True Crime Campfire - Bird Brain: The Story of the Great Feather Heist

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Natural conservation is something that most people can get behind. I mean, you see a baby duckling covered in oil and you can’t help but shake your fist at the oil companies that created the mess while you reach for the dish soap, right? When wildfires break out, firefighters from all over the country pack their bags and get on planes to go help. We generally want to keep our communities clean. But sometimes, there are people to whom nature is just a playground. People who will do anything to capture and keep the world’s beauty all for their own selfish gain...and they’ll keep doing it too, unless someone stops them. As the Lorax says, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” Join us for the true crime story of one of the weirdest heists in history--a tale of obsession and "main character syndrome" run wild. If you think this one's gonna be boring, trust us. It ain't. Sources:The Feather Thief by Kirk W. JohnsonNPR's "This American Life" with Ira GlassFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Natural conservation is something that most people can get behind. I mean, you see a baby duckling covered in oil and you can't help but shake your fist at the oil companies that created the mess while you reach for the dish soap, right? When wildfires break out, firefighters from all over the country pack their bags and get on planes to go help. We generally

want to keep our communities clean. But sometimes there are people to whom nature is just a playground. People who will do anything to capture and keep the world's beauty all for their own selfish gain, and they'll keep doing it too, unless somebody stops them. As the Lorax says, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not. This is Birdbrain, the story of the feather heist. It was a cool evening on June 23, 2009, when Edwin Rist stepped off the train in Tring, England. He cast a tall, lanky, shadow as he hauled his suitcase across the platform. Despite being just 20 years old,

he was at the peak of his career as a concert floutist. He had just performed that evening at the Royal Academy of Music where he was studying, and now he was about to satisfy his other passion. His suitcase was filled with a few peculiar items, a glass cutter, latex gloves, a flashlight, and wirecutters. As Edwin walked down the footpath toward the building that held his quarry, he kept looking over his shoulder, but the night was quiet, and no one seemed to notice him. Through the gloom of the night, the Victorian mansion-turned-museum appeared. He crept toward the barbed-wire adorned exterior wall of the mansion grounds and gripped the wire-cutters in his hand and snipped away a path for himself at a section nearest to a window.

Then he swung his suitcase onto the wall and pulled himself up. Crouching like a cat, he positioned himself near the closest window. On one side of the wall were the grounds and on the other was a ravine. Falling would mean either drawing the attention of security or injuring himself in the ditch below. Taking a deep breath, he pulled out the diamond glass cutter he'd purchased from eBay a few months earlier and went to work cutting open the window. Unfortunately for Edwin, he'd not thought to practice cutting glass and he found that he had to press harder than he'd anticipated.

His hands slipped and he dropped the glass cutter into the dark of the ravine. shit. Maybe he should stop. Maybe this whole thing was a mistake. But no, he thought, I've come too far to go back. I have to keep moving forward. Carefully, Edwin scrambled back down to pick up a rock and heaved himself back up. As he smashed the window, a silent alarm tripped in the security office, where the security guard on duty was too engrossed in the Swedish soccer match to notice. Edwin didn't realize that he'd cut his hand on a shard of glass that fell into the darkness below. Edwin shoved his suitcase in through the window, pulled out his flashlight, and made

his way to the vault he'd visited months earlier when he started casing the place. He entered the vault and was met with rows and rows of cabinets. He found the one he was looking for and opened the first drawer. Inside he found his quarry. Well-preserved bodies of red-ruffed fruit crows, dark birds with crimson feathers wrapping around their throats, each stuffed with cotton and carripped with cotton and carrived. carefully tagged with bio-data that outlined the date, weather, location, and circumstances of their capture. Edwin grabbed the male specimens and started filling his suitcase with 47 of the

fruit crows before moving on to the next cabinet. Inside, he found specimens of the resplendent Ketzel, an endangered species from Panama. The males can get up to four feet long and sport teal, green, blue, and red feathers. Edwin managed to stuff 39 of them into his suitcase. Next, 72 specimens of Cottingas of South America, tiny little turquoise and red birds. He managed to grab specimens of four different subspecies of the birds, one of which the banded Cottinga is critically endangered. Only 250 of them are currently living in the wild. Then he made his way to his final cabinet.

