor, had received it
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six, and it was probably just packed
Speaker 1: up when Clinton lost reelection in nineteen eighty. He was
Speaker 1: one of three governors who happened to be in possession
Speaker 1: of a rock in Cyprus, the American ambassador had been assassinated.
Speaker 1: A diplomat's relative grabbed the rock and held on to
Speaker 1: it until she read about the missing rocks. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, some rocks were in storage, at least
Speaker 1: one probably wound up in a landfill. Joseph and his
Speaker 1: team found seventy eight of them, but many are still missing.
Speaker 9: And those are just and again one hundred and fifty
Speaker 9: are missing. Some of the states are missing them, the
Speaker 9: Orcs missing their Paul Levin. Delaware's missing their apoul eleven.
Speaker 9: New Jersey's missing their Poulo seventeen, and a lot of
Speaker 9: the nations the world are missing them. No doubt, there's
Speaker 9: no doubt in my mind that there is a black market.
Speaker 1: But what about Canada's Goodwill Rock, the Jamie Matthews Rock.
Speaker 1: By the time Joseph began his Moon Rock project in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, Jamie's rock had been missing for
Speaker 1: well over two decades, and it carried a significant price tag.
Speaker 9: One of a kind and to a collector, that's in value.
Speaker 9: When we in Operation Lunar Eclipse, and remember this goes
Speaker 9: back sometime the seller Alan Rosen offered it to be
Speaker 9: for five hundred dollars and I said, oh well, let
Speaker 9: me research that and talk to you. And I talked
Speaker 9: to some experts in Nassa. Prices that's what they said.
Speaker 9: But along the lines of priceless, five million dollars could
Speaker 9: be a re.
Speaker 1: And as Jo's students began diving into the story, they
Speaker 1: discovered something odd.
Speaker 9: In two thousand and two, they started finding the story
Speaker 9: that he's recounting that it was stolen in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 9: And I'm going to my students, I go, that's not acceptable.
Speaker 9: It's not acceptable that you're getting a story that says
Speaker 9: it was stolen. Where's the police report, where's the newspaper stories.
Speaker 9: You know, this is a piece of Canadian history and
Speaker 9: NASA history. Where is the trail? And so they kept
Speaker 9: cracking it.
Speaker 1: There was no police report and no news stories. Jamie's
Speaker 1: Moonrock was nowhere. For years afterward, Jamie had kept on
Speaker 1: calling the museum asking if the Moonrock had reappeared.
Speaker 6: I kept calling back like every year to find out,
Speaker 6: and they said, we don't know. And finally, after like
Speaker 6: ten years, I just said, Okay, it's never gonna get back.
Speaker 1: The nineteen seventies turned into the nineteen eighties. Jamie attended
Speaker 1: the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario.
Speaker 1: He got a job. He sometimes forgot about the rock
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties turned into the nineteen nineties and then
Speaker 1: the two thousands. When something is missing for decades, the
Speaker 1: odds of ever finding it again are slim. The moon
Speaker 1: Rock had officially wound up on the proverbial milk carton.
Speaker 1: Then one day in two thousand and eight, Jamie decided
Speaker 1: to use the single best investigative tool of them all, Google.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight, Jamie wasn't really looking for
Speaker 1: the rock fragment, but for the rock itself. He was
Speaker 1: hoping to find a picture of the larger piece, the
Speaker 1: one the astronauts of Apollo seventeen had returned to Earth
Speaker 1: with before it was segmented into smaller sections. But when
Speaker 1: he tried googling, he found something else instead.
Speaker 6: And I wanted to get a thing before it was
Speaker 6: gotten into all those passes, so the big thing the
Speaker 6: first time. So I was looking there, I figured somebody
Speaker 6: must have it, and then I found my thing.
Speaker 1: What Jamie found was a photo of a man holding
Speaker 1: his moon rock, really Canada's moon rock, but still it
Speaker 1: was on the plaque. The digital photo had a visible
Speaker 1: watermark with the date. The photo was from two thousand,
Speaker 1: eight years prior. Jamie was able to trace the origin
Speaker 1: of the photo to a storage facility in Aylmer, Quebec,
Speaker 1: one that belonged to the museum. He phoned the curator and.
