Springfield man fined for taking Civil War remains

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — A southwest Missouri man has to pay about $5,000 in federal restitution for collecting bones he found while canoeing through a national battlefield site.

The U.S. attorney’s office for western Missouri said in a release Wednesday that 31-year-old Coy Matthew Hamilton will pay the National Park Service $5,351 and perform 60 hours of community service to avoid prosecution for removing artifacts.

Prosecutors say Hamilton was canoeing last year down Wilson’s Creek, which runs through the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield Site, looking for artifacts after a storm.

Hamilton saw a bone sticking out of an embankment and dug into the embankment, removing more bones. About 10 days later, he turned the bones into the park service, which determined the bones were those of an adult dating back to the Civil War.

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Paroquet 6 months, 2 weeks ago

Woah. Guy does the right thing, gets fined skrood-over cold.

Or...is the paper not doing its job and vetting what is the truth? I want to know who to be mad at. The people who punished a guy for, as reported, turning in artifacts/remains that would have otherwise been lost, OR some scumbag pot-holer who happened to get caught. What do we have here, which is it, and it pretty-much is nailed down to one or the other.

Had the guy left the bones, they wouldn't have been discovered in the first place, and succumbed to the elements in short order. Full story, please, NT? Surely you have some reporters that can ferret and proffer the truth.

online_editor 6 months, 2 weeks ago

Because it's a national park battlefield site, you're not allowed to do your own amateur archaeology dig, take several bones and then notify authorities 10 days later. The legal and proper thing to do would be to alert park officials about your discovery immediately without disturbing it. See justice.gov/usao/mow/news2012/hamilton.div.html for additional.

Paroquet 6 months, 2 weeks ago

It looks to me like the proper thing to do would have been to do nothing. Had Hamilton done nothing, there wouldn't be a story.

You're standing on the platform of "the law is the law"? That's unfortunate. Because my experience is such that the Law picks and chooses what it will enforce. Some violations they won't touch, others they go in guns blazing.

However, I'm glad they give me such moral compasses as this. Would I pull someone from a burning car? Nope. Too letigiously risky.

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