Speaker 1: In early two thousand, eBay was still a little bit
Speaker 1: of a novelty. The auction site hadn't even introduced the
Speaker 1: buy it Now feature four items. If you wanted something,
Speaker 1: you had to wait days until bidding ended, and you
Speaker 1: had to hope you had the highest offer. Sniping, or
Speaker 1: the act of bidding at the last possible second, could rip.
Speaker 1: Some prized would be possession out of your grasp, especially
Speaker 1: if someone had a broadband connection with blazing fast internet
Speaker 1: speeds instead of you know, dial up. eBay was also
Speaker 1: becoming a hot market for comic books. Before eBay, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to buy a rare comic, you'd have to
Speaker 1: go to an auction in person, or attend a comic
Speaker 1: convention or by a trade publication and scan their list
Speaker 1: of comics. Then may you and in order with a check.
Speaker 1: But Eva was changing all that. It was democratizing the
Speaker 1: buying and selling of collectibles. That's important to know in
Speaker 1: order to understand what happens next. As you'll recall, comic
Speaker 1: book dealer Stephen Fishler got a frantic phone call from
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage, who explained his three most prized comic books,
Speaker 1: worth hundreds of thousands of dollars had been stolen. Action
Speaker 1: Comics number one, Detective Comics Number twenty seven, and the
Speaker 1: lesser valued but still important Detective Comics Number one vanished
Speaker 1: without trace from his house in a gated community in
Speaker 1: bel Air. No leads, no suspects, just a despondent cage
Speaker 1: staring at empty wall frames that had once housed the
Speaker 1: debuts of Superman and Batman. Stephen, of course, was key
Speaker 1: bring an eye on the collector's community, looking for any
Speaker 1: sign of the stolen books coming onto the market. He
Speaker 1: owned his own place, Metropolis Collectibles in New York, but
Speaker 1: the chances of the thief strolling into his business were slim. Still,
Speaker 1: Stephen kept looking. Hope was the only currency he had
Speaker 1: at the moment, and look optimism is a defining Superman trait.
Speaker 1: One day, a collector showed Stephen one of his newer acquisitions.
Speaker 1: It was a copy of Marvel Mystery Comics number seventy one,
Speaker 1: dated April. The original human Torch is flying through the air.
Speaker 1: A number of characters from ancient Egypt are shocked by
Speaker 1: his appearance. His young side kick, Tora, who is also
Speaker 1: on flare, is sacking someone in the gut. Another man
Speaker 1: appears to be reviving Cleopatra from her sarcophagus, injecting her
Speaker 1: with a strange serum. It's your typical Golden Age comic cover,
Speaker 1: lots of disparate elements stitched together to compel a kid
Speaker 1: to spend his one and only dime to see how
Speaker 1: the hell any of this made sense These days. It's
Speaker 1: a desirable comic, though not one of the most sought after.
Speaker 1: Some people chase it just because the cover is cool,
Speaker 1: A dynamic composition by Golden Age artist Alex Schomberg. What's
Speaker 1: with the Egyptians? Well, it was just after World War
Speaker 1: Two and comics needed new villains to employ. But something
Speaker 1: else about it seemed strange to Stephen. Not just the
Speaker 1: fact that to self immolating heroes were punching ancient Egyptians.
Speaker 1: Besides that, here's Stephen to explain. He showed it to me.
Speaker 1: It's a well known collector in New York, and I went, weird,
Speaker 1: you get this book? And then you said, I got
Speaker 1: it from this woman, and I'm looking at it. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it. This is impossible. I sold this book.
Speaker 1: How could Stephen possibly know that there were hundreds of
Speaker 1: copies of Marvel Mysteries number seventy one out there that
Speaker 1: had survived being thrown away by parents. But this one
Speaker 1: was different. Inside on the first page was a handwritten
Speaker 1: sequence of numbers and letters seven eight four one dash
Speaker 1: D dash three to zero. It's an old comic book.
Speaker 1: Kids wrote or drew all kinds of things on them
Speaker 1: before they realized. Some of them could put their kids
Speaker 1: through college. But this isn't just a doodo. It's legendary
Speaker 1: in the comic book collector's community because it means the
Speaker 1: comic belonged to the d collection, one of the most
Speaker 1: comprehensive ever assembled. It's a pedigree like a fingerprint. The
Speaker 1: person who bought this comic book and thousands of others
Speaker 1: wrote a code on the first page of everyone he
Speaker 1: bought as a teenager and young adult. There's only one
Speaker 1: Marvel Mystery Comics number with those numbers inside, and it
Speaker 1: once belonged to a collector. Stephen Fishler knew, well, this
Speaker 1: was exactly a book that I had sold Nick that
Speaker 1: somehow left his house. Someone hadn't stolen three comics from
Speaker 1: Nicholas Cage. Someone had stolen four for I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: This is stealing Superman I'm your host, Danis Schwartz, and
Speaker 1: this is episode two, four empty frames. As soon as
Speaker 1: Stephen got a look at the Marvel Mystery, it was
Speaker 1: his turn to call Cage and a near panic. It
Speaker 1: was possible he was somehow mistaken that he misremembered selling
Speaker 1: it to him, that maybe it wasn't the d copy
Speaker 1: Cage had bought, but no Cage confirmed it. He had
Speaker 1: had a Marvel Mystery and now it was gone somehow.