Speaker 6: I said, wait what And so I looked and I
Speaker 6: found out that it was in a warehouse in a
Speaker 6: place in Quebec for thirty five years and nobody knows
Speaker 6: how it got there. But as soon as I knew it,
Speaker 6: I called the curator and I said, hey, you've got
Speaker 6: my room rock. It took me a while to say
Speaker 6: because he didn't believe me at first.
Speaker 1: As more of the story came out, it seemed increasingly
Speaker 1: unlikely the rock had ever been stolen. The museum had
Speaker 1: no record of a theft, Joseph Goudheinz had never found
Speaker 1: a police report. More than likely it had been clinton
Speaker 1: and misplaced for decades. Here's Joseph Goodheinz again.
Speaker 9: What my guess is, and only having dealt with these
Speaker 9: all over the world is because nobody accounted for these
Speaker 9: that after they were done with their lou tour, they
Speaker 9: they said, okay, where do we put them over in
Speaker 9: storage over here? They did and it was sort of
Speaker 9: like you know in box three thousand and five, who knows,
Speaker 9: But they just lost bracket it over the decades.
Speaker 1: But why had the museum told Jamie the rock had
Speaker 1: been stolen instead of misplaced?
Speaker 6: And nobody knows how it got there. So it's a
Speaker 6: little bit like Indiana Jones at the Last movie, except
Speaker 6: for me. It's like Indiana Jamie and the Lost Run Rock.
Speaker 6: It was just there and nobody knows how it got there.
Speaker 6: Nobody knows because if you go back to that time,
Speaker 6: nobody is around anymore.
Speaker 1: Maybe they simply wanted him to stop calling. But there's
Speaker 1: another wrinkle to the story. Remember that Joseph and his
Speaker 1: graduate students were looking into the rock as early as
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Jamie found the photo in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight.
Speaker 9: My students actually tracked it down in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Then, according to Joseph, his students had actually located the
Speaker 1: rock five years earlier, in two thousand and three in Aylmer,
Speaker 1: not through Google.
Speaker 5: But through detective work.
Speaker 1: They called every museum and museum associated building in the area.
Speaker 1: The problem was, no one told Jamie.
Speaker 9: Well, here's the thing, He's not wrong two thousand. He
Speaker 9: probably did discover it two thousand and eight because the
Speaker 9: problem with that Boon Rock is. It was never into
Speaker 9: an inventory control system, and maybe there was somebody that
Speaker 9: discovered it nineteen ninety five, but to discover it, there
Speaker 9: it is, and then you forget about it.
Speaker 1: Jamie didn't realize they had it until two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until two thousand and nine when Boy
Speaker 1: and Rock were reunited. The National Museum of Natural Sciences
Speaker 1: now known as the Canadian Museum of Nature wasn't able
Speaker 1: to put the Moon Rock back on display, so it
Speaker 1: went to the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa
Speaker 1: on loan. There, Jamie was able to see it for
Speaker 1: the first time in over thirty years. Fittingly, it was
Speaker 1: the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo eleven moon landing. Canada's
Speaker 1: goodwill Moon Rock is now with the Canadian Museum of Nature,
Speaker 1: where it periodically goes on display. The rock's journey had
Speaker 1: been a little murky. Jamie's wasn't. A love of astronomy
Speaker 1: turned into a love of astrophysics. He became doctor Jamie
Speaker 1: Matthews and then Professor Jamie Matthews, an astrophysicist at the
Speaker 1: University of British Columbia, where he measures the vibrations of
Speaker 1: stars too far away to be seen by a telescope
Speaker 1: on Earth, not even a telescope in a cemetery. A
Speaker 1: stroke has resulted in some expressive aphasia, a little trouble
Speaker 1: finding words, but it hasn't slowed his work.
Speaker 5: Or his love for it.
Speaker 1: Bearing witness to the Apollo seventeen mission, caring for a
Speaker 1: piece of lunar rock set him on a path for life.
Speaker 6: Oh no, it was really good for me. So after
Speaker 6: this I did lots of things after that with space
Speaker 6: and astronomy and so on. So no, this was like,
Speaker 6: come on, how many people have their own moonlock? I mean,
Speaker 6: it's wonderful for me, and so that will always be
Speaker 6: one of the things that I'll like is the fact
Speaker 6: that I actually am had a real moon rock. And
Speaker 6: so yeah, I couldn't expect anything more than that, to
Speaker 6: be honest.
