Thad Roberts was a 25-year-old intern Nasa’s Johnson Space Center When he promised to give his girlfriend the moon.
But unlike so many young lovers for him, he actually realized that promise.
In 2002 Roberts hired his girlfriend Tiffany Fowler (who was also one NASA Trainee at the time) and another trainee named Shae Saur to help him break in in Johnson Space Center and to steal 17 pounds of a maximum of $ 21 million.
The trio used their NASA IDs to slip after hours in the space center and get rid of a 600 pound vault back with lunar rocks back from Every Apollo mission.
But what Roberts and Fowler did afterwards was even more shocking.
Immediately after the robbery, the couple spread the moon rock over Roberts’ bed and had sex on top of them.
The story recently appeared on Instagram, where a user placed: “First man who once said” I’ll give you the moon “and did. A real one size !!!! ‘
No matter how wild it seems, the stunt led to an international manhunt after the group tried to sell the stolen monsters online for a good price – and Roberts eventually served 10 years in prison.
In 2002, NASA -Stagee Thad Roberts (photo) took his girlfriend Tiffany Fowler (who was also a NASA trainee at the time) and another trainee Shae Saur to help him break into Johnson Space Center and 17 Pound Moon Rocks steals
Following the romantic gesture, Roberts and his henchmen mentioned the Moon Rocks for $ 2,000 to $ 8,000 per gram on the website of the Mineralogy Club of Antwerp, Belgium.
A Belgian rock collector saw the online placement and contacted the FBI who invented a plan to catch the thieves.
The agents let the collector e -mail the trainees, who had mentioned the rocks for sale under the pseudonym ‘Orb Robinson’ and say he was interested in buying them.
A fourth complicit – Gordon McWhorter – had set up the online list and corresponded with the collector.
“Contact my brother and sister -in -law in Pennsylvania to set up a meeting,” the collector wrote. But these supposed American family members would actually be undercover FBI agents.
‘Orb’ agreed to meet each other in an Italian restaurant in Orlando, Florida on July 20, 2002.
When Roberts, McWhorter and Fowler showed up the meeting, Roberts said: “I just hope you don’t have a thread on you.”
FBI agent Lynn Billings – who was sitting opposite him in the restaurant – actually wore a thread.
They have stolen the lunar rocks (stock) with a plan to have sex on it
“I think they are trying to mislead me. You know, just catch me, “Roberts was caught on tape.
But despite his suspicions, the audio recordings of the meeting suggested that Roberts and his accomplices were completely for the FBI list.
All three seemed excited and dizzy, with MacWhorter jokes that he told a waitress $ 30 to make her day. Roberts said he was so excited that he could not finish his meal and offered it to Fowler.
Billings and her partner then went with the thieves back to a hotel room where they kept the stolen moon rock. The agents arrested them on the spot.
Saur was later arrested in Houston, Texas. Ironically it was THe 33rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Roberts, Fowler and Saur are all guilty of conspiracy to commit theft and the transport of stolen ownership between Stolen.
The trainees used their NASA IDs to slip after hours in the Space Center and to go off with a 600 pound safe with lunar rots that brought back from each Apollo mission
On October 29, 2003, Roberts was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for his leading role in the Moon Rock robbery and for stealing dinosaur bones from a museum in Utah.
Those fossils showed up during an FBI search assignment to his house.
Fowler and Saur were sentenced to 180 days of house arrest and 150 hours of community service, while McWHorter was sentenced to six years in prison.
The moon rocks Roberts and his employees stolen from NASA were made scientifically useless for contamination.
The trainees also destroyed three decades of handwritten research notes from a NASA scientist who was locked up in the vault.
Roberts was released from prison in early 2008 and has since become a theoretical physicist, philosopher of physics and an author.
During an interview in 2011 with NBC News, he was asked what it was like to have that stolen moon in his possession.
“Like many others, I am full of awe when I think about how those rocks demonstrate the unlimited potential of humanity,” said Roberts.
“But that awe does not live in those rocks. It’s all of us. From experience I can say that there are more suitable and more productive ways to face our beautiful insignificantness than stealing a piece of the moon. ‘
“Whatever you do, don’t repeat my mistakes,” he added.
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