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In a case that seems destined to inspire more than one murder mystery in the future, a U.S. citizen who had served as director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University died on Wednesday at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, the Associated Press reported later that day. -- Arrested on May 9 upon her arrival in Seattle for an academic speaking engagement, Dr. Roxanna Brown, 62, was a somewhat exotic figure. -- She had a gained a Ph.D. in art history at UCLA and lost a leg in an accident in Bangkok more than twenty-five years ago, and federal authorities had just arranged for her grand jury indictment for allegedly "allowing art collectors to use her electronic signature to overstate the value of items they donated to several Southern California museums." -- Roxanna Brown's brother, who lived in Chicago and who maintains that she was innocent, said that "his sister became interested in Southeast Asian art after visiting him in 1968 in Australia, where he was recovering from a Vietnam War wound." -- The Los Angeles Times said Thursday that Brown "was a focal point of a widening federal probe that was launched with highly publicized raids on four Southern California museums in January."[2] -- Brown died about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday as preparations for her extradition to L.A. were underway. -- Her death was initially believed to have been due to a heart attack, but the Seattle Times reported on Friday that the King County Medical Examiner's Office said she had died "from infection and inflammation caused by a perforated gastric ulcer."[3] -- Coming on the heels of a Washington Post series on the neglect suffered by detainees in the post-9/11 immigrant detention centers around the nation, there was sure to be interest in the fact that "the detention center does not have any medical staff on duty overnight." -- The talk that Dr. Brown was prevented from giving on May 10 at a "China in Asia Workshop" at the U. of Wash. on "Maritime Asia in the Early Modern World" was entitled "The Sea Trade from China to Southeast Asia."[4] -- Roxanna Brown was the author of the erudite Ceramics of Southeast Asia: Their Dating and Identification, 2nd ed. (Oxford UP, 1989; orig. ed. 1977), which treated of Vietnamese ceramics, Go-Sank kilns, Khmer wares, Sukhothai and Sawankhalok kilns, Northern and other Thai kilns, celadon wares, and Burmese ceramics. -- For more on Roxanna Brown's scholarly work, see this 2004 article from UCLA's Center for Southeast Asian Studies....

A Thailand museum director who was indicted as part of a federal investigation into looted antiquities died Wednesday at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, apparently following a heart attack.

Roxanna Brown, a 62-year-old U.S. citizen, passed away sometime around 2:30 Wednesday morning. Prison spokeswoman Maggie Ogden said an autopsy was planned.

Brown, director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand, was arrested Friday while visiting a cousin in Seattle. She also had been scheduled to speak at the University of Washington over the weekend.

She was charged with wire fraud, allegedly for allowing art collectors to use her electronic signature to overstate the value of items they donated to several Southern California museums. The collectors then claimed fraudulent tax deductions, investigators said.

Brown was too ill to appear in federal court in Seattle on Monday but did appear briefly Tuesday. Another hearing on her transfer to Los Angeles, where the indictment was returned, had been set for Wednesday.

She was the first person arrested in an ongoing probe into looted artifacts. Federal agents raided several Southern California museums and a Los Angeles gallery in January, searching for artifacts from Thailand's Ban Chiang archaeological site, one of the most important prehistoric settlements ever discovered in Southeast Asia.

An affidavit filed in the case said the gallery's owners, Jonathan and Cari Markell, used Brown's electronic signature several times to falsify appraisal forms. In one case, an appraisal for items to be donated to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena indicated Brown had inspected the items. The Markells, who have not been charged, previously declined to comment about the investigation to The Associated Press.

Brown's brother, Fred Leo Brown of Chicago, said his sister maintained her innocence. He said that although a cause of death had not been determined, he had been told it was apparently a heart attack, which he suggested was the result of stress from the arrest.

"She wasn't in good health to begin with, but they definitely brought on the heart attack," he said.

Brown said his sister became interested in Southeast Asian art after visiting him in 1968 in Australia, where he was recovering from a Vietnam war wound. With a journalism degree from Columbia University, she soon made her way to Saigon, where she befriended many people in the international press corps, he said, and she traveled around Vietnam in the early 1970s visiting kiln sites where pottery was made.

She earned a master's degree in Asian art at Oxford University and lost one leg in an accident in Bangkok in 1980, he said.

** The director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University had been implicated in a scheme to smuggle looted antiquities from Thailand to L.A.-area museums. **

An internationally known expert on Asian art who was implicated in a scheme to smuggle looted antiquities from Thailand to Los Angeles-area museums died Wednesday at a federal detention center in Seattle four days after being arrested there on a visit from Bangkok.