Speaker 1: There was a study released in late twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: the Apollo seventeen lunar lander module, which was left behind
Speaker 1: on the Moon, may be causing tiny moonquakes small changes
Speaker 1: to the lunar surface from the materials expanding and contracting
Speaker 1: with temperature changes. But Apollo seventeen has been causing those
Speaker 1: tremors For a long time. The mission reverberated through dozens
Speaker 1: of teenagers who were invited to witness history in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, Through people like Joseph Goodheitz, who want to
Speaker 1: protect the legacy of those missions, missions that were only
Speaker 1: possible because astronauts sacrificed themselves in our pursuit of lofty goals,
Speaker 1: And through Jamie Matthews, who for a brief time owned
Speaker 1: a tiny piece of it all and got a book
Speaker 1: about birds in return.
Speaker 6: And I still have it, of course, So no, now
Speaker 6: it's it really is nice for me, But at the
Speaker 6: time it was like birds.
Speaker 1: Nah, okay, I have to feel like coming back that.
Speaker 1: Playing Marco Polo with Neil Armstrong is like maybe the
Speaker 1: biggest flex of all time.
Speaker 4: Oh are you kidding me? He touched the moon? You
Speaker 4: got touch him playing Marco Polo. I mean, not to
Speaker 4: be weird about it, but you're like, Neil Boom got you.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: He touched the moon and so if you touched him,
Speaker 1: it's like you've touched the moon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like two degrees of Kevin Bacon but the moon.
Speaker 7: And in that story he just casually mentions like, oh, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I met Richard Nixon, but nah didn't do anything for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so good.
Speaker 6: I love Jamie.
Speaker 1: I have to say, though, like living in LA and
Speaker 1: like pitching TV constantly, you're always like talking to network
Speaker 1: executives who are just like we're looking for like the
Speaker 1: next procedural we really want, just like a crime procedural.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, where is NASA's Special Agents? Where's that show?
Speaker 3: I mean that is like CBS written all over it.
Speaker 5: Oh God, right CSI, NASA?
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 9: Now?
Speaker 4: Did you guys have a very special character of this
Speaker 4: episode that was your favorite?
Speaker 3: Do you have one that just jumped out for you? Hmm?
Speaker 7: Jason, I was thinking about going with Neil Armstrong and
Speaker 7: his wife and kids splashing around the pool, which.
Speaker 6: Just was a cool cameo.
Speaker 3: But did we just talked about Neil?
Speaker 1: I actually think the very special character in this episode
Speaker 1: is me, Dana Schwartz, the volunteer at the Adler Planetarium,
Speaker 1: tangentially related to the story, just devoted to educating the
Speaker 1: next generation of space loving kids.
Speaker 3: Actually, I have a different character.
Speaker 6: Let me just is it awesome? Me?
Speaker 7: How about the guy at the museum who, after fielding
Speaker 7: these calls for several years, just decides like, I know
Speaker 7: how to put an end to this.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 7: I'll tell him it's stolen. What a great way to
Speaker 7: get someone off your back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is one hundred percent a great way to
Speaker 4: get someone off your back. In fact, I think I've
Speaker 4: done that. They're like, oh, I don't know where it
Speaker 4: is your carb has stolen? Man to stop calling me now, Dan,
Speaker 4: I gotta say, in all honesty, you were also my
Speaker 4: favorite Special Episode characters. So I don't know what you
Speaker 4: know why Jason was thinking, but I went with you too.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Top five, Top five.
Speaker 4: Yeah, come on, volunteers. We got to support the volunteers.
Speaker 4: Do it for love.
Speaker 7: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 7: This episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our producer, editor
Speaker 7: and sound designer is Josh Fisher. Additional editing by John Washington,
Speaker 7: Mixing and mastering by Behead Fraser. Very Special Episodes is
Speaker 7: hosted by Danis Schwartz, Sarah Burnette and me Jason English.
Speaker 7: Original music by Lise McCoy. Our story editor is Marisa Brown.
Speaker 7: Research in fact checking by Marissa Brown Austin Thompson and
Speaker 7: Jake Rawson. Show logo by Lucy Kntania. Our executive producer
Speaker 7: is me Jason English. Go to see you back here
Speaker 7: next week after our first Very Special field trip Very
Speaker 7: Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.