Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - ZONE 7: Poisoned Meatballs and Wolf Justice | Special Agent Ed Newcomer

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. He's back. Ed Newcomer, the special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Y'all know he's been over 20 years there. He's got his own podcast, Nature's Secret Service. Several of y'all know about that. Y'all have checked that out. It is quite frankly phenomenal, but we have brought him back because he has got a case

Starting point is 00:00:37 that you are not going to believe in what's important about this case to me. If you can work this case, you can work any homicide out there. So Ed Newcomer, thank you so much for coming back. Well, Mack, thanks for having me. I love your show and I love being. And on your show, it was such a great time last time I had to accept. Are you kidding? And let me tell y'all, anybody coming to CrimeCon, you're going to be able to see him live and in person.

Starting point is 00:01:11 We are going to be on the main stage for the creator's row. We are going to be live at CrimeCon doing a Zone 7 in person. And Ed's going to be right there and you will not believe the case we're going to cover there in person. and it's the first time wildlife crimes will be at CrimeCon. So come see us. All right, Ed, this case involves poison. And I got to tell you, those are difficult cases, and they're difficult to me because almost anybody can obtain poison.

Starting point is 00:01:54 It's sub-level. It's not like a gunshot where people can hear. it. It's not like arson where people can smell it. I mean, this is something that the killer, they don't even have to be there when the death occurs. You know, you're absolutely right. I never really thought of it that way, but poison is a very sneaky weapon, right? It is so sneaky. I mean, you can be in another state. You can have a solid alibi. I was nowhere near there. You have time to get away. There won't be any eyewitness or ear witness. And it it wouldn't matter anyway. You're not there. Exactly. It's kind of the perfect weapon for a criminal to use because, you know, like you just said, they can actually take the time to put distance between themselves and the victim and the crime scene, which, you know, is pretty important if you're trying to evade capture. And unfortunately, Mack, a poisoning is a pretty common method for people to commit wildlife crime, particularly if they're trying to kill wild animals for some reason.

Starting point is 00:02:58 well that's what took y'all to Idaho so why don't you tell us about February 2004 we're out there trying to reintroduce wolves so we're trying to build this population back yeah that's exactly right and you know it might be really helpful to you and your listeners if we just kind of back up just a little bit and I tell you a little bit about the situation with wolves in the western United States particularly around that time in 2004 going if we go way back let's go back to 1926 that's the year we're going way back that that is hilarious I thought you were going to say like you know 2001 no we're going back y'all we are going way back way back okay yeah so let's go back to 1926 in yellowstone national park Remember, Yellowstone was like the first National Park in the world. It's often considered America's greatest idea. The last wolf was killed in Yellowstone National Park in 1926. And that's what's called extirpating a species, which means they're not necessarily extinct wherever around the world, but they no longer exist in the ecosystem where they used to.

Starting point is 00:04:21 So pretty much by 1926, the United States had been well on its way to extirpating or killing all of the wolves that they could in the United States. And by that time, there's just a small pocket of wild wolves living in the Great Lakes area. They're gone, basically, from the Rocky Mountains. Now, that turned out to be kind of an environmental disaster because it allowed elk and deer populations to explode, which has. had all these cascading effects on the environment. And as early as 1940s, people started to talk about, maybe we should bring wolves back to fix kind of this imbalance. That didn't happen until 1995 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service finally decided we're going to bring wolves back to Yellowstone and certain parts of Montana. And that effort really started

Starting point is 00:05:21 in 1995 and a number of wolves were brought down from Canada. They were captured and they were released in the park and they started to do phenomenally well. A lot of deer, a lot of elk were there for them. They were specialists in killing deer and elk and it started to put the ecosystem back into balance. Unfortunately, well, fortunately for the wolves, but also unfortunately for the wolves, as they prospered, they moved. Their packs started to move outside the park and to populate their natural, previous historical environment. And unfortunately, wolves get a bad rap, and it's not warranted. It's not earned. And a lot of hunters and ranchers just hate them. And they try to, some of those guys are willing to break the law and they'll try to kill them at every

Starting point is 00:06:16 opportunity. Because wolves had been extirpated, when they were re-released, they were automatically listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, which gave them protection. And as we know from my last appearance on the show, violations of the Endangered Species Act are a criminal violation, and that law is enforced by special agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So there's a little history, Mac, but that kind of brings us up to this case that happened in February of 2004. It turned out to be an amazing, an amazing investigation done by a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named Scott Bergonier. And the reason I know so much about this case is because when I heard about it, I was an agent in Los Angeles. I didn't

Starting point is 00:07:11 do wolf cases, you know, we don't have wolves down there. But I was so fascinated by the high quality work that this agent and Idaho State Game Mortons did. It was an amazing crime scene investigation. It involved forensics. It involved great detective work. And ultimately, as I tell you this story, I think you're just going to be kind of blown away. You want me to just jump in now? I'm so sorry. I was so captivated. I'm sorry. I was listening, not talking.

