Bears Birds and Bones | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

you can see where we're standing near the head right here is the head and the front legs are extending off to the east
the main trunk of the body is extending northwards away from us and the rear legs are extending also off to the east
what we're hearing is the description of a giant mound in the shape of a bear made of dirt and covered in grass
there are mounds like these all over the Midwest and many are Effigies of animals
here at Effigy Mounds National monument in Iowa the Mounds are shaped like bears
and birds but other places in the country have snakes and turtles I met with the superintendent of Effigy
Mounds National Monument Jim nepstead the first Mounds we visited are called the marching bear group from above they
look like a long line of bears walking South along the bluff next to the Mississippi River so I mean this is a
you know literally you know close to a hundred foot long animal that's been sculpted onto the Earth by bringing
basket after basket after basket of Earth and piling it all up I mean there's the equivalent of
dozens of dump truckloads of of Earth that were moved and and placed in order to create just this one Mound right here
and what's underneath this mound uh well uh in many cases we don't know there have been very few excavations
here in the marching bear group but what we do know is that nearly all Effigy Mounds do contain burials
this appears to be a place associated with ceremony foreign just into the forest
I can't quite see it with all the vegetation here but there's the ruts of what's known as the Military Trail you
know that trace of that Old Road actually helps explain you know why the tribes are no longer present here in
Iowa a lot of people wonder well you've got all of these um spectacular monuments that were
obviously built by American Indians you know where are the American Indians in Northeast Iowa they're all gone why is
that well you know it's because the federal government removed them you know back in the um back in the 1830s and 40s
literally you know packed them up and moved them on to to distant reservations and so on
this Military Road passing right near this mountain group again is an artifact of that era
white settlers moved into the area and started plowing the fields and sometimes plowing down anything that got in the
way up to 80 percent of the Mounds and any remains inside them were ground up into
the fields yeah and and that's you know that was the fate of of many of the the Mounds I mean there were
thousands of Mounds throughout Southern Wisconsin Northeast Iowa southeast Minnesota and Northwest Illinois
you know many of them like the Mounds that we're seeing here animal shapes bird shapes you know all all kinds of
other shapes thousands and thousands of them dotting the landscape but the rugged nature of the landscape here the
fact that it wasn't ideally suited for agriculture is what protected a lot of the Mounds in what eventually became
Effigy Mountains National Monument in 1949 Harry Truman signed a presidential Proclamation making the Effigy Mounds in
Iowa a national monument and stating that the Mounds held quote great scientific interest
in 1951 the first archaeologist was assigned to quote reveal the mysteries of archeology and the resources of the
park which really meant digging into the Mounds to see what was inside and often
putting it on display the native Rights Movement argued that the scientific Community needed to treat
Native American remains with respect in 1971 a highway construction crew uncovered an old Cemetery in Iowa the
remains of 28 people were dug up including one Native American woman and a child
the 26 white people were put in new caskets and reburied at the local Cemetery but the Native American woman and child
were boxed up and sent to the state archaeologist stories like this started to make
national news by 1989 the Smithsonian reached an agreement with tribes to return some of
their collection to any descendants they could identify they said when you face a collision
between human rights and scientific study scientific values have to take second place
and then in 1990 Congress acknowledged that Native American remains were not being treated appropriately and passed a
law requiring institutions to return their remains it's commonly referred to as nagpra
okay that's the Native Americans grave protection and repatriation act and it allowed Indian tribes
to repatriate remains sacred objects and patrimonial objects this is Pat Murphy he worked as the tribal representative
on nagpra matters for the Iowa tribe of Kansas and Nebraska his job was to help remove remains from
museums across the country and ensure their re burial we are charged with taking care of the any body that cannot
take care of themselves the little ones the elders and we're also supposed to take care of the ones that
were dug up and their Spirit Journey was interrupted in his role as a nagpur representative
Pat Murphy visited Effigy Mounds in the early 2000s he worked with the other tribes that were descendants from the
area and they returned and reburied two sets of remains so we didn't see all the
bad things that went on here are the bad things that happened at Effigy Mounds new construction had been completely
Reckless trenches and post holes damaged burial sites a utility shed was built right on top of a hidden Mound you know
once that investigation concluded it was very very clear that things had that this park had kind of
straight away um from the straight and narrow and very few things were done appropriately here tribal groups were
Furious the superintendent was removed and that's when Jim nepstead was brought in and asked to fix everything you know
Effigy Mounds was in turmoil I knew it was in turmoil it's clear as day that the um that the the park was in the
wrong so I wasn't about to come in here and try to minimize the seriousness of what happened so I thought you know I'm
just gonna go in there I'm gonna all things as I see him I'm going to be extremely open and transparent and that
was easy enough for the first few months and then when it seemed like the situation at Effigy Mounds National
Monument could not possibly get any worse Jim learned that the remains of 41 Native Americans were missing and no one
had any idea where they could be I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] when did you first suspect or discover
that something was off at Effigy mountains I can tell you is to me it was the old ones
telling me to do something I didn't know what and I didn't hear voices or anything like that it was just a feeling