Speaker 1: In the chaotic aftermath of the heist, he hadn't noticed
Speaker 1: it missing. Everyone's attention had been on the Big Two,
Speaker 1: Action number one and Detective number twenty seven. No one
Speaker 1: had noticed the weird Egypt meets Marvel comic had vanished too.
Speaker 1: Nick had a run of Marvel Mystery and the only
Speaker 1: Marvel Mystery missing from the house it was Marvel seventy one.
Speaker 1: He had one through ninety two, I believe, but missing
Speaker 1: the seventy one. And I said, well it was the
Speaker 1: seventy one was taken out of the house. We're a book,
Speaker 1: I went, that's it was a pedigree book with very
Speaker 1: unique markings. It's the same book. So who was this
Speaker 1: woman on eBay had sold the book to his collector friend.
Speaker 1: eBay seller profiles usually have scant information. People can be
Speaker 1: as anonymous as they like. For the most part, you
Speaker 1: might buy something, even something worth thousands, and not have
Speaker 1: any more information about the seller than that their screen
Speaker 1: name is Biceps Due. There's just one exception. An eBay
Speaker 1: profile usually offers up the user's city and state. The seller,
Speaker 1: the one with cages book was in Connecticut and obviously
Speaker 1: connected it to the theft. There's no way if I
Speaker 1: sold in this book that a woman in Connecticut would
Speaker 1: have ended up with. But that's how it happened. So
Speaker 1: that was the only lead that I had. Somehow, in
Speaker 1: the span of just a couple of months, this book
Speaker 1: had been taken from cages home and been delivered miles
Speaker 1: away and then wound up on eBay. A few fouls
Speaker 1: it a monumental book on its own, but it just
Speaker 1: was a book that I told them. There was just
Speaker 1: one thing to do. He asked the buyer for more
Speaker 1: information about the seller, and so he gave me the
Speaker 1: person who got it from and that's how that we began.
Speaker 1: This isn't as strange as it sounds. The rare comics
Speaker 1: collecting community is small Plenty of people buy and read comics, sure,
Speaker 1: but not that many deal in rare, high priced books
Speaker 1: from the nineteen forties. Stephen is among the most well
Speaker 1: known dealers of such paper treasures. The collector was from
Speaker 1: New York, where Stephen lived. They had done business before,
Speaker 1: so the comic finding its way to Stephen wasn't far fetched.
Speaker 1: Most desirable comics made their way to him eventually, and
Speaker 1: the man, whom Stephen prefers not to name, trusted him,
Speaker 1: and so he told him that the seller was a she,
Speaker 1: a woman named Kimberly. He gave Stephen a phone number
Speaker 1: and an email, so Stephen began dialing, wondering if the
Speaker 1: person who would pick up the phone knew that the
Speaker 1: comics she had sold had been taken from the home
Speaker 1: of Nicholas Cage. I had contacted the woman asking how
Speaker 1: she got it, and she was very worried and defensive.
Speaker 1: Kimberly did not wish to discuss where her Marvel Mystery
Speaker 1: number seventy one had come from. Stephen kept trying left
Speaker 1: her phone messages but got no response. Maybe she was
Speaker 1: just unsettled by the question, maybe she had no idea
Speaker 1: it was stolen. But then the buyer told Stephen another detail,
Speaker 1: a detail that didn't do anything to convince him. Kimberly
Speaker 1: was an innocent bystander. He had bought the comic in person,
Speaker 1: an in person swap money for the Marvel Mystery. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing people may do on Craigslist,
Speaker 1: but on eBay, even back then, it was unusual. The
Speaker 1: whole point of eBay was to find items you couldn't
Speaker 1: find locally, and with relative anonymity, you could purchase them
Speaker 1: safely without risk of being lured into someone's basement. But
Speaker 1: Kimberly preferred a personal meeting, and the collector didn't mind.
Speaker 1: Connecticut was a short drive. He had no idea the
Speaker 1: comic was well questionable, and no idea why Kimberly wanted
Speaker 1: to keep it offline. A cash transaction didn't leave much
Speaker 1: of a paper trail. If Kimberly didn't know the comic
Speaker 1: was hot, why insist on meeting up in person? Why
Speaker 1: the Cloak and Dagger stuff? Stephen pondered, whoever took the
Speaker 1: Marvel Mystery had taken the other books, the very rare,
Speaker 1: very valuable com x. It stood to reason Kimberly probably
Speaker 1: knew something about the others. So he sat down and
Speaker 1: began typing another message. This one was more to the point.
