Speaker 1: You know how this story started. A New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: party at Nicholas Cage's house in late nine d perfect
Speaker 1: cover for someone to run off with cages copies of
Speaker 1: Action Comics Number one and Detective Comics Number twenty seven,
Speaker 1: two of the most valuable comics in existence, a theft
Speaker 1: that would ultimately have value in the millions. It was
Speaker 1: the Stewart Isabella Gardner heist of the comic book world.
Speaker 1: That's the infamous Boston theft of priceless art works back
Speaker 1: in nine You can probably find a lot of podcasts
Speaker 1: about it. You know what would be strange, though, if
Speaker 1: you took a famous art heist like the Gardener Museum
Speaker 1: or the Mona Lisa theft, and somehow found that someone
Speaker 1: somewhere had done something almost exactly like the robbery, right
Speaker 1: down to the modus operandi, and did it just weeks
Speaker 1: before the more well known heist, like it was some
Speaker 1: kind of criminal dress rehearsal, and the parallels were so eerie,
Speaker 1: so puzzling, that you'd almost have to think the two
Speaker 1: had to be related. Example, what if someone told you
Speaker 1: that just before someone stole Nicholas Cage's copy of Action
Speaker 1: number one from his bel Air home. Someone took another
Speaker 1: copy of Action number one from the home of another
Speaker 1: collector in Connecticut, and did it just after the person
Speaker 1: had a party with dozens of guests at their palatial
Speaker 1: residence that was known to have lack of security measures
Speaker 1: and that there were no shortage of suspects, from his
Speaker 1: house staff, to his guests, to his two house sitters.
Speaker 1: How could two copies of the same priceless comic be
Speaker 1: stolen thousands of miles apart at practically the same time,
Speaker 1: the only two recorded times anyone has ever been audacious
Speaker 1: and brazen enough to steal Superman's first appearance. I know
Speaker 1: I'm asking a lot of rhetorical questions, and what I'm
Speaker 1: about to tell you isn't exactly like the Cage case.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it took place on the East Coast.
Speaker 1: For another, the collector wasn't a famous millionaire. He's a
Speaker 1: famous billionaire. For I Heart Radio, this is Stealing Superman.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Danis Schwartz, and this is episode three.
Speaker 1: The collector. Drive about an hour northeast of New York City,
Speaker 1: and you'll find yourself in Westport, Connecticut, a bedroom community
Speaker 1: for city workers looking for a little quiet. It's safe, peaceful, friendly,
Speaker 1: and home to a lot of wealth. Up until his
Speaker 1: death in two thousand eight, you might have caught sight
Speaker 1: of the actor Paul Newman, who was a resident for decades.
Speaker 1: Martha Stewart used to live here too. This is where
Speaker 1: a woman named Anne found herself in late ninety nine nine.
Speaker 1: Anne was a student at the time, in her early
Speaker 1: twenties and dating a man named Jeff. Jeff taught tennis
Speaker 1: at the local recreation center, and like most couples in
Speaker 1: early adulthood, money was a little tight. Then Jeff heard
Speaker 1: about an opportunity. Someone in the area needed a house
Speaker 1: sitter and maybe there could be a trade tennis lessons
Speaker 1: in exchange for free rent. Yeah, Jeff was always open
Speaker 1: and tells things and looking for a commodations or something,
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, looking for someone that's there during the
Speaker 1: week to watch his house. I guess, And that's how
Speaker 1: we got to live in his house. That's Anne, and
Speaker 1: the house she's referring to belonged to one of Westport's
Speaker 1: wealthy residents, and and Jeff were intrigued by the idea
Speaker 1: of becoming house sitters, but a better term may have
Speaker 1: been mansion sitters. The owner who had invited Anne and
Speaker 1: Jeff to house it worked in the finance world and
Speaker 1: knew how to navigate it, so much so that later
Speaker 1: on he'd take on ownership of a professional sports team.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about his vacation home. There was a tennis court,
Speaker 1: eight bathrooms, stone walls, a gate. It was a palace
Speaker 1: fit for a king, and he needed someone to watch
Speaker 1: it while he was off making gobs of money. Well,
Speaker 1: you know where I'm from. I don't know that it
Speaker 1: was for him. Yes, their main resident was in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and then they would come on the weekends that the
Speaker 1: family mainly just the kids and him, and spend the
Speaker 1: weekends there or vacation there. Yes, it's a mansion, so
Speaker 1: it's a huge house. We didn't need to live in
Speaker 1: the main house. We lived in a side house, separate house.
Speaker 1: You imagine like a castle looking like it was all
Speaker 1: made out of stone. House and then their kitchen would
Speaker 1: connect like a walk away to the house to what
Speaker 1: we had at a house into like a little living
Speaker 1: area with the kitchen, and an upstairs for us was
Speaker 1: our bedroom. Will be respectful of his privacy and call
Speaker 1: him the collector. The collector's home in Westport was cavernous
Speaker 1: and reportedly filled with memorabilia of all kinds, from sports
Speaker 1: cards and jerseys to autographs to comic books, especially comic books.
