As he sentenced former Kansas Cosmosphere director Max Ary to three years in prison Monday, U.S. District Court Judge J. Thomas Marten said he thought a prison sentence was important in Ary’s case “for people to get the message.” The judge got that right. As Ary was stealing and selling off artifacts from the museum he co-founded, he not only wrecked his career and tarnished Hutchinson’s sterling science center. He also broke the promise that all nonprofit museums have with their donors, the one assuring that their dollars and other gifts will be handled with extraordinary care for the long term.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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11 Comments
White collar crimes shouldn’t be lightly punished.
Max and Duke Cunningham had it all. Both heros in their field, both men had worked their way up to the top of their chosen professions. Then they started believing their press clips, they started thinking, hey, I deserve more. I’ll just take a little bit, just this once. Then they did it again, and again. Hubris is an insidious thing that has toppled people like Max and Duke for eons. Good men gone bad. A shame.
Well said.Max built the Cosmosphere, and then he began tearing it down for personal benefit, brick by brick. We live in an era where there must be a quid pro quo for everything.
I applaud the verdict. Fair and sensible.
I worked for Max from 1983 to 1994, and it was sad to watch him change – hubris is the right word. He’s 56 years old, and he’s thrown away his career, his reputation, and his financial security – I’m not sure any jail sentence could punish him more than that. But I think the sentence was fair – a slap on the wrist and a “go and sin no more” isn’t enough.
The Cosmosphere is the number 1 tourist attraction in Kansas and one of the finest space museums in the country and the world due in large part to Max Ary.
I don’t know why he did what he did. But I think it is sad.
You are correct in that they started believing they were bigger than the project they had created. They did a wonderful job and Kansas can be thankful. They have ruined their lives and our thoughts and prayers need to go out to their families who are also suffering. They had no idea what these guys had become.
The verdict ain’t over yet!
He will get more than a slap on the wrist for stealing and selling the million dollar moon rocks.
He will probably get some rocks slapped on his buttocks before it is all over!
He may get Maxed out doing hard time with more of a stiff sentence than he can handle! That will teach him to play others moon rocks!
What’s this deal about moon rocks? Moon rocks most likely originated from our planet, the EARTH, several billion years ago when the moon was probably carved from the Earth’s surface.
However, my MAIN point here is that each year in a Kansas prison costs Kansas taxpayers some $30,000/year. So judges who are “being hard on crime” are being harder on Kansas taxpayers. Personally, from what I have read, I think parole would have been adequate in the case of Max Ary. He is not a criminal — just got too deeply involved in his hobby and lost track of the boundaries.
If a trusted friend was an avid antique collector, and while visiting your house helped himself to over $100,000 from your collection, would you feel the same way? Or did this individual do more than become “too deeply involved” in his hobby and “lose track of the boundaries?” Sidebar: Max will be serving his time in a Federal penitentiary – not a state facility.
I wonder what the sentence would have been if I were the theif? What if the theif was a black man? The judicial system is a crime in itself.