St. Petersburg, Florida police arrested Joshua McCarty-Thomas, 46, and Dashae McCarty-Thomas, 29, for the suspected theft of two endangered Galapagos tortoises from a zoo along with rare comics from a museum, other books, and guitars, and other items nicked from across the state. They were selling the books on eBay. Worth noting is that Dashae McCarty-Thomas works in law enforcement as a correctional officer.
When detectives searched the couples' home, they found one of the tortoises dead in the freezer and the other in the yard with many other random tortoises. From Tampa Bay Times:
The juvenile Galapagos tortoises had microchips, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissionofficials scanned the chips and confirmed they were the same tortoises that had been stolen from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in St. Augustine on Nov. 30, police said.
Each tortoise is worth about $10,000, according to the release.
In a Facebook post announcing the theft last year, the zoo said the tortoises had been born there in 2017 and were part of a captive breeding program at the facility. The rare reptiles "require special diets and supplements," officials warned in the post.
(Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!)
