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Hunting Guide Is Accused of Taking Artifacts

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

A Santa Cruz Island hunting guide dug up a Chumash grave with his bare hands, offered bone souvenirs to federal agents posing as wealthy hunters and told the officers they had better keep quiet because grave digging was “a lock-up offense,” according to federal authorities.

In a sworn statement released this week, National Park Service agent Todd Swain said that guide Brian Krantz, a caretaker at the Smuggler’s Cove sheep hunting camp, took him to a Native American burial ground in October on one of three undercover trips to the rugged island 20 miles off the Ventura coast.

“He removed what appeared to be human bones,” Swain said in an affidavit to justify the Jan. 14 raids on two island hunting camps. “The bones appeared to me to be a human jaw with teeth, portions of a skull, and a long bone that was either from an arm or lower leg. Embedded . . . were other bones that appeared to be primarily skull and rib material.”

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For an hour, as Swain secretly tape-recorded Krantz’s comments, the guide allegedly dug bones from the hard soil.

“It could be a burial ground,” Krantz told Swain and his partner, according to the affidavit. “Once you get into it--it could be body after body. They didn’t do coffins or a lot of other stuff. They just dug holes and put them in. Could be bowls and bodies and everything. All of which is major, major bad karma--the Indians folks get all weirded out by it.”

Krantz declared the burial ground “the coolest” thing he had ever found on the island.

Krantz, 33, is suspected of felony destruction of a Chumash grave site, removal of human remains and lesser offenses of guiding and serving food and alcohol to hunters without permits.

Two other hunting guides who worked on the 6,200-acre Gherini family ranch--volunteer Rick Berg and caretaker Dave Mills--also face misdemeanor charges of guiding and serving food without permits.

All three were arrested last week during a commando-style raid, in which 20 heavily armed federal agents and Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies dropped onto the island in a Blackhawk military helicopter.

None of the suspects has been charged with a crime so far. Nor has Jaret Owens, who has run the Island Adventures hunting concession for 12 years and whose Ojai house was also searched last week, been charged.

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“Krantz is the focal point,” Santa Barbara Deputy Dist. Atty. Darryl Perlin said Wednesday. “The case is still under investigation as to whether we’re going to prosecute Jaret Owens.”

All three arrested suspects have said they did nothing wrong. “All this stuff is completely fabricated,” Krantz said in a recent interview. “These two undercover guys are going to sound-bite me to death, I can see it now.”

An attorney for Owens and Krantz said that the government’s case is overkill aimed at putting Owens out of business and making it easier for the National Park Service to seize the Gherini Ranch, the last privately held land in the Channel Islands National Park, on Feb. 10, as Congress has authorized.

“It’s extremely gross overkill,” lawyer Steve Balash said. “It appears that our government has gone crazy. You could have sent any officer out there with a citation book and accomplished the same thing. You didn’t need to come in there with a SWAT team,” he said.

“The government’s acting as a bully,” he added. “I think they’re in a hurry to get the hunting concessionaire off that island.”

Authorities have said such conclusions don’t make sense because Owens’ concession was scheduled to close in two weeks regardless of the raid.

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Balash denied that Krantz, who still manages the Smuggler’s Cove hunting camp after being released on $25,000 bail, had committed any crimes.

“Under the law, moving some dirt away from bones and picking them up is not disinterment,” he said, since Krantz returned the bones and covered them back up.

Potential charges of stealing artifacts don’t wash because pots, bowls, grinding and pounding stones, beads and assorted rock fragments found in Krantz’s cabin were openly displayed and never taken from the island, the attorney said.

“It’s like if you just touch them, you’re automatically committing some crime,” he said. “and that’s not so.”

The criminal investigation began in January 1995 after a Chumash woman from Ojai, Julie Tumamite, complained of possible grave robbing on Santa Cruz Island, the affidavit said.

“Are we the only race that think this is a disgusting act?” Tumamite said in an interview this week. “This is a crime against human nature.”

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In 1995, Tumamite told investigators that a former Island Adventures employee, Paul Starbard, had information about possible theft and trafficking of Native American artifacts and human remains from Santa Cruz Island, Swain said.

Starbard, an island hunting guide in 1986 and 1987, told investigators that Owens’ father, Duane Owens, showed him a large container that held numerous human skulls, other human remains and Indian artifacts. “High-roller” hunters who found artifacts were allowed to keep them, Starbard reportedly told investigators, while others were told to turn them in. Another former employee also sold artifacts and human remains to German and Japanese collectors, Starbard told investigators.

Last week’s search of the home of Jaret Owens, who took over the business from his father, resulted in the seizure of some Native American artifacts, according to court documents. But Swain said that at least four Santa Cruz Island artifacts, including two stone bowls and a stone pestle, he saw while at Owens’ house last year were missing.

Owens has said that any Native American artifacts in his home were collected during 25 years as a guide all over the world, including 20 years on Santa Cruz Island. The artifacts he owns were collected legally, he said.

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