Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio Zaren Burnett.
Speaker 2: Hey, Elizabeth Dutton, how are you? I'm doing all right?
Speaker 2: Does my hair look good?
Speaker 3: Looks amazing? It looks so good. Oh it's really nice.
Speaker 3: You know, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, do I MRI scans? You know about
Speaker 2: those them? Okay? Yeah, so they're magnetic resonance imagery. They
Speaker 2: getting that two the magnets inside. You know, they're really
Speaker 2: strong right there, two hundred times stronger than your average
Speaker 2: magnets you have for that size. Now, Americans, you know
Speaker 2: how they are, right? They love their guns. So this
Speaker 2: Wisconsin woman she was getting into an MRI and they
Speaker 2: asked her, oh, ma'am, do you have any metal you
Speaker 2: in your pockets? Because it'll be a problem for the magnet.
Speaker 2: She's like, I do not. Turns out she was lying
Speaker 2: or wrong or forgot, who knows she had metal on
Speaker 2: her pockets? Elizabeth, she had a gun.
Speaker 3: She had a gun on her and oh yeah, you
Speaker 3: know what happened.
Speaker 2: The MRI machine It triggered the gun. The gun shot
Speaker 2: her in that she got shot her own gun, and
Speaker 2: they had the MR right there to watch it happens.
Speaker 2: I would love to see the imagery of that a
Speaker 2: gun shot recorded that. We found out about this because
Speaker 2: a report got submitted to the FDA's Manufacturer and User
Speaker 2: Facility Device Experience, a voluntary reporting site for accidents involving
Speaker 2: medical devices. That's how we find out about this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so she was fine, only a flesh loan. She had
Speaker 2: plenty of butt for the bullet to hit. And no
Speaker 2: one else was hurt either. So there you go, boom,
Speaker 2: ridiculous bringing a gun into a hospital. I don't care what.
Speaker 3: Happens to you.
Speaker 2: And the question do you have any gun? Do you
Speaker 2: have any metal on you? Nope, no, nope, it should disaswered.
Speaker 2: Do you have a gun on you? You're an American?
Speaker 2: Do you have a gun on you? That that counts?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, I mean like your car keys.
Speaker 3: That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 3: Do you want to know what else is reading?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it came for here, for.
Speaker 3: Dealing books and not even being from Modesto. What this
Speaker 3: is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous caper's
Speaker 3: heiss and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free
Speaker 3: and one hundred percent ridiculous. Right do you do you
Speaker 3: remember the book thief from Modesto. Yes, and then the
Speaker 3: biblio Dick.
Speaker 2: The Bibliadic's my favorite.
Speaker 3: Well, you know there are more thieves out there, book thieves.
Speaker 3: These are their stories. Yes, dog, so Ed Maggs. He's
Speaker 3: a fifth generation co owner of what was Queen Elizabeth's
Speaker 3: favorite bookstore.
Speaker 2: Wait, there's a bookstore named Ed owner named.
Speaker 3: Ed maggsg Mags, and he owns Mags Brothers.
Speaker 2: I love this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He once told Vanity Fair that quote, the problem of
Speaker 3: the connoisseur book thief is a real one.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a real one, real one, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: We're about to see that written largely. I got three
Speaker 3: Biggins for you. I love the Let's start in jolly
Speaker 3: old England. This one has some oceans, eleven qualities too,
Speaker 3: and mission impossible.
Speaker 2: You're talking.
Speaker 3: I love that. Stuff's very cinematic. They're also Eastern Europeans.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, great modern cinematic crime villains. Let's talk
Speaker 3: about the Feltham book heist. What book I felt them
Speaker 3: Feltham f E L T h A M. It's not Feltem,
Speaker 3: Feltem Feltham whatever.
Speaker 2: It's in West London.
Speaker 5: Oh like felt Ham who felt this Ham, the Feltham
Speaker 5: book heist.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. People the UK are just like like
Speaker 3: they're having a physical response.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm so sorry about that. But we're Americans.
Speaker 3: They're having like an anal squeeze over it. The Feltham
Speaker 3: book heist in West London. So this is this place.
Speaker 3: This is the home of Frontier Forwarding Warehouse and it's
Speaker 3: a bonded warehouse for secure storage of goods that go
Speaker 3: in and out of Heathrow Airport. They had like custom
Speaker 3: services there. It's the hub for European air freight shipments.
Speaker 3: So February twenty seventeen, the California International Antiquarian Book Fair
Speaker 3: was scheduled to take place in California, Oakland, California, at
Speaker 3: the Oakland Marriott City Center right there at Broadway in Tenth, Okay.
Speaker 3: And it was going to feature collections and like rear
Speaker 3: treasures of nearly two hundred booksellers from over twenty different countries,
Speaker 3: and it was recognized as one of the world's largest
Speaker 3: and most prestigious exhibitions of antiquarian books.
Speaker 2: Happened in our backyard. I don't even know about this.
Speaker 3: I know in the run up to this book fair,
Speaker 3: book dealers prepped to have their finest wares shipped to Oakland,
Speaker 3: which like nowadays I think, and at the Frontier Forwarding
Speaker 3: Warehouse in Feltham crates of books from three dealers. There's
Speaker 3: two Italians and a German. They arrived on January twenty eighth,
Speaker 3: and these rare valuable tomes. They were only going to
Speaker 3: be there for like a little more than twenty four
Speaker 3: hours and then off they would fly to the Golden State.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you know about the Italians and Germans. They
Speaker 2: loved your team up, so I can see this.
Speaker 3: They just came by air. So but crime interrupted these
Speaker 3: plants and so January twenty ninth, twenty seventeen, a crew struck.
Speaker 3: And when I say struck, they pulled off a heist
Speaker 3: with mission impossible levels of precision. Yes, it started. A
Speaker 3: car pulls up to the side of the road near
Speaker 3: the warehouse. Two men get out, and then the car
Speaker 3: drives off. The men cut a hole in the fence
Speaker 3: and they head towards the building. And that's all anyone
Speaker 3: had of these guys on camera. And after that they're invisible,
Speaker 3: like they're.
Speaker 2: Just out out camera.
Speaker 3: A camera shots somehow they scale the sheer wall, the
Speaker 3: blind spots. They scale the sheer wall of the warehouse.
Speaker 3: There's like no little outcroppings on which to get a foothold, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Slither up the side cartoon suction cups.
Speaker 3: Yes, And they get onto this steep roof that's on there,
Speaker 3: and they pop open the skylight and then like the
Speaker 3: warehouse is rigged up with state of the art security.
Speaker 3: There's alarms, there's like you know, motion sensors, cameras. They
Speaker 3: don't trigger a thing. Wow, nothing, no alarms, no cameras.
Speaker 3: They used either ropes or like ladders to descend into
Speaker 3: the warehouse, apparently very slowly, so they don't trigger anything.
Speaker 3: And they made their way to these crates of books.
Speaker 3: Now there's other valuable stuff in the warehouse, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, other stuff you don't steal and sell.
Speaker 2: It's a bonded warehouse. It's a way.
Speaker 3: Station for valuable goods. They ignored everything but the books,
Speaker 3: well not everything. There was a shipment of large, heavy
Speaker 3: canvas tote bags and they broke that open and took
Speaker 3: the tote bags to haul out their loot.
Speaker 2: I guess that it was listed on the outside of
Speaker 2: the box. Okay, and so.
Speaker 3: They go through the books in like a really meticulous man.
Speaker 3: It took five hours to pick out the ones they wanted.
Speaker 2: I just thought that these books are getting stolen before
Speaker 2: they get to Oakland.