Speaker 1: I sent a letter quietly to this woman who somehow
Speaker 1: had one of the other stolen books, the Marvel seventy one.
Speaker 1: Sent her a letter and I said, you know you
Speaker 1: might have gotten books. This is my only lead. I said,
Speaker 1: you may have been in possession of books that could
Speaker 1: be stolen, But the owner really just wants to get
Speaker 1: his book back. So I said, here's a picture of
Speaker 1: a book that was stolen. If you have this book,
Speaker 1: I will give you ten thousand dollars. There's no questions,
Speaker 1: asked finders a reward for returning this book, Thinking you
Speaker 1: know she got this cheaper book, Stephen was essentially offering
Speaker 1: her a finder's fee if she could procure the real treasure,
Speaker 1: the action number one or the detective number twenty seven
Speaker 1: or both. He mailed the letter and wait did And
Speaker 1: while he waited, he thought about something else, something else
Speaker 1: that was strange about seeing this comic on eBay. When
Speaker 1: it disappeared from Cages House. It had been raw. That's
Speaker 1: what collectors called a book that hadn't been graded by
Speaker 1: a third party company, hadn't been assessed for its condition,
Speaker 1: for blemishes, for an objective ten point rating of how
Speaker 1: well it aged, since it was first on the stands
Speaker 1: in the system. All changed in two thousand when what's
Speaker 1: now called the Certified Guarantee Company or c g C
Speaker 1: started looking at comics. For a fee of roughly twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: C g C would take your rare comic, examine it,
Speaker 1: and put it in a protective plastic case so it
Speaker 1: would be forever sealed against further wear. It solved the
Speaker 1: problem of a dealer and buyer having different ideas of
Speaker 1: what a comics condition was. It was perfect for eBay
Speaker 1: when you had to buy items site unseen. C g
Speaker 1: C really took off in the early two thousand's mostly
Speaker 1: because of eBay. That's Paul Lytch primary grater for c
Speaker 1: g C. Back then he was the secondary greater. So
Speaker 1: what CDC really did. It really gave buyers the level
Speaker 1: playing field to say, no, c g C, this third party, independent,
Speaker 1: impartial company gave this book that you're selling me an
Speaker 1: eight five, so I'm only going to pay the eight
Speaker 1: five price. C g C could make sure a comic
Speaker 1: was unrestored, hadn't been messed with and they graded down
Speaker 1: to the tenth of a point, from point five to
Speaker 1: nine point two to rarely a ten point Oh, this
Speaker 1: Marvel Mystery scored very very high, a nine point four,
Speaker 1: close to perfect. Once a book is slabbed, it's protected
Speaker 1: against a lot of things that age old comics which
Speaker 1: were never printed to last, Cheap ink and cheap paper degrade.
Speaker 1: So with the micro chamber paper in there, it will
Speaker 1: help aging of the book and it will help it
Speaker 1: with environmental storage problems that may happen down the road
Speaker 1: depending on how you store your comics. So that comic
Speaker 1: is then placed into an inner well. In the inner
Speaker 1: well we have many, many different sizes that are custom
Speaker 1: made for comics. That inner well is sealed on all
Speaker 1: the edges and then it is placed in the outer
Speaker 1: acrylic folder, which is just an acrylic plastic, very sturdy,
Speaker 1: and that is sonically sealed and welded shut. And so
Speaker 1: you have a tamper evidence very what's the word. I'm
Speaker 1: looking for safe way to store your comics and archipe
Speaker 1: a nice archival way to protect your comics and protect
Speaker 1: them from any kind of other damage that could happen
Speaker 1: just with life. So someone had thoughtfully taken Cage's stolen
Speaker 1: comic and decided it deserved archival protection, at which point
Speaker 1: it was sent to c g C for grading before
Speaker 1: being auctioned on eBay. Someone wanted to squeeze every last
Speaker 1: dollar out of its value, which was contrary to most
Speaker 1: stolen goods, where getting a fraction of an item's worth
Speaker 1: is usually good enough. This was well bold. Imagine swiping
Speaker 1: a painting from a wall and then going to get
Speaker 1: it appraised in the hopes word hadn't yet reached the
Speaker 1: expert about the art going missing, or going to a
Speaker 1: framing store with a swiped van go to pick out
Speaker 1: the perfect frame for your wall. Kimberly either didn't know
Speaker 1: it had been stolen, or knew but figured it was
Speaker 1: one of many Marvel Mystery comics. She didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have any idea it was a D copy, one instantly
Speaker 1: recognizable someone had slipped it. Suggested that the thief knew
Speaker 1: enough about comics to grab the most valuable ones, but
Speaker 1: wasn't that much of an insider to know about the
Speaker 1: D collection. It revealed something else too. The comics were
Speaker 1: taken from Cage's home just days before c g C
Speaker 1: officially opened for business just days c g C began
Speaker 1: accepting submissions from the public on January first, two thousand.
