Scamtown - The Book Thief | 9

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

In the late 1980s, university libraries start to notice items missing from their rare book collections and suspect they’ve been robbed. That's when a lone university police officer takes the case, helping to lead the FBI to a mansion in Ottumwa, Iowa, where they make a shocking discovery of more than 23,000 stolen rare books and manuscripts. In a heist spanning 20 years, hundreds of libraries across the United States and Canada had been hit by the most prolific book thief in world history.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

Once in a while, a story comes along that's kind of surprising. I totally know what you mean. Sensational details can initially be attractive, but there are certain episodes that once you start digging into them, it just lingers in your head for a while. This one does just that. It's a crime of history. Yes, we're talking rare, one-of-a-kind artifacts worth

millions of dollars or even priceless kind of history. This is about a person who broke world records by undertaking a 20-year-long heist. Welcome to Scam Town, an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. I'm Brian Lizarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. We're filmmakers who've been trading stories now for quite some time, obsessed and compelled to bring some of our favorites to life. We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think

you know. Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and writing that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that. Today's episode, The Book Thief. When you consider the valuable items a criminal would go to the trouble of stealing, top of the list would be cash or diamonds, automobiles, maybe art. Right. You know, jewelry stores or museums, not libraries. But in 1990, these assumptions were challenged when the FBI raided a home in Ottumwa, Iowa. Inside, they found a mansion filled with 19 tons of rare books. And these weren't dog-eared copies of Daniel Steele romance novels.

A songbook from the year 800. A Nuremberg Bible dated back to 1480. The values of the individual books range from minimal value to what is described as priceless. This thief hits hundreds of university libraries across 45 states, D.C., and several Canadian provinces. But the bandit's motives were still unknown. Other than a big payout, what would drive someone to steal more than 23,000 rare books and manuscripts? I mean, when you're obsessed and you're driven, anything's possible. That's investigative reporter and columnist-turned-author Nick Bazbanes. He's written 10 books, largely about books themselves. His first, A Gentle Madness, explored the unique passion of book collecting. You pick it up. I mean, it's got this creamy textured leather binding. You smell the leather,

you stroke into the colors. If it's beautifully printed, the texture of the paper. All of these things, there's a tactility to it. Now, book collecting might be a little highbrow, but like other passions, it can overtake unsuspecting individuals. The bibliophile is the master of his books, the person who loves his books, and the bibliomaniac is their slave. Book bandits typically fall into two camps, library patrons with sticky fingers or the insider. The biggest threat to libraries and to museums is someone who knows what's in the collection, who knows where the catalog references are, who can make cards, records disappear. Not some guy from the outside. Well, the klepto in this case,

let me tell you, seasoned pro. Somehow, their thefts went largely unnoticed for decades. 90% of those books were not known to be missing until the day they were discovered. It's just amazing when we found out how much was missing, how we hadn't caught it sooner. These thefts were starting to attract more serious attention in the late 1980s by librarians and archivists who experienced the crime firsthand. We'll be hearing from them, including Tim Pyatt, who says he basically walked in the shadow of the book thief

because he worked in not one, but two different institutions hit by the burglar. And it started with a pretty big discovery at the University of Oregon. He stole almost 21 shelf feet of manuscript material. You know, the boxes weren't missing, just the contents inside were. So we had no way of knowing they'd actually been removed until someone actually requested the collection and we found the box was empty. That experience was not uncommon. Most of the targeted universities have more than one library and one campus can own millions of books. Next to discover some of their books are missing,

Washington State University. A librarian from another institution had asked to see an item that we had in our collection, and they could not find it. Eileen Brady is a retired WSU science librarian. She recalls that after that initial discovery, her colleagues at the Rare Book Library on campus took a closer look. Did a thorough inventory and discovered a vast number of things missing, estimated to be worth over a half a million dollars. In early 1988, a university officer named Stephen Hunsberry was tapped to investigate.