He removed 37 King Birds of Paradise, 24 magnificent rifle birds, 12 superb birds of paradise, four bluebirds of paradise, and 17 flame Bowerbirds and placed them in his bag. Edwin was losing track of time. He told himself that he'd only take the very best of each of the specimens, but all that went out the window when he saw his first bird.

Now he'd spent too long inside the museum and risked missing the last train. He scurried back through the corridors and through the window he'd broken. Meanwhile, back in the security office, the guard got up to complete his rounds, still not noticing the flashing alarm light. As he walked through the museum, he didn't see the broken window, nor did he know that hundreds of the museum's precious items were shoved in a suitcase, being dragged behind a musical genius on his way back to London. It was the next day when the security guard at the Natural Museum at Tring noticed something amiss.

He was completing his route at the exterior of the building when he noticed some shattered glass on the ground. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that one of the windows, about six feet above the ground, had been smashed. hurrying inside, he informed the curators that there had been a break-in. When the police arrived to secure the scene, senior curator Mark Adams' heart was in his throat. He needed to confirm that the museum's most valuable items were untouched. He rushed to the stacks and, handshaking, unlocked the case. Seemingly undisturbed, nestled in their packaging,

were Charles Darwin's Galapagos Finches, dodo specimens, including fragile skins, a rare extinct bird called the Great Ock, part of James Audubon's personal collection of bird skins and an original printing of his book, Birds of America, which at the time was considered the most valuable book in the world. Another original bound copy had just been sold at auction for $11.5 million. Huh. That was puzzling. Maybe the culprit was just some rebellious teenager that broke in for bragging rights.

Someone must have just broken the window and poked their head in, right? No harm, no foul. Nothing of value was lost. The museum wouldn't have to audit their collection after all. I mean, there were tens of thousands of items to catalog, and they really had a small staff, so it was kind of a relief. What the authorities didn't know is that the museum was the victim of one of the most audacious natural history heists of all time. The culprit was currently spreading out the spoils on his bed in disbelief of what he'd accomplished.

Hundreds of birdskins, all his. rare kettels, Katingas, and Birds of Paradise, the first part of his plan had gone off without a hitch, and now all he had to do is find buyers for his plunder. It would be weeks before they realized what they'd really lost, and by then it was too late. The culprit would not be brought to justice for at least a year. Plenty of time to get rid of dozens of dead birds. So why on earth would anyone steal dead bird skins? More importantly, who would buy them?

Well, there are a few suspects. First, you have the collectors, weirdos who Indiana Jones would punch in the face while yelling, that belongs in a museum, or whatever. Then you have the historians. You see, in the past, dead birds used to be the ultimate status symbol. It, of course, was the Victorians. Ah, yes, the Victorians, simultaneously prudish and kinky, inventors of both the Prince Albert piercing and sexual repression. Why am I not surprised? Yeah, well, on top of the immense amount of opium, everyone was smoking, they were super into animal cruelty, like just super into it. Stuffed bird hats were all the rage. In fact, there were some bird hats that required live birds inside cages, which is just...

I know. It's god awful. They're like 1800 Stanley Cups. Biches would be lining up outside of Victorian Target to get the latest bird hat. In 1886, on a walk through a she-she street in New York, An ornithologist counted 700 bird hats in one afternoon. And we're not just talking pigeons or sparrows here. We're talking rare or endangered birds.

In The Feather Thief by Kirk Johnson, our main source for this case, the most popular birds were birds of paradise, parrots, toucans, kettles, hummingbirds, the cock of the rock, great name, snowy egrets, and ospreys. There was one designer who became known for his shawl made out of 800 hummingbird skins, which just makes me want to invent a time machine so I can go back and punch that guy in the face. The feather industry single-handedly drove several species of birds to near extinction.

