On a brisk morning last September, three men -- including a federal undercover operative -- carried shovels and rakes to an ancient Puebloan mound on public land in San Juan County. As they piled dirt onto a blue plastic tarp, out popped a skull.

The discovery, recorded in real time and detailed in recently released federal court papers, didn't seem to slow the men much.

Richard Bourret picked up the skull and put it back in the hole, the documents say, then he, Vern Crites and the operative, whom federal authorities call the "Source," folded the tarp and funneled the dirt back into the hole. There wasn't quite enough to cover the damage.

Crites lamented a lost opportunity, saying he "wished that fella had still been intact, the skeleton, I mean."

The three were being watched. The Source wore an audio-video transmitter and a surveillance team of U.S. Bureau of Land Management special agents was nearby to take the suspected grave robbers down.

The details of Bourret's and Crites' activities, as well as those of Crites' wife, Marie, and a Santa Fe resident, Steven Shrader, were included in federal documents released by the U.S. District Court in Denver. The search-warrant affidavit is the last of 12 issued in a 2 1/2-year investigation of the theft and sale of more than 250 American Indian artifacts from the Four Corners area.

Bourret and the Criteses are residents of Durango, Colo. Shrader, a Santa Fe, N.M.,

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resident who killed himself in Illinois late Thursday or early Friday, were indicted last week along with 20 others on felony charges of alleged looting on public and tribal lands.

In the affidavit, Shrader appears to be a peripheral individual. It tells how he went on an arrowhead hunt in a region near Dove Creek, Colo., ringed with ancient ruins where private and public property mingle, and on a hike with Crites and the Source looking for artifacts.

But earlier that day last fall, Bourret, Crites and the Source talked about how they wanted to split up the pottery they expected to find, the court papers say. It looked to be a nice day, but they agreed to quit their dig at noon, no matter what they found.

Crites and Bourret, sitting in the Source's hotel room in Cortez, Colo., fretted about where to park their truck. Crites said they were probably being paranoid, the affidavit states, but Bourret said it was better to be paranoid when doing something illegal.

The affidavit, which covered a year of contact between the Source and the four defendants, focuses mostly on Crites' alleged and known activities as an excavator, buyer and seller of Four Corners artifacts. He and his wife displayed their business cards at the historic Strater Hotel in Durango. Artifacts stuffed their home's main entrance, a basement and a special collection room.

Crites allegedly told the Source he would be willing to sell his entire collection, gathered during the past 50 years. Crites said law enforcement had raided his house in 1985, but the agents didn't find the safe in his shop that held a dead eagle he and his son found hunting. He also said, according to the documents, that all of his collection was legal.

In February 2008, Crites showed the Source a set of prayer sticks he maintains he bought from a server at a Durango bar and grill. According to the affidavit, she said she had gotten them from her ex-husband, who found them in a cave from around "Zuni" somewhere. Crites said he thought they might be early Acoma, a possible reference to Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, and that he didn't have proper documentation for them.

Eventually, court papers say, the Source traded 16 arrowheads or knives and a bone gaming token in exchange for Zuni Paphos painted prayer sticks -- used in sacred ceremonies -- a set of unpainted Zuni prayer sticks and a frame containing a snare and twine, valued at $1,700.

The affidavit says Crites also bartered fire sticks, a bone scraper and "cloud blowers," the ceremonial pipes that Hopi and their ancestors used to invoke sacred breath during prayer offerings.