Campus police have, unfortunately, a not very good reputation in those places. Rent-a-cop is one of them. But Hunsberry proved to be different. Before landing at WSU, he served with distinction as a Navy officer in Vietnam, completed a history degree. With his good looks and voice, worked for a time as a lounge singer, attended Harvard Summer School, and finally, the Police Academy. In short, Hunsberry was more than happy to defy expectations about being a, you know, rent-a-cop. As Hunsberry learned more, his dedication to the case was fed by the book bug. He was handed a book to explain what had been stolen when he realized how old it was and that somebody like Christopher Columbus could have handled it.

It just electrified him, I guess might be the word. Some of their missing titles dated back more than 500 years. Which brings us to Incunabula. Incunabula, it's Latin for in the cradle, and it's books that are printed in the first 50 years of printing. From 1450 to about 1501. So they might be printed, but they would go back and hand decorate manuscripts or color in capital letters and things like that. There was a lot of customization that would happen. Aware that the thief is thirsty for incunables and other rare materials, Huntsbury dives into the investigation. This case is such a high priority for WSU, it's his only assignment.

So the first thing he does is work the phones. He starts calling every law enforcement agency up and down the West Coast to see if there had been any arrests of a book thief. And then he methodically contacts other university libraries to see if they too were hit. His work was starting to pay off. Huntsman gets a call from the University of Oregon saying that they were also robbed. Tim Pyatt says that these crimes were likely harder to solve because there was a stigma attached to admitting that they too had fallen prey. People were incredibly embarrassed if they were, if O'Liver was robbed. And I felt embarrassed at the time.

They didn't want to tell other folks about it. They tried to keep it underground. In fact, we at Oregon really had to fight with the administration to get the word out that we'd been robbed so others would be on the alert. Around this time, it also became clear that the perp was very familiar with the libraries and arrived with a wish list. We had a published catalog of our manuscript collections that each had a number assigned to the collection. So he basically used that as his shopping list and went through and sort of checked off the ones he wanted to see.

Pyatt says it was frustrating when he learned they'd been helping the thief identify his favorites. And then, of course, we being librarians, we had them in the little number order that was in there. So once he got in the storage area, it was really easy for him to go and find the items that he wanted. For anyone born before 1990, you'll remember the card catalog. You'd have to open a little drawer and figure your way through and look at numbers, decimal points, and then you'd have to take that and go to a physical shelf and hope to God that the book is actually there. Of course, you know, the various ways we list a book in the card catalog. By subject, by author, and by title? That's right. Ah, yes. Who can forget the Dewey Decimal System?

Can you tell me where I can find a book on astronomy? I think I know where you're pulling that from, James. It's from the movie UHF. Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System? Conan the Librarian. If you're a fan of Weird Al, it's an absolute must watch. Some of his best work. It's great cinema. It's fun for the whole family. With the Dewey Decimal System, let's just say you really had to work to get that book. Speaking of analog, Hunsberry, armed with news of the apparent links in these book crimes, drafts a warning flyer.

And he blasts it over teletype. Now, for those who have no idea what teletype is, it was pretty handy when you needed to remotely print something pre-fax machines. And here's what it read. Attention university and police agencies with jurisdiction over extensive valuable rare book and manuscript collections. In the last four months, two libraries have been hit. The suspect has been very selective.

It goes on to say that the culprit's apparent motive is to sell the books and documents, and that they exhibit a thorough knowledge of library procedure, especially since the suspect somehow completed each heist after hours and gained access to areas off-limits to the public. Basically, beware of this pro and make sure to check your rare collections. Huntsberry also puts his name and contact info at the bottom of the message. And it doesn't take long before he gets a call. A police detective out of Los Angeles says the flyer made him go to every public library branch in LA to warn them that a book thief is out there on the loose. Here's archival audio of Huntsbury explaining what happened next.

