Kloe escaped his police car at a tollbooth, still handcuffed. He ran across ten lanes of the East-West Expressway, jumped over a railing, scrambled down an embankment, and found shelter in a plumbing-supply warehouse. He might have succeeded, had the warehouse workers not mistaken him for a thief. They seized him and held him, blue lights and sirens approaching. The newspapers noted that Kloe wore a T-shirt with an iguana on it, an iguana lounging on a beach chair.
CRUTCHFIELD KNEW he would be indicted the moment he heard about Kloe’s arrest, but kept it to himself. His employees pressed him to tell them what he knew. “Tom was saying it had something to do with Madagascar tortoises, not us,” said Randal Berry, but the truth became obvious hours later, when Tom Crutchfield’s offices were raided by Ernest Mayer and his colleagues. Mayer had earlier driven straight to Crutchfield’s from the Waffle House, figuring he’d shoot a few surveillance pictures before formally searching the shop. But Crutchfield discovered Mayer snooping, hopped in his truck, and ran Mayer off the road. “Not one of my more fond memories,” said Mayer, who returned to Lake Panasoffkee that evening, with backup. The agents signaled to Crutchfield from the door of Catfish Johnny’s, where he was eating dinner. Crutchfield refused to leave until he had finished eating. Mayer was not surprised. “Tom Crutchfield was just Tom Crutchfield, kind of an arrogant blowhard,” he said. “There had been enough contacts by different agents over the years to know what he was like.”
The agents spent hours placing piles of paper into plastic evidence bags and pulling hard drives from computers, while Crutchfield’s staff sat in terrified silence. Crutchfield, by contrast, “was real cocky and confrontational,” said Randal Berry, who watched as agents took apart his .38-caliber pistol, a gift from the boss that he kept in a desk drawer. “But it also seemed like he was expecting it.”
Crutchfield was more than expecting it, and in the hours between Kloe’s arrest and Mayer’s search, Tom and Penny Crutchfield decided to do something they had been mulling over a long time. They would “go somewhere tropical, where they speak English, sort of retire, you know, fuck the U.S.,” Crutchfield said. Both Crutchfields had been quick to demand the return of their passports once their sentences on the Fijis were served. If they were ever indicted again, there would be no need for lawyers.
THE IMPLICATIONS of Kloe’s arrest were lost on nobody at the expo. Copies of the Orlando Sentinel flew around the lobby of the Radisson Twin Towers. Kloe had been arrested in Bushnell—no one but Crutchfield lived anywhere near Bushnell. Crutchfield, who always had the best booth at the fair, stood behind his well-placed, well-advertised table, in plain sight of the world. But few dared walk up to him, so fierce and glowering was his face.
Hank Molt ventured to Orlando for the 1996 reptile expo. It was his first foray into the reptile world since his Starbucks exile, and Molt spent most of the weekend drinking Heineken and avoiding Crutchfield—who, he was sure, would beat him up on sight. Yet Molt could not help but feel a sublime redress in everything that was happening. He had failed to finish Crutchfield, but Tom Terrific would finish himself.
ADAMM SMITH disappeared from Crutchfield’s the week after the raid. More Crutchfield employees quit in the weeks and months that followed, as the target letters poured in and Ernest Mayer rolled up in their driveways in a black SUV, asking questions. Mayer had lots of new information to badger them with. Wolfgang Kloe was cooperating with prosecutors in his eagerness to whittle down what threatened to be a very long prison sentence. Adamm Smith was meeting wildlife agents in hotel rooms, desperate to cut a deal. Randal Berry remained in Crutchfield’s employ until the winter of 1997, when Ernest Mayer came around for a chat. Within a day of that unsettling experience, Berry and his wife loaded all their animals and possessions into U-Hauls and drove away forever. The Little Rock Zoo gave him his job back.
CRUTCHFIELD DIDN’T wait around for the indictment. He had no way to escape a conviction when everyone who had ever worked for him seemed to be cooperating with the government.