Starting point is 00:07:44 I just, I didn't know if you wanted a chance to like pepper in questions there. Just go for it. I was just sitting there literally keep it in because that's honestly what was happening. I was sitting there so captivated. I was like, oh, my Lord, what is going to happen? Even though I know the facts of the case. So let's just go right back in.

Starting point is 00:08:04 Yes, I want you to just jump right in. Okay. So let me set the scene for you. It's now February 20th, 2004. We're almost 10 years into wolf reintroduction. They're doing great. They have expanded their territory. They've moved out into Idaho. And there's an area in Idaho known as the Wagon Hammer drainage. And it's a popular place for people to go hiking and walk their dogs and things like that. So on, February 20th, 2004, a local resident in Idaho is out walking her dog, and the dog finds a meatball. We all know what a dog will do if it finds a meatball. It'll gulp it down before you can do anything about this. Yep. Yep. Well, that's what happened. And within a few minutes, the dog goes into convulsions, starts foaming at the mouth, drops over, you know, panic ensues. and the woman rushes her dog to the veterinarian only to learn that the dog's been poisoned.

Starting point is 00:09:12 So how now does a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent get involved? Well, it turns out that the wagon hammer drainage, that area, is known to be wolf habitat. There are wolves there, and those wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act. So through just people understanding that wild animals are, there, including wolves, this poisoning incident gets reported to the Idaho Wildlife Department, so Idaho Fishing Game.

Starting point is 00:09:43 Because they know wolves are there, they notify the nearest special agent with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who is Scott Bergonier. And Agent Bergonier, and a few gaymortons, go out to this Wagonhammer drainage district, the hiking trail or drainage area, and suddenly they find themselves, imagine this, Mack, you normally if you're a law enforcement officer you go into a crime scene it's that crime scene might consist of a room or two rooms or a house maybe a yard but we're now we're talking about acres and acres of wild land that is potentially your crime scene ed as soon as you said drainage my heart sank because i thought how much land are you talking about yeah if you look at an aerial

Starting point is 00:10:33 map of this, just imagine it's basically a valley with a river running through the middle of it or a creek. And at this time a year of February in Idaho, it's pretty snowy. It's cold and there's snow on the ground. So if you can imagine that, you have now all these challenges with just a handful of law enforcement investigators. And all you know is a dog ate a meatball and the dog was poison. So, you know, pretty much, I think if you and I were out there starting this, we'd be like, well, let's see if we can find some more meatballs, right? So that's exactly what happened. Agent Bergonier and the state game wardens kind of spread out through this hiking trail, looking on either sides, looking for meatballs. And it doesn't take them long before they start

Starting point is 00:11:23 to find kind of golf ball sized holes in the snow, kind of all. on either side of the trail, left and right. And they reach down into these holes and sure enough, they start to find meatballs about the size of, you know, a standard spaghetti and meatball meal. And they obviously think they're onto something, so they start to collect these meatballs

Starting point is 00:11:50 and photograph them in place and pick them up. Now, they also know, of course, that this dog, keeled over within minutes of consuming one of these. So there's some officer safety issues here, too. They've got to be gloved up. They don't, if there are poison meatballs out there, they don't want to touch this stuff.

Starting point is 00:12:10 But in the end, they found 58 meatballs scattered throughout this drainage area. And each time they found a meatball, they kind of cracked it open. and inside they found what looked like gray granulated powder, kind of like almost like a thick gunpowder. Now, most agents in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are very aware that people tend to use poison to kill predators. And one of the most common poisons out there to do that is called Temik, or also known as Aldicarb.

Starting point is 00:12:50 And that is exactly what Temik and AldiCarb look like. it looks like a gray kind of beaded powder. So good job on the crime scene, right? Unbelievable. And with the dog, that's plus one. So, you know, you're almost at 60, and you just have to imagine how many did they not find, how many had already been consumed.

Starting point is 00:13:13 And on that note, another thing that they started to find while they're kind of combing this crime scene are dead animals. They found magpies, which is a federally protected bird. Looks like a crow, but it has a white wing. They found red fox that were dead and coyotes. And so if you think about it, these are animals that are just innocent. They're doing nothing.

Starting point is 00:13:40 They're just doing their thing in the environment. And within minutes of consuming one of these meatballs, they're dead in place. So it's not like these animals ate a meatball and wandered off and died in seclusion somewhere. the agents and the investigators are finding multiple dead animals across the crime scene. The reality is you're going to have a bear come along and eat that magpie. You're going to have maybe other wolves come and try to get a carcass that's been poisoned, and then they're going to die too. 100%. It's that secondary poisoning.