So maybe some kind of historical costume collector stole the skins. Seems a little far-fetched. I mean, cosplayers make do with replicas all the time. Speaking of the far-fetched, though, there's one group that's left to talk about, the fly-tires. Now, fly-tires are hobbyists who enjoy creating lures for fly fishing,

which is a type of fishing that utilizes a little bitty lure that's designed to look like the tiny insects that fish like to eat off the surface of the water. Fishermen take great pride in their flies, even going so far as to make them themselves, using thread, feathers, wool, and hooks to mimic the appearance of tiny little bugs. It's one of those hobbies that probably costs more to undertake

than if you just buy your own flies. For example, there's a fly called the Chatterer that requires 200 blue chattel. chatterer feathers, which would cost about two grand to complete. Damn. I found a retail version with substitute feathers for 550 bucks. Still expensive, but less prohibitive. Weirdly, not all fly tires are fishermen. There are some people that just love the craft. This is the group that won Edwin Rist found himself in. Edwin Rist had an idyllic, if atypical childhood. Born in 1988 to Lynn

and Curtis wrist, two Ivy League graduates, Edwin and his brother Anton were given every advantage to succeed. Both Lynn and Curtis worked as freelance writers and wrote about all kinds of different topics for various publications. They also ran a Labradoodle breeding business. It would fuel their son's eclectic, homeschooled education. He'd bounce around between any subject that interested him. When Edwin became obsessed with snakes, his parents asked a professional herpetologist to teach in biology, which there's something about that. Like, that sounds like a good thing, but there's something about that that just is obnoxious to me.

So obnoxious. And I guess it's the privilege. I don't know. No, it's like, oh, you're interested in, in archaeology. I'm sending you to Jurassic Park. Fuck off. Shut up. It's just, it's like all, everything I'm about to say sounds like it would be a good

thing. But it's just not always a good thing. It's just not. And it wasn't for Edwin, as we will soon see. In fact, if Edwin showed any talent or interest in something, his parents would buy into it full bore. When he was six, he showed great aptitude with the recorder, presumably playing hot cross buns like a boss. You know, they send you home with that little thing and parents want to like jump off the roof for the next few weeks. And after that,

he quickly took up the flute. Within a few years, he would win a scholarship to a master class with the principal floutest of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. One day, when Edwin was about 13 years old, his father was working on an article about the physics of fly fishing. He'd bought a copy of the Orvis Fly Fishing DVD to learn more about the subject. Edwin walked in just as the host was demonstrating how to tie a trout fly. And for Edwin, it was love at first sight. He kept rewinding that segment, watching as the host wrapped some thread around a rooster feather,

causing the feathers barbs to sprawl out in every direction. From under the surface of the water, it looks like little insect legs wiggling around. At first, Edwin stole feathers from his parents' pillows and a bunch of pipe cleaners and began tying flies immediately. He was eager to learn, and his parents were eager to indulge. They took him to meet a man called George Hooper, an evolutionary biology professor who happened to adore fly fishing. For the wrist brothers, he was the perfect educator. He referred to fish by their Latin names and used microscopes and magnifying glasses. Hooper was impressed by the brothers and pushed them to join fly-tying competitions.

God, there really is a competition for everything, isn't there? Like, there's a case with backgammon competitions. Like, he did backgammon competitions. Like, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Never the type of parents to discourage burgeoning talent. Curtis and Lynn drove their sons all over the East Coast to various fly fishing shows. At the arts of the angler convention, Edwin tied 68 trout flies in an hour and won the top prize.

68. Dang. That's more than a tie-in-hour. That's crazy. I don't know if I could tie 68 knots in power. Definitely not. That's kind of impressive, actually. At the Northeast Fly Tying Championship, both Edwin and Anton were tasked with tying

assigned insects. They both won first place in their categories. It was there where Edwin's interest mutated into obsession. It was there, he was introduced to Victorian salmon flies. Whereas a trout fly is minuscule and kind of boring. They're kind of like dull and boring and can be tied in less than a minute. a Victorian salmon fly is a passion project, colorful and huge, taking hours of labor. The master of Victorian salmon flies is a guy named Edward Muzzy Musrule.

By day, he's a marine designer, and by night, he's a world-class fisherman and fly guy. He was the owner of the booth that captured Edwin's imagination. So when they got home, Edwin and his brother begged their parents to let them go to Muzzy's place in Maine to study under his watchful eye. Oh, what red-blooded American teenager doesn't dream of his first fly-tying apprenticeship. God. Victorian fly recipes are both complex and opulent. They require feathers from several types of birds, fur from various animals, and specific types of string. At Muzzy's place, Edwin's first salmon fly was called the Durham Ranger.

It's undoubtedly a beautiful piece. You should look it up. It's gorgeous. Brightly colored with oranges, reds, yellows, and blues. and it's stunning for something that's meant to go in a fish's mouth. Yeah. The original recipe, and yes, they do call them recipes, calls for... It's so weird. It's so weird.

