40 years since final moonwalk, former NASA agent appeals for stolen rocks

As America marks 40 years since the last man set foot on the Moon, an investigator has launched an appeal for missing lunar rocks - after almost half of those given out as goodwill gifts disappeared.

Now, Professor Joseph Gutheinz, a retired former NASA security agent is planning a series of overseas trips - including to Malta - in search of the lost lunar snippets.

US President Nixon distributed 269 fragments of Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 moon rock fragments to 135 nations, including Malta after the final moonwalk of December 13, 1972. Today, 159 of them are unaccounted for, either lost, stolen or destroyed.

Malta's Goodwill Moon Rock was reported stolen on May 18, 2004 from the Museum of Natural History in Mdina. 

Local and international media had reported that at the time of the theft, there were no surveillance cameras and no custodians at the museum because of insufficient funding. "The only attendant is the ticket-seller," said an Associated Press report. A Maltese flag displayed next to the rock - which the U.S. astronauts had taken up with them - was not taken.

Gutheinz, who heads up a "Moon Rock Project" at the University of Phoenix (where he assigns his students the task of hunting down missing moon rocks), urged the Maltese authorities to grant an amnesty period to the thieves. He advised that only an amateur thief would have taken the Maltese Goodwill Moon Rock and left the plaque and flag behind, as all three together would have been self-authenticating and eliminated the risk of a geologist needing to authenticate the moon rock.

"This was what the sacrifice of astronauts like Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan was all about - they brought back the Moon to the people of the Earth. The Moon!" Gutheinz said.

"Some people were in awe of it. Some people put it in boxes and forgot about it. Some people stole it. They stole the Moon and it's time we got it back."

As an undercover agent with the OIG, Prof Gutheinz led a sting operation that led to the recovery of Guatemala's Apollo 17 rock, which had been stolen from the state by a retired military officer, sold to a Florida businessman and then offered for sale for US$5 million.

Since leaving the OIG ten years ago, Prof Gutheinz and his criminal justice students at the University of Phoenix, in Arizona, and others, have located dozens of rocks whose whereabouts were previously unknown.

Among them were rocks presented to the people of Colorado, Missouri and West Virginia but found to have been retained for decades by past governors in their homes or offices.

Ireland's Apollo 11 rock was accidentally discarded at a landfill site. Nicaragua's ended up with a Las Vegas collector.

Romania's was appropriated by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and then sold to an unknown buyer as part of his estate following his death in 1989. Spain's was last thought to be in the possession of the former dictator General Francisco Franco's grandchildren.

Alaska's Apollo 11 relic found its way into the hands of a crab fisherman, Coleman Anderson, who claimed that he retrieved it in 1973 from the debris of a museum fire. When finally tracked down by Elizabeth Riker, one of Prof Gutheinz's students, in 2010, he launched a lawsuit against the state maintaining that he was the rightful owner and that if it wanted it back, they must pay him.

Last week, Anderson - whose foster father was the museum's curator - finally dropped his case, after state prosecutors obtained witness testimony countering his version of events.

"It just amazes me that all these pieces of the Moon - Malta's piece, Cyprus's, Malta's, Spain's, Romania's - are all out there and yet I don't see much energy on the part of law enforcement to do what they should be doing to find them. That bothers me," Gutheinz said.

"It's like a shot to the gut when you think of how these astronauts brought back a piece of the Moon to inspire and send a message to the children of the world - children that have never seen them because someone stuck them in a drawer, or took them home for themselves, or stole them.

"Each of these pieces of the Moon has a story and in too many cases that story is a case of 'Well, what the heck happened?" he asked.