Speaker 1: The collector had grown up idolizing Superman and Batman, their adventures,
Speaker 1: their code of honor, their exemplar modern mythology. When he
Speaker 1: was just a kid and worked at the local pharmacy,
Speaker 1: he was paid in Superman comics, a weird way of
Speaker 1: his employers skirting child labor laws, but the collector didn't mind.
Speaker 1: It instilled in him a lifelong love of the character.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of comics, but only two were
Speaker 1: kept under wraps, Action number one and Batman Number One.
Speaker 1: That comic isn't actually the first appearance of the Dark Night,
Speaker 1: but it's his first solo title, and it's perhaps the
Speaker 1: third most desirable comic in the world. It's the first
Speaker 1: time anyone ever glimpsed the joke Er and Catwoman. The
Speaker 1: collector had just moved the comics from his home in
Speaker 1: Manhattan over the summer. Both of those comics were kept
Speaker 1: in protective cases to ward off fingerprints, dust, body oil,
Speaker 1: anything that could corrupt their excellent condition. The Action number
Speaker 1: one was valued around two hundred thousand dollars, while the
Speaker 1: Batman could fetch hundred thousand dollars. If it were a
Speaker 1: stack of money, it would take up an entire Duffel bag.
Speaker 1: But these comics were just a quarter inch thick at most,
Speaker 1: and like Cage, the collector had bought them from dealer
Speaker 1: Stephen Fishler and Metropolis Collectibles. Here's Stephen, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: through my memory banks so that you're mentioning it. I
Speaker 1: remember like, oh, you gotta be kidding, not again. What
Speaker 1: was interesting about this is that Fishler sold both copies,
Speaker 1: one to the collector and one to Cage, around the
Speaker 1: same time, and both were virtually in the same, very
Speaker 1: fine condition. The books were like doppelgangers. Well, I had
Speaker 1: sold a tim for a hundred fifty thousand, and in
Speaker 1: fact I sold two copies within thirty days of each
Speaker 1: other for a hundred fifty each, and they were very
Speaker 1: similar to each other. So in ninety I had two
Speaker 1: copies and they sold for exactly the same price, very
Speaker 1: close together. Time wise, if the collector was a little
Speaker 1: cavalier about the other collectibles in his home, he was
Speaker 1: downright militant about these two comics. He kept both in
Speaker 1: a Century Safe Model six. It's about the size of
Speaker 1: a dorm room refrigerator with a numbered keypad. This isn't
Speaker 1: national security level stuff, but it should dissuade most people
Speaker 1: from trying to get inside. Jeff and Anne were not collectors.
Speaker 1: They were sort of well oblivious to all of it. Now,
Speaker 1: not really, I mean at that time, howell was I
Speaker 1: have no, We're just like dumb kids. We were happy
Speaker 1: where we were and happy that we could live there
Speaker 1: for free, and just now not even researched it or
Speaker 1: even like, oh, how much are they worth or whatever?
Speaker 1: I never thought of that. Oh comic books, okay, frame
Speaker 1: and put them up for I don't know, well, framing
Speaker 1: comics hadn't turned out too well for cage. But anyway, besides,
Speaker 1: Jeff and Anne weren't usually in the house. They were
Speaker 1: staying in a guest area that was connected to the
Speaker 1: house but relatively separate. This was a pretty good arrangement.
Speaker 1: The collector allowed them to live there to keep an
Speaker 1: eye on things, make it seem like the house was inhabited.
Speaker 1: On weekends, the collector would come in from the city
Speaker 1: by himself or with his family, and then off he'd go.
Speaker 1: It was really an ideal situation, except well, except for
Speaker 1: a couple of things, like the fact Anne and Jeff
Speaker 1: weren't the only people there. And to know that there
Speaker 1: are too many people around. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: at one point Jeff even thought the driver comes in.
Speaker 1: We didn't know when someone would come, someone would drop
Speaker 1: off some of someone. These people are just coming and going.
Speaker 1: There are always different people, and they don't introduce themselves.
Speaker 1: They just come in and they're just of a sudden,
Speaker 1: stand right next to you and you're in their house.