It calls for Indian crow, which is what fly tires call a red-ruffed fruit crow, ostrich feathers, orange and black seal fur, wool, gray jungle fowl, blue chatterer, and blue macaw. As Johnson points out in the feather thief, the fly was like a snap. snapshot of the British Empire at mid-century, employing plumes shipped up by ostrich farmers in the Cape Colony, Blue Chatterer and Indian Crow extracted from British Guinea, and golden phezzet crated in the port of Hong Kong. The British colonial empire in all of its bloody, greedy, wasteful glory all boiled down to a tiny fishing lure. Man holding dominion over his earth. That's what, like, like, you see, like, you see these and it's like, like, how much money went

into just like one single fly that's crazy it's just it's nuts now muzzie wasn't about to let a 13 year old kid presumably with like cheeto dust on his fingers not this kid but yeah usually yeah i guess you're right yeah we'll we'll find out about edwin in the second uh edwin has never had cheeto fingers he's never i don't think he's i think a cheetah would kill him personally I think a Cheetah would immediately send him into cardiac arrest. Muzzy was like, I am not going to let you use any real stuff for this practice fly. So Edwin was given substitutes to make the Durham Ranger. As Muzzy walked Edwin through tying the fly with mundane turkey, kingfisher, and pheasant feathers,

Edwin struggled with some of his feathers. Muzzy explained that it would be so much easier if they could get their hands on some of the ingredients that the recipe called for. Turkey feathers, you see, have a round quill that fruit crow feathers. don't. After a couple more days of tying Victorian flies, with Edwin and Anton tucked away in their parents' car to head back home, Muzzy imparted one final gift. He handed young Edwin an envelope. Inside were $250 worth of Indian crow and blue chatterer feathers, enough to make two flies. He told Edwin, this is what it's all about. Don't tie with them yet. Not till you're ready. You got to work up to these things. If Edwin was upset,

best before, now he was consumed. Now, he and his brother, calling themselves the flyboys, took over their family's garage and turned it into a two-man fly factory. Using the less desirable turkey and pheasant feathers, they developed their fly-tying skills, drawing attention from small-time journalists looking to fill their papers with local color. Their mom, Lynn, told one, they would spend all day out there if we let them, but occasionally my husband and I force them to come in and eat. He should have forced him to do some other shit too, but whatever, Len, bless your heart. Still, though, something haunted, Edwin.

While his flies looked like the real deal, he knew. He knew that they were frauds. He was 13 years old and in the midst of perfecting his two passions. He was about to enroll in the local community college, majoring in fine arts, while at the same time joining the wild world of internet forums. There he met like-minded tires, those who hungered for the real materials. On classic flytying.com, one wrote, was the tone of yearning, usually reserved for a lover? There is something to a fly tied with the old materials.

Another member responded, I've met this something. I'm haunted by it constantly now. It's like a drug. Nothing else matters. Nothing else compares. When it touches my fingers, I feel the history. I'm taken back to a time when fish were as big as logs, fresh from the sea, reds, yellows, and shades of

blues. Their texture and color have that power to push you to do your best. There's nothing else that compares to that power. Jesus Jones. Excuse me, there is nothing else in the world that compares to that power. I beg to differ on that, sir. Um, yeah, you guys, they're feathers. Yeah, what about girls, young fellow? Or boys, you know, I'm begging you. Go, outside and talk to a woman. Touch some grass. Do something that's not this because you, you are not okay. But okay, you know, this is exactly why I think we should bring forums back. I mean, they still exist. I spent so much time on fly tying forums over the last two weeks that my algorithm thinks I'm a grizzled old man that fantasizes about pheasants. But they all talk like

this. They all do. It's crazy. I do think it's good to give. weirdos a place to go be weird away from gen pop, though. This is true. I'm just saying, I don't want to see this guy's nightstand drawer, okay? Because I feel like I might not recover from that. Now, for those of us who are, you know, normal human beings and might not know this, the feather trade is pretty restricted. Per the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, it's illegal to even transport an already dead bird, even common ones. This was established because, you guessed it, The Victorians hunted birds to near extinction, and the federal government was like,

yo, we should probably, like, put a stop to this, and took steps to prevent any kind of feather trade or hunting at all. Like, you can't even pluck a dead swallow without risking a federal fine. So if he wanted access to real rare feathers, Edwin would have to pay the price. His buddy Muzzy put him in contact with a retired detective-turned feather dealer named, I shit you not, John McLean. Yippie Kaye, motherfucker Detective by day Feather Dealer by night