Roxanna Brown, 62, director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University, had traveled to Seattle for a speaking engagement at the University of Washington, authorities said.

She was a focal point of a widening federal probe that was launched with highly publicized raids on four Southern California museums in January. Hours before her arrest at a Seattle hotel, she had been indicted Friday on a federal wire fraud charge that accused her of inflating the value of the plundered antiquities.

The American-born Brown, who was trained in art history at UCLA, apparently died of a heart attack around 2:30 a.m. at the detention center, between Seattle and Tacoma. Extradition to Los Angeles on the charge was pending, authorities said.

Officials said Brown was too ill to attend a court hearing Monday in Seattle but made a brief appearance Tuesday. She faced up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Brown was the first person to be arrested in the probe. Her apprehension surprised many who knew and respected her as "the epitome of the academic expert," as one art historian put it to the Bangkok Post.

But federal investigators asserted that Brown allowed her electronic signature to be placed on fake appraisal forms that inflated the value of pieces from Thailand's Ban Chiang archaeological site that were sent to Southern California museums. The phony appraisals allowed collectors to claim fraudulent tax deductions, according to authorities.

An Asian-antiquities dealer arrested in Seattle on wire-fraud charges died in federal custody from infection and inflammation caused by a perforated gastric ulcer, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office.

The autopsy determined Roxanna Brown's death early Wednesday at the federal Detention Center in SeaTac was natural, the medical examiner's office said.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is investigating the death of Brown, 62, the director of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at Bangkok University in Thailand. Officials at the detention center refused to release any details about her death or medical treatment she received while in custody.

Brown had been arrested a week ago by federal agents on an grand-jury indictment in Los Angeles. She was charged with wire fraud and was a key figure — and the first arrest — in a long-running investigation into alleged Asian-antiquities smuggling and fraud, according to court papers.

Brown was in Seattle to speak at an Asian-art symposium at the University of Washington.

Maggie Ogden, an attorney and spokeswoman for the FDC, would say only that Brown was screened by medical personnel when she was booked into the facility following her arrest Friday.

The U.S. attorney's office said Brown was also seen by center medical staff Monday after her initial appearance in court was postponed because she was suffering from flulike symptoms and was vomiting. She made a brief court appearance Tuesday.

Abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting are common symptoms of peritonitis, an infection and inflammation of the lining of the stomach and intestines, according to the National Institutes of Health online medical dictionary.

Brown died in the FDC about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. Ogden said the detention center does not have any medical staff on duty overnight. She would not say whether Brown was treated or whether outside help was called.

Brown, who lived in Bangkok, was indicted on a single count of wire fraud for allegedly allowing her electronic signature to be used on appraisal forms of items donated to museums.

Those appraisals, according to court documents, were inflated so that the donors could claim fraudulent tax deductions.

2008 CHINA IN ASIA WORKSHOP: MARITIME ASIA IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, AT UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

In light of new evidence contained in recently discovered maps and shipwrecks, this symposium considers the connections of maritime Asia to world history in the early modern era and China's relations with Southeast Asia in particular. This is the second in a series of annual meetings on China in Asia jointly sponsored by the UCLA Asia Institute, the UW East Asia Center, and the USC East Asian Studies Center with funding from the U.S. Department of Education Title VI program.

--Dr. Santanee Phasuk, Chitralada Palace School, Bangkok. Co-author of Royal Siamese Maps: War and Trade in Nineteenth Century Thailand.
--Prof. Zhimin Man. Director, Institute of Historical Geography, Fudan University, Shanghai; Author of Historical Climatic Change in China
--Prof. Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Department of History, UCLA. Director, UCLA Center for India and South Asia. Author of The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama.
--Dr. Roxanna Brown. Director, Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum, Bangkok. Author of The Ceramics of Southeast Asia: Their Dating and Identification.
--Prof. Emeritus John Wills. Department of History, USC. Author of 1688: A Global History.

Prof. R. Bin Wong. Department of History, UCLA. Director, UCLA Asian Institute. Author of China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience.

10:00 Explanation of Place Names on the Navigation Map of the Royal Siamese Maps

2:45 Diaspora? Mediterranean? Tribute System? Some Big Ideas with Small Applications for the Understanding of Maritime Asia

Prof. William Lavely lavely@u.washington.edu or Prof. R. Bin Wong rbwong@international.ucla.edu.

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