Speaker 1: Despite his memorabilia and his other possessions, the collector didn't
Speaker 1: seem overly concerned with security. Maybe it was the presence
Speaker 1: of Jeff and Anne to human guard dogs, who might
Speaker 1: ward off any theft by their mere presence alone, but
Speaker 1: even patrol officers in the area would notice how the
Speaker 1: collector didn't seem to mind leaving doors unlocked and giving
Speaker 1: people plenty of acts us. Hey, it's Westport. The property
Speaker 1: crime rate is almost half the national average. The collector
Speaker 1: had a housekeeper named Linda, who came in multiple times
Speaker 1: a week to clean. Linda had been working for the
Speaker 1: collector for years and was trusted implicitly well by the collector. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when she was there, we state on our side. When
Speaker 1: I was even there, I went to school, Jeff went
Speaker 1: to work, so I don't know when she was there,
Speaker 1: I would say hi, and that was Then there was Rodney,
Speaker 1: the collector's driver. Rodney was around even when his boss
Speaker 1: wasn't dropping things off and picking them up. He had
Speaker 1: a key to the house, just like Linda did. Yes,
Speaker 1: there were multiple drivers. They would pick up different cars,
Speaker 1: drop off different cars, just come and hang out in
Speaker 1: the house. I guess, so did a guy named Joe,
Speaker 1: a contractor. The collector had some home improved projects going on,
Speaker 1: so Jeff and Ann would sometimes see Joe and his
Speaker 1: workers around. And so things went on like this for
Speaker 1: a few months, Jeff and Ann living beyond their means,
Speaker 1: but in kind of a cool way. And then, because
Speaker 1: there's always and and then and opened a drawer one
Speaker 1: day to find something very unusual. A few weeks prior,
Speaker 1: Jeff had given her a gift, which she kept in
Speaker 1: a jewelry box inside of the dresser in her bedroom.
Speaker 1: As she reached for it, she realized something was wrong.
Speaker 1: Jeff had given me some diamond ear rings, and those
Speaker 1: diamond ear rings, the piece on the back of the
Speaker 1: stut was through on, so when I was putting them on,
Speaker 1: they just clicked in and I was like, now something's wrong.
Speaker 1: There was something different about the diamond gold earrings. Anne
Speaker 1: couldn't quite put her finger on it until she put
Speaker 1: her finger on it. So I looked at him and
Speaker 1: I could tell that there were struns, and I was like,
Speaker 1: those are not my ear rings. And then I looked closer.
Speaker 1: That didn't have any stamp, you know, like how they
Speaker 1: have a stamp in it that they're real and nothing.
Speaker 1: And then I called him and I said, something that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right. Someone had gotten into Anne's rare and
Speaker 1: replaced the earrings with fakes. That would mean someone had
Speaker 1: been looking in the drawer, found them, and made the
Speaker 1: very deliberate choice of returning with a fake pair to
Speaker 1: try to keep the theft undetected. It was planned. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can say someone looked already through everything beforehand to
Speaker 1: see what we have. Anne immediately told the collector about
Speaker 1: what had happened. After all, a theft had taken place
Speaker 1: in his home, but his reaction seemed a bit muted.
Speaker 1: He was like well, we'll take a look at it.
Speaker 1: I mean him, that's minor. I'm sure so. And then
Speaker 1: I think they're just talked Jeff and him to locate
Speaker 1: where it was. I mean, I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: strange to me at that time, and now it's even
Speaker 1: stranger because who comes in our room and steals that
Speaker 1: tiny of something knowing that I'm wearing I have. About
Speaker 1: two weeks after Anne's earrings disappeared, the collector came back
Speaker 1: to the house for the weekend, and that's when it
Speaker 1: was his turn to notice something was very amiss. The
Speaker 1: collectors safe was kept in a bedroom closet. At the time.
Speaker 1: It contained the comics, about five dollars in cash, and
Speaker 1: an expensive Cardier watch. He noticed someone had tossed some
Speaker 1: clothes on top of the safe. When he pulled the
Speaker 1: clothes away, he saw that the safe had clearly been
Speaker 1: pride open. There was no elegant safe cracking here. It
Speaker 1: was brute force, and when he opened the bent, twisted door,
Speaker 1: he found his Cardier watch, but the five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: was gone, and so was the action number one, and
Speaker 1: so was the Batman number one. The Westport police would
Speaker 1: soon be on the case, But unlike in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: there was no dedicated art detective, nor was Westport some
Speaker 1: massive metropolis. If the Collector and Cage were ever to
Speaker 1: get their comics back, they'd need some kind of specialist.
Speaker 1: Do you mean the forensic comic cologist. The action number
Speaker 1: one's taken from the homes of the Collector and Cage
Speaker 1: are by far the two most significant comic book heists
Speaker 1: in the history of the hobby. They're practically mirror images
Speaker 1: of one another in much the same way Bizarro is
Speaker 1: a mirror image of Superman, only a little off, a
Speaker 1: little different. You know, Bizarro, he's Superman's opposite, wielder of
Speaker 1: broken syntax and calling himself Kent Clark. Instead of an
Speaker 1: S on his chest, there's a bee or later a
Speaker 1: reverse U S. There was an episode of Seinfeld where
Speaker 1: Jerry met a Bizarro version of his friends. The Collector's
Speaker 1: heist was kind of like that, a Bizarro theft, or
Speaker 1: maybe Cages was the Bizarro version, But there was one
Speaker 1: major component both crimes had in common. Police departments are
Speaker 1: usually ill equipped to investigate these sort of thefts. Remember,
Speaker 1: there are hardly even a handful of our thief detectives
Speaker 1: in the world, let alone comic book detectives. But there
Speaker 1: is one person, maybe the only one in the world,
Speaker 1: is uniquely qualified to talk about these kinds of heists.