Speaker 1: It's possible that whoever took Cage's comics wanted to get
Speaker 1: ahead of c g C, ahead of Cage, possibly submitting
Speaker 1: his valuable books to be slabbed and therefore making them
Speaker 1: harder to steal. Each slabbed c g C comic carries
Speaker 1: a certification number. There would be no way of reselling
Speaker 1: it in its c g C case without someone realizing
Speaker 1: it had been stolen. Someone would have to take it out,
Speaker 1: crack the slab, make it a raw book again. It
Speaker 1: would be harder. Whoever took the comics may have been
Speaker 1: knowledgeable enough to know that if they waited any longer,
Speaker 1: the comics might be off to c g C for submission.
Speaker 1: Than in case and trackable, we have helped our chatboards.
Speaker 1: Dealers have listed books and the serial numbers and the
Speaker 1: grades that have been stolen from their shops, and our
Speaker 1: comic book community has helped find them. And it has helped,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately still some tests do happen. But it also
Speaker 1: presented another avenue for Stephen to explore. Anyone submit to
Speaker 1: c g C had to provide a name and return
Speaker 1: address to get their comic book back from their office
Speaker 1: in New Jersey unless they submitted it through a participating dealer.
Speaker 1: So Stephen reached out to a contact at c g
Speaker 1: C to see if he could learn anything else. In fact,
Speaker 1: Stephen had actually helped get c g C off the ground,
Speaker 1: helping map out what the ten point grading system should
Speaker 1: look like, and he discovered something very interesting about Kimberly.
Speaker 1: She apparently called c g C and said, the c
Speaker 1: g C g about personal information about who it's a grade.
Speaker 1: It's something about that. Whole situation looked pretty bad. Kimberly
Speaker 1: from Connecticut was definitely getting worried. She didn't know Stephen
Speaker 1: had already gotten her information from the buyer. C g C,
Speaker 1: for the record, didn't provide any further details about Kimberly
Speaker 1: to Stephen, but what they had done was confirmed what
Speaker 1: he already knew to be true that the comic he
Speaker 1: sold Cage was undoubtedly part of the d collection. If
Speaker 1: Stephen had any doubt before c g C provided authentication,
Speaker 1: they always noted a comics pedigree on their label. Kimberly
Speaker 1: had taken steps to guarantee that it was Cages comic
Speaker 1: beyond all doubt. So out of those four comics, why
Speaker 1: had this one, the least valuable, least important, come up first.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't the person who grabbed it from Cage's home
Speaker 1: try to cash in on the action number one for
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars? Why not in case that one
Speaker 1: in a C G C slab and shoot for the stars.
Speaker 1: It's a marvel mystery mystery. So we asked someone who
Speaker 1: might know. We asked an art thief. Well, what did
Speaker 1: she want? Attitude is I never give anyone the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt, and God everyone is despicable as each other.
Speaker 1: And if you go into these things with that attitude,
Speaker 1: you normally can't go far wrong. Okay, so let's be clear.
Speaker 1: We asked a reformed art thief, a man named Paul Hendry.
Speaker 1: Paul is from the UK, and for years he made
Speaker 1: a dishonest living as a knocker. That's a person who
Speaker 1: would find reasons to get inside someone's house and assess
Speaker 1: their belongings for anything worth stealing. If he found something good,
Speaker 1: he'd rope in some co conspirators, the people doing the
Speaker 1: actual liberation of the goods. Well, yes, I was born
Speaker 1: in Brighton on the South Coach of the UK in
Speaker 1: nine and was adopted. And then when I was twelve,
Speaker 1: I went out on the knocker, which is something where
Speaker 1: you knock on people's heals you try to buy antiques.
Speaker 1: I moved swiftly up the food chain and started organizing
Speaker 1: thefts from country houses, and then I became very, very
Speaker 1: successful in the nineteen eighties, and then I gave up
Speaker 1: the business early nineties when my son was born, and
Speaker 1: I went to university and got a BA honors degree
Speaker 1: in American Social Studies and a master's degree in contemporary history.
Speaker 1: And I now commentate on art related crime because I've
Speaker 1: seen it from both perspectives. Paul has helped the FBI,
Speaker 1: foreign Law Enforcement, and local bureaus find and recover stolen artworks.