Speaker 3: You know, don't want to blame us e eccastically, So
Speaker 3: the stolen items included more than one hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: rare books. Wow, here's some notable ones. Albert Einstein's own
Speaker 3: sixteen to twenty one copy of Johannes Kepler's The Cosmic Mystery,
Speaker 3: where he lays out his theory of planetary motion. A
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy seven edition of Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of
Speaker 3: Natural Philosophy. A fourteen ninety seven update of the first
Speaker 3: book written about women, concerning Famous Women. A fifteen sixty
Speaker 3: nine version of Dante's Divine Comedy A Sheath that had
Speaker 3: eighty Goya prints in it. A fifteen sixty six Latin
Speaker 3: edition of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres by Copernicus. Oh,
Speaker 3: and then that one alone is where two hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety three thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars has to be.
Speaker 3: All said, the missing books are valued at more than
Speaker 3: three point four million dollars and they were worth a
Speaker 3: lot more than that because a lot of them had
Speaker 3: handwritten notes in.
Speaker 2: Them Einstein's top these are like adding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and most of the books could just irreplaceable. You
Speaker 3: could not replace them. The next morning Scotland Yards called
Speaker 3: in and they are just blown away. This is like
Speaker 3: something out of the movies. In the middle of the
Speaker 3: warehouse or the three empty metal cases where the books
Speaker 3: had been lesser books kind of strewn on the floor,
Speaker 3: skylights still open. So forensic teams they get to work
Speaker 3: scouring the scene for clues. And when one of the
Speaker 3: Italian book dealers was called and told about the theft,
Speaker 3: he almost fainted. I mean he freaks out. He rushes
Speaker 3: to the airport in Padua and catches the next flight
Speaker 3: to London. The German dealer couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Speaker 3: He told Vanity Fair quote, I had never heard of
Speaker 3: so many books being stolen at once. Insurance fraud, somebody
Speaker 3: who wanted to harm one of us, a book lover
Speaker 3: who wanted to have one item and threw away the
Speaker 3: rest of the books cover his intentions. That was that's
Speaker 3: a you know, convoluted way.
Speaker 2: They left all this hemingway behind. What the hell.
Speaker 3: All three of the dealers were worried that the theft
Speaker 3: would just ruin them financially. These are the prize positions,
Speaker 3: the guest items. Meanwhile, the heist crew kept moving and
Speaker 3: they have.
Speaker 2: To know, like, I mean, this is like an inside
Speaker 2: inside job. I mean, this is a place in a warehouse.
Speaker 2: You have to know they're going to the warehouse. You
Speaker 2: have to know that these books are in there.
Speaker 3: I mean this is like, so they get the books
Speaker 3: out to a house in London and then to the
Speaker 3: chunnel and then to the continent.
Speaker 2: Gone. Yeah wow.
Speaker 3: And they weren't just moving the books out of the country.
Speaker 3: They were striking again and again. Yeah, other warehouses were hit.
Speaker 2: On the way. They're like, let's just hit a couple
Speaker 2: of more jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's in one they stole a huge number of
Speaker 3: Lenovo laptops and like put a pin in the in
Speaker 3: the laptops will come back to that. So remember the
Speaker 3: footage of the guys cutting into the fence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they were not seen again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, police were able to track down the car are
Speaker 3: in the video. It was wiped clean, but a forensic
Speaker 3: tech was able to find one single hair on the headrest.
Speaker 3: It was logged. No matches pop up. Meanwhile, in Romania,
Speaker 3: Elena Albu she's the chief prosecutor of organized crime in
Speaker 3: Romania and there's there's.
Speaker 2: A lot of work for her to Yes, she's a
Speaker 2: busy lady. Yeah.
Speaker 3: A couple of weeks after the book how she gets
Speaker 3: a call and the tipster tells her that the thieves
Speaker 3: at the heist were Romanian and here they got names too, Elena,
Speaker 3: check it out. Tea Zoo, Blondie and Christi the Bruiser.
Speaker 2: I love Christi. So these are the people.
Speaker 3: Basically, these are members She hadn't heard of some of these, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I bet not. They're members of Clumparu. And this is
Speaker 3: an absolutely horrific gang like think coke and human trafficking,
Speaker 3: run by an absolute monster named i Clumparu aka Pighead aka.
Speaker 2: The Godfather pig Head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he's just a big like sick next.
Speaker 2: Oh, I get the idea. But your criminal nickname is Pighead. Yeah, like, oh.
Speaker 3: MANI he's doing a thirty year stretch for his crimes.
Speaker 3: But his protege, Gavrel popin Chiuk, he started his own
Speaker 3: crew and he saw all the Pighead's mistakes as like
Speaker 3: lessons of what to avoid.
Speaker 2: He learned from Pigett.
Speaker 3: He learned from Pigott, and so as a result, he
Speaker 3: created a criminal network that carried out targeted strikes of
Speaker 3: property crime in other areas of Europe. It's like nothing
Speaker 3: on Romanian soil, and everything was ever rotating. Crews would
Speaker 3: pull off a heist and then hand the goods to
Speaker 3: a newly arrived transport crew before immediately leaving the country,
Speaker 3: and then the transport crew would move the goods to
Speaker 3: another location. Then they'd rotate out of the country while
Speaker 3: a new crew got those goods out of the country.
Speaker 3: So they're just constantly rotating. Some of the stolen stuff
Speaker 3: was fenced, some was us this collateral for things, and
Speaker 3: some was stolen especially for like a particular person.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I told you about a similar crew of the
Speaker 3: Pink Panthers before. Yes, those were Yaks, Yugoslavians, Albanians, Croatians
Speaker 3: and Serbians. But these these guys, they're just Romanians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3: So people exactly your people.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: So Alena Albu and then Tiberius Minea. Tiberius is head
Speaker 3: of organized crime investigations for the Romanian National Police. They
Speaker 3: get in touch with Scotland Yard because they're like, we
Speaker 3: just got this huge tip, this is the break they'd
Speaker 3: been hoping for. So papin Chiuk, he's well known to
Speaker 3: the Romanian authorities and he was like he was always
Speaker 3: he was the mastermind, never a foot soldier. But Romanian
Speaker 3: authorities had like a good notion of who he used
Speaker 3: to carry out his dirty work across Europe. In fact,
Speaker 3: they had just busted a guy named Narses Popescu and
Speaker 3: he was stopped while driving and the cops found a
Speaker 3: ton of electronics in his Van Lenovo laptized. Hey, it
Speaker 3: could all be traced back to a warehouse break in
Speaker 3: in England. So the cops they ran his DNA against
Speaker 3: the hair in the car found ditched in South London
Speaker 3: and they got a hit. Whoa yeah. So then DNA
Speaker 3: was also recovered from a piece of metal in the warehouse,
Speaker 3: like touch DNA. So now that the authorities had the
Speaker 3: identity of the purpse, they were able to backtrack their
Speaker 3: movements in the days leading up to the burglary. Eventually
Speaker 3: they're able to connect the crew to twelve different warehouse
Speaker 3: hes and you know they were good every time they
Speaker 3: slipped in and out without detection and adding it all up,
Speaker 3: they got like five million dollars in stuff in this
Speaker 3: little spree theirs.
Speaker 2: Did they ever find out how these guys were doing
Speaker 2: their stuff?
Speaker 3: No, no, So Scotland, Yard, Romanians and then Europeol they
Speaker 3: they got all together and they were able to identify
Speaker 3: all of the various men and then they came up
Speaker 3: with what they called Z day Xerenday twenty fifth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: So on that day, one hundred and fifty police officers
Speaker 3: spread out simultaneously and searched forty five houses in other
Speaker 3: kind of locations in England, Italy, Germany, Romania. Thirteen men
Speaker 3: were arrested and then sent to England to stand trial.