Starting point is 00:14:17 It can go on and on and on in the environment, killing eagles. vultures, you know, small scavengers, big, big predators, all the animals, indiscriminately. It's really an insidious, it's an insidious tool to use to try to kill an animal because there's a lot of things you're going to kill. And here's what you're really bringing to light for us. Most people would think poachers are single-focused. I'm going to go get that one rhino. I'm going to go get that one bear. I don't know that people understand if the poachers are trying to get rid of something,

Starting point is 00:15:03 if they use poison, not only are they going to maybe wipe out this whole wolf pack, but they're also going to get maybe the animals that you do care about. Exactly. And it's so indiscriminate. And it's used around the world. And, you know, that's an interesting point you raised because there's different kinds of poachers out there, you know, like there are the guys who don't have a license to hunt deer, but they go hunt deer anyway. That's one kind. Then, as you mentioned, there are people out there killing animals for profit, like elephants for their ivory or rhinos for their horns. That's a totally different person because they're trying to commercially profit. Then there are these Poachers who do things out of spite and anger and ignorance, honestly, you know, people who hate wolves because they think wolves are killing too many deer and elk or sometimes wolves do

Starting point is 00:16:01 kill cattle. And they're going to take it upon themselves to go back in time a hundred years and make wolves go extinct. That's not their, you know, that's not their place in the world. The American people have been trying to reverse centuries of environmental and habitat destruction. They want wolves back in the Western United States. It's not up to some individual poacher to take it upon him or herself to start killing animals that are of value to the entire American populace. You know, it's frustrating, especially as a law enforcement officer because you do see all of this, you know, collateral kill and collateral impact that throwing poison out in the environment causes. It's depressing.

Starting point is 00:16:52 Especially in a drainage way, because, again, you're already talking about one domestic animal that was almost killed, but it gets in that water system. I mean, that's like a bullet. It doesn't have anybody's name on it. It's just out there to hurt something. Exactly. And with this poison in particular, Temick, As I said, each meatball was kind of filled with these granules. If you accidentally breathed in just one or two of these particles or if it absorbed through your skin,

Starting point is 00:17:27 you could become extremely sick and possibly die. It's just from a few particles of this getting into your, you know, ingesting it or breathing it in or having it. So it works like fentanyl. It's bad. It's not quite as quick as. fentanyl, but it will kill you and it will make it real sick, even small amounts of it. So it's a very dangerous poison. We, you know, Fish and Wildlife Special Agents receive a lot of training on how to deal with

Starting point is 00:17:55 poisons that they encounter in crime scenes like this. And we take it real seriously. So there's another thing that they found during their crime scene investigation that was very interesting, especially from a forensics point of view. they found boot prints and what tied these boot prints to the meatballs was that in some instances they would find the hole where the meatball had gone into the snow and directly on top of it there would be one of these boot prints as if someone had stepped on it to push the meatball down into the snow hey that's really good investigative work that's a that's a great

Starting point is 00:18:37 way to articulate what you saw that explains it to a jury. Exactly. And it explains why these footprints were zero, you know, obviously there's hikers there. There's other footprints, but these prints seem to be very closely related to the meatballs. But I mean, what are the odds a hikers going to step on every meatball? You know what I mean? So I'm just saying that's really good because a lot of times that's hard to train people. They may realize what they're seeing, but they don't always write it down. So if somebody took the time to say, hey, on every single one of these meatballs, we saw this same boot print that looked like it was shoving it down into the snow. Well, that makes sense. Exactly. Exactly. And as you know,

Starting point is 00:19:22 you know, footprints, tire prints can be very important because if later you find a boot, it gives you something to compare to the print that you saw out in the field. So very smartly, agent Bergonier took very good photographs at right angles of these footprints because it was snow of course he couldn't or plaster Paris in there because it would destroy the print but he did record the the footprints and that became very important later because one of the things that really stands out if you look at a photograph of one of these bootprints if you know if you kind of work in the world of wildlife and you know hunters, this boot print is actually immediately recognizable to you as coming from a boot made by a company named called Danner in Oregon. And this particular

Starting point is 00:20:18 soul was primarily made for a boot sold by the Cabela's Outfitting Company. So you might, you know, know Cabellas and Bass Pro shops as an outdoor supply company. And they exclusively sold this boot made by Danor that had this very unique tread design, which almost, it almost looks like instead of the classic chunky boot print, it looks like it has points on it, almost like cleats, little round indentations make up the footprint. So it's kind of a very, there's a lot of those boots out there, but it's a very recognizable hunting boot that anybody who's familiar with Danner boots would know that this is this is that type of boot. There was one other thing they found at the crime scene,

Starting point is 00:21:07 which turned out to be sort of a joke among everyone. And that is there was a place in the snow where there were two of these boot prints right next to each other as if the person was standing still. And in front of the toes of the boot prints were some yellow snow. And most of the senior investigators there were like, oh, yeah, well, somebody took a leak and that's that. But a very new straight out of the Academy game warden for the Idaho Department of Fish and game, eagerly collected that, that yellow snow. Oh, yeah, he scooped it up and put it in a bag and preserved it. And everybody kind of teased him because they're like, what are you going to get out of urine?

