Moments before a stamp-sized piece of space history was placed on a Dallas auction block, lawyers for Texas' nursing home agency rushed in and interrupted the sale with a restraining order.

The frantic interception two years ago wasn't because the auction item was a part taken from a fallen space shuttle or a purloined moon rock. Instead it was a "lunar Bible," a curious one-inch-square microfilm replica of Christendom's most holy text that was flown on an Apollo mission to the moon.

The move by the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) to stop the sale of the lunar Bible has kicked off a strange and tangled two-year legal battle in three courtrooms in Texas and Oklahoma over ownership of the historic relic.

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At the heart of this litigation odyssey is the little-known story of how a group of Christian faithful at Johnson Space Center, called the Apollo Prayer League, engineered a plan to have astronauts with the Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s ferry microscopic editions of the King James Bible to the moon.

The subsequent dueling court battles center on whether a 91-year-old former NASA chaplain, John Stout, and his wife, Mary Helen - who have been declared wards of the state - are being held against their will in the Texas guardianship program and whether an Oklahoma Christian author, who claims she was given one of these highly collectible religious relics to auction for the elderly couple, was taking advantage of them.

After all, just last December, a lunar Bible placed in a 22-carat gold frame, set with pearls and a ruby, complete with an affidavit from Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who carried it into space, sold at Sotheby's for more than $56,000.

"Things that went to the moon … are the Holy Grail among space artifacts," said Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSPACE.com, an online publication about space history and artifacts. "That's because there are so few of them that are not in museums."

Cecilia Cavuto, a DADS spokeswoman, said it is the state agency's job to protect the financial assets of its wards.

"We are just doing our due diligence," she said.

'Dear friend'

But the attorney for Carol Mersch, the Tulsa, Okla.-based Christian author whose book "The Apostles of Apollo" details how Rev. Stout's Apollo Prayer League worked to send 300 lunar Bibles into space with Apollo astronauts, disagrees.

Stout, who is one of last surviving founders of the Apollo Prayer League, gave Mersch at least four of the Bibles, and she put one of them up for auction in Dallas in 2010 to raise money for the couple, according to court records.

"Although DADS' employees are dedicated public servants doing important work to care for and protect our seniors, they were off base in their attempt to void the Apollo Prayer League's gifts to Carol Mersch," said Burton Manne, Mersch's Houston attorney. "Hopefully, once DADS has exhausted its appeals, DADS will allow the Stouts to receive telephone calls, mail and personal visits from their dear friend, Carol Mersch."

As for Mersch, she declined to comment specifically.

"I would love to talk to you," she said. "As you're aware, I have two attorneys standing over me with billy clubs."

Four years ago, with the help of a private detective, Mersch located the Stouts after hearing the intriguing story about the NASA prayer group's mission to put Scriptures in space.

Stout told her how he and Apollo astronaut Ed White, who died in the fatal 1967 Apollo 1 launchpad fire at Cape Canaveral, discussed a project in which the Bible would be sent to the moon. Knowing the space program's weight limitations, Stout contacted a microfilm manufacturer to create the lunar Bible, which could be read with the aid of a microscope. The lunar Bible project was conducted entirely in private, on employees' spare time. No tax dollars were used to fund it.

Mersch's book details the Stouts' dizzying life up to the point they landed in the Houston area in the early 1960s. Childhood sweethearts, the two began studies at Texas A&M, then left when Stout was called up for active duty in Japan during World War II.

Afterward, he returned to school, earned a chemical engineering degree, then set off with his wife for Brazil, where they taught and worked as missionaries. He later attended Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and became an ordained minister, according to Mersch's book.

Achieving their goal

While working at NASA, Stout said the idea of placing God's word on the moon seemed a natural one, particularly after the death of White, who had told Stout he had planned to take a Bible to the moon.

"The fire that took the young astronaut's life had a profound effect on Reverend Stout," Mersch wrote. "From that moment, one thing became clear to the reverend: We were not leaving Earth merely to return with a cargo of knowledge. As mankind reached into the heavens, they would be sure to take something with them-something that spoke of the eternal bond between mankind and its Creator."

But the first lunar Bibles did not make it into space until 1971, when Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell carried more than 100 of them with him as a favor to Stout and to honor the memory of White and his fellow Apollo colleagues, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee.

"Ed White and Rev. Stout, the two of them being very devoted Christians wanted to see the Bible carried to the moon," Mitchell said. "It was their project. I just came about it later."

When Mersch arrived at the Stouts' Mont Belvieu apartment home for the first time in 2009, she founded it filled with papers from those early days, including letters from President Lyndon B. Johnson, Vice President Spiro Agnew and famed atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

"What I saw was a loving aging couple doing their best to keep their lives in order," Mersch said. But she realized they needed financial help and offered to have one of the lunar Bibles sold at the upcoming Dallas auction of space collectibles.

Unbeknownst to Mersch, DADS and Adult Protective Services officials at that same time had been asked by a court to evaluate whether the couple should be placed in guardianship.

The couple's condition, particularly Stout's disheveled physical appearance, alarmed the worker called to evaluate them.

"He was dressed in a shirt and shorts that appeared very dirty with socks and tennis shoes that were also extremely soiled," wrote Danielle Sells, a guardianship specialist for DADS. "Mr. Stout's nails were long and dirty and his hair was unkempt."

Sells' first interview with Stout - as is often the case in such meetings - was contentious as the older man rejected the idea he needed any type of assistance.

No improvement

A follow-up visit by Sells on Aug. 5, 2010, found no improvement of the couple's condition.

"It appeared that they had not bathed in several weeks or more," Sells noted. The Stouts were formally placed in guardianship in December 2010.

More details about the distressing state of the former chaplain's affairs came from Adult Protective Services investigator Dedra Sampson, who was assigned to the couple's case in 2010.

"During the investigation, I observed that John Stout was living in a deplorable condition," Sampson wrote in an August 2010 affidavit. "Specifically, there was trash hoarded throughout the apartment home restricting the ability to ambulate throughout the home."

She noted that she believed Stout was suffering from "untreated dementia" in addition to his other physical problems including heart problems.

The Stouts eventually were placed at a Dayton nursing home, where they remain today, and the state sued Mersch, seeking to get back the four Bibles in her possession.

In October, a Chambers County judge ruled in Mersch's favor, and the case is being appealed. Mersch filed a counter suit in Oklahoma against the state, claiming the Bibles were given to her as a gift. That suit is pending.

Jonathan Stout, the couple's son, said last week he supported what the state agency is doing.

"The state is helping them," he said of DADS' involvement. "The other people are not."

Mersch said she had grown close to the couple and was acting purely out of concern for them.

"I do miss their stories and their fun, feisty ways and I was grateful I was allowed into their lives," she said.