Speaker 1: He's well versed in what happens when someone steals one
Speaker 1: of a kind pieces and then tries to figure out
Speaker 1: what to do with them. Well, yes, people call me
Speaker 1: the art crime on Bardsman. So really, when I see
Speaker 1: wrong doing, whoever's doing it, whether it's law enforcement, the
Speaker 1: insurance industry, private art detect chie's themes handless whoever, I
Speaker 1: call everyone out. So to be honest with you, I
Speaker 1: upset everyone at some point each time, and the fact
Speaker 1: that the Marvel Mystery, the least valuable comic in the bunch,
Speaker 1: was the first to surface, doesn't surprise him one bit.
Speaker 1: Like obviously the person put it on eBay testing the water.
Speaker 1: It's a test balloon scene whether it can slip through
Speaker 1: the market without coming on top without being discovered. Remember,
Speaker 1: two of the four comics were the two rarest The
Speaker 1: other two the Marvel Mystery and the Detective Number one, weren't.
Speaker 1: The Action Number One was worth at least two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, the Marvel Mystery about a thousand dollars. To
Speaker 1: be honest with you, because of the large discrepancies in value,
Speaker 1: I will be leaning towards they took those to use
Speaker 1: a test balloons and the proof of putting in that is,
Speaker 1: the first comic that surfaced in Connecticut was the lesser
Speaker 1: valued one, right, So I would actually look towards that
Speaker 1: as Yes, they took one very valuable one and one
Speaker 1: less valuable one, one very valuable one, one less valuable
Speaker 1: one to use as bargaining chips as a test balloon.
Speaker 1: If the Marvel Mystery had gone undetected. It was entirely
Speaker 1: possible that the more valuable comics would have surfaced soon
Speaker 1: after the Action number one and detective number twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'd be in shiny new c g C slabs
Speaker 1: ready to be framed or displayed. Maybe they already were
Speaker 1: c g C. After all, couldn't possibly be suspicious of
Speaker 1: every comic that was submitted to them, or treat the
Speaker 1: submitter as though they were a thief. But the Marvel
Speaker 1: Mystery did not go undetected. Stephen detected it. This was
Speaker 1: a real lead, tangible, verifiable proof that at least one
Speaker 1: of the comic was out there, and proof that the
Speaker 1: comics weren't taken as a prank or had some home
Speaker 1: been misplaced. Whoever had taken the comics had not done
Speaker 1: so for their own personal pleasure to have some kind
Speaker 1: of illicit comic book collection for their eyes only. The
Speaker 1: Marvel Mystery was put up for sale for money. You
Speaker 1: have to remember art, be a comic, a painting, a sculpture,
Speaker 1: or anything. He's just a commodity, and that they steal
Speaker 1: them because they pan and then they try to monetize them. Now,
Speaker 1: comics are like say, musical instruments, they're quite unique and
Speaker 1: knee market for them, and collectors market is a very
Speaker 1: very small market. The majority of art crime is against
Speaker 1: personal householders where they have art and antique stolen with
Speaker 1: values ranging from say a thousand dollars up to ten
Speaker 1: tho dollars and maybe a hundred thousand dollars, and those
Speaker 1: things happened every day of the week all over the world.
Speaker 1: Every now and again you get a big heist from
Speaker 1: a museum where paintings worth millions and tens and hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars stolen and then either ransom back
Speaker 1: to the insurance company or victims, or they're held as
Speaker 1: collateral and used within the underworld in drug deals because
Speaker 1: the moving of money around the world is much more
Speaker 1: difficult because of money laundering laws. So these comics, including
Speaker 1: the Superman ones and all of them, are just a commodity.
Speaker 1: If you put it in a safety deposit box, you
Speaker 1: can give the person that you're going to borrow some
Speaker 1: money off, or you're going to get some narcotics off.
Speaker 1: You give them the key to the ux and access
Speaker 1: to it as collateral, and then when you sell the
Speaker 1: drugs to pay the money back, you can then get
Speaker 1: the access back again when the cage books went missing.