You may need to lean in a little. It's not the best audio. And he said, I went into Clark Library. They said to him, funny you should mention, two weeks ago, a fellow came in. We thought he was a street at Clark Library who looked dirty and acted hyper. He was in a section of the library he wasn't supposed to be. So they asked him to leave. This random guy was gone, but they did notice a ring of keys was missing too. So they checked the registry book. It's signed as Matthew McGue, M-C-G-U-E.

And he used a driver's license from the University of Minnesota and a faculty ID card from the University of Minnesota. It's signed Matthew McGue, a guy with a Minnesota driver's license and a faculty ID from the University of Minnesota. It's starting to look like an inside job after all. By a professor. But a Minnesota ID in L.A. kind of throws a curveball. Hunsberry checks to see if he has a police record in Minnesota or California and there's nothing. He's clean. About a week later, staff at UC Riverside

received a version of Hunsberry's flyer, this time shared by the head of security at the Getty Museum. It had additional details, including a suspect description. Male, Caucasian, 5'8", slim build, thin and grayish hair, and a library card with that name again, Matthew McHugh. A month later, now retired library assistant, Charlotte Dessens is working the night shift at the UC Riverside Library.

She's at the circulation desk. It's business as usual until she sees one of the custodians firmly escorting an oddly dressed man towards her. With his hand like on the arm of this man. He was dressed in like the gray suit, kind of ill-fitting, too big for him. Dark hair with a mustache, and said, I found this man in special collections, not once, but twice. He had some weird excuse, like, oh, I left my notebook in there. The suspect hands her an ID that matches the name on the flyer. So when I saw the name, it clicked.

And I just started asking general questions. She didn't have to ask many before they called the police. He wanted to go and sit down and wait. And I said, no, you'll stand right here until the police come. You are not going anywhere. I must have had a firm enough tone that, you know, he thought he better just stay there and not try to get away. In his briefcase, they found an array of gear for picking locks. Think dentistry tools. And they found some

incriminating reading material. There was an article in there about how security on campus wasn't great. And it wasn't. I think there was maybe one officer covering the whole campus at night. And we had no security guards in the library either. The police charged this Professor McGue with trespassing and possession of burglary tools. He was fined and released on his own recognizance. He hightails it out of state and never shows up for a scheduled court appearance. This is the first big break in the case, and Huntsbury, informed about their arrest, continues to add up clues. Tim Pyatt recalls also

having a run-in with a man when he worked at Duke University who looked and acted very similar to the one at UC Riverside. This guy comes in and he's like in a sort of a shabby tweed jacket with disheveled hair, and his personal hygiene wasn't of the highest quality. So far, other than stealing books, our bandit is becoming known for being a guy who sports a threadbare blazer and maybe doesn't love soap. But he was a visiting scholar and wanted to wander around and look at things. And, you know, I sort of followed him around because he just sort of, he seemed kind of odd. But, you know, this is another day where we're

very trusting. I mean, we just had him sign in on a ledger. Over the next couple of months, we would have these sort of random late night, we thought at the time, alarm malfunctions. Pyatt came to learn that the only research this nutty professor type was conducting was after-hours testing of the library's alarm system to check response times. So he knew how many books to steal before the police arrive. Pretty ingenious. Next, Hunsberry calls Riverside to request a copy of the suspect's mugshot. He keeps digging and zeroing in on the suspect's fingerprints.

Here's Huntsberry again. So what I ended up having to do was to take that fingerprint card and the information I had about this guy and send it to every state in the union and specifically sent it to the Department of Licensing in Minnesota. He says that he sends the fingerprints and all he has on McGue to every state in the Union. That's definitely dedication. A couple of weeks later, Huntsbury gets a call back. It's one of those calls that could easily start out with, you better sit down for this. Those prints don't belong to Matthew McGue, but they do belong to someone else.

