SALT LAKE CITY—A southern Utah man has pleaded not guilty to threatening a confidential informant who worked with federal agents in an investigation into artifact thefts and trafficking in the Four Corners area.
A federal grand jury indicted 44-year-old Charles Denton Armstrong, of Blanding, on a charge of retaliating against an informant. Armstrong entered his plea Thursday morning in federal court.
Prosecutors say Armstrong told a government agent he planned to beat the informant, an artifacts dealer who spent two years working undercover for the FBI and the Bureau of Land Management.
A federal complaint says Armstrong told a witness that he blamed the informant for the death of his former doctor, James Redd, who committed suicide a day after he and 23 others were named in indictments in the artifacts case.