It's like can't you picture a guy like in an alley with a trench coat on Like Pst Hey You want Blue Jay I got Blue Jay All right look I ain't got no California Condor this week But I know a guy

Gonna have to charge your finder's feet Like it's just so ridiculous that this is a thing Yeah poor, poor Detective McLean, just when they, just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in. Now, Mr. McLean runs a website called FeathersMC.com, where he legally sells all kinds of feathers and other fly-tying supplies. The problem for Edwin, however, was the cost. One feather from an Argus pheasant costs 200 bucks. A set of 10 minuscule Indian crow feathers cost nearly $100.

dollars. Edwin started doing work around the neighborhood and went about earning the money that he could for his flies, but as Johnson puts it, the boy's appetite for feathers far outstripped what he could afford. Hey, Edwin, have you thought about, like, drugs? Like, I just think, I just, I feel like, I just feel like one marijuana cigarette would cure him. It'd fix him. I'm just saying, you know, you do like an eight ball of cocaine. You might hurt yourself. But you do what he's getting ready to do, and you hurt, like, endangered species, man. That's like, I'm just saying. It's true.

I'm not advocating for drugs, but just saying. Yeah. Leave the birds alone, damn it. They have enough problems. Yeah. Well, John McLean tried. He advised Edwin to contact zoos for access to some feathers from their molting birds. But some feathers, like from the resplendent Ketzel, the Indian Crow, and birds of paradise are exceedingly rare.

Desperate tires would search for Victorian hats on eBay, even bidding on actual Victorian flies, only to deconstruct them for their feathers. When a fellow flyboy passed away, there was almost instantly a long line of people trying to call Debs on their hoard, which makes me so sad. That's horrible. And this isn't a joke. They'd be like, oh, my God, that's so sad. He was such a nice guy.

What about his feathers, though? Yeah, I can imagine there were poor relatives, like, at the graveside crying, and somebody's like, hey, sorry for your loss and everything, but, like, who's got dibs on? on the flies. Anybody spoken up yet? That's horrible. So clearly, the market was ripe for a new source of birds and eventually someone was going to pit pay dirt. Edwin's talent grew and under the screen named flute player in 1988, he started becoming more well known in the fly tying community, which I find personally offensive. In my day, we took real pride in our screen names. Edwin took two of the most boring facts about himself and said, good enough.

Yeah, my screen name on Myspace was Whitney, so I'm probably not your girl on this one. Pathetic. Although you have really good screen names now. We won't go into it, but you have, you've made up for it. I know what your screenings. I have. I have. I have made up for it. Yeah. His YouTube account, by the way, was Resplendent Edwin, which is slightly better, but A, it's annoying. And B, it's based on his one other personality trait, birds, which is like, you know, the resplendent Ketzel. It's one of the birds that the feather freaks drool about. Anyway, by the time he was 16, he was killing it. He was posting 20-page fly-tying tutorials and giving tips and tricks to his fellow tires. One of his compatriots called him, quote, the best salmon fly-tire he's ever seen.

Meanwhile, he'd received his associate's degree in fine arts with honors from the community college he'd been attending and was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music in London. Now, before he'd left for Mariel, England, Edwin decided to leave his fly-tying supplies at home. He was going to England to play the flute. He didn't need to be distracted by feathers. But the siren call of fishing lures was just too much for him, and by the next spring, he was trawling around British fly-tying conventions and longing for his men. birdie bag back home.

A couple of years later, Edwin was lucky enough to be invited to tie a fly at the Bristol Fly Dressers Guild. One of his foreign buddies agreed to put him up and asked what he needed to tie and also what he wanted to eat. Edwin told him he needed everything to tie, and he also replied, I will eat absolutely anything, as long as it's not disgusting a la McDonald's and in large quantities. I am after all still a student and a fairly starved one at that. The only reason we're including that is to drive home how annoying he is. Like Edwin, the guy is going grocery shopping. He's not going to be running you through a drive-thru. Yeah, come over here and say McDonald's is disgusting, little dweeb. Say it to my fucking face. Clearly never had a spicy

McChicin with a sprite. Fuck, loser. You know he's exactly the type of person to like frequently work it into the conversation that he doesn't own a TV. Oh, God, you're right. Breaking bad. Oh, I wouldn't know. I only read. Yeah, I hate this fucking guy. I'm just saying it. Was he, like, genetically engineered to be the most insufferable little torplet in history? Because I think he must have been. I think he was grown in a test tube in, like, the back of a Montessori school in Bushwick.