Someone with a rap sheet in Minnesota. And he's got a long record of petty theft. And guess what? He steals books and doorknobs. He steals books and doorknobs. He steals books and doorknobs? So that's how the link came together, that this phony professor was actually this different person. And I held my breath and said, this Matt McHugh is Stephen Cary Blumberg. Just to make sure you heard that correctly,

he said Matt McHugh is actually Stephen Kerry Blumberg. All this time, they've been looking at the wrong name. This was a huge crack in the case for Huntsbury. Armed with this revelation, he goes to the FBI. And nothing happens. The case becomes less of a priority for WSU and is moved to the back burner. But Huntsbury can't leave it alone and actually continues to work it in his off time. And even pens an article published in 1989 in which he names Stephen Blumberg as the book thief. So a couple months after the article comes out,

which also happens to be about two years after Huntsbury shares Blumberg's identity, the FBI finally raids his home. But when they enter his three-story mansion, he's not there. And if you were nearby, you might have heard some gasps. Yep. They expected, you know, maybe a few books, a couple of

hot antiques. But what they discovered was a mansion overflowing with rare books. The men moving the books are astounded at what they've seen inside the home. All the halls, all the rooms are all books. The men moving the books are astounded at what they've seen inside the home. All the halls, all the rooms are all books. Third and ceiling.

We were able to get our hands on actual footage the FBI recorded of the house before the books were seized. And it's pretty jaw-dropping. Located in this room were several manuscripts, letters. All 17 rooms, floor to ceiling, are jammed with books. And journals which were identified as being stolen from the University of Oregon. Hallways. Just off this room. Attic. Is a second room at the front of the house.

Even the bathroom. He had a whole library next to the toilet. A squadron of FBI agents arrived at his home and seized something on the order of 19 tons of books. You know, they needed two semi-trucks to remove everything. During this raid, sometime in the middle of the night, early morning, Blumberg actually shows up. And I don't know, James, have you ever heard of a story

where the perpetrator, like, actually enters a house during the raid rather than jumping out the back window? Yeah, typically people just try to make a run for it. But I guess he was more used to evading capture in libraries and not fleeing federal agents in his kitchen. After two decades of stealing tons of books, literally, Blumberg is finally arrested.

Nick Bazbans was busy writing his book about bibliophiles, already bumping up against deadlines. But what he was discovering about the suspect made him an irresistible subject. You know, there have been other book thieves. Their motivation was to sell them. You know, it was greed. This wasn't his motivation at all. That made him very interesting to me. You know, this was a guy who stole them for the love of them. Now, I've heard of romance novels before, but this man was stealing in the name of love? A love that turns into obsession. He's the collector who sort of goes over the cliff,

whose passion can't be controlled, is expressed in ways that aren't really very acceptable to society. They'll squander their fortunes. They've lost their families. I guess they realized he wasn't interested in resale when they found, as we mentioned at the top of this episode, his stash of a whopping 23,000 books. The Blumberg collection, you could call it. And the guy motivated to break into hundreds of libraries from sea to shining sea just to fill his mansion full of books? A year after Blumberg's arrest, he appears in federal court. I would have liked a bigger monster, somebody who really looked nasty and evil. That's Frazier Cox, the curator of special collections at the Knight Library at the University of Oregon, sizing Blumberg up for the first time.

This was the moment everyone had been waiting for. All the archivists and librarians who traveled to Iowa to testify were finally seeing the man who terrorized them and their collections for decades. He was a small, kind of craggy-faced guy, shaggy hair. Average height, skinny, a guy you might describe as good at blending in. Just sat there and didn't say anything. What he was hearing, of course, were people telling what he had stolen and people who were angry at him, who felt betrayed by him. Baz Baines rearranged his life to cover the trial in 1991. It was historic for several reasons,

not least of which was Blumberg's not guilty plea. And the defense at trial was not guilty by reason of insanity. The only documented instance in American jurisprudence where someone has been accused of criminal bibliomania. Before long, the writer and suspect are talking. He came up to me at one point and he said, who the hell are you? And I said, I'm here to write about you as a book collector. That really got his attention.

