The first day of April, in 2014, dawned “gray, cold, rainy, ugly,” recalls Supervisory Special Agent Tim Carpenter of the FBI’s Art Theft Program in Washington, D.C. Early that morning, his team knocked on the door of Don Miller’s farmhouse in Waldron, Indiana.
Part of that team was cultural anthropologist Holly Cusack-McVeigh, who remembers being so nervous that she hadn’t slept the night before. Though she had experienced many human cultures, law enforcement was new. “This was way beyond my comfort zone,” she says.
A tip to the FBI had brought Carpenter and Cusack-McVeigh to Miller’s door. According to the tipster, Miller had an extensive trove of illegally looted cultural objects, along with some human remains. In preparation for what Carpenter suspected would be a massive seizure of cultural property, he had asked Cusack-McVeigh, based at the nearby Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, to assist with the operation.
But this was no predawn raid led by armored agents with guns drawn. The team took care to respect Miller — who was surprised but cooperative — and his home. They sat down for an hourslong discussion with the collector before they began to empty the farmhouse of objects.
Miller, who passed away in 2015 at the age of 91, was an electrical engineer, amateur adventurer, and avid collector. He told the Indianapolis Star in 1998 that he’d been interested in collecting cultural objects since childhood, when he’d search the family farm for arrowheads. He’d traveled the globe, gathering items that he regularly showed off to visitors.