Speaker 3: All of them pleaded innocent.
Speaker 2: Of course, good good on them. You kind of got
Speaker 2: to Yeah.
Speaker 3: The trial started on February twentieth, twenty twenty. Think about
Speaker 3: that date.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going right into COVID.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. Trial did last long because COVID lockdown kicked
Speaker 3: in just a couple of weeks later everything ground to
Speaker 3: a halt. This was a huge case and like tons
Speaker 3: of witnesses, evidence and hubbub, but you know you got
Speaker 3: this global pandemic wreaking habit. Court gets canceled. The defendants
Speaker 3: are told to sit in stew and jail until things
Speaker 3: open back up. And like remember back in that time,
Speaker 3: we were like, oh, it'll be like two weeks, three
Speaker 3: weeks for yeah. Oh boy. So the guys they realized
Speaker 3: this is going to drag on after a while, and
Speaker 3: on the advice of council, all all but one pleaded guilty.
Speaker 2: All but one.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Judge Jonathan Davies said, quote, each of you joined
Speaker 3: and played a part in a criminal enterprise carried out
Speaker 3: with skill and determination. You took risks with your eyes open.
Speaker 3: This was a carefully planned operation, often carried out with
Speaker 3: mission impossible skill.
Speaker 2: Bravo. So yeah, I'm gonna wap you guys up, come on,
Speaker 2: give it up.
Speaker 3: They all got reduction for pandemic conditions.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, the release release.
Speaker 3: Yeah. On their sentences. The foot Soldiers got three to
Speaker 3: four years based you know depending Papinciok he got five
Speaker 3: years and eight months. And like none of them would
Speaker 3: reveal how they knew to hit the warehouse at that
Speaker 3: specific time. For those specific books. Everyone's like there had
Speaker 3: to be an insider, but they never found out who
Speaker 3: could be.
Speaker 2: So there's some criminal overlord who is a reader and
Speaker 2: he's like, I need my like and also the scientific
Speaker 2: book code.
Speaker 3: Well here's the thing though, what happened to the books?
Speaker 2: Why Neil de grass Tyson pay for this? That's why
Speaker 2: I want to know.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so they still they're trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what did happen in the books? Was there like a
Speaker 3: criminal who's you know, a science guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, I really wanted my own copy of
Speaker 2: Principal mathematic.
Speaker 3: Grass Tyson order this hit. Two of the men who
Speaker 3: were convicted were brothers, and authorities were aware of the
Speaker 3: fact that they had built a really large house very
Speaker 3: recently right next to their parents' place out in the
Speaker 3: country in Romania, and they figured, you know, we should
Speaker 3: check this new construction.
Speaker 2: Can I dig guys?
Speaker 3: So the cops they go. They busted up a six
Speaker 3: inch slab of concrete over the garage floor and underneath
Speaker 3: there was a board and Tiberius, right, he's on hand,
Speaker 3: He's the one who gets to lift the board.
Speaker 2: They made him lift the board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he said, quote it was very tense. I was
Speaker 3: really worried about damaging the books. We'd work so long
Speaker 3: and hard to arrive at that moment. And then so
Speaker 3: they lift the board and there's an underground bunker and
Speaker 3: that's where the books all were. So most of them
Speaker 3: are in recycling bins. Some were still in the canvas
Speaker 3: totes from the heist. Yeah, the authorities they took the
Speaker 3: books and they moved them to a climate controlled room
Speaker 3: at the National Library in Bucharest, and the book dealers
Speaker 3: they all descend to like claim their precious cargo. Only
Speaker 3: a couple of the books were damaged, but it was
Speaker 3: all really small stuff that could easily be fixed, like
Speaker 3: a little bit of water, Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: There were only four books missing, but they weren't like
Speaker 3: the big ticket items. Book dealer Biselobado, he's the one
Speaker 3: who came from Padua. He said quote, I had given
Speaker 3: up hope. When I saw them, I felt like the
Speaker 3: youngest book dealer in the world. They were fantastic books.
Speaker 2: The youngest, whole life of promise of book dealing lay
Speaker 2: before me.
Speaker 3: So that night, the book dealers and then like the
Speaker 3: Romanian cops, the English cops, they all got together for
Speaker 3: dinner at a restaurant in Brest.
Speaker 2: They read from the books.
Speaker 3: Well in bizzello, he yells out, tonight we drink like lions.
Speaker 2: Wow, these guys are on boy.
Speaker 3: So that that's we got a happy I like that.
Speaker 2: Way to go.
Speaker 3: Let's get a glass of water, stretch our legs. Here's
Speaker 3: some ads. When we get back, I'll hit you with
Speaker 3: another book. Heist zaren a bit. Let's stay in Europe.
Speaker 2: I like it there not, I got my passport on me.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: I like Italy, and that's where we're going for this
Speaker 3: next book. Heist.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like Yugoslavia, but it's not a country anymore.
Speaker 2: It's okay, I can't go there.
Speaker 3: Let's try Italy.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: My mom's favorite city in Italy is Naples. Really, she
Speaker 3: loves place.
Speaker 2: I mean nothing against Naples. I'm not like doubting, but.
Speaker 3: What it loves everything about it?
Speaker 2: Okay. I mean I love Milan, but I really love Bologna,
Speaker 2: which is not said a lot of people talk about,
Speaker 2: but one of my favorites of all Italy. So Naples
Speaker 2: is it? The food? Is that the art?
Speaker 3: Culture is the art the culture? She said, it's gritty
Speaker 3: that it's that so this.
Speaker 2: One goes out to the monis like the edge much
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: So the Biblioteca giro Lamini in Naples. It's one of
Speaker 3: the oldest and most prestigious libraries in Italy. It's located
Speaker 3: inside the sixteenth century church complex right in the middle
Speaker 3: of Naples.
Speaker 2: All the best libraries are.
Speaker 3: Oh, totally, and it looks like you'd imagine like this
Speaker 3: isn't some modern glass and steel, climate controlled vault. Totally
Speaker 3: Like I'm talking rich dark wooden shelves soaring up to
Speaker 3: cathedral ceilings, ornate designs, gilded walls, you know those like
Speaker 3: long ladders that reach the top.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 3: You know how some people have zoom backgrounds with like
Speaker 3: lux European libraries. Why have you noted that? But that's
Speaker 3: what this looks like. What's your zoom background?
Speaker 2: By the way, I just I just make it blurry
Speaker 2: and because I have dreads and makes it constantly interesting
Speaker 2: where it doesn't know how to cut off my hair.
Speaker 2: So I'm just moving in out of this weird filter.
Speaker 3: Space so you don't raw dog it and just have
Speaker 3: I used to do that, but.
Speaker 2: People kept commenting on like all the stuff behind me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, you people are weird not doing that anymore. Blur.
Speaker 3: There's too much this detectable in the blur.
Speaker 2: I don't care. I'm just like I don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it.
Speaker 3: I have like a blaze.
Speaker 2: I just like a blue, like a having a solid background.
Speaker 2: So do you have like a fixed thing? Wow, look
Speaker 2: at us, solid blue. I don't zoom with you. No,
Speaker 2: we don't. And let's keep it that okay.
Speaker 3: Hey anyway. Biblioteca giro Lamini. It contains an extensive collection
Speaker 3: of rare books and manuscripts, and like for years people
Speaker 3: would visit from all over to marvel at the wonders
Speaker 3: with him.
Speaker 2: They should.