Speaker 1: My name is Jamie Newbold, live in San Diego. All
Speaker 1: my life. I own Southern California Comics. It's a business
Speaker 1: that's been in effect now since the late nineties. Several
Speaker 1: years before that, I retired from the San Diego Police Department.
Speaker 1: I had done twenty years there. Jamie, by the way,
Speaker 1: is talking to us just after hip surgery. I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for this guy to come pull my stables. It's unusual
Speaker 1: to find a comic bookstore owner and collector who also
Speaker 1: happened to be a uniformed police officer. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a genes plicing of law enforcement knowledge and the insider
Speaker 1: perspective you can only get when you've grown up reading comics.
Speaker 1: And while Cage and the collector may have been shocked
Speaker 1: that someone came for their books, Jamie has seen it before.
Speaker 1: In fact, he worked a stolen comic case back when
Speaker 1: he was a cop. The books were all kept in
Speaker 1: America Comics, which debuted before the US entered World War Two.
Speaker 1: The very first appearance of the patriotic hero who was
Speaker 1: injected with super steroids sorry super Soldier serum and fought
Speaker 1: for the American way. If you've got the first issue
Speaker 1: in your attic or around the house, tried to dust
Speaker 1: it off. It's worth over three million dollars in excellent condition.
Speaker 1: This gentleman, his name is Ray, lived in the Beach area,
Speaker 1: San Diego, and his job takes him out of town.
Speaker 1: Frequently leaves his home no one's there. He had a
Speaker 1: collection of Golden Age Captain America's he was quite proud of,
Speaker 1: and they were missing one day. Now he can't explain
Speaker 1: who or how. He just knows they were gone. I
Speaker 1: was detailed to take the police report, and I'm like
Speaker 1: the only comic book guy on the department at the time,
Speaker 1: so I was able to give him some feelers and
Speaker 1: what I would do if I were him. Fortunately everything
Speaker 1: fell into place. I told him, I will get you
Speaker 1: into con if you don't have a badge for comic Con.
Speaker 1: This was years ago when you could still get badges
Speaker 1: just off the street. Jamie is referring to the San
Speaker 1: Diego Comic Con, the apex of comic book gatherings and
Speaker 1: a place where it might be easier to pass along
Speaker 1: a stolen comic. Jamie had a feeling that the thief
Speaker 1: might head there to sell his Captain America's and well,
Speaker 1: you go ahead and look around for those comics. I'll
Speaker 1: be set up there. I always have a booth at con.
Speaker 1: And if you're lucky enough and maybe somebody actually has
Speaker 1: your books and selling them, come get me. We'll get
Speaker 1: security and we'll go over and lock it down. Well
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. So the gentleman had the books
Speaker 1: was another one of these locals, like a Craigslist guy.
Speaker 1: He would buy and sell through Craigslist. He lived in
Speaker 1: a hangar at one of the local private county air fields,
Speaker 1: so it's a really odd location. So the story was
Speaker 1: that he had someone offered to sell him some books
Speaker 1: through Crazy List, and he bought him when the guy
Speaker 1: came out to the airfield and sold him to him.
Speaker 1: This man had no idea that he was stealing was
Speaker 1: stolen property, but I sensed that he should have. So
Speaker 1: when we did, in fact lock the mooth down, security came.
Speaker 1: It led not only to the recovery of all of
Speaker 1: these expensive golden age Captain America's, but it led to
Speaker 1: the suspect. The dealer had no choice but to give
Speaker 1: it up to the police to stay out of trouble.
Speaker 1: And here's something important to note. Possessing stolen property isn't
Speaker 1: a crime as long as you didn't steal it or
Speaker 1: admit you knew it was stolen. They hit your heart
Speaker 1: on that when it's time to decide if you're a
Speaker 1: thief or an innocent. If this old man had tripped
Speaker 1: up and said something about he knew they were stolen,
Speaker 1: but he didn't think he'd get caught, then he would
Speaker 1: have been guilty. But he didn't know or said he
Speaker 1: doesn't know, and there's no way to prove it, and
Speaker 1: less the suspect confest. But that's low hanging fruit at
Speaker 1: that point. Once you have the suspect of law enforcements
Speaker 1: less interested in the guy defense the items, So that's
Speaker 1: a problem. Even if your stuff is recovered and you
Speaker 1: want justice, that's two different things. Getting him this one
Speaker 1: thing justice is a complete other bugaboo. It's why art
Speaker 1: theft can be so lucrative and so low risk. Imagine
Speaker 1: swiping a comic than trying to sell it then being caught.
