by Ben Mezrich
It was conventional jailhouse wisdom that it took about two years for a man to reach empty, to finally let go of his old life—hopes, dreams, expectations, family, real contact with the outside world—two years to reset at rock bottom, to become that empty, unimprinted shell. By the end of his first year of being locked up, awaiting sentencing, Thad knew that the jailhouse wisdom was probably correct. He was halfway to becoming that nowhere, nothing man, and if he had to endure another year, the time would shatter him and cause him to shed whatever was left of his old self.
The worst moment of each day usually came when he lay down on his hard steel bunk, listening to the incessant buzz from the brightly lit ceiling, waiting for the clump clump clump of the hacks’ boots as they walked along the catwalk, often trying to ignore the horrifying, muted groans of men in nearby cells being abused, beaten, sometimes even raped by other inmates. It was a half-awake, half-asleep kind of place, where it was impossible to shut down his senses but equally impossible to digest what he was seeing, hearing, smelling.
The best time of the day was when he found himself alone in the shower, because it was the only time he could let go and cry.
In between, there were moments, good and bad, that marked the monotony of life in a cage. Meals, almost always grits, served on plastic trays that had to be returned and counted. Exercise, in a yard barely fit for a dog, fetid and hot and dangerous, where Thad usually stood in a corner trying not to catch the attention of anyone who might do him harm. TV time, usually those damn Teletubbies, sometimes the news, other times a Christian station spouting Scripture. And then, the card games with his cell mates—during which Thad was often asked to retell the story of the Moon Rock Heist—which inevitably morphed into a discussion of the sort of sentence he was probably going to receive, now that he had pleaded guilty and cooperated with the FBI.
Like everything else in prison, the topic of his sentence had become something the prisoners were eager to gamble on; not just Thad’s cell, but all of the surrounding pods got involved, inmates choosing sentences they thought Thad would receive; anyone who missed by more than a year was going to have to do fifty push-ups, one of the few forms of currency allowed in the jail.
Although Thad’s lawyer was still convinced that the highest penalty that Thad could receive—no matter how much NASA and the court’s experts finally decided that 101.5 grams of moon rock and the little Martian meteorite were worth—was about three years, a handful of prisoners had guessed as high as five. Thad knew that there was no way he could survive being caged up that long, but even so, he never once regretted pleading guilty, or disallowing his lawyer to argue against his being in the leadership role of the heist.
His shouldering that weight had allowed Rebecca and Sandra to plead that they had been misled, coerced, and taken minor roles in the theft. When Rebecca’s sentencing day finally came—a year after the heist—Thad was engulfed by a mixture of feelings. He hadn’t had any contact with her since the day of their arrest, and every passing minute without that contact had been sheer torture. Every time he’d spoken to his lawyer—his only real link to the outside world—he had begged the man to get him in touch with her, to give him a phone number, an address, anything, but the lawyer had explained that it was impossible. Rebecca had been preparing for her own day in court—and as she had said, her father had banned her from speaking to Thad ever again.
But now that she was getting a sentence, Thad allowed himself to hope that afterward, things might change. When he found out that she had received only probation, along with 180 days of house arrest—he was thrilled. She wasn’t going to jail, she was free, and eventually, he believed, she would reach out to him. Sandra, too, had gotten probation and house arrest, having also argued a minor, coerced role in the plan. Thad had been painted as a charismatic Svengali, a good-looking, fast-talking lothario who had duped the poor innocent girls into following him into Everett Gibson’s lab, but he didn’t care what they said about him because it had gotten Rebecca off, and she wouldn’t have to go through what he was going through.
Gordon hadn’t been so lucky, but it had been the stoner’s own fault. He hadn’t shown up for his court date, had instead gone on the run. When they had finally tracked him down in a Utah state park, he had stayed true to form—giving his name as Job, from the Bible, ensuring that the wrath of an angry government was going to rain down on him come sentencing time.
But Rebecca was free—and yet, Thad still had no way of reaching her. Over the course of the next few weeks, it became an obsession—and he began to try finding ways to contact her, if only to hear her voice one last time. Every time he heard of a prisoner being released, he’d approach the man, begging that once the man was on the outside, could he look up a girl named Rebecca Moore, and send Thad what he found? Most of the inmates looked at him like he was crazy, some openly laughing at the idea that they would have any more contact with the jail once they were out that door.
Realizing he wasn’t going to make any progress that way, Thad created a game to try to achieve the same results. Using a piece of newspaper that one of the inmates had gotten from a guard, he re-created a puzzle he had learned back at NASA—actually, in a study aid designed to help potential astronaut applicants, as it was a test often given during the astronaut application procedure. As the other inmates watched, Thad tore the sheet of newspaper into five geometric shapes. These shapes, he explained, could be rearranged into a perfect square—but there was only one way to arrange them so that they fit together as a square, and there would be a time limit involved. Thad knew that NASA applicants usually took about ten minutes to get the arrangement correct. So he gave the inmates twenty, betting them a meal on the result. If they could create the square in under twenty minutes, they would earn Thad’s dinner. If they lost, their dinner was Thad’s.