Ugh. Ugh. Anyway, you'll have to read the book because the interview with this guy, like, if you don't hate him already, you're going to. If you read that book, he's just insufferable. Anyway, despite his initial dedication to his musical career, Edwin was keen to get back to fly-tying. Getting his mom to ship him his birdie bag was out of the question, though, because some of his more rare ingredients would be flagged by customs. He tried desperately to rebuild his stores, but dead birds and antique shops were either prohibitively expensive or just not available. There were economic pressures at play as well. It was 2008, and the American financial crisis was blown up the risk for, family's stability. People weren't buying designer dogs like they used to. Not only that, but

Edwin was getting ready to start auditioning for professional orchestras, and our special boy needed a new flute. Not just any flute, though. He wanted a $20,000 golden flute. Fun fact, one, auditions happen behind a screen, and two, even professionals can't tell the difference between an expensive flute and a cheap flute. Yeah. But then how would people know that our extra special boy was extra special. It was then he remembered a nice email he'd gotten from his buddy and fellow feather fetishist Luke before he'd left the States. Maybe between flute performances, Luke suggested, Edwin could visit this place he'd heard of. It was the Natural History Museum in Tring,

and they had drawers upon drawers of birds. According to the feather thief, the museum's collection is stunningly extensive. Quote, the museum's ornithological collection included 700,000 skins, 15,000 skeletons, 17,000 specimens in spirit, full birds pickled in large jars, 4,000 nests, and 400,000 sets of eggs. Over two kilometers of shelves were needed to hold the birds in spirit alone. The specimens safeguarded there represented about 95% of the world's known species, which I mean, good God, do you know how many birds there are? So many. percent. If Edwin could get his hands on some of those specimens, he'd be set for life. That golden flute

he wanted would be his if he sold only four skins. Edwin checked the museum's website, and luckily they do allow visitors in the section, but only researchers and photographers, and he was neither. No matter, though. Edwin emailed the museum and told them that his buddy at Oxford needed some help with a project and needed photos of their birds of paradise specimens. The museum said that would probably be fine, but they would need to confirm with his friend. He gave them a fake email, and the confirmation for his visit came shortly. Did he have an Oxford domain email address? See, I couldn't figure that out.

Surely an official natural history museum wouldn't let a guy with an email address like definitely not a thief at hotmail.com. Just say, uh, yeah, I totally want my friend, not me, my friend, to go into your super rare bird vault. thanks, bye. It's like rare museum quality feathers for sale at Gmail. Nick Cage National Treasure at AOL.com. Anyway, with his clearances taken care of, Edwin made his way to the museum, armed with an SLR camera.

The museum led him into their archives without much fuss. All they asked him to do was sign into their visitor's log. Now, campers, let's say you're planning a heist and your first step is staking out your target. And by some miracle, you're allowed inside and all you have to do is sign a logbook. They don't even call your references. What do you sign? If you said a fake name, you are light years ahead of boy genius over here who signed the logbook with his full Christian name. Wait, are we sure he's a genius?

I mean... According to everyone around him, he is. Okay, but wait a second. Doesn't that mean... That the police and the museum had all the evidence to find the perpetrator and it still took them a year anyway? Yeah. Yeah.

Everybody in this case is a goober. Dude, he stole feathers for fishermen who don't fish. This entire case is stupid. So Edwin took his camera and carefully took photos of each bird he was interested. in making sure to also take a photo of its cabinet to remember the location when he got home the plan was truly starting to take form in his mind he opened up a word document on his computer and saved it as plan for museum invasion doc Oh, holy shit.

