I feel like Jack Webb! (or possibly Ed O\’Neill.) Reader Charles Davis sent in three different stories about individuals apprehended in thefts of rare materials. In brief:
- Michael John Williams of Baltimore, Maryland had stolen Revolutionary War documents. Police tracked him down through the antiques dealer he had sold them to.
- John Charles Gilkey of San Jose, California had used a stolen credit card to purchase a first-edition copy of The Grapes of Wrath. He was apprehended when he tried to pick up the package.
- Neil Winstanley of London, England had stolen or damaged several priceless books while working in the Middle Temple law library. He was sentenced to nine months in prison.
Click below for more of the stories and links to the full content.
I feel like Jack Webb! (or possibly Ed O\’Neill.) Reader Charles Davis sent in three different stories about individuals apprehended in thefts of rare materials. In brief:
- Michael John Williams of Baltimore, Maryland had stolen Revolutionary War documents. Police tracked him down through the antiques dealer he had sold them to.
- John Charles Gilkey of San Jose, California had used a stolen credit card to purchase a first-edition copy of The Grapes of Wrath. He was apprehended when he tried to pick up the package.
- Neil Winstanley of London, England had stolen or damaged several priceless books while working in the Middle Temple law library. He was sentenced to nine months in prison.
Click below for more of the stories and links to the full content.Story 1 from http://www.yorkdispatch.com/:
Police apprehended a man charged with taking rare Revolutionary War-
era documents that were later found being offered for sale on the
Internet. Michael John Williams ran from police as they converged on
a house where he was hiding Thursday night, but was caught nearby,
police said. Williams, 36, faced one count of felony theft and one
count of receiving stolen property. He was ordered held in York
County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail. Police said their
investigation of the theft of the documents from the York County
Heritage Trust led them to a Baltimore antiques dealer, who told them
Williams sold him the documents. The dealer, who faces no charges,
had posted the items for sale on the eBay auction Web site.
Read the full story online.
Story 2 from http://www.bayarea.com/:
Book-theft suspect posed as transient
Staking out the lobby of Palo Alto\’s upscale Westin hotel, San Jose
police officer Ken Munson waited to see who would approach the front
desk and ask for an overnight package from Massachusetts. Inside was
a rare first-edition copy of John Steinbeck\’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
“The Grapes of Wrath,\’\’ purchased by phone for nearly $6,000. But
police say the rumpled fellow in slacks and a baseball cap who
claimed the package was not a rare-book connoisseur in town for this
weekend\’s Antiquarian Booksellers Association fair in San Francisco.
He was a thief who allegedly used a stolen credit card number to buy
the original bestseller and reserve a room at the hotel where he
planned to pick it up, police say. Now investigators say they have
connected the man, John Charles Gilkey, to at least one other similar
rare-book theft in the Bay Area and are looking into whether he is
linked to $50,000 worth of others over the last two years.
Read the full story online.
Story 1 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/:
A heroin addict who stole priceless books from a library at the heart of Britain\’s legal system was jailed for nine months yesterday.
Neil Winstanley, 45, took antique books – including the first ever Bible printed in Spanish – while working as a casual paper
conservator at the Middle Temple law library in London.
He ripped out vital pages, some depicting detailed maps of the ancient world. Some were then auctioned off to collectors, Inner
London crown court heard.
It was estimated that Winstanley, from Leith, Edinburgh, caused £40,000 damage, and that he had received £6,000 from the sale of the books.
The recorder, Charles Atkins, told him: \”You abused a position
of trust placed in you. The items were valuable and rare. The offences are so serious I sentence you to nine months\’ imprisonment.\”
Winstanley was convicted on six counts of theft between January 1 1997 and March 2 2000.
Read the full story online.
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