Speaker 1: When any art goes missing, there's always a question of
Speaker 1: whether it was an impulsive crime, something done at a
Speaker 1: spur of the moment, or something premeditated. And if it
Speaker 1: were premeditated, whether the thief knew exactly where the comics
Speaker 1: were going to go, whether they had a buyer already
Speaker 1: lined up. If not, how else could one of them
Speaker 1: get from Los Angeles to Connecticut so quickly. If this
Speaker 1: would a carefully playing theath, then the people would have
Speaker 1: eva had someone that they were going to sell them
Speaker 1: too straightaway already sold it out, or they would at
Speaker 1: least know where they were going to monetize them or
Speaker 1: what they were going to do with them afterwards. Bob
Speaker 1: Whitman x FBI Art Crime Team Boss, he's got a
Speaker 1: good saying, you know, aren't Thieves are very good at
Speaker 1: steam in art, but they're terrible businessmen and terrible at
Speaker 1: trying to monetize the art once they've stolen it. Were
Speaker 1: it not for that infernal decollection marking, the Marvel Mysteries
Speaker 1: could have passed unnoticed. Comics have the benefit of being
Speaker 1: printed in multiples. Most art is one of one and
Speaker 1: therefore much harder to return to a legitimate market. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of art theft, you see, is opportunisty or
Speaker 1: even those that are planning right, they put a lot
Speaker 1: of planning into the actual ceiling of the artwork, but
Speaker 1: not so much planning there's what they're going to do
Speaker 1: with them once they've stolen them, and then they find
Speaker 1: that it's even in the art world, it's a very
Speaker 1: very exclusive club and it's very very difficult if you
Speaker 1: don't know the right context to know what to do
Speaker 1: with these things, unless, of coursehip was something like, I
Speaker 1: mean there's a gang in the UK. Then they raised
Speaker 1: stately homes. Now they sold a solid gold toilet that
Speaker 1: was being exhibited at Blenheim Palace. And this solid gold
Speaker 1: toilet ways, it's something like a hundred and twenty teals,
Speaker 1: and they ripped it out of where it's been exhibited.
Speaker 1: They cut it up and they put it in the
Speaker 1: melting pot for five million dollars and it was insured
Speaker 1: for six million dollars. But it got mounted down, you see,
Speaker 1: so that the work of art that could just literally
Speaker 1: be monetized because of the material that it was made
Speaker 1: by it there was also place where there was a
Speaker 1: diamond tr in Portland, Tiara that was stolen worth millions
Speaker 1: of dollars. They just popped all the big diamonds out
Speaker 1: of it and melted down the frame and sold the
Speaker 1: stones for a few hundred thousand dollars. So there are
Speaker 1: different things. I mean with this comic, you couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything like that because it's an an animal object, something
Speaker 1: that you can't change it into anything. But again, it
Speaker 1: needs something that could be used as collateral by the underworld.
Speaker 1: But you've got to get it into the underworld, and
Speaker 1: from what I can see, I don't think they ever
Speaker 1: really reached the underworld with this. Unfortunately, this was no
Speaker 1: golden toilet, but it was altered in a way when
Speaker 1: it was stolen from Cage's house. It was raw. Now
Speaker 1: it was slabbed. Kimberly may have wanted to give the
Speaker 1: comic a fresh start, have it appeared to be something
Speaker 1: other than what had gone missing. Some art is stolen
Speaker 1: for ransom, kind of a Lindberg baby situation, a kid nothing.
Speaker 1: The intent isn't to try to move it on the market,
Speaker 1: but to tempt the owner with it if some kind
Speaker 1: of agreement can be made to dangle the art in
Speaker 1: front of the nose of the victim and promise it's
Speaker 1: safe return in exchange for a fee. Stephen Fishler had
Speaker 1: essentially done that in reverse. He proactively offered a reward
Speaker 1: to the mysterious Kimberly from Connecticut. The question was would
Speaker 1: she bite guilty or not? Kimberly was not playing it cool.
Speaker 1: She had phoned c g C in a panic, hoping
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give out her personal information. She refused to
Speaker 1: speak to Stephen, and when Stephen offered her a monetary
Speaker 1: reward that was virtually ten times with the Marvel Mystery
Speaker 1: was worth, she never responded. But Stephen wasn't out of options.
Speaker 1: In addition to offering Kimberly a reward, he reached out
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles Detective Donald Harrisik, the man who was
Speaker 1: leading the investigation into the heist. Stephen expected harre sick
Speaker 1: to do something. Make a call, contact the Connecticut police,
Speaker 1: follow the only lead anyone had. Maybe not kicked down
Speaker 1: her door, but something. I got a feeling from what
Speaker 1: I heard about this woman's reaction. Who I contacted asking
Speaker 1: how she got this Marvel mystery, she got very panicky,
Speaker 1: so I said to the police, she's acting like she
Speaker 1: contacted the company graded the book for her and was
Speaker 1: worried that they would reveal her information. And when that's
Speaker 1: somebody who knew that book was questionable. According to Stephen,
Speaker 1: Detective Harrisick wasn't as enthusiastic as one might expect. Well.
