Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just wanted to pass along this info about John Richard's stolen turtles:

The following turtles were stolen from John Richards' Loggerhead Acres near Springfield, Missouri on Saturday night/Sunday morning August 14th 2004:

3450 (approx.) alligator snapper eggs

4 Argentine sidenecks 12 - 15” Phrynops hillari

5 Mexican giant musk 8 - 10” Staurotypus triporcatus

41 Northern diamondback terrapins, 35 @ 8” and 6 @ 3” malactemys terrapene

10 Cagles map turtles 2.5” and one male @ 3.5” Graptemys caglei

14 Pink bellied sidenecks 6 - 8” Emydura subglobosa

4 Vietnamesese temple turtle @ 7 - 8” 2 @ 3” CITES 11

14 Rio Grande Cooters 13 @ 1.75” 1 @ 7” male Pseudemys conecinn gorzugi

6 Indonesian sidenecks @ 11” Elseya brandehorsti

800 (approx.) redear slider hatchlings Pseudemys scripta elegans

2 Barbour’s map turtles @ 2.5 inches Graptemys barbouri

11 Japanese Reeve’s turtles 6 - 8” 2 @ 1.5” Chinemys reevesi

2 European pond turtles @ 7” Emys orbicularis

8 Japanese pond turtles @ 8” Mauremys japonica

16 Spotted turtles @ 4” Clemmys guttata

3 Chinese yellow pond turtles @ 5 - 6” Mauremys mutica

1 Painted river terrapin @ 11” Callagur borneoensis

2 alligator snappers @ 2.5” macroclemys temniinckii, 1 @ 9”

3 alligator snappers 40 to 70 lbs. 17 - 19”

1 7" leucistic alligator snapper, 1 @ 4” and 9 @ 2.5”

5 common snapper hatchlings g 1.25” Chelydra serpentina serpentina

7 redear sliders @ 3” Pseudemys scripta elegans

1 pastel redear @ 5” “ “ “

1 Cafifornia Kingsnake @ 3’

1 alligator snapper shell @ 24” length

1 alligator snapper skull @ 8”

6 Geoffrey's sidenecks @ 7 - 12 "

* Please keep an eye out for these animals. Some will not be easy to move without causing some interest. Drop John a note at macrojon@ipa.net or call him him at 1-417-736-9114 if you have any information. As you can see, this is a huge theft and represents a significant portion of John's current and future financial livelihood. Let's solve this one for John (one of the hardest working and most honest guys out there) and for the turtle community.

Thank you -

Russ Gurley

OMG, with the amount of animals stolen, they either had hours to do it, or a small army was involved. Someone should start contacting pet stores in the neighboring towns and states. Time consuming, yea, but the less avenues there are to sell them, the more likely they will be to get caught. Especially with the sizes of some of the turtles. Not an easy thing to say, "Oh we caught these down the street"
Hope they get caught...Definitely.

I caught someone crawling thru my window in the snake room last month... Luckily the guy had no idea of my collection (small as it is), but was gonna steal my stereo, Xbox, etc. Unluckily for him, I was in the next room, with one of the snakes, getting some old shed off when I heard the noise.

Needless to say, 3 hours later, a trip to the hospital, and 22 stitches later...he was in jail. Louisville Slugger to the rescue once again. I knocked him right out the window.

Good Luck, John. If I wasn't in Miami, and was in Miss... I would join the hunt.
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Coastal Carpet Python 0.1 (Lillith)
Albino Burm 0.1 (Kimba)
Columbian RedTail 0.1 (Squishy)
Kenyan Sand Boa 1.0 (Shai'hulud)
Brown Water Snake 0.1 (Fang)
Common Snapping Turtle 1.1 (Sherman and Tiger)
(RIP Abrahms)
RES 1.0 (speedy)

np

Most of those turtles can be absorbed into the market without a lot of detection, but how do you move 11 leucistic alligator snappers? They don't exactly look like normal ones. Find those and you will find your turtle hijackers. Good luck with those. I bought a leucistic snapper from John last year and it is my favorite turtle in my collection.
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1.1 Womas, 1.0 Australian Water Python, 1.0 Australian Olive Python, 1.0 Cape York Spotted Python,1.0 Albino Green Burmese, 1.1 Loxocemus bicolor (New World "Pythons" ), 1.1 Hog Island Boas,1.0 Peruvian Red-Tail Boa, 0.1 Belem Brazilian Red- Tail Boa, 0.0.1 North American Wood Turtle, 0.0.2 European Pond Turtles, 1.0 Leucistic Alligator Snapper, 0.0.1 FL Red Belly, 0.0.1 Concentric Diamondback Terrapin, 0.0.1 Marine Toad, 0.1.1 "Flame" Crested Geckos, 1.0 Yellow Ackie