Harvey Updyke, the Alabama football fan who made national headlines when he poisoned trees at Toomer’s Corner of Auburn University in 2010, died.
Her son Bear Updyke told AL.com that his father died of natural causes Thursday afternoon in Louisiana, where he had been living. He was 71 years old.
Harvey Updyke became a household name among Alabama sports fans in 2011 when he called up the radio show Paul Finebaum claiming to have poisoned Auburn’s iconic trees after the Tigers’ victory at the Iron Bowl the previous November.
“Let me tell you what I did,” Updyke told Finebaum on the live radio. “The weekend after the Iron Bowl, I went to Auburn because I lived 30 miles away and poisoned both Toomer trees. I put Spike 80DF on them. They are not dead yet, but they will definitely die. “
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He later pleaded guilty in 2013 to a felony of criminal damage to 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 fines and restitutions, but had only paid around $ 6,900 last October.
Auburn then cut the oaks and replaced them.
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