Speaker 3: They had a fifteen eighteen edition of Thomas Moore's Utopia
Speaker 3: yea Galileo's sixteen ten treatise Siderus Nincius, containing more than
Speaker 3: seventy drawings of the moon and the stars.
Speaker 2: Give it up to my heretics.
Speaker 3: Kepler's Study of the Motions of Mars Astrona Mia Nova.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be one of the greatest books in
Speaker 3: the hit story of astronomy.
Speaker 2: It was the new astronomy at the time. Elizabeth, It's
Speaker 2: right there.
Speaker 3: But you know, in the eighties, the library fell into disrepair.
Speaker 2: Yes to everyone.
Speaker 3: I was like that museum in Brazil I told you
Speaker 3: about with the dinosaurs. Oh what like, we don't take
Speaker 3: enough care of our cultural institutions and.
Speaker 2: We can't even blame Reagan for this one.
Speaker 3: No, sadly, and so that that's what happened in Naples.
Speaker 3: They didn't have the money to restore it or like
Speaker 3: fully staff it. So it's it's closed to the public,
Speaker 3: but academics could still act okay cool, and they still had,
Speaker 3: you know, librarians working there. Zeren close your eyes.
Speaker 2: Whoa okay closed?
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it.
Speaker 2: It's spring twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: You are an art history graduate student at Universita del
Speaker 3: Sturdi de Napoli Fredridue. The university was founded in twelve
Speaker 3: twenty four and is the world's oldest state funded university
Speaker 3: in continuous operation. You have the great honor of studying
Speaker 3: under famed art historian and academic Professor Tomaso Montenari. The
Speaker 3: Florentine scholar is an expert in Baroque art, and he's
Speaker 3: written more than one hundred scholarly essays on the topic.
Speaker 3: The bespeckaled professor with a boyish haircut came to you
Speaker 3: a couple of days ago with concerning news. He'd received
Speaker 3: a call from a brother and sister who work at
Speaker 3: the Biblioteca Girolamini. They'd seen unsettling footage on the library's CCTV.
Speaker 3: They wanted Professore to take a look at the library
Speaker 3: and see for himself what was happening there. They said
Speaker 3: it was bad. You can't imagine what that means. Tamaso
Speaker 3: asked you to go with him to the library, as
Speaker 3: he wanted both a witness and some muscle. It's only
Speaker 3: a ten minute walk or so from the university to
Speaker 3: the library. As you walk down via Duomo, moped's whiz
Speaker 3: by and diner's chat at cafe tables on the sidewalk,
Speaker 3: you crossed via de Tribunali and share comments about Caravaggio's
Speaker 3: The Seven Works of Mercy House. Just here left in
Speaker 3: the Pio Monte de la Missicordia, you reached the Duomo
Speaker 3: di Napoli and you know you've arrived. Just across from
Speaker 3: the cathedral, filled with frescoes and candles and the stunning
Speaker 3: Baroque high altar, is the library, a once equally impressive
Speaker 3: building The library is shabby and has seen better days.
Speaker 3: The professor presses a doorbell on the main front door.
Speaker 3: As tourists and Vesco's speed by you. There's a buzz
Speaker 3: and a door on locks. You push it open and
Speaker 3: escape from the hot sun the din of the bright
Speaker 3: street into the silent tomb.
Speaker 2: Of the library entryway.
Speaker 3: Your footsteps echo off the marble floors as you cross
Speaker 3: through the main library room. It looks dusty, but none
Speaker 3: worse for wear.
Speaker 2: Bonjana.
Speaker 3: The professor calls out silence. You proceed into the back
Speaker 3: of the library, into the rare books area. The professor
Speaker 3: lets how to gasp when you round a corner. The
Speaker 3: bookshelves are empty. On tabletops and on the floor, books
Speaker 3: and loose papers are piled into random jumbles. You walk
Speaker 3: into the next bookroom, it's the same books everywhere the floor.
Speaker 3: On stairs, you hear a weak and papers slide from
Speaker 3: a crowded tabletop to the floor. A mouse scurries out
Speaker 3: of the pile and ducks under a doorway. As you walk,
Speaker 3: you stumble on potato chip bags and accidentally kick an
Speaker 3: empty soda can across the room. You hear a tapping sound.
Speaker 3: You and the professor turn you recognize that sound. It's
Speaker 3: the sound of a dog's nails on a tile floor.
Speaker 3: A scruffy pup sticks his head around the corner, a
Speaker 3: bone in its mouth. You've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 3: This is outrageous, the professor yells. The dog knows when
Speaker 3: he's not welcome, so he trots off in the direction
Speaker 3: of the back of the library. You hear quiet footsteps,
Speaker 3: the soft souls of a librarian. A woman enters the room.
Speaker 3: Come this way, she tells you. You and the professor
Speaker 3: follow her down a hall to an alcove by.
Speaker 2: A fire exit.
Speaker 3: There are no CCTV cameras here.
Speaker 2: She leans in and whispers.
Speaker 3: Professor, the director has been looting the library. Well, who
Speaker 3: is this director?
Speaker 2: One?
Speaker 3: Marino Massimo Dico Dacao is a self taught bibliophile. No
Speaker 3: college degree. He studied law at the University of Siena,
Speaker 3: but he dropped out before getting a degree. He moved
Speaker 3: to Verona in nineteen ninety eight and he took a
Speaker 3: job as a communications director at a government office.
Speaker 5: Ah, the Ungentleman of run exactly, and then like around
Speaker 5: this time, he meets this Argentine book dealer at a
Speaker 5: bookfair in Milan, and so he gets that connection, and
Speaker 5: then he starts going to Argentina on the regular and
Speaker 5: he would like hang out with all the book collectors there.
Speaker 3: Eventually he met Cardinal Jorge Mahia, who's from Argentina and
Speaker 3: also happened to be the director of the Vatican Library.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it.
Speaker 3: Takaro gets access through him to the Vatican Library's card catalog.
Speaker 3: So he's just like this operator. In February of two
Speaker 3: thousand and three, Tacaro gave the Vatican Library sixteen books
Speaker 3: printed before fifteen oh one and three fifteenth century manuscripts
Speaker 3: in total, all worth about a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Why do they give them books?
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like, yeah, they're broke.
Speaker 2: Like like they don't need Come on now whatever, All right,
Speaker 2: get into Heaven. Okay, fine, man.
Speaker 3: Well, in exchange, though, the Vatican gave him six books
Speaker 3: valued it more than a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're just trading books.
Speaker 3: They're trading books like baseball cards. Yeah, including three Galileo
Speaker 3: titles that had been owned by relatives of Pope Urban
Speaker 3: the Eighth.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Vatican was like, we got other copies of
Speaker 3: the Galileo text, no big like.
Speaker 2: We got us. We got a lot of his books.
Speaker 2: We'll give you some, right, we confiscated a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: And like the Pope's secretary totally.
Speaker 2: Authorized the deal. Of course, what do they care it? Right?
Speaker 3: So, however, there were people at the library who thought
Speaker 3: it hanky. I'm with them, yes, so much so that
Speaker 3: when they tried to broker a second deal, someone put
Speaker 3: the brakes on it.
Speaker 2: They're like, you need to stop this, Like, bro come on.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So twenty ten DeCaro he's named an advisor on
Speaker 3: energy issues to the Agriculture minister in the government of
Speaker 3: mister Bunga Bunga party himself, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Speaker 2: That's all I have to hear. I now know everything
Speaker 2: I need to know about this guy, get it.
Speaker 3: When that minister moved from agriculture to the Culture portfolio
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven, Dakaro went with him, and from there
Speaker 3: Jacaro starts lobbying to become the director of the library
Speaker 3: in Naples, and then in that same year they give
Speaker 3: him the gig. He's not qualified in any way other
Speaker 3: than just being like, I really like books and I
Speaker 3: know how to make deals with the Vatican Library.