that it wasn't complete up there and so I started checking into it in 2011 Pat Murphy in his role as tribal
representative ask for a full inventory of the remains in the Parks collection he went to a park employee named Sharon
Greener she handled the inventories and asked her to show him the reports from the 90s and early 2000s it took her a
few days to find them when she did she didn't give them to Pat Murphy instead she went straight to the
new superintendent Jim napstadt and she put this report down on my desk just plopped it down my desk and she said you
need to read this and then she just walked out of the room and the report is about an inch thick
it's a big report but it's organized in such a way that after just about five minutes or so of leafing through it
I was seeing all these references time and time again about remains that had been
sent off to the Office of the State archaeologist in Iowa City to be studied in 1986 they returned to the park in
1987 and they have now disappeared and we don't know where they are and so time and time
again you know remains were studied in 86 return at 87 and disappeared soon after
and you know one of my first questions was did anybody tell the tribes about this Jim Knupp said started making calls
to anybody who had been around before his time who might know something but nobody knew where they were and they
would all shrug their shoulders and say look a lot of smart people have looked into this over the years and nobody's
been able to find them you're not going to find them and so I just thought well I'm going to
have to account for them nonetheless I'm going to you know let our tribal Partners know that they're
that they're missing so I started drafting the letter to notify the tribes formally
I mean you must have thought at this point give me a break like I cannot you know that
yeah I mean in in all honesty you know I knew the situation was bad here um but I I had no idea that the park had
this kind of a uh a Negra problem and and there there were some pretty big lumps under the carpet that were
suddenly being revealed the park had its own law enforcement officer Bob Palmer he'd been in the job for more than 20
years he said he remembered something funny about the Park's old superintendent Tom
Munson taking home a box of animal bones Bob offered to go to Tom Munson's house
and check it out they'd known each other for a long time Tom looked around but City couldn't find anything and
unexpectedly though the next day the the phone rings in Bob's office and it's Tom Munson
and Tom said well you know I've got this box you might want to come over and look
at it so Bob goes over and um Munson produces this box out of his garage and it has little
catalog numbers and Bob took that box back to the park um and had them sitting on his desk
called me over to his office and said Jim you need to come over here and I walked in
and opening up the plastic bag and peering inside there's I mean it's just one of
these things that you just never ever forget it's just like burned into the retinas of your eyes
um I looked into the plastic bag and there's this human Cranium steering out at me you know literally looking out you
know from the from the from the bag I mean it just it haunts you I mean it's almost like this
person's inside this bag saying Help Jim nepstead and Bob Palmer arranged for someone from the state archaeologist's
office to come up and study the Box's contents and eventually um a few weeks later we got a final
report that uh no you don't have all of the missing remains you've got you know a third to a half of them
Jim napstadt called an outside experts and they went through every single box and filing cabinet at the park tens of
thousands of Records to make sure that every item on paper actually existed in the building it's obvious that the
remains are not swirled up anywhere in our collection or anywhere else in the park they are not here they are truly
and verifiably now unaccounted for this isn't just a mere I'm curious where are these kinds of things this is okay
somebody's really seriously playing with us somebody has broken the law this needs to be investigated Jim called
David barlin Miles a special agent for the park system whatever felony occurs on Park Service property whether it's a
common law crime people on people crime murder sexual assault all the way to cultural resource crimes
natural resource crimes those are all what I do David barlin Lyles is crisscrossing the country and leaving no
stone unturned you know going through thousands of pages of documents and so on yeah I'm interviewing people that
have moved from Effigy mounds and now they they work in Atlanta they work in Washington DC they're
out on the well you know they're all over the the country some of them are retired living
up in Minnesota some of them are out in Olympic National Park Washington so I'm interviewing people all over the
place David interviewed all the parks employees including Sharon Greener who'd put the report on Jim nepset's desk in
the first place he actually interviewed her twice the first time she said she thought the
Park's remains had been transferred to the state archaeologist in Iowa City but David barlin Lyles had already
checked that it wasn't true so he went back for a second interview and her story changed and she finally
told me that indeed she removed the human remains from the museum catalog drawers of of the park
unit put them into two moving boxes she created the report of survey all under the orders of Thomas Munson
and she picked up a box Thomas Munson picked up a box they walked him up the stairs
out of the basement of The Visitor Center walked through the visitor center of Effigy Mounds
out the front door out into the parking lot and put them in the trunk of Thomas Munson's Ford Taurus and he drove them
away from Effigy mount's National Monument and she did not know where he was taking
them David said that conversation with Sharon Greener was one of the most important
moments of his career the very next day David drove to Tom Munson's house this time Tom's wife
Linda was there too they have a really beautiful home in Prairie duchenne kind of a restored Victorian home
and um it was a gorgeous spring day and I walked up to the front door and Tom was at the front door and he let me
in I had never met his wife Linda personally so I was introduced to her and we sat at kind of a dining room
table and they sat together on one end of the dining room table and I sat at my end it
was browned I think so we were just really across from each other and uh I spread out all the
information I had in my case File and the documents I felt were pertinent to the