Speaker 1: He was annoyed that I contacted the woman directly and
Speaker 1: now she won't talk to him. You're the police, I said,
Speaker 1: call her up and see who you are. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't think police work. Ended with the notion of
Speaker 1: she won't talk to me. When Kimberly refused to talk
Speaker 1: to her, Sick, it seemed as though he just well
Speaker 1: gave up her re Sick was less than curious. Stephen
Speaker 1: knew that Cage had his own security personnel working on things,
Speaker 1: so he reached out to them to let them know
Speaker 1: that a woman named Kimberly in Connecticut was in possession
Speaker 1: of one of Cage's comics without question or doubt. The
Speaker 1: d copy. Yeah, I had spoken to Oh, absolutely, just
Speaker 1: give me an update, I said, I have found a
Speaker 1: book that left Nick's house and it was transacted off
Speaker 1: the v Bay by a woman in Connecticut. Well, they
Speaker 1: found it interesting, but I'll be honest, it seemed a
Speaker 1: bit like they were being annoyed by me. Why Nick
Speaker 1: had a purity person I cannot remember his name in place.
Speaker 1: A little bit after that and I all right, we'll
Speaker 1: have the security person follow up on this. Why am
Speaker 1: I doing this? And the security person didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be bothered by trying to track this down. I mean,
Speaker 1: I found it a little frustrating talking to Nick's people
Speaker 1: when something's not let me just makes sense here, like
Speaker 1: I could have been talking to somebody who stole it,
Speaker 1: like they didn't want to deal with it, and maybe
Speaker 1: they had. I don't know, to be honest, I just
Speaker 1: don't know. There was some weirdness going on. Instead of wow,
Speaker 1: Steve's really trying to find the book, it became wow,
Speaker 1: Steve's really annoying us. I said to myself at the time,
Speaker 1: I said, this is bizarre. It is bizarre. And Paul
Speaker 1: Hendry has a theory about that too. The police will
Speaker 1: go out to Shay the person in Connecticut and try
Speaker 1: to track it back from there. The fact that I
Speaker 1: didn't do it makes you wanted a lot about this, Like, well,
Speaker 1: initially I think We've got a look that behavior, and
Speaker 1: any investigator would look at that behavior. Has perhaps Nicolas
Speaker 1: Cage has some idea of who stole these things and
Speaker 1: the reason that they stold them, because, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, you know what celebrities are like. If this
Speaker 1: was just a genuine theft and Nicolas Cage is a
Speaker 1: victim of this theft, it would have been all over
Speaker 1: the news and it would have given interviews because you know,
Speaker 1: in that world, Oscar Wilde said, the only thing worse
Speaker 1: than bad publicity is no publicity, and this would have
Speaker 1: given a platform for Nicolas Cage to say he's a
Speaker 1: victim of an art theft. We've seen it before when
Speaker 1: famous people have been robbed. I mean they've gone out
Speaker 1: and they said, we'd like the things back, and they
Speaker 1: contact the police. But at this point, Cage had still
Speaker 1: not gone public with the theft, and neither the police
Speaker 1: nor his security seemed enthusiastic about pursuing the Kimberly situation.
Speaker 1: Cages people did send a letter to her, and according
Speaker 1: to what Stephen was told, Kimberly sent a letter back
Speaker 1: insisting they were harassing her. So it's possible Nicholas Cage
Speaker 1: didn't want to be perceived as someone who was ordering
Speaker 1: his staff to bother a strange woman who may or
Speaker 1: may not know anything about his stolen comic books. That's
Speaker 1: a weird National Enquirer worthy headline. But she was the
Speaker 1: only link to the heist, So why didn't anyone make
Speaker 1: more of an effort to question her? I think, as
Speaker 1: we've gone through the whole story, it really is a
Speaker 1: Russian dole. You're opening more and more layers, You're peeling
Speaker 1: back the onion and every kind of stop. There is
Speaker 1: something there that doesn't smell right, it doesn't taste right,
Speaker 1: and doesn't look right. And in the normal world of things,
Speaker 1: this is not only what would happen, from the theft
Speaker 1: of it to the handling of it to the surfacing
Speaker 1: Stephen Fishler agrees. And I gave the police this lead
Speaker 1: and they were really just not doing much with it,
Speaker 1: and I said, all right, well, here's the book that
Speaker 1: he from Nick's house. This is my only lead. The
Speaker 1: police don't seem to have the wherewithal to really follow
Speaker 1: it up or the motivation, and I just became like
Speaker 1: the crazy uncle who was still trying to find these books.
Speaker 1: And the detective zombie as a sort of a nuisance.
Speaker 1: But that was then and this is now. Time has
Speaker 1: passed and you're probably thinking, well, why not try to
Speaker 1: find Kimberly today. There's one hurdle to overcome. Kimberly's full
Speaker 1: name is not uncommon. In other words, a lot of
Speaker 1: people named Kimberly live in Connecticut. So we needed more
Speaker 1: to go on a town a phone number, information that
Speaker 1: has in the intervening years slipped through Stephen Fishler's memory.