Then, on a Saturday morning, when court was in recess, he called me in my hotel. It was about 8.30 in the morning, and he said, these are the exact words, would you like to spend the day in the life of Stephen Blumberg? I said, are you allowed to do this? Because I don't want to be contributing to some sort of violation that was a bail. He said, no, no, I just can't go to any bookstores.

So we went, and we spent that day together. So Blumberg cruises over to the Embassy Suites Hotel, not in a horse and buggy, but a 1960s Cadillac to pick up his new friend. Their first stop was the old red brick house at 116 North Jefferson Street, where Blumberg lived. I got pictures of him in the California room. And that was so named because he said some of my best pickings came from the state of California. And all that was left, all the bookshelves were still there, except one pennant from UCAL Berkeley that was draped from one of the shelves. Then they dropped by one of Blumberg's storage units and made another spontaneous pit stop along the way.

There was a dumpster not far from where the warehouse was. He stopped the car, pulled in. He's coming out of the dumpster with a book. He did say to me at one point, we're driving in the car. He said, Nick, do you think I'm crazy? I said, Stephen, no, I don't. But I have to say, I've never seen anyone stop his car in a rush and dive headfirst into a dumpster looking for books. I said, people might question that sort of behavior. And he did. He said,

but I, no, he said, we rescued the treasure, didn't we? So he did. Back in court, one of Bloomberg's longtime friends and accomplices or associates who rescued treasures with him for years was about to take the stand. Maybe frenemy is a more accurate term for Kenny Rhodes. He turned in his old pal for a fifty six thousand dollar payout. And what he shares on the stand about their adventures is revealing. Right, like his descriptions of how they crisscrossed the country together, spending their time selling antiques and stealing books. It's worth noting, Blumberg didn't need to steal or even work very hard.

He received a trust fund stipend of $72,000 a year. That freedom possibly made Rhodes jealous. Whatever the case, Baz Baines observed few redeeming qualities. I went up and I introduced myself to him and I said, Mr. Rhodes, so-and-so, and I'd love to talk to you. I'd like to get your side of the story. He said, what's in it for me? I said, oh, just an opportunity to get a balanced story. I said, because if you don't talk to me, you come across as a pretty bad guy. He said, no need to talk. I am a bad guy. This guy didn't have a decent bone in his body. Sounds like he left a lasting impression.

Definitely. As the trial continues, some of Blumberg's origin stories are also revealed. He grew up in the Twin Cities during a time when 19th century homes were being abandoned or slated for demolition. So he became obsessed with rescuing some of these artifacts. Ironwork, intricate stained glass windows. And he collected doorknobs. He had 100,000 doorknobs, or whatever the number was. At first, Amassing Books was born out of his other collecting. He sought them as a reference to learn more about antiques. Blumberg's most treasured books were focused on Americana

and what you might call his appreciation for the Victorian era. Blumberg's attorneys went a step or two beyond appreciation, suggesting that Blumberg actually believed he was a guardian of the past and was locked in a time warp. Quote, emotionally, mentally, and even physically, to the point of wearing Victorian underwear. Unquote. I can't speak to the underwear,

but, you know, he wore collages, you know, with snaps on them, the olden time boots. So he's eccentric. And when he was asked to draw pictures of himself, he always drew the same picture of an Edwardian guy with a beard. Bloomberg was known for wearing a hidden pouch filled with gold coins dangling from the inside of his oversized coat. Prepared just in case the country's economic system collapsed.

Well, in addition to psychiatrists, other witnesses for the defense testified that Blumberg's drive to collect old things was lifelong. There was one woman from the Twin Cities, Miss Fredericks. She said it was this grubby little boy, came in a bicycle, and she said, boy, did he know his antiques? And he used to climb up on roofs to get a weather vane or something like that off the top of a house. In court, the jury also heard about how Blumberg perfected his skills at other types of stunts as he broke into libraries to steal books. He was very lithe. He was like a Spider-Man. He was climbing up an elevator shaft someplace in California.

