April 4, 1969

Edgar G. Laybourne (d.1966), exhibits specialist, with the United States National Museum, prepares a model of a snake – a reticulated python – for display in the National Museum of Natural History. He is removing the plaster cast to reveal the snake model within.

April 4, 1969: Lampros Marines attacks the reptile display in the Malayan Exhibit of the National Museum of Natural History. Marines smashes through the glass exhibit case with a hatchet and then uses a butcher knife to decapitate the reticulated python and king cobra and stab the Komodo dragon. He is apprehended by chief of the museum’s guard force, Captain Wilfred L’Abbe, who notes in a report that Marines had previously attempted to injure a large snake on display in January 1968. In the 1969 incident, Marines is charged with damage to government property and held on $5,000 bond.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives

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