Harvey Updyke, the Alabama football fan who made national headlines when he poisoned trees at Auburn University’s Toomer’s Corner in 2010, has died.
His son Bear Updyke told AL.com that his father died Thursday afternoon of natural causes in Louisiana, where he had been living. He was 71.
Harvey Updyke became a household name among Alabama sports fans in 2011 when he called into the Paul Finebaum radio show claiming to have poisoned Auburn’s iconic trees after the Tigers’ win in the Iron Bowl the previous November.
“Let me tell you what I did,” Updyke told Finebaum on live radio. “The weekend after the Iron Bowl, I went to Auburn because I lived 30 miles away, and I poisoned the two Toomer’s trees. I put Spike 80DF in ‘em. They’re not dead yet, but they definitely will die.”
He pleaded guilty in 2013 to a felony charge of criminal damage of an agricultural facility and spent more than 70 days in jail. Updyke, a former Texas state trooper, was ordered to pay $800,000 in court-ordered penalties and restitution, but had only paid about $6,900 by last October.
Auburn later cut down the oak trees and replaced them.
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