Speaker 1: But it is the kind of information c g C
Speaker 1: would have recorded back in two thousand when they accepted
Speaker 1: the Marvel mystery number. Seventy one escape end of the
Speaker 1: comic still exists. So we typed in the certification number
Speaker 1: into the c GCS database. The registrate Paul Lytch was
Speaker 1: talking about the one given to the comic back when
Speaker 1: it was graded. It's a ten digit number that gives
Speaker 1: a person general information about the comic, like the data
Speaker 1: was examined and any grader's notes like catch up staying
Speaker 1: on third page. But the c g c S database
Speaker 1: couldn't find the certification number. It seemed to have disappeared
Speaker 1: from their system entirely. That was unusual. Had c g
Speaker 1: C scrubbed the number after Kimberly called to complain, or
Speaker 1: was it just a glitch? So we asked Paul Lynch.
Speaker 1: According to Paul, the number not coming up means the
Speaker 1: comic may have been resubmitted at some point. Some collectors
Speaker 1: do this in the hopes c g C might wind
Speaker 1: up giving their comic a more favorable grade. If that happened,
Speaker 1: then the old label and number would have been destroyed.
Speaker 1: I don't see why we wouldn't. It's got to be
Speaker 1: here somewhere. But as far as to submitted it that's
Speaker 1: above my pay grade, you'd have to, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's one of the head hunchos. Paul told us to
Speaker 1: talk to someone higher up in the c g C
Speaker 1: hierarchy to see what we could find out. We had
Speaker 1: a full name and a state, a non working certification number,
Speaker 1: and a question about a comic submitted that had been stolen.
Speaker 1: Could they help us find Kimberly from Connecticut? We went
Speaker 1: to the head hauncho to find out Harsh and Patel,
Speaker 1: vice president of the c g C. We explained the situation,
Speaker 1: and harsh And understood, but however, noble our intentions. The
Speaker 1: c g c has a commitment to protecting the privacy
Speaker 1: of their customers. Harshin told us that the only way
Speaker 1: he could hand over that kind of information would be
Speaker 1: with a subpoena. That was dead end number two, so
Speaker 1: we tried something else. In two thousand two, that same
Speaker 1: copy of Marvel Mystery Number seventy one went up for
Speaker 1: sale via Heritage Auctions, one of the largest auctioneers in
Speaker 1: the industry. Auctions like these are always private. No one
Speaker 1: but the auction house knows who the buyers or sellers are.
Speaker 1: It's possible the seller was the same person who bought
Speaker 1: it from Kimberly, but again, Heritage couldn't reveal their identity.
Speaker 1: Strike three. For now, the location of the elusive Kimberly
Speaker 1: remains a mystery, but maybe not for much longer. There's
Speaker 1: one more thing to try. Stay tuned, But what about
Speaker 1: that Marvel Mystery Number seventy one. Shouldn't it have been
Speaker 1: returned to Nicholas Cage. Shouldn't the New York buyer have
Speaker 1: forfeited what he knew to be stolen property? Well he
Speaker 1: would have, except Cage wasn't asking for it back because
Speaker 1: the main thing was trying to figure out the Action
Speaker 1: One trying to undertake him. I had mentioned to Nick
Speaker 1: about this lead, and if Nick said to me, that's
Speaker 1: my book, I wanted back. It was more about the
Speaker 1: lead versus getting it back. By this point, Cage's insurance
Speaker 1: company had paid out on all four books. He had
Speaker 1: been financially, if not emotionally, compensated for their loss. The
Speaker 1: Marvel mystery was in some ways small potatoes, even though
Speaker 1: the fact that it had materialized in Connecticut means someone
Speaker 1: had crossed state lines and technically made a Los Angeles
Speaker 1: robbery a federal crime. And maybe it was someone Cage knew, Well,
Speaker 1: maybe someone Cage already considered a suspect, which made looking
Speaker 1: into Kimberly less of a priority. To find these comics,
Speaker 1: someone was going to have to take the initiative. The
Speaker 1: problem was there was no analog for this heist. There
Speaker 1: were plenty of art thefts, but not many comic book thefts.
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder if anyone had ever been bold
Speaker 1: enough to steal an Action number one before Cage's copy
Speaker 1: went missing, if any crime had been an inspiration for
Speaker 1: this one, if it had been a kind of copycat
Speaker 1: comic heist. It turns out the answer is yes, and
Speaker 1: it happened in of all places, Connecticut. Stealing Superman is
Speaker 1: written by Jake Rawson, sound design scoring by Josh Fisher,
Speaker 1: additional editing by Jonathan Washington, Mixing and mastering by Baheed Frasier.
Speaker 1: Original music by Aaron Kaufman. Research and fact checking by
Speaker 1: Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson, with production support from Lulu Philip.
Speaker 1: Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our executive producer is Jason
Speaker 1: English and I'm your host Danish words. If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: this show, check out Haileywood and Noble Blood and give
Speaker 1: us a nice review. We'll see you next week. Stealing
Speaker 1: Superman is a production of I Heart Radio.