Plan for museum invasion doc. I just, this boy has zero imagination. Yeah. Just no pizzazz. It is straightforward and to the point. The first thing he did in his document was making a list of all the things he'd need. Like a glass cutter, latex gloves. grappling hooks because apparently he maybe he doesn't own a TV but he thought Batman was a documentary

yeah the first items he obtained were the gloves he was sitting in an examination room at the doctor and thought oh I could use those and pocketed them which is so weird I'm gonna pinch some gloves from the doc no big deal then using his eBay account, flute player in 1988, he ordered a diamond blade glass cutter and moth balls to prevent insects from eating his treasures. He studied maps at the museum and the town of Tring. He would have to complete the heist before term ended on July 1st, so he decided that the 23rd of June would be the day. And we all know how that went. It wasn't until July 28, 2009, when Tring's senior curator Mark Adams was walking a researcher

down the stacks of their vault when he opened up one of the drawers to show the researchers some specimens. To his horror, it was empty. Panicked, he opened another drawer. In another. All empty. Oh, my gosh. The staff then scrambled to audit their stores.

They realized they were missing 299 birds. Oh, wow. Detective Adele Hopkins was assigned to the case and frankly, it baffled her. Who on earth would steal some dead birds? By her and her teen's estimation, the missing birds could have filled up to six trash bags.

Or just one nerd's suitcase. The investigation was almost immediately cold. The initial investigation hadn't turned up much and they hadn't pulled the CCTV footage. The tapes were erased every 28 days and had now been 34. Under the window that had been broken, Detective Hopkins noticed some shattered glass with blood, a piece of latex glove, and a glass cutter.

Somehow, the first investigators missed this crucial evidence. Hopkins sent the items to forensics. Goobers. All goobers. So many goobers. So many goobers. Meanwhile, Edwin got to work selling his wares. He bought a thousand tiny Ziploc bags. It was like a drug dealer.

He posted on the classic flytying forum, titling it Indian Crow Feathers for sale. buying a new flute. He wrote, all are super A quality. I have limited numbers, so first come, first serve. There is no limit on the number of feathers you can buy at a time. Prices are Scutatus large, 10 feathers, $95, 10 medium, $85, 10 small, $80. Granodensis, 10 large, $120, 10 medium, 95, 10 small, 90, and they started selling like hotcakes. He also sold some at various fly tie-tying shows. He sent some to a friend, Long Nguyen, in Norway, who helped him sell skins on eBay to avoid attention. Despite the previously starving students suddenly coming into rare bird skins, the community didn't seem to notice anything off. To them, it was just yet another

source of their addiction to tap. Edwin's feathers were making a splash everywhere, except the police station. In May of 2010, the case was well and truly cold. It wasn't until one of Edwin's customers was showing off a blue chatterer specimen at the Dutch fly fair to another fly tire known only as Irish, noticed how good the specimen was. Usually, the bird's fly tires work with are in rough shape, worn, plucked, or cut up, but this one was museum quality. Irish asked the guy where he'd gotten it, and he replied that he'd bought them on the classic fly-tying forum from some kid on eBay. Irish was, well, Irish, and remembered hearing about the Tringheist the before. He looked up the feather sales on classic fly tying and found sales from an eBay

user called flute player 1988. With that in mind, he called the Tring Police Station and told them to look up flute player 1988. Good for him. Good job, Irish. Good job. Detective Hopkins requested the info from eBay, and that was the first time she heard the name Edwin Rist and that he'd purchased like the most suspicious things possible. Again, a goober, a glass cutter, mothballs, and a thousand tiny little Ziplocs. He bingo. He was a documented student at the Royal Academy of Music, but the term ended two weeks ago and Edwin was back in the U.S.

There was little chance of getting an extradition, and her department didn't have the budget to send her to the U.S. for an interrogation. She'd have to wait. Again. And wait, she did. Until November 12, 2010, when she knocked on Edwin wrist's door and put the habeas grabbis on him. Edwin pretty much immediately admitted to what he'd done. Some of the bird skins were still in his apartment, so there was really no point in lying.

He also admitted to stealing a TV from his school for some reason, but he wasn't charged with that. Of 299 specimens stolen, 174 were recovered. Of those, only 102 still had their biodata labels, meaning the rest were scientifically useless, which just makes me want to... I'm so mad. A third of the birds that Edwin took were able to be returned to the Tring Museum. A third.