investigation and I started by asking Tom Munson to talk to me about what he thinks happened
here David says that Tom offered three different explanations that he had sent the remains to the state archaeologist
that he sent them to an archaeological Center in Nebraska and that he had gotten an unusual directive from the
national office in DC free explanation David produced documents to prove Tom wrong eventually
um Linda turned to Tom and said I don't think you're telling this young man the truth
and turned back to me and said well what do you think happened and these the munsons clearly love each
other very very much and somehow she either believed me or just realized that I'm not gonna leave their house until
they kick me out David pulled a consent to search form from his briefcase and put it in front of them Linda signed and
we got up and I followed Linda out the back door of the house across a small lawn to a detached garage
she opened up a door to the garage and we stepped into it and then she opened up the garage doors to let all the light
in and she turned to her left and looked at an area in front of a white minivan that they had
parked in there and she goes I wonder if that's it and she walked to this cardboard box that was frankly out of
place in their garage everything else about the garage was pretty tidy and neat and newer and there was this older
cardboard box and she pulled it slightly out from the wall opened up the flaps of the cardboard box
and under the flaps was a partially opened kind of black garbage bag and I peeked over her shoulder and I
could see the head of a femur and I knew that that was what I was looking for and she backed away from it
and I said you know stay here I'm gonna go get my camera David took photographs put the
box in the passenger seat of his car and texted Jim I remember just being shocked
when he texted me you know found the second box you know need to get back into the museum
collection can you can you meet me out at the park what emotions were very high with me and Jim was just
so shocked that we did it that we figured it out and we felt both sad and happy at the same time and
did you immediately lock them up absolutely yes we even um prepared a a special place to put them
as both returning them home but also as strangely evidence of crime Jim napstadt and David barlin Lyles told
tribal Representatives what had happened right away Sandra Massey of the sack and Fox Nation
remember seeing the pictures that David took of the box in the garage then you see uh the trash bags
um and yeah that was really it hurt um I was very angry but it also hurt because the thing is we in the sack and
Fox Nation still do our ceremonies um I lost my little brother a couple of years ago we put him away in our
traditional way and it occurred to me that all those people had been buried with that same
kind of love you just it's just hard to imagine that anybody could do that I don't know that I can tell you what a
feeling it was Pat Murphy I guess it'd be if your grandmother was dug up and misplaced and her remains were
off in somebody's garage someplace then that's how you would feel you know violated
Tom Munson pled guilty to one count of embezzling government property his sentence was ten consecutive
weekends in prison one year of house arrest 100 hours of community service and he was ordered to pay more than a
hundred and eight thousand dollars in restitution the tribes were disappointed when he
received community service I wanted him cleaning out the toilets at Effigy my house
the federal prosecutor for the case said that Munson was being punished as though
he'd stolen a xerox machine the Department of Justice issued a statement that said at all times during
his employment Munson was entrusted with preserving and protecting the sacred site he failed this trust
Tom Munson had to make a public apology in it he said please remember me as you know me and not for what I've done
why do you think Tom Munson did it he didn't want those goddamn Indians to take away his stuff Albert LeBeau is the
cultural resources manager at the park and in a Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe that was
the mentality of nagpra in the 1990s people who had amazing collections like Effigy mountains did it does
you know they were afraid that the Native Americans were incumbent and repatriate everything
um you know personally I think he was given bad advice but Underneath It All I think he was
kind of cuss okay I believe Tom Munson took the remains um because he's [ __ ] racist he
probably thought he was being like a hero he's gonna save these from the Indians and then bring them back Sandra
Massey when nagpur started but anybody that had our artifacts or human remains thought that we were going to bring our
big trucks and load everything up and take it away um and there was sort of a disconnect there
was a distance between them and us he literally admitted in writing that it was because Negra was about to pass
and he wanted to protect the funerary objects that some of which were on display you know here in The Visitor
Center Jim napstad and in his mind the best way to protect this stuff was to make the remains go away and if we could
eventually get people to forget the fact that this stuff was associated with human remains then maybe nobody's going
to bug us and force us to repatriate it and so it's very misguided effort on his part
to protect the material Goods that came out of the Mounds but at the cost of you know the remains themselves
yeah this is the last of the paramounts Jim told me that even though he works at
the park he spends most of his free time here too and when he's not here he thinks about it all the time
about why the Mounds were built the way they were and about the people who built
them moving basket after basket of dirt from the river to the top of the Bluffs but he's okay with never getting the
answers they might not be his to know is this your favorite group in the in the park
yeah it is yeah there's just some some kind of order and design here and whether we'll really ever know
what it was um you know we'll just have to have to wait and see um you know we we are definitely working with our
tribal partners [Music] um trying to learn as much as we can but at the same time
you know we're cognizant of the fact that you know maybe there's certain things that we're not meant to
know the park hopes to begin reburial of the recovered remains next spring when the
ground thaws [Music] foreign [Music] Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers our intern is matild or
fellino Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at
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radiotopia X