All of a sudden, the elevator started coming down. And he said he only escaped being crushed by wedging himself into one of these recesses on one of the floors as the elevator went by. It was almost as if no building was secure enough to keep him out. He studied and he understood alarm systems, detection systems. He knew how to bypass alarms. There were huge rings of keys shown as evidence at the trial. He would sneak into the library and he would find where the keys were stored. Tim Pyatt can attest to that.

I had like a jailer's thing of keys to get into all the storage areas. He says, yeah, one place I went, the librarian kept all his keys in his desk, so I just stole them and had them duplicated to make it easier to get in and out. I just jumped right up. I'm like, oh my gosh, that was me in Oregon. Talk about playing the long game. This guy had duplicates made so he can come back at any time he wanted. That's what you call a Victorian shopping spree.

One of the most crucial steps in the checklist of thievery was removing any evidence about where the book was from. And he employed all sorts of methods. Yeah, because if you're walking out with a book that has stuff in it, about where the book was from. And he employed all sorts of methods. Yeah, because if you're walking out with a book that has stuff in it, you know, they're going to identify it as one of theirs. So he had like a sandpaper. He would scrape off the identification of the name.

If there was a pocket, he had stuff that could dissolve it and take out. He had a stamp that would put in, he would stamp a university of Minnesota. So he would say, oh, I'm sorry, that's my copy. I brought it in with me. Remember when he was nabbed at UC Riverside? He made the stamp disappear. He chewed that rubber stamp and swallowed it. And I asked him, I said, did you actually do that? He says, how else was I going to get rid of that?

That's commitment. One of the other curious practices he had for removing book plates involved spit. He would lick them. I mean, saliva. He would lick them or he would do other things. But once he removed the book plates, he didn't throw them away. He kept his favorites kind of like a trophy, the way a game hunter might hang elk antlers on their wall.

There were only 2,500 or so book plates in the collection, so it was very selective. Meanwhile, do you know what we haven't gotten to figure out? If Victorian underwear is glorified Long Johns or something that I've never imagined before? You know, I'm curious about that too, but I was actually thinking more specifically, what happened to the thousands of stolen books? So the FBI feared it might take years before they were able to match 23,000 books to their rightful owners. So they rented a Nebraska warehouse and spent $11,000 on shelving alone. Then fate stepped in. There was an article in USA Today about the books that had been found in Ottumwa, Iowa.

And one of the things included in the article was the FBI agent was quoted as saying that they thought it would be difficult to get the books and the libraries back together again. And we thought that that would be a good opportunity for OCLC with our database of bibliographic records and locations to lend a hand. That's Kate Nevins with OCLC, formerly known as the Online Computer Library Center. OCLC created the most comprehensive database of library collections, even before the dawn of the internet. So she sends four of their employees and sets up 10 computer workstations. They also put a call out to librarians to help and ended up getting around 40 volunteers. I'm Sandy Jones. I'm a senior product analyst here at OCLC. Nice long history here. Jones says it was a fun gig for a month, even if conditions weren't the most spick and span.

We were in an abandoned office storage space in, you know, kind of downtown Omaha. Once all of the volunteers started arriving, it just became a busy place. It was dirty, these materials. They're old, they're crumbly, they're dusty. There was a, like a garage type facility off to one side. And that's where there was a rather large collection of antique doorknobs that were kind of boxed and they were stored in there. There was a first edition of Winnie the Pooh. You know, I mean, what a fascinating item to actually hold. Blumberg even offered to help share information about the provenance of some of the books in hopes of leniency in court. It was also a way to see his beloved collection one last time. He said that. I was saying goodbye to him.

