TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY Laurent Thomet
A picture taken on July 28, 2011 shows a stuffed rhinoceros at the Brussels Royal Institute for Natural Sciences Museum. It was a daring daytime robbery at the natural science museum. The two thieves snuck into the rhino gallery and ripped a stuffed head off the wall. They carried it to a restroom, opened a window, and dropped the 30-kilo trophy two-stories down to an accomplice waiting in a van. The museum had never been robbed until the July heist, when it became the latest of a rising number of science museums in Europe targetted by thieves for rhino horns, which can fetch tens of thousands of euros on the black market. AFP PHOTO / GEORGES GOBET (Photo credit should read GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)
Photo: GEORGES GOBET/2011 AFP
Perhaps the feds aren’t great at judging character. After they enlisted the help of antiques dealer David Hausman in cracking down on black-market rhino horns, the 67-year-old was spotted outside an Illinois truck stop sawing the horns off two stuffed rhinoceros heads he’d just purchased. Later, a search revealed that his apartment was teeming with taxidermist-stuffed rhino heads and horns.