As long as 2,500 years ago, Native Americans placed the bones of their dead in giant mounds of earth in the shape of animals. The Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa was created to protect one set of these — and the bones inside. But in 2011, a new superintendent, Jim Nepstad, discovered that the remains of 41 Native Americans had disappeared.

In this episode, we use the term “Native American” because the story refers to legislation that uses that term. The National Park Service now uses “American Indian.”

This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone.

Music in the episode “One Quiet Conversation” by Blue Dot Sessions “Leadin'” by Blue Dot Sessions “Aspirato” by Kai Engel “Downhill Racer” by Blue Dot Sessions “Tarnish” by Podington Bear “Refraction” by Podington Bear “Filt Lining” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 72 originally published 8/4/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-72-bears-birds-and-bones-7-3-2017

Brief Summary

Effigy Mounds National Monument's history reveals missing Native American remains and the investigation into their mishandling by park officials.

Key points

Effigy Mounds National Monument. A giant mound shaped like a bear, part of a unique cultural heritage.
The Fate of the Mounds. Many mounds were destroyed by settlers, leading to a loss of cultural heritage.
Missing Remains Investigation. A shocking discovery reveals that the remains of 41 Native Americans are missing.
Tom Munson's Guilty Plea. The former superintendent is sentenced for embezzling government property.
Cultural Disconnect. A deep-rooted fear among collectors about repatriation of Native American artifacts.
Jim's Dedication. Jim spends most of his free time at the park, pondering the Mounds' mysteries.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a place associated with ceremony.

Description of Effigy Mounds' significance.

1:49WatchDec 13, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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