Geronimo's headdress seized by FBIBy Milo Ippolito
Cox News Service
-ATLANTA - Whether Geronimo's headdress ends up in a museum, with a Native American tribe ,Or back in a Gwinnett County lawyer's house will be for the federal courts to decide.
he FBI, which seized the head dress this week from Leighton
ing of Suwanee, Ga., has had numerous inquiries about it since Deming's arrest Tuesday, FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi said.
Adorned with eagle feathers, the headdress belonged to Deming's family for three generations, but the
FBI says he violated federal laws protecting the endangered birds by trying to sell it on the Internet for $1.2 million.
The FBI is going through forfeiture proceedings to acquire the headdress as government property. In the meantime, it is temporarily holding the headdress as evidence. in criminal cases against Deming and Thomas Marciano, who helped Deming arrange a transaction for the headdress.
"If it is forfeited to the government, the determination will be made as to who best should have it, whether it be a museum, the tribes,"
Vizi said. "It's 'really an important piece of history."
Geronimo, a famed Apache chief, wore the headdress in 1907 to the last powwow in the Indian territory that is now Oklahoma. Geronimo is believed to have given the headdress to a friend of the Deming family.
Deming, who hopes to resolve the legal mess by donating, the headdress to a national museum, referred further inquiries to his attorney in Philadelphia, who said Friday that Deming will plead not guilty.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, Vizi said.