You wouldn’t call yourself a perfectionist.
Still, if something is amiss, you feel a need to make it right. Something’s broken, you fix it. If it’s off, you make it right. That goes for minor issues or, as in the new book “The Grave Robber” by Tim Carpenter, matters of grave importance.
The tipsters were adamant. Don Carlin Miller had “Indian bones.”
And so, on a cool, cloudy fall afternoon, FBI bomb tech coordinator and sometime art crime expert Tim Carpenter and one of his associates headed to a remote property near Indianapolis, in search of the truth.
Miller was well-known to the FBI; years earlier, he’d bragged that he was involved in the Manhattan Project and had some uranium in his possession. A case was filed in 2008 and he gave up those souvenirs, but this was different: Carpenter, who was “eager for a good art crime case,” had gotten photographs of Native American remains on Miller’s property.
A meeting was arranged and Carpenter was careful to stay above the law. Introduced as someone with interest in antiquities, he paid close attention as Miller showed him around, and he noticed items that gave him pause. Furthermore, Miller, then around 90 years old, loved to tell stories and some of his tales confirmed what Carpenter suspected.
Over the course of decades, Miller had robbed Native American graves. Recovering them would take enormous effort.
Miller ultimately gave up the remains and stolen items without a fight and so, over the course of several days, Carpenter waded through many months of bureaucracy and red tape before leading an FBI team of experts, students, and agents through Miller’s home and outbuildings. There, hidden in secret rooms, moldering closets, paper bags, and in plain sight, they found “hundreds of people’s bones” – most dug hastily and amateurishly, some in abysmal shape, most stored or displayed disrespectfully.
Miller considered himself somewhat of an expert in the field, but that wasn’t the case at all. Says Carpenter, he “wasn’t just a bad digger, he was far worse — nothing more than an unabashed grave robber.”
Wow. Be prepared to say it loud and say it often because “The Grave Robber” is a stunning story on many levels.
There’s the book’s raison d’etre: the sometimes-thrilling tale of horrifying plunder and wrongly assumed privilege, both set right like a skewed, often obscene treasure hunt in reverse. True crime fans and those who love a good FBI procedural will be excited to see how author Tim Carpenter explains his case, how it proceeded and how it ended, with just enough biography inside the tale to make it personal. And history buffs will absolutely relish the backstory and the reasons the case came about in the first place.
If you’re a fan of all of the above genres, well, what are you waiting for?
Though it contains what is often a confusing alphabet soup or FBI acronyms, “The Grave Robber” is a can’t-miss story that’ll have you glued to your chair. For nonfiction readers like you, it’s perfection.
“The Grave Robber: The Biggest Stolen Artifacts Case in FBI History and the Bureau’s Quest to Set Things Right” by Tim Carpenter
c.2025, Harper Horizon $29.99 299 pages