Crutchfield’s new 1997 price lists in no way indicated there was anything amiss—but then, they never did. The year of the Fiji iguana trial was Crutchfield’s “most successful year yet,” as he told it to his customers. The new lists were timely, long, full of interesting animals and helpful veterinary tips. The only thing different about them was a notice at the bottom:
FOR SALE
BEAUTIFUL property in Subtropical Sumter County, Florida. Property comes complete with wild herps such as Alligators, Gopher tortoises, etc. Sumter County is still one of the most unspoiled and sparsely populated areas in Florida!!
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service didn’t get the hint. They were busy building a case against Crutchfield, a case so damning that it took thirty pages just to summarize, and failed to notice that though Crutchfield’s lists kept coming in the mail, no one had actually seen Tom Crutchfield for a while.
On May 1, 1997, Crutchfield’s probation officer faxed the U.S. district judge in Tampa. He had checked in to find only Penny at home, and she’d been nervous and evasive about her husband’s whereabouts. Later that night, the officer wrote,
Tom Crutchfield called me at my home and explained that the call was primarily a courtesy call. In the course of our conversation, he said that he had left the United States and did not intend to return. He said he had researched places to go that did not extradite him back to the United States for violation of his release or any new charges that he anticipates occurring. He would not say which country he was in. He said he anticipated new criminal charges and felt that he would not receive justice in the American court system as the government has all the advantages and would ultimately win.
HANK MOLT, who had little better to do that summer but sell coffee and savor Crutchfield’s misfortunes, typed up a brief “herp news bulletin” announcing Crutchfield’s arrest warrant, and circulated it to what remained of his mailing list. Then he drafted a letter to Penny:
Mrs. Crutchfield:
Just a reminder that you still owe me $5,000 that you both cheated me out of back in 1991. I realize that I will probably never see that money but at least it gives me succor to finally see your decaying empire slowly grinding to an ignominious and agonizing death.
With the issuance of the Federal Arrest Warrant for Tom on May 8, 1997, the final chapters of the Crutchfield saga officially began. When you next talk to FUGITIVE TOM, ask him if he remembers back in ’91 when he called the Dietleins in Canada and told them that “THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CANNOT HIDE.” Tom got a big laugh out of that. I wonder who is laughing now? Who else but Tom Terrific could make the pain last this long and cost him and his family so much? Do you have anyone you can solicit perjury from this time to try to save your butts? Why not hire the great Fred Ohlinger to save you from the Feds once again. He certainly was the best lawyer I ever came across.
As your and Tom’s peregrination of pain plays out just remember that you two people have contrived your own ruin with a finality that not even your worst enemy could have achieved by unremitting malice. You and Tom have proven that there are no half-measures in treachery. No decisions can be made without a price, but if the wrong decision is made the future will take its inevitable revenge …
With a special appreciation of a delicate moment,
I remain faithfully yours,
Hank Molt
INCARCERATION THRU STUPIDITY!!!
The letter never reached Penny Crutchfield. By then she had packed her family’s possessions into shipping containers, gathered her daughters and her aging, infirm mother, sold the crocodiles, sold the farm, and joined her husband in Belize.
16
Belize
Tom Crutchfield didn’t know exactly what to do with himself in Belize, but he had enough money to start some sort of business, and when his wife and three of his daughters arrived, in the summer of 1997, it was agreed that the business would be rental cars. The girls made runs to Texas, buying Isuzu Troopers that they drov
e down the east coast of Mexico and into Belize. Crutchfield leased office space in the Biltmore Plaza Hotel in Belize City. When the family had enough Troopers, they opened shop as Iguana Car Rentals.
At first everything about Belize seemed to confirm Crutchfield’s good judgment in moving there. He had an excuse to walk around with a machete a lot. He had spent much of his life dreaming about jungles, and here he was, so close that he could sometimes hear the throaty calls of jaguars at night. The girls loved wildlife as much as their father did, and were nearly as tough. On weekends they marched off into the forest with their dad and their binoculars and a Catholic priest who taught science at a local college and whom Crutchfield liked to interrogate about exorcisms.