Speaker 1: If you're smart. All you'd have to say is that
Speaker 1: a third party sold it to you and gee, you
Speaker 1: didn't know it was a hot item, sorry, officer. Combine
Speaker 1: that with the skepticism facing comic collectors, and you have
Speaker 1: the recipe for a near perfect crime. It's no wonder
Speaker 1: thieves were tempted by the collector's comics and cages. When
Speaker 1: it comes to collectors or mac shops having their books stolen,
Speaker 1: Jamie doesn't think the law is acting as much of
Speaker 1: a deterrent. In fact, his shop has been broken into
Speaker 1: more than once, and even after handing over video and
Speaker 1: other evidence to the district attorney, it's difficult for them
Speaker 1: to act. So he came up with another solution, one
Speaker 1: that probably would have solved Cage's problem. In our store,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of expensive stuff. Now that I've
Speaker 1: said that, my listeners are wondering if I'm an idiot. No.
Speaker 1: The answer is if you come into the shop, all
Speaker 1: you're gonna see her xerox printouts. Good stuff is stored elsewhere,
Speaker 1: so we locked them in glass cases for appearance, but
Speaker 1: they're nothing more than pieces of paper with a picture
Speaker 1: on the Cage could have done something in his own home,
Speaker 1: even to protect against ultra violet light. He could have
Speaker 1: just made copies and frame them. They give him the
Speaker 1: same thrill, and he knew he owned them. He didn't
Speaker 1: have to showcase him. But that's just a difference between
Speaker 1: what he's thinking and what I'm thinking. But in both
Speaker 1: the Collector's case and Cages, the thief or thieves weren't
Speaker 1: likely strangers. If he kept shifting that stuff around, then
Speaker 1: those things were somewhere else in that wrong somebody knew
Speaker 1: it well that would take a repeat have to be
Speaker 1: somebody who had been there either more than once realized
Speaker 1: there were more than these books on the wall that
Speaker 1: meant the rest of them, or someplace else, or somebody
Speaker 1: who had taken a tour of the room and had
Speaker 1: seen other stuff, which would make it more grizzly for
Speaker 1: Nick Cage, because then it was somebody worthy of his
Speaker 1: time and friendship to do that only be ripped off.
Speaker 1: These are the things, though, that a private investigator who
Speaker 1: would have brought pain to Nicholas, because he would have
Speaker 1: made him think deeply about people close to him until
Speaker 1: the detective finally found a change in the armor. It's
Speaker 1: just the way it works. I don't know if cage
Speaker 1: if he hadn't hired a private investigator. Maybe he was
Speaker 1: satisfied with the assurance, or maybe he just didn't want
Speaker 1: anyone digging into his life, including people looking for the thieves,
Speaker 1: because maybe he knew him in a different way. In fact,
Speaker 1: he thinks it's far easier to traffic and stolen books
Speaker 1: than you'd ever think. Possible. Problem is encouraged by the
Speaker 1: fact that comics are so liquid they can be stolen
Speaker 1: and sold to the next door down the block. The
Speaker 1: back issue market is rife with people who are forced
Speaker 1: feeding the public stolen books. Dealers have a cage problem
Speaker 1: every time they put books out for sale, especially at
Speaker 1: comic conventions, so that if you're a pair of thieves
Speaker 1: and there's one person working at a booth, all those
Speaker 1: booths have wall displays, one of the two will ask
Speaker 1: the person in the booth to turn around and get
Speaker 1: a price tag off that book at the top for him,
Speaker 1: because he can't see it from where he's standing in
Speaker 1: that moment, either that person is stealing or another us
Speaker 1: and next to him, who was in that person's blind
Speaker 1: spot as well as stealing. This happens all the time.
Speaker 1: The other tell is a comic con. For instance, they
Speaker 1: hand out these massive tote bags and they hang on
Speaker 1: straps over your shoulder so that the opening of the
Speaker 1: bag is about wigs tight, and they'll use the same dodge.
Speaker 1: They'll get your attention, and then they'll have you distracted,
Speaker 1: and then they'll simply scoop stuff off your table into
Speaker 1: one of those conveniently placed bags and move on their way.
Speaker 1: The stores the problems theft. Graded books are the choice
Speaker 1: plumb because the public is willing to pay more for
Speaker 1: a graded book, knowing that they'll pay close to retail.
Speaker 1: The thieves target those raw comics are a harder sale
Speaker 1: because so many stores don't know how to grade, they
Speaker 1: don't know what the books are worth, and they're reluctant
Speaker 1: to pay in your wheel money. And it's unbelievable, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just stamick. And I can't explain the organization
Speaker 1: behind this, but there certainly seems to be some sort
Speaker 1: of common knowledge, if not a greater connection. And these
Speaker 1: are all problems. These are the tells. Tells are the locations,
Speaker 1: The hands are the demons, tools, and the inability for
Speaker 1: comic bookstores to play policemen or to be trained to
Speaker 1: do this is inevitable or not supposed to be. Cops
Speaker 1: were just retailers, but there's still a difference between unloading
Speaker 1: a valuable comic and getting someone interested in an action
Speaker 1: number one, and it's possible that both the collector and
Speaker 1: cage thieves realized just how hard it was going to
Speaker 1: be only after they had the goods. The collector was
Speaker 1: in a big hurry to get back to new work.