Speaker 2: I hate the lack of respect for how like things
Speaker 2: like this it took a long time to create and
Speaker 2: to mag and these long traditions were like, well the
Speaker 2: hell once it worked? To you, Bob, we've turned everything
Speaker 2: into a commodity and there is nothing that isn't like,
Speaker 2: what will you give me for this?
Speaker 3: Exactly? So he gets the gig and then not even
Speaker 3: nine months later, it all starts to fall apart. Of course,
Speaker 3: So after the professor visited the library, he wrote an
Speaker 3: article about it in the paper, and then the cops
Speaker 3: launched an investigation.
Speaker 2: What kind of article do you have to write? The
Speaker 2: cops like, well, what is going on?
Speaker 3: Liter was like there was a dog with a bone
Speaker 3: in its mouth walking around the library and soda cans
Speaker 3: on the floor, like that's in there. So it turns
Speaker 3: out that like Tacaro got in and basically started looting
Speaker 3: the place, that sounds like, And eventually he's arrested. Major
Speaker 3: Antonio Coppola, the police chief in charge of the operation
Speaker 3: to like get all the books back. Copola, yeah, said quote.
Speaker 3: Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system
Speaker 3: in action. A group of people carried out a devastating
Speaker 3: systematic looting of the library. What strikes you was the
Speaker 3: complete lack of respect for these precious works. Many of
Speaker 3: them were thrown on the floor, chaos, rained shelves in
Speaker 3: which very important books, once rested, were now totally emptied.
Speaker 2: So another Coppola understands the respect. We need to pay
Speaker 2: a call exactly, So they all understand exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In all, it's estimated that Tacarro lifted about four thousand
Speaker 3: books from the library Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: In nine months?
Speaker 3: And it went like this, So at night he would
Speaker 3: turn off the library CCTV system, which was like limited anyway.
Speaker 3: And in one case there's well there's footage of him
Speaker 3: taking something and realizing the cameras there and then covering
Speaker 3: it up and then like so he and some associates
Speaker 3: they would just totally I forgot that one. They would
Speaker 3: just take books right off the shelf, like he had
Speaker 3: these little you know, minion.
Speaker 4: One.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the ones that are of particular value they put
Speaker 3: into boxes and they loaded those into vans outside. And
Speaker 3: sometimes they would just make piles next to the stacks
Speaker 3: as they scan through the books of real value. So
Speaker 3: they're like toss, keep toss, keep.
Speaker 2: I hate to know what they can do it. I
Speaker 2: guess it's just all monetary value.
Speaker 3: Yeah, completely. So he had a bookbinder who worked for him,
Speaker 3: and that guy's job was to remove the library stamps
Speaker 3: from the books, and in some cases they just ripped
Speaker 3: them out and like seriously damaged the books in doing so.
Speaker 3: Coppola said, sometimes they would even remove the binding of
Speaker 3: the book. Ah, he said, quote they wanted to make
Speaker 3: it impossible to trace them back. But some of the
Speaker 3: books had binding from the seventeenth century, which in some
Speaker 3: cases made the binding more valuable than the book.
Speaker 2: Wow, come on, guys.
Speaker 3: And so the books they made their way all over Europe,
Speaker 3: South America, Asia, they ended up with antique sellers, collectors,
Speaker 3: auction houses, suspects. Yeah, five hundred books went to a
Speaker 3: German auction house who paid a million euro advance on
Speaker 3: the lot. Yeah this, Coppola said, quote, this was only
Speaker 3: one load of the books. So you could imagine how
Speaker 3: much money they could have made from this looting if
Speaker 3: we and the courts hadn't stopped it. Yeah. He said
Speaker 3: that DeCaro was like a well known figure in all
Speaker 3: these these bookselling circles, and that quote he had some
Speaker 3: kind of political cover that enabled him, over the years
Speaker 3: to reach positions of responsibility and institutions more or less
Speaker 3: controlled by the Ministry for Culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I imagine him in like the mask on parties
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Totally, so they're like, you know, he says, yeah, I
Speaker 3: took him, but I did it because I was trying
Speaker 3: to raise money for the library and then the kids
Speaker 3: the library.
Speaker 2: Come on, you know, like, if.
Speaker 3: That's true, why are you removing all the markings and
Speaker 3: doing it not under cover of darkness and trash and.
Speaker 2: The joint people come up in lives like that, like, look,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to save it by destroying destroying. I'm not
Speaker 2: good at that.
Speaker 3: Come on. He wasn't the only one to go down
Speaker 3: for this, thank god. Well, the same prosecutors who go
Speaker 3: after the mafia in Naples, Yes, guys, they went after
Speaker 3: the book gang and the same investigation tactics. So Naples prosecutors,
Speaker 3: they focused on rare book dealers and collectors who may
Speaker 3: have bought the works.
Speaker 2: They created the network, they found it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they totally just dismantled the whole thing. The New
Speaker 3: York Times reported at the time, quote, they are slowly
Speaker 3: exposing the practices of the rare book market, where deception
Speaker 3: sometimes rains, prices can reach into the millions of dollars,
Speaker 3: and the trail often goes dead at the Swiss border.
Speaker 3: The international market absorbed without batting an eye books that
Speaker 3: they could not have known came from the Geralamini library.
Speaker 3: Giovanni Mililo, the Naples prosecutor who's leading the investigations, said
Speaker 3: in an interview this week the rule don't ask, don't
Speaker 3: tell is what governs the rare book market. He added,
Speaker 3: prosecutors have requested cooperation from across Europe, as well as
Speaker 3: from the United States and Argentina.
Speaker 2: It sounds like the rare book market is basically the
Speaker 2: art world with less cocaine and more dust.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, it's the bookish modern art world totally.
Speaker 3: One guy arrested was a priest responsible for security at
Speaker 3: the library. Like they no one was spared. Then there
Speaker 3: was Marcello Delutri. He was a senator and a member
Speaker 3: of Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party party. He was
Speaker 3: a close aid of Captain Bunga Bunga and was known
Speaker 3: to have mob ties, and it was said that he
Speaker 3: received about ten of the stolen books for his personal collection.
Speaker 2: Of course. Quote, Bosters love that kind of stingy.
Speaker 3: This is what his lawyer told BBC. Quote, he received
Speaker 3: some books as a free gift. As soon as he
Speaker 3: realized from newspaper reports that they probably came from the
Speaker 3: Jerlimini library, he contacted the authorities and gave him back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, since he realized there may be trouble, He's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess I can't keep these.
Speaker 3: But he didn't return a fifteen eighteen edition of Thomas
Speaker 3: Moore's Utopia. Really, and this is what his lawyer said,
Speaker 3: quote regarding the other book, we're speaking about a book
Speaker 3: of very little value, and he simply can't fight it
Speaker 3: at the moment. As soon as he does, he'll give
Speaker 3: that back as well.
Speaker 2: Hey, I just love murdered parishioners.
Speaker 3: So in court proceedings, Diccado testified that he had a
Speaker 3: bunch of copies of Galileo's Sidarius Nuccius forged in Argentina.
Speaker 2: Forged copies now and the world too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was like, I'm a really good forger,
Speaker 3: including one that he placed in the National Library in Naples.
Speaker 3: When he took the original, he just put his little yeah.
Speaker 2: He topped it.
