Bones taken from a construction site behind the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum have been returned to local authorities.

A final decision about whether the man who took them will be charged with a crime hasn’t been made. But it appears the return of the remains may resolve the situation.

The bones came from an informal burial site uncovered by construction crews doing excavation work. The museum is in the middle of an expansion effort focusing on a new headquarters building for the local Texas Rangers company.

At the heart of the controversy: concern over treatment of the loose bones during excavation.

City officials have known for decades that the land the museum complex sits on was once home to two burial sites. One is an abandoned Masonic cemetery, the other an informal burial ground used for paupers between 1850 and 1900.

By the time the city opted to build the museum complex in the late 1960s, both burial sites had fallen into neglect. They were covered by several feet of debris and waste, and nearly all graves were unmarked.

With a court order, the city removed the remains and markers, placing them in other local cemeteries. But when museum officials began planning an expansion in 2005, they suspected they would find more bones.

Before construction began, an archaeologist hired by the city examined the area where the new headquarters was to be built. No remains were found. But in late May, construction crews found bones as they excavated for utility lines beyond the initial inspection area.

Since discovery of the bones, museum officials have worked with the Texas Historical Commission to properly remove and rebury the remains. That plan hit a snag Tuesday, however, when a local man visited the site and removed some bones.

Gholson resident Richard Thompson says he took the bones because he believes they were being mishandled. He never intended to keep them, he said, and made arrangements to turn them over to law enforcement officials on Thursday.

“I just did what I thought I needed to do,” he said. “What I saw was wrong. That’s the way it is.”

Thompson says he got involved after a Baylor University professor told him about bones lying around a construction site behind the museum. Thompson is known at Baylor and elsewhere in the area for his love of American Indian culture and his efforts to rebury American Indian bones once used for research.

When Thompson visited the construction site Tuesday afternoon, he said he was dismayed to see human bones lying on the ground and in dirt piles. He contacted the Tribune-Herald about the situation and pointed out the bones to a Tribune-Herald photographer. He then collected all the bones he could see, performed an American Indian ritual over them, then put them in a box for safe-keeping.

Thompson said he didn’t want to return the bones to the museum because he viewed officials there as negligent in their treatment of the remains. So on Thursday, he contacted Sheriff Larry Lynch and arranged to give him the bones.

Lynch, in turn, gave the bones to detectives from the Waco Police Department. The city attorney’s office asked the police department to look into the situation because the museum is a city department.

On Thursday afternoon, Waco Police spokesman Steve Anderson said the only information he had about the case was that detectives were looking into it. No reports had been generated, he said, so he wasn’t sure what potential criminal offense was being investigated.

The most likely charge, if any, would be abuse of a corpse. Under Texas law, someone commits the crime if he digs up, disturbs, damages, dissects or carries away any part of a human corpse. The violation is a Class A misdemeanor, carrying a punishment of up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.

Thompson could also be charged with trespassing, a Class C misdemeanor.

Byron Johnson, director of the museum, said officials there aren’t interested in Thompson’s prosecution. They simply wanted the bones returned, as well as information about where Thompson found them.

Unfortunately, Thompson didn’t provide such information when returning the bones to the sheriff, Johnson said. Thompson did say, however, that he excavated some bones from a pile of dirt that officials were waiting to screen for remains, Johnson said.

The reason the piles were sitting unexamined, Johnson said, is because the historical commission ordered the museum not to disturb any bones unless they were washed out by rain or moved by other unavoidable circumstances. That’s because officials want to craft the best plan of action for removing and studying the bones, he said.

The other bones Thompson took were lying on the ground after having been collected by construction officials, Johnson said. They were washed out by recent rains, he said.

An archaeologist with the state historical commission said Thursday that it appears the museum has handled the site appropriately. But he said details of the actual agreement between the commission and the museum will have to wait until Monday, when other commission officials who oversaw the plan are back in the office. They have been attending meetings out of town, he said.

To better protect the bones until a plan of action is agreed upon, the museum has erected more barriers at the site and posted signs instructing people not to enter it, Johnson said.

Mike Bradle, an archaeologist hired by the city to oversee the removal and reburial of the remains, says he wishes Thompson had not taken the bones.

“It is a shame they have removed bone that we could have linked to a specific person, and now we do not know where it came from,” Bradle wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune-Herald.

City Attorney Art Pertile said Johnson’s inclination to not prosecute Thompson will weigh heavily in the case. But before a final decision is made, officials must know more about the circumstances surrounding collection of the bones.

cculp@wacotrib.com

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