Speaker 1: He brought the safe downstairs and left it in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: It was upsetting, but he really didn't have the time
Speaker 1: to deal with it, not right then. Jeff and Anne
Speaker 1: didn't even know the collector had a safe when I
Speaker 1: had no idea he was a collector. He had things
Speaker 1: like that. It was obvious that whoever had taken the
Speaker 1: earrings had also helped themselves to the comics, but the
Speaker 1: party had muddied the waters. Had it been a guest
Speaker 1: or had one of the collector's many helpers used the
Speaker 1: party as a cover to confuse detectives. There were no
Speaker 1: signs of forced entry, so whoever the culprit was, they
Speaker 1: didn't need to break a window or shimmy a doorlock
Speaker 1: to get access, and that narrowed things down. A few
Speaker 1: days later in November, the collector finally phoned the Westport
Speaker 1: Police Department and explained what had happened. That his two
Speaker 1: rare comics had been stolen, oh and and earrings too.
Speaker 1: But even though Anne's property had been swiped, she and
Speaker 1: Jeff were in an awkward position. They were the full
Speaker 1: time occupants of the property with access to the entire house,
Speaker 1: so detectives sympathized with and missing jewelry, but they also
Speaker 1: had to question both of them. The problem was the
Speaker 1: collector had shown Jeff and Anne the bedroom, which they
Speaker 1: never usually went into, to explain what had happened. This
Speaker 1: turned out to be slightly unsettling for Anne. I just
Speaker 1: remember it showed us everything, and then in the end
Speaker 1: it was like, well, police is going to come and
Speaker 1: check everything. And then Jeff and I were like, well,
Speaker 1: we touched everything, and I think that was another reason
Speaker 1: why we were not staying investigative, but asked as well, yes,
Speaker 1: they talked to me, and then I remember Jeff wasn't there,
Speaker 1: so they just talked to me and they told me
Speaker 1: that fingerprints it found my fingerprints up there, and then
Speaker 1: I had to just tell them, Well, yeah, because we
Speaker 1: all went up to look at it, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: you open things and you lean against stuff. I was like,
Speaker 1: I've never seen this room before. I've never was up
Speaker 1: there before. Detectives took away the Century Safe Model sixteen
Speaker 1: ten and photographed the closet area. Then they put out
Speaker 1: a kind of a c B or All Comics bulletin
Speaker 1: asking comic shops in the area to be on the
Speaker 1: lookout for the missing titles. And then they began looking
Speaker 1: more closely at the cast of the collector's vacation home.
Speaker 1: That left Linda the housekeeper, Rodney the driver, and Joe
Speaker 1: the contractor each had unsupervised access to the home, and
Speaker 1: in some cases more than just access. It's not fair
Speaker 1: to call them suspects. Let's call them interviewees. The first
Speaker 1: was Linda. Linda had been with the collector for about
Speaker 1: a year and was introduced through a relative of hers.
Speaker 1: The collector told police that Linda had access to his
Speaker 1: valuables and in all the time she had been working
Speaker 1: for him, nothing had ever come up missing. Was she
Speaker 1: going to snap one day and pry open a safe?
Speaker 1: It seemed unlikely. Although Anne had her doubts. I always
Speaker 1: like we were going through it, and at that time
Speaker 1: I said it was the housekeeper or she was involved
Speaker 1: in it. I don't know. I didn't like her demeanor,
Speaker 1: I didn't like I don't know, but as a ninety
Speaker 1: year old, you can whatever. And then I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it was an inside job. They
Speaker 1: also spoke to Joe, the contractor. Joe was an interesting person,
Speaker 1: a person of interest, one could say, while he was
Speaker 1: also a trusted member of the collector's circle, having done
Speaker 1: work at several of the collector's proper these for several years.
Speaker 1: Joe sometimes brought along helpers. There was a guy named Ed.
Speaker 1: Ed was once left alone in the house for several hours,
Speaker 1: but Joe insisted Ed was a family friend, not of
Speaker 1: the collectors, but of Joe's family, and Ed was trustworthy.
Speaker 1: Probably knew his way around a crowbar, but that's neither
Speaker 1: here nor there. Joe insisted he had no idea the
Speaker 1: collector even had a safe let alone what was inside
Speaker 1: of it. Detectives also spoke to Rodney, the collector's driver.