Speaker 3: According to The New York Times, quote asked outside the
Speaker 3: courtroom in Naples, how you go about forging a book
Speaker 3: by Galileo let alone, one that was sold at auction
Speaker 3: and fooled some of the world's leading experts, mister DeCaro
Speaker 3: smiled with excitement. Borhes Inficxioones wrote that when a book
Speaker 3: is false, it is equal to, if not better than,
Speaker 3: the original. He said. Then one of his lawyers quickly
Speaker 3: approached and said the conversation was over.
Speaker 2: He's quoting Borhees.
Speaker 3: He quotes Borhes, I love that that. I hate him.
Speaker 4: Now right.
Speaker 3: He gets sentenced to seven years imprisonment but house arrest,
Speaker 3: and then he also had a lifetime exclusion from public office.
Speaker 3: And the good news is that eighteen months after the
Speaker 3: looting was discovered, police believed that they had managed to
Speaker 3: track down most of the books. Copola said, quote, we
Speaker 3: think a high percentage, up to eighty percent, has been recovered.
Speaker 3: And then in twenty twelve, the authorities recovered more than
Speaker 3: a thousand volume in a self storage unit in Verona
Speaker 3: that Dacaro had. So he just put it into self storage.
Speaker 2: Like lost track, and didn't pay his bill and He's like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I forgot which one is that in, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden someone buys all these books like four thousand
Speaker 2: euro or whatever.
Speaker 3: So Copel I will go back to him. Quote. This
Speaker 3: is thanks to investigative activities shadowing and wiretapping, for example,
Speaker 3: that has enabled us to identify movements in places where
Speaker 3: books were being kept warehouses, underground parking places, houses. We've
Speaker 3: had important collaboration with associations of antique booksellers. We've warned
Speaker 3: them to keep an eye open for books that they
Speaker 3: might have even the slightest suspicion could be coming from
Speaker 3: the library. And he said that, like people all over
Speaker 3: the world have contacted him about books. Quote, my personal
Speaker 3: email address is spread around the world among those in
Speaker 3: this sector, and I'm often reached by people that have
Speaker 3: doubts about a book.
Speaker 2: Oh who's a player, right, you can find my email everywhere.
Speaker 3: So he's thinking that, like, you know, when all the
Speaker 3: attention dies down, that like maybe more of the books
Speaker 3: will reach Twelve years later, library remains closed. No, let's
Speaker 3: take a break. When we come back. I've got a
Speaker 3: state side book heist.
Speaker 6: For you, and I got a book you may want
Speaker 6: to buy.
Speaker 3: Zaren, Elizabeth Zaren, I got books.
Speaker 2: I got books for you too.
Speaker 3: Yes, I told you about books in a warehouse. I
Speaker 3: told you about books in an old, poorly guarded library.
Speaker 3: Are there any places where books are safe submarines? Yes,
Speaker 3: the safest rare book collections. They use what's known as
Speaker 3: a defense in depth, So like a series of small
Speaker 3: overlapping measures that like, you know, you have to get
Speaker 3: through too many chambers or too many layers of security.
Speaker 2: Timed locks, and then into vaults that box sign out. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So an example of this is the Oliver Room, which
Speaker 3: is home to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's rare books
Speaker 3: and archives. So there's a single point of entry and
Speaker 3: only a few people have keys to it, and all
Speaker 3: guests they got to sign in. You have to leave
Speaker 3: personal items like your bag or your coat.
Speaker 2: You know, people have to turn different keys at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so it's extensive CCTV. Why am I telling you?
Speaker 2: Why are you telling me this, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Oh, surely the books there are safe.
Speaker 2: Don't call me, Shirley.
Speaker 3: In twenty seventeen, the library's administration discovered something shocking.
Speaker 2: What did they discover?
Speaker 3: A bunch of stuff was gone.
Speaker 2: Those would be like electric outlet.
Speaker 3: No, like a like a lot of stuff is gone?
Speaker 2: How much we're talking.
Speaker 3: Eight million dollars worth of real It's like, what are
Speaker 3: we talking about? You want me to give you a little.
Speaker 2: Inventory a whole building? What the hell?
Speaker 3: A book signed by Thomas Jefferson. The oldest book in
Speaker 3: the collection was gone. It was a collection of sermons
Speaker 3: printed in fourteen seventy three. There was a first edition
Speaker 3: of Isaac Newton's ninety eight, A first edition of the
Speaker 3: Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, a letter written by WILLIAMS.
Speaker 3: Jennings Bryant, Oh across the Gold, Yeah, A rare copy
Speaker 3: of Elizabeth Katie Stanton's memoir eighteen eight Memoir, A first
Speaker 3: edition of a book written by John Adams, the first
Speaker 3: English edition of Boccaccio's De Cameron.
Speaker 2: Oh I have that book? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, this one was printed in London in sixteen twenty.
Speaker 2: You got that mine from eighteen hundred.
Speaker 3: I thought maybe you had this one. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: the first edition of George Elliott Silas Marner. Missing were
Speaker 3: one hundred and eight of the one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: five hand colored lithographs from Audubon's eighteen fifty one Quadrupeds
Speaker 3: of North America.
Speaker 2: Damn Audubon's book. Dude, you know the paintings and everything.
Speaker 3: Fifty one plates and maps from John Ogilbee's America, one
Speaker 3: of the greatest illustrated works about the New World, sixteen
Speaker 3: seventy one. All of the maps from a copy of
Speaker 3: Ptolemy's Legiographia printed in fifteen forty eight. Whoa, yeah, Ptolemy's maps. Yeah,
Speaker 3: all two hundred and seventy six hand colored lithograph maps
Speaker 3: in the sixteen forty four Blau Atlas that mapped the
Speaker 3: known world in the age of European exploration. Oh, fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred rare photogravure plate prints of Native Americans by Edward Curtis.
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, And only two hundred and seventy two
Speaker 3: sets were created, And in twenty twelve Christie sold one
Speaker 3: of those sets for two point eight million.
Speaker 2: I think I remember hearing about that, and so one
Speaker 2: of those is gone totally.
Speaker 3: And so while the London heist I told you about
Speaker 3: like that took just a few hours, and the Naples
Speaker 3: looting went on for about nine months, this was a
Speaker 3: slow moo heist.
Speaker 2: It went on for almost a quarter of a century.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. You first said slow,
Speaker 2: like they just did it and they like.
Speaker 3: To not set off motions exactly totally. So who was
Speaker 3: in charge there? You must be asking.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth who was in charge of this Carnegie Mellon one room.
Speaker 3: Library fellow by the name of Greg Priori, not Greg Prior,
Speaker 3: Greg greg Priory a Priori. In nineteen ninety one, the
Speaker 3: library decided to establish like a true archive of its collection,
Speaker 3: and like, yeah, ninety one. So Greg, he had an
Speaker 3: MA in European history and he was working in the
Speaker 3: library's Pennsylvania room while he was getting a library science
Speaker 3: degree at University of Pittsburgh, and he had like that
Speaker 3: was with an emphasis on archives management. So he's like
Speaker 3: the perfect choice for this. Yeah, and he's a chill
Speaker 3: guy's local boy made good. He's like doing his dream job,
Speaker 3: dream location and running a tight ship. Like his desk
Speaker 3: was right where people signed in and out of the
Speaker 3: archive and he would personally assess each item that was
Speaker 3: removed and returned. It was just a hard ass. Like
Speaker 3: when he set up the archive, he worked with a
Speaker 3: preservation specialist to assess the Carnegie Librariy's collection.
Speaker 2: A plenty of white gloves good, oh for days.
Speaker 3: Then he hired two rare book experts who found that
Speaker 3: the library hadn't really done much to preserve its oldest books.