Starting point is 00:21:58 You can't find DNA in a person's urine. So everybody kind of teased him and kind of it became a joke. But nonetheless, this yellow snow got itself booked into evidence. I love it. Okay. As you know, the yellow snow will come back later in this story. So the last thing, before the investigators walked off of this crime scene, they found something very, very sobering. And that was on top of one of these boot prints, meaning something came through the crime scene after the poison poacher was a wolf print.

Starting point is 00:22:33 Right on top of one of these boot prints was a huge wolf print. And they are unmistakable. A wolf print is about the size of your hand. They're big. And so what it meant to Agent Brugonia was that after these meatballs had been placed, at least one wolf had passed through the end. area now no no dead wolf was found but it's a little scary to think that the very species you're trying to protect did in fact go through this crime scene after these poison 58 at least poison meatballs had been placed in the environment pretty pretty sobering way to start this

Starting point is 00:23:11 investigation and now as facing all you know investigators you're done with your crime scene you've collected 58 meatballs. You've taken pictures of boot prints. You've collected other dead animals as, you know, collateral kill. You've got your yellow snow. Now what? Right. Right. So what? You know, what do you do? Well, interestingly, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has its own dedicated criminal forensics lab. It's called the Clark Bayven Forensics Lab. And it's located in Ashland, Oregon, and their sole purpose is to support law enforcement investigations involving wildlife crime. So, of course, Agent Bergonier sent the meatballs to the lab for two things.

Starting point is 00:24:04 One is, tell me what this meat is. And two, what's this powdered granular material inside the meatballs? He already knew, but he needed scientific forensic evidence. And sure enough, the lab results come back. indicating that the granular powder was aldecarb, also known as temic, and that the meat was characteristic of the same tissue that would come from a North American elk. Okay, so that's great information. We know for sure now we got poison and we know this is elk meat.

Starting point is 00:24:40 And that tells you something about your suspect? You bet. And it gives you something potentially to compare later. So out of that meat, of course, you're going to get the individual. DNA from that particular elk and that of course gives you something to compare later hoping that your investigation goes somewhere. But now we're really in this situation where how does Agent Bergoner develop a suspect? How do we figure out who this was? There's no surveillance cameras at a hiking trail. There's no witnesses. Nobody saw anybody hiking around. They're

Starting point is 00:25:13 throwing something, you know? It's a pretty remote area. And what has to be? What happens next is, you know, an investigator could basically go back to the office and sit and twiddle their thumbs and hope somebody calls in the tip or they could really get proactive. And Agent Bergonier was never the kind of guy when he was working to sit back and twiddle his thumbs. He was a very proactive agent. And he was very well dialed in with the other law enforcement agencies in that area of Idaho. So, you know, he knew the federal Forest Service law enforcement. He knew the local police. He knew the tribal police. He knew everybody. And he basically put the word out, hey, I got this case. There's found some poison meatballs. It's in a wolf area. I'm trying to figure out who might have

Starting point is 00:26:06 put these here. Anybody have any ideas? I mean, really, that's what it came down to. And don't you know, it triggered someone's memory and it turned out that the NesPers tribe which is a Native American tribe in that area employs their own staff to work on wildlife issues

Starting point is 00:26:31 and they had a biologist who remembered having an encounter get this back in 1998 with an individual known as Tim Sundles and the encounter was so memorable for this biologist or so unusual that the biologist ended up writing a memo about it and the memo basically detailed how the biologist was out in the field and was approached by this guy named Tim Sundles who just started railing

Starting point is 00:27:05 about how he wanted to kill wolves. During that conversation, Sundles mentioned to the biologist and this is a quote, straight from the biologist's memo. He said, quote, do you think it would work if we dropped a couple of elk up there and packed them full of poison? Now, is this our suspect? Well, we don't know, but he talks about elk and he talks about poison. So, Ragonia is better off than he was before he talked to this biologist. Even though this was 1998, that's pretty close.

Starting point is 00:27:39 Yeah, I mean, it's six years, but it's. It's something, right? And when you're an investigator, as you know, Mac, when you're at a loss, you start pulling at threads. And you see whether or not those threads start to unravel. Well, here's the other thing, Ed, this guy is radical. Those types of folks write things down. That's how we have manifestos. That's how we have all these things posted on social media.