125 were still missing. Edwin Rist was eventually charged with money laundering and theft and pleaded guilty. For his sentencing, his defense had him meet with a prominent British psychologist, Dr. Simon Baron Cohen. Wait, hang on. Yep. Yeah, there is a relation to Sasha Baron Cohen. Simon is his cousin. Okay.

It's Borat's cousin. This solidifies my theory that everyone in England actually does know each other. You could play six degrees of Sasha Barron and everyone would be like two degrees away. Yeah. So as if this case needed like one more absurd detail, we've got Borat's fricking cousin. Simon. In interviewing the guy. Simon Baron Cohen.

Who the fuck knew? Anyway, so Simon met with Ed. Edwin and concluded that Edwin's motivations were not financial. Instead, it was his so over-focused on this art form and all its intricate detail that he developed a classic form of tunnel vision in only being able to think about the materials and the products he aspired to make and not about the social consequences for himself or others. That's my Simon Baron-Cohen impression there. I like it. That's good.

I guess Edwin forgot to tell him about his golden flute, huh? Yeah, slipped his mind. Simon ultimately diagnosed Edwin with Asperger syndrome, which is a now out-of-date diagnosis of autism. In his letter to the court, he wrote, I am persuaded that the shock of being arrested, the shock of how his reputation as a very serious artist and a world leader in the fly-dying community has been badly affected, and the feedback from that community and from the police and negative media coverage of the crime have all led to him learning a sobering lesson, such that the risk of him committing a similar crime in the future,

is negligible. So, basically, his autism made him do it, and he's just a tiny baby who shouldn't be held responsible for his actions. Yeah, that is such a gross, like, weird ableist, actually, view of autism. Like, I can't imagine anybody I know with autism would be flattered by that diagnosis. Mm-mm, mm-mm. I imagine not. What fucks me up even more, though, is that it fucking worked.

Of course it did. Gross. Edwin ultimately was sentenced to a 12-month suspended term only to be served if he re-offended in that time. Edwin, of course, did not re-offend and is now a concert flautist in Germany. He uploads videos of himself doing flute covers of metal music and has faced almost no consequences for his actions. Yeah, and if I remember correctly, one of those songs that he put up was Master of Puppets by Metallica, which is just the weirdest song to play on the flute. play the flute, okay? That's the weirdest

song to play on the flute. Yeah. Like, why would you want to do master puppets? I'll tell you why. For the same reason that he doesn't like McDonald's and he's never had Cheeto fingers and he wants to tell everybody he doesn't own a TV because he's an insufferable little twat basket and he wants to be like

yeah, I'm going to try this one because it's not in any way, shape, or form appropriate to play on the fucking flute. Anyway, I feel like we shouldn't have to say this. But please don't send him any hate or anything. Like, keep it here.

We're making fun of him enough. Leave him alone. Edwin has to spend the rest of his life being Edwin. Okay. And honestly, that's almost punishment enough. A lot of people react to this case with a, so what? Like, those birds were moldering away in storage in a museum. No one was even really looking at them.

It took them a month to even realize they were gone. Edwin himself, in an insufferable interview, with Kirk Johnson, author of The Feather Thief, said that his theft probably saved some of the rare birds from being poached. Hibbleshit. Yeah. But here's the thing. Animal specimens serve a scientific purpose.

Scientists had used the museum stores to prove that mercury levels and coastal species were on the rise. The eggs in the museum's collection had helped prove that the pesticide DDT was causing eggshell thinning, and scientists are still using specimens at Tring to discover more about endangered and extinct species. Also, they weren't Edwins to take. They didn't belong to him. They didn't belong to the fly tires. They were little messengers from the past, showing us how to move forward. And now we have lost hundreds of precious links just because some weirdos can't fathom using some turkey feathers instead of an endangered species.

Yeah, not everything is for your grubby little fingers. Oh, yeah. Ugh. Ornithologist Dr. Richard O'Prom really got to the heart of this case when he said, When I work with feathers, knowledge is a consequence. When I pluck a feather and destroy it, we discover things about the world that nobody knew before. Meanwhile, he said, Edwin and his fellow feather freaks were participating in a, quote, candy-ass, ridiculous parasitic activity that serves nothing and no one.

Amen. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again. around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Stephanie, Isabella, Miriam, Claire, Leanne, Emily, and Michael. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show get every episode ad-free, at least a day early, sometimes even two,

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