The girls attended private schools, just as they had in Florida. It was important to Crutchfield that his daughters have certain advantages, because he had grown up poor. The family moved into a six-bedroom house. At night, the Crutchfields read books and ate fresh avocados and cracked each other up with conversations in Creole. Even Penny’s mother, who was very sick with Alzheimer’s, took well to her new surroundings, as “she didn’t know what the hell was going on,” said Crutchfield.
But then there were the inevitable third-world moments when it became painfully clear how far they were from home. A motorcycle crashed in front of the house, and the badly injured victim fell into a canal, forcing Crutchfield’s fourteen-year-old daughter to jump in and save him, with no ambulance arriving for an hour. Everyone had to be bribed all the time. Crutchfield had to bribe officials with each new Trooper he registered, or else he would have paid 80 percent of its value in taxes. He did not, however, seek to bribe his way to quick Belizean citizenship—a move that would have guaranteed his freedom—because the going rate was $50,000, “which seemed a little stiff to me,” he said, especially after buying all the cars. Instead, he decided to go about becoming Belizean the normal, non-fugitive way, by applying for temporary residency, the first step toward permanent residency and citizenship.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Justice Department figured out where Crutchfield was soon enough. They mailed him certified letters, which Crutchfield ignored, concentrating instead on designing ecotours he would run in addition to the car business. Already he’d taken a few car-rental clients into the jungles and to Mayan ruins, and he found himself to be good at it. He changed his business materials to read “Iguana Car Rentals and Eco Tours.”
It had not occurred to Crutchfield that the U.S. government might want him—or any other reptile smuggler—badly enough to come get him. Ernest Mayer was tasked with extricating Crutchfield from his jungle paradise, “a pain in the ass,” said Mayer. An extradition could take years, and Belize was not inclined to extradite, which was why Crutchfield had chosen it. “We needed to figure out how to get him arrested and held,” Mayer said, but that was going to require some creativity.
In early 1998, Crutchfield began to wonder if he was under some sort of surveillance. His daughters claimed they’d been followed on their way home from school. One weekend, he was visiting the southern part of the country, hunting snakes with a friend, when he spied from his hotel window two white guys outside on the patio. They had that law-enforcement look, a look Crutchfield had come to recognize. Crutchfield dispersed them by storming onto the patio with a pissed-off expression and a machete in his hand. Suddenly, he wished he had fled to Thailand instead.
The next sign of something amiss was when a Belize City police officer was spotted parked outside the Biltmore Plaza, showing people a picture of Crutchfield before giving up and leaving. Crutchfield wondered if the cop would have arrested him or just questioned him. He received word from his friends that the cops were under pressure to arrest him from the U.S. government, which had, months before and totally unbeknownst to Crutchfield, flown two Belizean officers up to Miami for some Christmas shopping. This was Ernest Mayer’s idea. “Belize was just so corrupt,” Crutchfield said, which was fine when it came to avoiding duties on cars, but not when his freedom was at stake.
In late February 1998, nearly a year after his arrival in Belize, Crutchfield was arrested and taken to the Racoon Street jail in Belize City. Crutchfield found the Racoon Street jail to be about the most disgusting place he’d ever set foot in, until after three days he was transferred to the Hattieville prison, which was worse, and farther from his family’s home. The United States had not made a formal extradition request, but merely asked Belize to expel Crutchfield. This Belize had every right to do, but no particular reason to do it, except as a favor to the Americans. Expulsion was like a backdoor extradition—and a contingency that Crutchfield had never envisioned.
The Belizeans did not disguise the fact that they’d put Crutchfield in jail just to placate the United States. Penny Crutchfield protested to the local newspapers that her husband posed no threat to public safety, and the Crutchfields hired a respected solicitor to plead his case. None of it did any good.
BELIZE HAD given Crutchfield the option to be deported at any time, but he chose to stick it out until his residency expired. He spent six months in an open-air cell, unprotected from biting insects and the occasional venomous snake or ocelot, defecating in a five-gallon bucket. He dodged a cholera epidemic that swept the prison.