Starting point is 00:28:08 They can't stop themselves. Exactly. And they're proud of what they're doing. Yep. They think they're right. Yeah. Exactly. And one of the other scary things that this individual said to the biologist, and this is another quote, he said to the biologist, he said, if I see a wolf, I'm going to kill it. And any fed who comes and tries to stop me is going to get a bullet in their back. Now that is, yeah, that's a scary person. He goes to the number one slot for me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for sure. Wouldn't, as, as, as, as, as. Agent Brugonia thought, well, hey, this is something. I'm going to start looking into this person. So he starts to kind of just do some basic investigations, and he finds out that this Tim

Starting point is 00:28:56 Sundles guy was previously investigated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for killing a wolf. But interestingly, under the Endangered Species Act, one of the legitimate reasons you can kill an endangered species is if it's in self-defense. events. Now, wolves do not have a history of attacking human beings, but it's possible. They're average wolf weighs between 100 and 130 pounds. And yeah, if they wanted to, they could hurt you. So it turns out back in 2001, Tim Sundles actually shot and killed a collared wolf. But when it was investigated by a different Fish and Wildlife Service special agent at the time, Sundles claimed

Starting point is 00:29:42 that he killed the wolf in self-defense, and there was just no way to prove otherwise. So there wasn't a case. But he now has a history of talking about elk meat and poison and actually has killed wolves and has talked about it. So he's looking more and more like an interesting suspect. And that leads to a search of the internet, where, as you said, so many suspects will write things down.

Starting point is 00:30:18 And one of the things that Tim Sundles had going was a chat room and a bulletin board and a blog. And he loved to post about his hatred of the federal government and his hatred of wolves. And Agent Bergonier started to sift through his very, you know, many posts. on the internet. And he saw a lot of specific hostile language about U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agents, basically, you know, denigrating us as not being very experienced outdoorsmen and trying to trick people and the usual. But one of the things that Agent Bergoner came across was this very interesting passage in a blog that Sundles had posted on the internet. And get this, wait till I read this to you.

Starting point is 00:31:09 This is a direct quote off of that blog. It's a recipe for how to make poisoned meatballs. Ed Newcomer. I'm not kidding. He basically lists out how you do it. And it includes, from his own words, adding a pinch or two of Tammick to the center of the beatball patty and roll it into a ball. It should be about the size of a golf ball or a little larger so a wolf can swallow

Starting point is 00:31:37 it hole without chewing it. Here's what's blowing my mind. First of all, great job, agent. Second of all, you don't use chicken. You don't use hamburger. You don't use noodles. I mean, you say meatball. Yeah, meatball.

Starting point is 00:31:56 And he even suggests you can make the meatball out of beef, elk, or pork. So he's even listed elk as a possible source. Well, that's a money tree. It's a money tree. it gets even slightly better. He even says place between 30 and 40 of these meatballs out in the environment. And that is almost exactly the situation that occurred. Now, does this mean that Tim Sundles is the guy who put the meatballs out there? No, but he's obviously put this a lot of thought into this. He's put it out there on the internet. Unfortunately, anybody else could have read it

Starting point is 00:32:34 and used his modus operandi to do this and followed his instructions. But it's still, right now, he's Agent Bergonier's best and only suspect. So ultimately, there's a little more goes on. There's some surveillance done of Sundals. He's got a car that has some really hostile bumper stickers on it about wolves and feds. But ultimately, all the surveillance and all the internet searches lead to enough probable cause

Starting point is 00:33:08 to obtain a search warrant for Tim Sundell's house. And this is where this is the kind of thing an investigator lives for. You have developed enough probable cause to convince a judge

Starting point is 00:33:21 that you should be able to go into someone's home or their car or whatever and search. And that search warrant's always very specific. As you know, it's you're only looking to find evidence

Starting point is 00:33:32 of the crimes you're investigating. and you execute those warrants with your fingers crossed, hoping, what are you going to find? You know, am I going to find something that ties my suspect to that crime scene? And funny enough, as I think about this case and I used to talk about it when I would do presentations about it while I was an agent myself, I always remembered something and you're going to know this to your low cards principle, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:02 Kind of like, if your listeners don't know what it is, Locard's principle is kind of like the basic fundamental aspect of forensics. And it's true. If you work enough things, you will know it's true. It is, yes, it is true. And it is amazing how many times you're out there and you're just like, wow, this is low card's principle. And the principle, of course, is that if any two items come in contact with each other,

Starting point is 00:34:29 they will leave traces of themselves on the other. And that's why it's so, you know, critical to crime scene investigations because ultimately your goal, right, Cheryl, is to, you're going to tie the suspect to the crime scene and the victim at the same time, you know, or the evidence at the scene. And that's what this search warrant is hopefully going to do for Agent Bergonier and his team. So a month after the poisoning occurs, March 20th, 2004, they serve a warrant on Tim Sundle's house. And the warrant includes the property around his house, such as the garage and workshops. And don't you know, they go in the front door, and what do you think they find immediately inside the front door? A pair of Danner hunting boots with those round, nubby, soul. Shut your mouth.

