Sometime next week Hogue may face a grand jury indictment, Reilly said, adding that Hogue "is still wanted as a fugitive from justice in New Jersey." Utah may also seek to arraign Hogue on similar charges, she said.

Meanwhile, the Harvard investigation, which ranks as one of the largest recoveries in the history of the university, has drawn national media attention and commendation from upper-echelon administration officials, including President Neil L. Rudenstine.

For Harvard police and Detective Mederos, who arrested Hogue, the Sisyphian task of cataloging the hundreds of stolen items and completing the paperwork on Hogue continued even more than a week and a half after the recovery.

"This is the tough part," Mederos said.

But Mederos' and other police officers' task, solving the mystery of Hogue's past, strewn across the globe like the rocks and minerals he studied, may prove even more difficult.

Evidently, Hogue's fictitious mother had risen from her Bolivian grave only to travel to Europe and contract cancer.