Speaker 1: Rodney was well special. He had been working for the
Speaker 1: collector for about three years, constantly coming and going from
Speaker 1: the home like the others, he had house keys. But
Speaker 1: what made Rodney different was that he had the combination
Speaker 1: to the safe in the upstairs bedroom. The collector had
Speaker 1: given it to him so Rodney could get his passport
Speaker 1: for him once. This was when the safe was in
Speaker 1: the collector's other home, but the safe had been opened
Speaker 1: with force, not a combination. If Rodney was the culprit,
Speaker 1: it's possible the combination had revealed to him the valuables inside,
Speaker 1: but didn't leave him any options If he took anything,
Speaker 1: and the collector hadn't given the combination to anyone else,
Speaker 1: that's one giant flapping red flag. If Rodney pried it open,
Speaker 1: that would certainly widen the pool of suspects. Rodney, though
Speaker 1: didn't seem like he had much to hide. He openly
Speaker 1: admitted to having the combination to the safe. He also
Speaker 1: said he sometimes brought along his stepson or a friend
Speaker 1: to help him with errands, but no, he had no
Speaker 1: idea who had taken the comics. After a round of interviews,
Speaker 1: detectives didn't have much more than archetypes to go on.
Speaker 1: The maid, the driver, the contractor. It was like a
Speaker 1: Bizarro game of clue. The driver in the bedroom with
Speaker 1: the pride bar and the action number one. What made
Speaker 1: the case even more complicated was that the collector had
Speaker 1: held a birthday party that fall, with roughly a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty friends and family attending. There were caterers and
Speaker 1: tents and food and drinks, even a DJ. So for me,
Speaker 1: I think Jeff recalls it differently, but I thought there
Speaker 1: was a huge party and he had invited us to.
Speaker 1: We were around, but it was all outside and people
Speaker 1: would just come in, I guess, to go into the bathroom,
Speaker 1: but there were servers there at least there was a
Speaker 1: band too, and it was under a big tent in
Speaker 1: the backyard. And after that I remember that he had
Speaker 1: said someone broke into the safe, and I thought it
Speaker 1: must have happened at the party. R He did have
Speaker 1: one thing to add during his talk with police. He
Speaker 1: told them that some of the workers with the tent
Speaker 1: company had migrated inside into the living room. That wasn't
Speaker 1: really where they were supposed to be. If the collector
Speaker 1: was feeling paranoid at this point, that was understandable. He
Speaker 1: had opened his home to a number of people he
Speaker 1: felt he could trust, and someone had betrayed that trust
Speaker 1: and taken two very valuable comics. What was worse was
Speaker 1: that the collector hadn't been in that closet for months,
Speaker 1: not since September of the theft could have taken place
Speaker 1: any time from September to November, which was when he
Speaker 1: checked the safe again. He had no idea who could
Speaker 1: have done it. And because he had no idea, Jeff
Speaker 1: and Anne were about to get some bad news. The
Speaker 1: collector wanted them to leave. I didn't feel good in
Speaker 1: my gut anymore to be there, and I think shortly
Speaker 1: after that we found a home place and moved out.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a hostile split. It was as amicable as
Speaker 1: it could be given the circumstances. But the collector just
Speaker 1: didn't know who in the house could have taken the comics.
Speaker 1: It no longer made sense to have a full time
Speaker 1: house setting couple there. At best, they hadn't been much
Speaker 1: of a deterrent when it came to a robbery. By
Speaker 1: February two thousand, with the police failing to generate any leads,
Speaker 1: the collector's insurance company paid his claim a total of
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty thousand dollars for both comics and
Speaker 1: ear rings were all but forgotten. Perhaps the only man
Speaker 1: in the world who could feel the collector's pain was
Speaker 1: across the country. Nicolas Cage was still in the throes
Speaker 1: of brief after his copy of Action number one had
Speaker 1: been stolen after a party with many suspects. Here's Jamie Newbold.
Speaker 1: Cage is one of our people. He's one of my people.
Speaker 1: I understand exactly what he must be thinking or half
Speaker 1: thought when that happened, how it felt to him. We
Speaker 1: all do. We are collectors first and then dealers second.
Speaker 1: We don't go to comic book college and get a
Speaker 1: b A and comic ology. You are a fan from
Speaker 1: the get go, and you become a lover of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and then the buying, selling and trading becomes an act
Speaker 1: where you're playing out the hobby to a much more
Speaker 1: satisfying degree. Now you're a player. Finally, when you reach
Speaker 1: my level, it's a living. And when you're robbed of
Speaker 1: your living, jeez, yeah, it's miserable. The parallels to the
Speaker 1: Cage crime are uncannon and and Jeff left without knowing
Speaker 1: who the culprit was, and today the Westport Police Department
Speaker 1: has no record of the case being closed, which means
Speaker 1: the police didn't find the thief or thieves, and no
Speaker 1: charges were ever filed against anyone. Not even Stephen Fishler
Speaker 1: is quite sure what happened. We tried to find the housekeeper,
Speaker 1: but there's nary a trace of her anywhere. The driver, Rodney, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: he passed away a number of years back, and a
Speaker 1: relative says they don't know anything about the comics. The contractor, Joe,
Speaker 1: doesn't know anything either. But here's what we do know.