Starting point is 00:35:24 yeah that is absolutely beautiful it gets better one of the things that agent bergonier had noticed at the crime scene when he took the photographs was that it appeared and and these these round treads I'm talking about the only way I can describe them is nubs they look like like I said they look like a cleat or a nub and what he noticed from the print in the snow was it appeared as if the nubs weren't symmetrical from left to right. And in his mind, what that meant was one of these nubs had come off, had been cut off or scraped off or, you know, just in the process of hiking around. So he turns the boots over and what do you know, one of these boots is missing a nub.

Starting point is 00:36:11 So not only do you have a boot print that matches the boot print at the scene in terms of size and tread pattern, but you've got individual characteristic, which is a missing nub. Yep. Pretty good evidence. That is pretty good all day. Pretty good. But of course, you know, we're always looking to determine whether or not does our suspect have a ability here to create reasonable doubt. So do we know that those are Tim's boots? Do we know that Tim was wearing those boots at the time?

Starting point is 00:36:42 You know, these are questions. It's great evidence, but can we put Tim in those boots on the day of the poisoning? so the search of the house continues one of the things of course that they included in their warrant was because sundles had been posting on the internet they grabbed his computer the other thing they searched was his garage and his workshop and as soon as they opened the doors they saw hunting equipment including saddlebags that had bloodstains on them a bone saw and a small bottle one bottle precariously balancing on the top of a of a metal trash can. And when they opened that white bottle, the first thing they saw were small, gray, granulated powders.

Starting point is 00:37:35 This is an unbelievable search. Unbelievable search. The bottle was in a basically a calcium supplement bottle. So it was used for, you know, the vitamins were taken out and Sundals had put Temak in this bottle. And it, it, the lab later confirmed that the powder inside that bottle was also aldecarb or temic. So now we've got the boots in Sundel's house tied to the crime scene. We've got temic at his house and at the crime scene. Next, we need to figure out do we, can we tie the elk meat? And the first thing Agent Bergonier did was he zeroed in on these saddlebags

Starting point is 00:38:14 that had bloodstains on them. And he immediately collected those as evidence. And, and they were sent to the forensics lab. Now, before I tell you what the forensic lab results were, let me say that another thing they found inside his house was a box full of bumper stickers that talked about, you know, save a ranch or kill a wolf, lots of anti-wolf things. But among those bumper stickers was one that said,

Starting point is 00:38:44 save the U.S. Constitution, eliminate a Fed. now when you're a federal agent or a federal employee in general trying to serve your community and work in an environment where people have bumper stickers basically you know calling for you to be eliminated what does that mean exactly that's a scary environment to try to be a public servant right and i'll tell you that also goes back to what he said to the biologist so you're showing a pattern conclusively that he has not only believed this for years, he's elevated what he's doing. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 00:39:24 And he's intentionally, he's, he's, everything about him just says he's intentionally violating the law. And can I ask you a question? He doesn't seem like the type of man that would have a roommate. So again, I think putting him in them boots is going to be pretty easy. Yeah, I agree. I agree. It would be, it's excellent.

Starting point is 00:39:48 I mean, it's almost irrefutable evidence, right? They're well worn in boots. He's, you know, who else is going to be wearing those boots in his family? He's the hunter of the family. Yeah, he, in the imperfection, plus his recipe, plus he said he was going to do it. Yes, exactly. So the couple things happen next. They seized computers, so now there's going to be a forensic examination of computers

Starting point is 00:40:16 and emails, traffic, and whatever's posted there. Also, the blood, and they also found in the shed, they found a bone saw. So the bone saw and the saddlebags and the temic all go to the FWS forensics lab in Ashland, Oregon. So let's talk about a little bit what they found as a result of the forensic analysis of the computers first, and then we'll talk about what they found at the lab. one of the things they found in doing a search warrant on the computers was a whole lot of stored emails and in those emails he's writing to different people and talking about very specifically about how to poison wolves I give you an example in one email he sent in 2003 you know he talks about poisoning is much more effective than shooting especially in winter when the wolves are confined to their winter grounds and the best place. way to do it is to put a frozen meatball made out of elk because it'll

Starting point is 00:41:18 last all winter long. Yeah. It's just one thing after another, right? Now, at the Fish and Wildlife Forensics Lab in Ashland, they start to take scrapings off of these blood stains

Starting point is 00:41:35 on these saddlebags. And of course, they already have the meatballs that were collected at the crime scene so they can do a DNA comparison between the blood and saddlebags and the meatballs. And don't you know, not only is the blood in the saddlebags elk meat, but it came from the same elk that those meatballs were made out of. You have got to be kidding me. I know. It gets better and better. Every turn in this case just got better and better.