Having deemed this ordeal a personal crucible, there was no turning back. “All my life I’ve been telling people I’m a tough guy, been telling myself that I’m a tough guy, and I thought if you’re such a tough guy, make yourself put up with it,” he said.
Crutchfield’s whole family got to share in his test of will, making twice-weekly trips to Hattieville, where they could spend thirty minutes standing in an open field divided from the prisoners by two wire fences. If it started to rain, the guards made them go home.
A representative from the U.S. embassy came now and then to drop off magazines and toiletries for Crutchfield, and also to review with him the charges against him. Each time Crutchfield would thank her politely, express his lack of interest in the case, and distribute the toiletries to the other prisoners.
In August, Belize deported Crutchfield to Miami, where he was arrested on the tarmac and held at a federal detention center in the Everglades.
Penny and the girls abandoned the Isuzu Troopers in Belize. They packed up what they could and returned to north Florida, where they would have to live with Penny’s sister until they figured out something better.
Crutchfield was transferred to a jail near Orlando, and having no recourse to bail, sat there for a year, working out a plea deal. There would be no dramatic cross-examinations, no pissing matches with prosecutors, no chameleon cages on the courthouse steps. It was inevitable now that he would spend considerable time in the federal penitentiary system.
It was all right, though, being back in Florida. Crutchfield had always preferred it to anywhere else in the world.
Part III
Dr. Wong
Anson Wong wore a stylish watch and a T-shirt that read “The Legend Continues.” Thick gray streaks ran through his long hair. He was fifty now, but he looked fit and youthful, sort of Californian, and though he’d seen California mostly from the inside of a prison cell, he said, he’d harbored a desire to live there ever since. Wong was no longer allowed to set foot in the United States, even in transit.
Penang was no California. It was mostly Muslim, for one, with all the accompanying rules and anxieties, and the crimes there were Gothic. During my first visit, in 2006, masked thieves broke into a computer-parts factory and chloroformed all the employees, making away with millions of dollars’ worth of parts. Wong refused to see me then. Two years and a few e-mails later, I visited Penang a second time, and while I was there a man was burned alive in his car dealership while thieves drove away twelve of his Mercedes-Benzes.
Wong was relaxed and garrulous. We sat in the courtyard of an empty hotel on the beach, a hotel Wong had chosen for me, and paid for. Wong was always interrupting himself to answer his cell phone, switch
ing languages from Malaysian to Thai to Indonesian, depending on who called.
In the e-mails we had been exchanging before my visit, Wong would say teasing things about plowshare tortoises: “Would you be interested in who actually buys the ‘crown jewels of tortoises’?” Wong had written. “How they get them out?” It had been twelve years since the big theft from Madagascar, and by now so many plowshare tortoises were showing up in Southeast Asia that the Bangkok airport displayed posters of baby plowshares, warning people not to smuggle them. A suitcase containing radiated and plowshare tortoises had been intercepted recently en route to Penang, but the case was never investigated. The local newspapers tried to implicate Wong.
It was known all around that Wong had been making frequent trips to Madagascar. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believed he’d established some sort of business in the north, near Mahajanga.
Wong launched into a story about running into a Chinese restaurant owner in Mahajanga who kept plowshares. Wong said he told the Chinese, in his halting Mandarin: “I want these.”
I interrupted Wong to ask when this was—“Just a couple weeks ago,” he said.
Then the story ended abruptly. Wong had something to do. When he returned the next day, he revised it. The restaurant incident had happened a year ago, he said; he didn’t go to Madagascar anymore. He didn’t enjoy the “weird food, broken-down taxis.” Instead, he said, he sent his staff members, but they were only collecting fossils. One of his staff members, on a recent fossil-collecting trip, had happened upon a huge cache of plowshare tortoises in Mahajanga.
Wong opened his laptop and scrolled through a series of photos that his staff member, he said, had taken. The photos showed plowshare tortoises, large and small, on sawdust, in a duffel bag, being held at waist height by a Malagasy man, then by a woman. Wong said the tortoises in the photos cost a thousand dollars apiece. They were being sold for food, he said.
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