Speaker 2: You know, it's harder to find rare books experts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are really hard to find. So they created
Speaker 3: a climate controlled environment like that followed all the best
Speaker 3: practices at the time. It became a prime example of
Speaker 3: a spectacular rare book archive. Zaren. It was highlighted on
Speaker 3: c SPAN. You know it's book TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know I watched books.
Speaker 3: I know you do watch book TV. So, as with
Speaker 3: any kind of collection, there came time for an audit,
Speaker 3: and in the fall of twenty sixteen, library officials hired
Speaker 3: the Paul mal Art advisors.
Speaker 2: Like the cigarette company, Yeah, to.
Speaker 3: Undertake They come in, all smoking cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Come on, you guys are not addiction on stuff? Whoa, whoa, ladies.
Speaker 3: So Carrie Lee, Jeffrey and Christianiskavuzo they come in. They
Speaker 3: began their audit on April third, twenty seventeen, and they
Speaker 3: were using this is in twenty seventeen. They're using the
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one inventory as their guide. Oh wow, so
Speaker 3: when it was first established and they immediately.
Speaker 2: Found problems like yeah.
Speaker 3: According to Smithsonian Magazine quote, Jeffrey was looking for Thomas
Speaker 3: McKinney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of
Speaker 3: North America. This landmark work included one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: hand drawn lithographs, the result of a project that began
Speaker 3: in eighteen twenty one with McKinney's attempt to document in
Speaker 3: full color the dress and spiritual practices of Native Americans
Speaker 3: who had visited Washington, d c. To arrange treaties with
Speaker 3: the government. The three volume set of folios, produced between
Speaker 3: eighteen thirty six and eighteen forty four, is large and
Speaker 3: gorgeous and would be a highlight in collection. But the
Speaker 3: Carnegie Libraries version had been hidden on a top shelf
Speaker 3: at the end of a row. When Jeffrey discovered why,
Speaker 3: her stomach dropped once a plump book filled with plates,
Speaker 3: she would recall the sides had carved in on themselves.
Speaker 3: All those stunning illustrations had been cut from the binding.
Speaker 3: Oh God, so just just cut it all out.
Speaker 2: The book predates Andrew Jackson's Like Indian Removal Act stuff.
Speaker 2: We're talking like American history.
Speaker 4: You can't.
Speaker 3: It's just like pure documentation.
Speaker 2: Goes in there with like an exact knife and just
Speaker 2: like I can get seventy bucks for this.
Speaker 3: Domino's falling after that, like things missing, pieces or items,
Speaker 3: every everything's missing. And then she she sees it and
Speaker 3: it's like the world is spinning out from underneath her.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, her stomach shopping cried.
Speaker 3: Like she wonder officers just started crying when she learned
Speaker 3: the extent of the thievery and the damage.
Speaker 2: Some people get upset when they see, like animals hurt.
Speaker 2: I'm sure she've had that.
Speaker 3: Visceral reach exactly exactly. So five days after the start
Speaker 3: of the audit, five days Jeffrey and Skuvuzzo they met
Speaker 3: with the library's director, Mary Francis Cooper, and then two
Speaker 3: other administrators, and they detailed their findings up until that point.
Speaker 3: Four days later, Cooper has the lock to the Oliver
Speaker 3: room changed and they didn't give Greg Priori a key.
Speaker 3: They kind of figured, you know, this all went down
Speaker 3: on his.
Speaker 2: Watch, and he's the only one with the watching everything.
Speaker 3: And it's also because he was the one taking everything.
Speaker 3: And the thing is he wasn't living large off the
Speaker 3: sales of these books and prints. You know, he was married,
Speaker 3: he had four kids. They lived in like a you know,
Speaker 3: little apartment, but he was like running up debt. His
Speaker 3: kids all went to posh.
Speaker 2: Private schools, so the books are paying for that pretty much.
Speaker 3: And between his place and work there was there was
Speaker 3: a bookstore, Caliban Bookshop, and the owner, John Shulman, he
Speaker 3: started his business in like the eighties and he worked
Speaker 3: out of his apartment and then he opened Caliban Bookshops.
Speaker 3: He was he was a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers
Speaker 3: Association of America RIAA. That's the this should all be
Speaker 3: an affront to Biblio Dicks. That was Biblio Dick's group exactly.
Speaker 3: So this dude he even served. Shulman he was on
Speaker 3: the board of governors for the mid Atlantic Chapter of
Speaker 3: He served as an appraiser for the University of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: Carnegie Mellon University, and Penn State. And he was even
Speaker 3: on PBS Antiques road Show.
Speaker 2: I don't trust those people. We've talked about it, it's
Speaker 2: happened before. I just don't trust him. Just generally. I'm like,
Speaker 2: you want to be on TV too much. I don't
Speaker 2: trust ANTIQ people shouldn't want to be on TV like this. No,
Speaker 2: he should be private.
Speaker 3: So Priori he would bring the books that he stole
Speaker 3: to Shulman. Shulman would inspect the item and then he
Speaker 3: would list it for sale on his website. And here's
Speaker 3: the thing though, remember how it enables their partners, their
Speaker 3: total partners. The guy in Naples hired the bookbinder to
Speaker 3: remove any marks or stamps from the books.
Speaker 2: They didn't do this.
Speaker 3: All of the items in the library had this special
Speaker 3: book plate inside the front cover.
Speaker 2: No problem.
Speaker 3: Shulman had a small red stamp in his store that
Speaker 3: read withdrawn from library. And when he had something from
Speaker 3: the Oliver collection, he'd used the stamp to mark the
Speaker 3: bottom of the book plate and apparently that was enough
Speaker 3: to override the book plate. Like the library got rid
Speaker 3: of this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see, it wouldn't question it.
Speaker 3: So Priori he had sort of seen the audit coming.
Speaker 3: He knew and he was a little nervous about it.
Speaker 3: And his coworkers thought that he was acting that way
Speaker 3: because he's just very territorial. But like they didn't know
Speaker 3: that he had liquidated most of the stuff in there.
Speaker 3: And like now the walls are closing in, and so
Speaker 3: Priori and Shulman had they came up with a bunch
Speaker 3: of explanations as to why stuff was gone, Like they
Speaker 3: just workshopped ideas. So they doctored paperwork saying that some
Speaker 3: of it was out for repair or like loaned to
Speaker 3: another institution. And then they're like, oh, maybe we could
Speaker 3: blame the former director of the library.
Speaker 2: He's dead.
Speaker 3: Let's just blame him.
Speaker 2: Let's blame the dead guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like, oh, let's just blame the staff, like
Speaker 3: you know whatever, Oh no, even better.
Speaker 2: Maintenance workers them like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this was in no way a one off though, right,
Speaker 3: It's not like, oh there's just one big thing missing
Speaker 3: or like five items suddenly gone.
Speaker 2: You're going for so long, and all.
Speaker 3: Signs point to Priori, and so first he gets fired obviously.
Speaker 3: Then the cops raided his house, and they raided the
Speaker 3: bookstore and the warehouse for the bookstore, and at the warehouse,
Speaker 3: the auditors rode along with the cops, and they were
Speaker 3: able to identify ninety one of the Edward Curtis Prince
Speaker 3: and seven maps from that atlas, and then plus they
Speaker 3: found the withdrawn from library stamp just sitting right there,
Speaker 3: and then upon questioning, Priori cracked. Of course, he pleaded
Speaker 3: guilty to theft and receiving stolen property the partner. Yeah,
Speaker 3: well yeah, he gets sentenced to three years of house
Speaker 3: arrest and twelve years probation.
Speaker 2: And people were mad.