One after another, the inmates failed; each time, Thad traded back the won dinner for a single request—find Rebecca, and tell her that Thad Roberts loves her. That was it, not even an address or a phone number—just tell her that Thad still loves her.
But even as a year dragged into fourteen months, Thad never received any indication that Rebecca had been contacted. No mail from ex-inmates, not even a postcard. The only mail he did receive came from Sonya, in fact. Divorce papers, with a blank spot where he was supposed to sign to make the separation simple and final for her, so she could move on with her life.
Thad didn’t have to think about it for very long; it was the least he could do, and he knew that Sonya deserved to be happy, and to forget about him. Since he did have her phone number, he decided to call her and tell her himself that he wouldn’t stand in her way, that he would make the divorce as easy as he could.
But there was nothing easy about the phone call. From the moment her voice echoed through the cold and heavy plastic hand piece of one of the shared pay phones in Thad’s pod, he felt his chest seizing up. He no longer had the same feelings for her that they’d once shared, but hearing her voice, so bright and alive and normal, filled him with memories: of the apartment they’d shared, of the charity bike ride across the country, of nights spent in a tent, of their rushed wedding to escape his parents’ anger, and most of all, those brief moments when she would warm his hands against her stomach, flesh against flesh.
But standing there, with the shouting and howling of the other caged animals all around him, the din of prison life echoing off the metal and cement, he couldn’t say anything to her except that he was sorry, that he hoped she could be happy. And then, when it was her turn, hearing the noise of the prison behind him, she responded with the only words that she could think to say.
“Well, I hope you’re having fun with your new friends.”
And that was it; Thad was left standing there holding the dead phone in his hand. Sonya had no way of comprehending how terrible what she had just said had seemed to Thad, how completely alone and separated from the world it made him feel.
But he didn’t have that lo
ng to dwell on the thought, because shortly after that phone call, he’d gotten word from his lawyer that the time had come.
The next morning, Thad would finally get his day in court.
40
The minute Thad saw the look in his lawyer’s eyes, he knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
The day had started ridiculously early. At three A.M., they had come to put him back in handcuffs and shackles, to lead him back to the courthouse holding cell, a place he had been to a number of times over the past year and three months. The courthouse itself had become a place of total sensory overload to him, and by the time he was walked through the halls and into the courtroom, he was in a state of disassociation; his mind was so used to the dull environs of prison, he could barely comprehend all the colors around him, from the designs on the carpets to the clothes of all the people. It was really hard to concentrate on anything anyone was saying to him—and it wasn’t until he looked at his lawyer, halfway through the proceeding, that he realized that terrible things were going on in front of him.
It wasn’t just the monetary value of what he had stolen that was being talked about; after a parade of specialists in previous proceedings, the court had valued the moon samples somewhere between $7 million and $20 million, based not on street value, which would have put it much, much higher, but on the cost of the moon landing program, and the amount Thad had stolen, as a fraction of the overall mass of samples that had been brought back. So in that regard, Thad was pretty lucky; it was a big heist, but it wasn’t nearly the half a billion dollars’ worth it could have been. But the value of the moon rocks and the Mars sample wasn’t the issue that was terrifying his lawyer—it was what the judge was considering doing with the sentencing guidelines.
Though Thad could only piece a bit of it together at the time, because of his confused mental state, it turned out that the judge was considering giving a “5k2.7 enhancement” to his sentence, which, in layman’s terms, was an additional rise in sentence due to a crime that “shut down a branch of the U.S. government.” It was a rare enhancement that usually applied to terrorists—people who blew up federal buildings or killed important government employees.
Immediately, Thad’s lawyer made an impassioned argument that such an enhancement was absurd, unfair, and illegal. But the judge was listening with deaf ears—and it wasn’t the lunar rocks themselves, or even the Martian meteor, that was pushing her toward such a draconian judgment. It was those green notebooks that Everett Gibson had told the FBI about, the ones that Thad couldn’t remember finding in the safe. Gibson had made an emotional speech at an earlier court proceeding—and the judge had decided that the loss of those notebooks, combined with the temporary loss and possibly permanent damage to the samples, was enough to warrant the charge.
“This is not an ordinary situation,” the judge exclaimed, looking right at Thad. “The significant disruption of a government function by Mr. Roberts stealing these moon rocks—personally, Dr. Gibson’s testimony was heart-wrenching. All the work that he had done that was just for naught because Mr. Roberts decided to steal not only the lunar samples, but also all of his scientific work that had been written in those notebooks—and these were national treasures that are priceless.”
Thad’s whole world started to melt as he heard the words, like a Dalí painting come to life. To have someone talk about him like this—it had simply never happened before, at least not since he’d been disowned by his family and the Mormon Church. He had always been the one with so much potential.
“To get the same thing back,” the judge continued, “the government would have to go back twenty or thirty years in the space program. We’re not going up to the moon to get rocks and samples every day. And in fact, Dr. Gibson can never go back and get his notes, and they can’t use the rocks for the same educational and scientific uses that they had before because they’re now worthless. I mean, Dr. Gibson was practically in tears on the stand because his—everything he had worked for was all for nothing.”