Starting point is 00:42:04 And some of it's luck and some of it is just downright tenacity by, you know, Agent Begoner and, you know, with all the support from the lab personnel and the state investigators and all of that. Well, that lab is amazing, but I'm going to tell you, Agent Begonier, you handled this thing. Good night. I mean, because it's one thing, you know, like, I've collected things that people have made fun of me for.

Starting point is 00:42:31 And I always say, well, I don't know how it fits yet, but I may later. I just know something didn't look right. It didn't belong there to me, so I took it, whatever. But frozen yellow snow, come on, they're going to make fun of you. Just yellow snow period in your report is hilarious. I mean, you have to write that. But look what came from it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:56 Yeah, and we haven't even, you know, I mean, as of now, we've locked down that the elk meets connected to the house and the boots are connected to the crime scene. And this is a dangerous person. And I want people to understand. I say it all the time. Anybody that can kick a dog, kill a kitten. And I am not talking about legal hunting. I'm not talking about legal hunting, fishing. I'm talking about somebody out of meanness, out of a direct target,

Starting point is 00:43:28 is going to kill animals. That person absolutely, without a doubt, can kill a human. And this man said it. And over and over and over. You bet. And this is different than hunting. This is not hunting. It's not.

Starting point is 00:43:45 Right. This is not hunting. And, you know, an interesting aside to this is that the U.S. Department of Justice keeps statistics on assaults on law enforcement officers. And consistently, every year, the law enforcement profession that has the highest number of physical assaults on them are conservation officers. Gay Mordons, wildlife officers, special agents. I did not know that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:13 It's a very dangerous profession because a lot of the criminals you're dealing with are armed. And you can't, you know, if you're approaching a hunter to do an enforcement action, of course they're going to have a gun. They always have a gun. You know, I did a training with Native American rangers. And that's one of the things they told me. They said first, they are by themselves. thousands and thousands of acres. I mean, their backup is a long way away.

Starting point is 00:44:44 Long way away. That's the first thing that they made me very aware of is that every single person they come in contact with has a gun, everyone. Yes, I mean, kind of famously, maybe 10 years ago, there was a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge officer who was involved in a shooting in the desert National Wildlife Refuge outside of Las Vegas.

Starting point is 00:45:06 And this is a guy who was on his own patrolling millions of acres. And it was kind of, you know, we were all reminded that we listened to the radio traffic after the shooting incident where he's requesting backup. It took an hour. It took an hour for the nearest law enforcement officer to reach his location on a shooting call. Yep. That's unbelievable. I mean, I knew the danger.

Starting point is 00:45:32 I didn't know that that group was the number one. assaulted. The good news is, based on what Agent Borgonier was able to obtain from the crime scene and the search warrant, it actually was enough for the United States Attorney's Office to file charges against Sundals. Now, interestingly, the charges were not for killing a wolf because no wolf body was found. But attempt to do it carries the same penalty. So believe it or not, this is actually.

Starting point is 00:46:06 the first case in the history of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where a person was actually charged with attempting to kill a threatened or endangered species. So it's kind of a case of first impression, but definitely was enough evidence to file those charges. Brilliant. Well, I hope he got 60 charges because each one should have served as a charge. Hey, yeah, exactly, 58 counts, right, of throwing those meatballs. So he pleads not guilty and immediately goes on the media offensive about, you know, of course, the out-of-control federal agency. And he said some things that didn't help him. For example, he said poisoning of pets is simply collateral damage,

Starting point is 00:46:47 which doesn't make you very popular with the public. Right now, what we have is we have evidence that, you know, boots in his possession matched the prints at the scene of the suspect. We got the same type of poison found in the suspect's garage. We got meat from the same elk from the crime scene that's matched. he smashes the blood in his garage and we know of course that he's a jerk but then there's one more thing that bergonier thinks about and that is that as he's considering what do we how do we get ready for trial he's looking at the evidence that's booked into you know in the evidence

Starting point is 00:47:27 and he finds this frozen yellow snow and he says what what is uh could this be important Why is this important? And, you know, I think, Mack, you know, I've talked about this. You know why there is one time when a person's DNA will show up in their urine. It's when they're sick. And if you have a cold or you're getting over a cold, your body will shed cells and it ends up in your urine. It's, you know, there's limited. Oh, please tell me he was sick.