Speaker 3: They didn't think that was enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 3: Shulman pleaded guilty to receiving stolen property, theft by deception
Speaker 3: and forgery, and he got four years of house arrest
Speaker 3: and twelve years of probation. But he also had to
Speaker 3: pay fifty five grand in restitution. That's not a lot.
Speaker 3: And so like these days, people lived so well in
Speaker 3: their homes, right, you got everything, Oh totally, Look, we
Speaker 3: just survived a couple of years a half exactly. And
Speaker 3: so like those who'd bought the books, they had to
Speaker 3: surrender them, either at their own volition or the order
Speaker 3: of the police. Bill Clasby is he's a head of
Speaker 3: special collections for Case Western Reserve University's main library. Okay,
Speaker 3: August of twenty eighteen, he gets called by someone from
Speaker 3: the DA's office in the Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, asking about
Speaker 3: a book of early modern astronomy that he bought from
Speaker 3: Caliban Books and like right there on the book plate
Speaker 3: was the telltale red stamp, so clasp he sent the
Speaker 3: book back. Another guy, Michael Kaisel, private collector, he bought
Speaker 3: a book from a rare book dealer in England and
Speaker 3: the same detective reaches out to him and let him
Speaker 3: know that Shulman had sold the stolen book to the
Speaker 3: English dealer, which meant his book was hot and he
Speaker 3: had to return it. So he did, and the detective
Speaker 3: he just continues to reach out to the duped and
Speaker 3: they all sent.
Speaker 2: Everything back, good for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's some debate about Shulman's involvement in all
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 2: I don't have.
Speaker 3: Any yeah, something that he was unaware that the books
Speaker 3: were stolen, and others think that there's no way that
Speaker 3: he was that naive.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, come on, he's got the stamp to
Speaker 2: be like falsifying things, and even he's being told by somebody,
Speaker 2: then he's just really dumb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Smithsonian Magazine pointed out, quote the Ethics Code
Speaker 3: of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America states that members
Speaker 3: quote shall make all reasonable efforts to ascertain that materials
Speaker 3: offered to him or her are the property that sellers
Speaker 3: and members shall make every effort to prevent the theft
Speaker 3: or distribution of stolen antiquarian books and related materials. Shulman
Speaker 3: was not only a member of the ABAA, he had
Speaker 3: served on its Ethics and Standards Committee.
Speaker 2: I mean, come on, man, we all know this. Your
Speaker 2: whole job is to be suspicious. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to be suspicious exactly.
Speaker 2: You're selling an item we all know is going to
Speaker 2: be likely either stolen or like possibly hinky right.
Speaker 3: And Patrick Dowd, board chair of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: said the thefts quote will forever raise doubts about the
Speaker 3: security of all future charitable donations, particularly to the Carnegie Library.
Speaker 3: The damage wrought by John Shulman and Greg Priori is unfathomable.
Speaker 3: The true depths of their betrayal of trust, their vandalism,
Speaker 3: destruction of public property, and theft from our community is unquantifiable.
Speaker 2: People don't value trust enough once it's gone, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Priori, he was eager to throw Shulman under the bus.
Speaker 3: According to the New York Times quote, mister Priori told
Speaker 3: the authorities that he had stolen the items for money
Speaker 3: to stay afloat and help pay tuition for his four children.
Speaker 3: I should have never done this, he said. I loved
Speaker 3: that room my whole working life, and greed came over me.
Speaker 3: I did it, he said, but Shulman spurred me on.
Speaker 2: It's okay. That was gonna be my question to you, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: You've read about these guys, do you think? Shulman said, Hey, man,
Speaker 2: you work at the book store. You know, can you
Speaker 2: ever get me something? The guy came in and said, hey, Shulman,
Speaker 2: I got some stuff, like is it a Priori telling
Speaker 2: Shulman I got the idea?
Speaker 3: Because I'm thinking that, like, I don't know, it's sort
Speaker 3: of this chicken egg.
Speaker 2: I think it was Shulman. I think the guy who
Speaker 2: sells is gonna be the one who comes up with
Speaker 2: the idea I can sell some books at the post
Speaker 2: of the guy who's like, hey, will you be my fence,
Speaker 2: because that's a harder question to ask.
Speaker 3: Or maybe there was one that like was legitimately removed
Speaker 3: from the I.
Speaker 2: Figure I started telling me about he goes and I
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 3: This again, you know, if you don't find another way
Speaker 3: to go.
Speaker 2: I got this stamp on me I keep this thing ready.
Speaker 2: It's inked up right now.
Speaker 3: Saren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Oh? Man, I don't mean to be you know me,
Speaker 2: I am naturally suspicious, and when I see people who
Speaker 2: act smug, I start questioning them more so like antique stealers,
Speaker 2: these these rare books people, they immediately make the hairs
Speaker 2: on my next stand up where I'm like mmmm, And
Speaker 2: I just want them to do that for their customers.
Speaker 2: And these people are coming up we go, I got
Speaker 2: some books I want to sell you or whatever. I
Speaker 2: got this fake bnett or you know it's real monet,
Speaker 2: yeah whatever. I want them to be as suspicious of
Speaker 2: their customers and possible clients as I am of them.
Speaker 3: Well, I think many are biblio dah, of course, exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's I find that attitude is less and
Speaker 2: less common.
Speaker 3: That's very true in a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Yes, just generally everybody's falling into the whole like what
Speaker 2: can I get for this? I'm like, doesn't anybody think
Speaker 2: that something has a value outside of what can I
Speaker 2: get for this?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Exactly.
Speaker 2: We're losing your whole culture, Elizabeth, thousands of years of
Speaker 2: history and people are willing to just forsake it, and
Speaker 2: I'm not even you should have me be the one
Speaker 2: to ending Western civilization. You got me to the boy
Speaker 2: going what about Plato? Yeah we are lost?
Speaker 3: You know what we need?
Speaker 2: What I talked that? Yeah, Calmus down, he hit me, Daves,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, super I love cheek.
Speaker 7: So I'm listening to your Big Boy episode and I
Speaker 7: had to stop when you said sigmoid flexure. Uh so,
Speaker 7: I have a degree in animal science, and a sigmoid
Speaker 7: flexer refers to two different things. One is an S
Speaker 7: shaped curve sigmoid flexure in the human colon right before
Speaker 7: the rectum, or an S shaped curved in a bowl penis.
Speaker 7: They have a fibro elastic penis instead of an erectile penis,
Speaker 7: so it has to fold up inside of them. You're welcome.
Speaker 2: No, take it back. That got retractable bull penis in
Speaker 2: my head.
Speaker 3: I've heard it like sigmoid colonoscopy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the folding. I know it was a fake name.
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything would do with bullpeness. I didn't
Speaker 2: see that is Spanish inquisition. Elizabeth Howe is a bullpen
Speaker 2: It's like the Spanish inquisition.
Speaker 3: That's all that's all we have for today. You can
Speaker 3: find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. We're also
Speaker 3: on social media. Email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com and then also most importantly, leave a talk
Speaker 3: back on the iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime is
Speaker 3: hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnette, produced and edited
Speaker 3: by Biblio Dick, Biblio Dix, Dave Cousten, starring Emilis Rutger
Speaker 3: as Judas. Research is by book plate specialist MRSA. Brown
Speaker 3: and Rubber Stamp enthusiast Andrea Song Sharpen Tear. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Warehouse, Third Shift Security Thomas Lee and
Speaker 3: Italian Library Dog Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by
Speaker 3: Botany five hundred guests, hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and
Speaker 3: mister Andre. Executive producers are lifetime members of the A BAA,
Speaker 3: Ben Bowen and Noah Brown.
Speaker 2: You hear the interns of there.
Speaker 4: Shdus Crime say it one more times.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.