Speaker 1: The collector got his comics back, both of them. Each
Speaker 1: comic has markings that identified them as being specific copies
Speaker 1: belonging to their original owners back in ninety eight and
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. Like the d copy of the Marvel
Speaker 1: Mystery comics that surfaced after being stolen from Cage's house,
Speaker 1: The Action number one belonged to a pedigreed collection which
Speaker 1: had been discovered back in the nineteen sixties. That particular
Speaker 1: copy of Action number one made history when it sold
Speaker 1: for one million dollars, in the first time a comic
Speaker 1: has ever reached that magical number, the very same copy
Speaker 1: that had gone missing from the collector's house. His copy
Speaker 1: of Batman number one sold for even more a few
Speaker 1: years later, and In a sign of the current state
Speaker 1: of the hobby, it wound up with a company named Rally.
Speaker 1: They sell shares of comics like the stock market. You
Speaker 1: buy a share of a rare book, and when it's
Speaker 1: time to resell it, you also share in part of
Speaker 1: the profit, assuming it appreciates in value. Each share is
Speaker 1: just ten dollars. In other words, both comics had been
Speaker 1: returned to him. They had to have been since he
Speaker 1: eventually sold them. So we asked the collector more than
Speaker 1: once what happened to his comics, who had taken them
Speaker 1: and why, But he didn't respond. Being from the cold
Speaker 1: case stolen comic division of podcasting didn't seem to make
Speaker 1: much of an impression on him, and and Jeff never
Speaker 1: spoke with him again either. So, I mean, we haven't
Speaker 1: even thought about it. I just heard that like a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago that he was a partner or
Speaker 1: something of the could have been a basketball did he own,
Speaker 1: was an owner of a basketball team or something that
Speaker 1: where a name came up, or he was on the TV.
Speaker 1: And then we talked about a briefly what happened between
Speaker 1: the comics disappearing in two thousand and the Action number
Speaker 1: one coming up for sale in It's possible whoever took
Speaker 1: the comics decided the books were too hot to unload,
Speaker 1: or maybe the collector let it be known that he'd
Speaker 1: let the matter drop if the books were returned unharmed,
Speaker 1: or maybe if the thief was very crafty, they ransomed
Speaker 1: the books back to the collector. Whatever it was, it
Speaker 1: didn't involve the police. So it's the real connection between
Speaker 1: the theft of the collector's copy of Action number one
Speaker 1: and cages copy. Did the same person do it weeks
Speaker 1: apart on different coasts. No, that doesn't seem likely, But
Speaker 1: these two cases are connected in a very real way.
Speaker 1: Talk to a law enforcement official about art crime, and
Speaker 1: you'll hear the same thing again and again. An art
Speaker 1: heist is often preceded by media coverage of the art
Speaker 1: in question, something to alert the thief that an item
Speaker 1: within their reach has real value. Just a few weeks
Speaker 1: before Cage's Action number one was stolen, a newspaper, The
Speaker 1: Norwalk Hour ran a story about the collector's misfortune. Extra
Speaker 1: Extra read all about it. It didn't name him, but
Speaker 1: it did go on to state that his Action number
Speaker 1: one had been taken and that it was valued at
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars. That story was then picked up
Speaker 1: by the Associated Press and the New York Times, which
Speaker 1: repeated the value of the comic two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Two thieves across the country likely never met, never knew
Speaker 1: one another, but one inspired the other. The article was
Speaker 1: a big flashing neon sign, come and take me, come
Speaker 1: and steal Superman. How else is two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: ever going to fit inside your jacket? One thief had
Speaker 1: created a bizarre thief. And in case you are wondering, no,
Speaker 1: and never got her earrings back. No nobody ever told
Speaker 1: us or there was never police report or a conversation, nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: I had told them to about the hearings, but that
Speaker 1: was minor. There was no investigation on that at all.
Speaker 1: That was just a little thing on the side. I
Speaker 1: guess one Action number one had been recovered and the
Speaker 1: collector could breathe a sigh of relief. But Nicholas Cage
Speaker 1: was not so fortunate. The case was cold, really cold.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't heat up again until two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: That's when his copy of Action Comics Number one was
Speaker 1: spotted in Memphis. The home of Nicolas Cage's other favorite
Speaker 1: hero and where apparently someone was looking to pass off
Speaker 1: his Action Number one for the right price, and this
Speaker 1: time the police were ready. That's next time on Stealing Superman.
Speaker 1: Stealing Superman is written by Jake Rawson, sound design and
Speaker 1: score by Jonathan Washington, additional production support by Josh Fisher,
Speaker 1: Original music by Aaron Kaufman, mixing and mastering by Baheed Fraser,
Speaker 1: Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson and Austin Thompson,
Speaker 1: with production support from Lulu Philip. Additional voices by Ruthie
Speaker 1: Stevens and Ben Bowan, show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jason English and I'm your host Danish Wartz.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this show, check out Haileywood and Noble
Speaker 1: Blood and give us a nice review. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Stealing Superman is a production of I Heart Radio.