Starting point is 00:47:58 Please tell me. So in going through all of his emails, stir it from the search warrant, But Brugonia remembered that the week before the meatballs had been thrown out there, Tim Sundles had been complaining to his friends about having had the flu. Oh, my word. Yeah. So now we've got a suspect who's pleading not guilty. He wants to go to trial.

Starting point is 00:48:26 He's gone on the public, you know, public media offensive against the government. But Regonia goes in front of a judge in the, of the judge. in the U.S. District Court and says, I want an order authorizing me to take a DNA sample from Tim Sundles. And the judge grants it. So the judge has now ordered Tim Sundal to turn over a DNA sample so it can be compared against the DNA that's found in the urine. And don't you know that immediately causes him to plead guilty? That is a beautiful thing. That is outstanding. And you know, you can get DNA from urine, but, you know, it's not as easy as people think. I mean, first of all, it's got to be fresh and all that, and then you've got to keep it

Starting point is 00:49:13 at a low temperature. So how fortunate that it was frozen, I mean, everything just worked out beautifully, but I'm going to say something now. It worked out beautifully because of a lot of hard work. I mean, when you're talking about, I mean, just hundreds and hundreds of acres, and And those meatballs could have been anywhere for him to find one after the other, after the other, and then keep searching. I mean, Agent Bergonier saved possibly hundreds of animals.

Starting point is 00:49:49 Yeah. I mean, he basically, he delivered consequences to somebody who desperately needed consequences for his behavior. For the safety of animals and humans. Yeah, 100%. And it kind of sent a message to anyone else. who's thinking about this. And this is something I always told people. You know, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents are among the most tenacious federal

Starting point is 00:50:14 investigators I've ever seen in my life. And they, you know, if you commit a wildlife crime, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent, they will pursue you. They will catch you. And they will put you in jail. It's just, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And that's exactly what, you know, happened here. And I think one of the best outcomes from this case, unfortunately, the Endangered Species Act carries fairly low penalties.

Starting point is 00:50:43 So it's not like we can say Tim Sundles went to jail for a long time. But some interesting things occurred in his sentence that were, I think, very painful for him. One of the one is that he was prohibited from entering federal property for the entire, term of his probation, which was two years. And if you live in Idaho, a lot of Idaho is federal property, either U.S. Forest Service land or BLM land. So it kind of is an impingement on your lifestyle. There was two miles. He could go in. Good. Exactly. But my favorite part was the Washington Post every year, they post a idiot of the year. And it's a number of people that make the list. but Tim Sundles was the 21st idiot of the year for that year.

Starting point is 00:51:34 And I'll just read you real quick what the Washington Post said. It said Tim Sundles, Tim Sundles, who's unabashed hatred of U.S. government efforts to reintroduce gray wolves out west borders on fanatical. In his latest scheme to finish off the endangered species, he planted poison-laced meatballs in Idaho's remote salmon, shayless national forest. Instead of killing wolves, though, the meatballs in the United States. of poisoning a coyote, a fox, some birds, and three pet dogs. So public shaming is a valuable

Starting point is 00:52:07 tool because whether or not you go to jail or whether or not you pay a lot of fines, having all your neighbors know what you did and how you did it and that the government caught you and you're guilty of sin is a valuable deterrent. Amen. It makes it that much harder for him to ever do it again because he's going to be usual suspects. He's always going to be on your list. Exactly. 100%. And I mentioned that the Endangered Species Act has, you know, not great penalties necessarily, but where people really start to get into trouble and go to jail is when they commit subsequent offenses. So if he turns up again in committing a wildlife crime, a state or a federal judge is going to look at his record and say,

Starting point is 00:52:54 Well, this is a prior violator who didn't learn his lesson before. I'm going to send him to jail. So I've seen that before where subsequent violators end up actually doing some pretty good time because they demonstrated that they didn't learn a lesson. So that's always hanging over his head. Ed, I cannot thank you enough. And I'm just going to, again, y'all, if you can work this case, you can work any case out there. This was, I mean, you can call some of it luck, but that's not what I said.

Starting point is 00:53:24 I see literally boots in the snow working this thing to the very end collecting things you don't even know what it's going to result in. You're just going to have it and see what comes from it. That's just unbelievably solid investigative work. 100%.

Starting point is 00:53:44 All right, Ed. I will see you in Denver at CrownCon. Looking forward to it. I can't wait. Well, y'all, I'm going to end Zone 7 the way that I always do with a quote. It all starts with the wolves, Peter, Woollen Bear, the hidden life of trees. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone 7.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - ZONE 7: Poisoned Meatballs and Wolf Justice | Special Agent Ed Newcomer

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