Thad couldn’t believe the venom in the judge’s voice. And truthfully, up until that moment, he had never considered the pain Gibson would suffer from his theft—he still had trouble conceiving of it as anything but a victimless crime. He and the girls had taken full scientific precautions when handling the samples—as much as they could. As Thad saw it, even Gibson himself had basically referred to the rocks as trash.
But neither of those responses was going to make any headway with the judge, who had obviously already made up her mind. Before she handed down her sentence, Thad requested and received the opportunity to at least apologize. Hopefully, if he worded it just right, he could get the judge to be lenient. To show mercy.
“Sorry, I’m very nervous,” he began, speaking as loud as he could. He hadn’t strung that many words together in a long time, and his throat hurt with the effort. “But, Your Honor. I believe you have a very—of course, you’ve been presented all the bad things I’ve done in my life, but your image of me has been very shaded. It makes me very uncomfortable to even talk to you. But from what I’ve been hearing today, I think it would be important for you to know that the reason I even considered taking these moon rocks out of that cabinet was Everett Gibson had shown them to me a year before. He had, because of my enthusiasm, informed me that they’d been there for a long time, and he was basically in charge of just leaving them there, and he let me know they weren’t being used.”
He was warming up as he went, because it was the first time he had the attention of a crowd that he considered his peers—intelligent, educated people—since the JSC. It wasn’t like being in a swimming pool full of co-ops, but it was something; it felt like, after fifteen long months, he was at least someone.
“And I’m not trying to justify my actions, they were definitely wrong. But I’m just trying to give you some kind of perspective of where I was coming from in there. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of my actions. I came into that whole thing, obviously, very naive. I’ve never had a chance yet to apologize.”
And he was really off, now, into a monologue that had been building since he’d been arrested. In some ways, it had been building since he’d first set foot in NASA. Because he’d never felt like he’d belonged; he’d always felt like he needed to apologize for just being there. Hell, maybe the need to apologize went even further back, all the way to the beginning for him, all the way to Sonya and beyond that, to his parents, all the way back.
“I have somebody to apologize to. I’d like to quickly take that chance first to apologize to NASA for embarrassing them and for any trouble any individual had to go through because of my actions. And especially for abusing the trust that I had, between so many individuals there. So many people that were my mentors and my heroes are now very disappointed in me because of the potential they saw in me and encouraged in me. And at a weak moment, I did the wrong thing and abused that trust. And I still believe NASA is a wonderful organization. It inspires millions of people around the world to achieve higher goals and, you know, to reach for higher things. I still have a complete respect for them, and now I have to think of myself as a person who did this to basically my hero organization. And at the same time, I took away my own dream of being an astronaut.”
He kept expecting the court to stop him, but this was his moment, probably his last; nobody was going to say a word until he was done.
“I think I should also apologize to science. At the time, I had tried hard to justify my actions, thinking because I knew these samples were already consumed—it doesn’t justify the disgrace and embarrassment I brought to NASA and to science as a whole.”
When he was done, he realized there were real tears burning at the corners of his eyes. But he could also tell that the judge was unmoved.
It wasn’t until his appeal that he realized that no matter what he said, no matter what he’d ever say, his own explanations and apologies for what happened would never be able to stand up against what NASA felt he’d don
e; or, more specifically, in Everett Gibson’s own words, given in a tearful victim’s statement that entirely sealed Thad’s fate:
“As an employee of the United States government, of NASA, and a research scientist, I would like to note that in 1969, some very brave individuals went to the moon and began recovering lunar samples—samples which are national treasures. They have been worked on in research projects, viewed by the public around the world with pride. It hurts me a lot to know that one individual would want to take it upon himself to steal one of these samples and benefit from it financially, knowing that this has hurt a large number of people. It has hurt our nation to know that we have one amongst us who’s working as an intern in our own laboratories—that just broke our trust. I, as a scientist, have been hurt deeply. I, as an American citizen, am deeply moved and shaken by these actions which occurred. It hurts me deeply. Thank you.”
That, more than anything, was what was going to enhance Thad’s sentence beyond anything he could have expected. In the eyes of the court, in the eyes of Everett Gibson, he had committed a crime against the entire country—the entire world.
“It is the judgment of the court,” the judge said, looking Thad right in the eyes as she lifted her gavel, “that the defendant, Thad Ryan Roberts, is hereby committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of one hundred months.”
The gavel slammed down, and in that moment, with the explosive crack of wood against wood, Thad went completely deaf.
…
By the time he was led back toward his cell, Thad had a strange smile planted across his face—a mixture of disbelief, shock, and even a little relief, at finally knowing his fate, finally being able to give up what little hope he had left. As he made his way into the Submarine and down the hallway, the prisoners who could see him began shouting to one another, “Moon Rock, Moon Rock,” because they knew their gambling game was about to be decided—and from the smile on his face, they all believed that he was about to give them a number that would hit at least some of their guesses. In fact, as he was led into his cell, some of his pod mates were already congratulating him, guessing from his expression that he was getting out with time served, fifteen months. When everyone had quieted down, Thad gave them the news.