He spent the day going through the books. He was with his books all day. Blumberg didn't interact much with the volunteers, but he did talk with some of the librarians who were seeking to locate their rare books, including John Sharp from Duke University. At one point, Stephen went up and he started talking to him and he said, you know, I had no idea that I would hurt so many people and I'm sorry for that. And John Sharp looked at him

and said, well, how many books did you take from us anyway? You only got 25 or 30. He said, 25 or 30? He said, more like 400 or 500. And Sharp says he could have collapsed. In the end, it took a little over a month to connect most of the books to the rightful owners, versus what the FBI had initially estimated to be two years. Many of the affected institutions sent staff to Nebraska to pick up their books, which included Officer Stephen Huntsberry.

I hope this shows up. Just trying to give you an idea of the amount of books that are involved here. In that shelf right there is the hack loot book, which is supposed to be about $50,000. Some of the incunabula. The jury was finally ready to share their verdict in July of 1991. Like his biographer, they also failed to see Blumberg as insane. I think they convicted him in 20 minutes, but they stuck around for lunch.

I mean, they didn't have the case for very long at all. He was found guilty on four counts of possessing and transporting stolen property. The judge sentenced him to 71 months. If you're good at math, you know that's nearly six years in prison. He was also slapped with a $200,000 fine. There were, of course, a range of reactions. It seemed very light to me at the time, just given the amount of damage that he'd done to so many institutions. Yes, he was a cultural felon,

but he hadn't killed anyone. Everything he stole was recovered in return. And I'm not saying he didn't deserve to be punished for his crimes, but you have to weigh things. I'm not that sympathetic. He stole stuff, took very valuable historical materials, kept them from the public, left a hole in history. At least one person was left feeling genuinely sorry for the book thief.

Remember Matthew McHugh, the man whose identity was stolen? He was the keeper of the books. So what is that? That doesn't seem a very effective criminal enterprise. It seems more like he has a mental health issue. I felt bad about the whole thing. A definite takeaway from all this is don't piss off or underestimate librarians. This man has insulted all of us that run libraries and to have stolen from another library is to have stolen from me. And I really felt that we had to do something about that.

They had nearly an impossible task to share these rare books with the public while also trying to keep them safe. Baz Baines says one of the FBI agents on the case offered up some useful wisdom. I wouldn't beat my brains out too much because let me tell you something. You know, this is a senior agent with the FBI. He said, this guy is a very professional, competent criminal. I'm not so sure if they buried these books in a 20-foot pit and encased it in concrete that he wouldn't have found a way in there because he was that good.

You know, he just decided that what he wanted was books. Sadly, Officer Stephen Hunsberry died a couple years ago. His friend Eileen Brady felt Hunsberry never received his due for helping to stop the book thief. Because he was a campus cop, he didn't get recognition he should have. But he did receive some notice in the form of awards, speaking engagements, and a promotion to sergeant after Blumberg's arrest. His crimes served as a wake-up call. So much so that you wish you could retroactively buy stock in some of these security companies. There's a lot of things I'd retroactively wish I could buy stock in.

Blumberg's heists would be next to impossible to pull off today. So he might just retain his Guinness Book of World Records title as the most prolific book thief. After serving four and a half years in prison, Blumberg also went from book collector to actually appearing in one. Specifically, chapter 13 of Nicholas Bazvain's book, A Gentle Madness, Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. Funny enough, since then, Blumberg has been picked up on various parole violations for stealing antiques, but has not been re-arrested for any book crimes. And one of the conditions of his parole was that if he did enter a library or even a bookstore,

he would need to pass the clerk a note saying, I am a book thief. Okay, I've heard of people getting kicked out of bars, but a literary badge of shame? That's impressive. On the next episode, we unravel a mystery about an unexplained disappearance. Nobody knew what was really happening.

Is this woman, first of all, is she alive? That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram. The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lizarte.

And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Kathleen Horan produced this episode. Mark Hay was our researcher. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm.

The production would like to thank Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections at Washington State University Libraries, Eileen Brady, and OCLC. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.