Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, Elizabeth Dutton, how's it going. I'm pretty good. I've
Speaker 2: been waiting for you. Oh yeah, it's fine, but it's fine, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Okay, whatever, I wasn't waiting blood. You know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: I do? Okay? Can I tell you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'd love it before Bruce Willis took the role. Bruce
Speaker 2: Willis out of guy. Lots of other people were offered
Speaker 2: this part. Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was offered it. He turned
Speaker 2: it down. Why because he wanted to get into comedy.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Sylvester Stallone he turned it down. Clint Eastwood, El Gibson,
Speaker 2: James Kahn turned it down, Richard Gear turned it down. Finally,
Speaker 2: the role was offered to Frank Sinatra. He also turned
Speaker 2: it down. Now that actually made the most sense, even
Speaker 2: though Frank was in his seventies. Now, why did it
Speaker 2: make sense to offer a role to Frank sinatchra before
Speaker 2: Bruce Willis and that role turned out to be die Hard?
Speaker 3: That was gonna say, That's all I could think when
Speaker 3: die Hard?
Speaker 2: Wow, Yes, the role Diehard originally was going to Frank
Speaker 2: Sinatra was better fit. And I honestly, he can tell you.
Speaker 2: There's a good reason. Diehard is based on Roderick Thorpe's
Speaker 2: novel Nothing Lasts Forever. In that novel, retired detective Joe
Speaker 2: Leland takes on terrorists in the headquarters of the Claxon
Speaker 2: Oil Corporation on Christmas e. Nothing Last Forever was the
Speaker 2: sequel to Thorpe's nineteen sixty six novel The Detective. Now,
Speaker 2: if you know your Sinatra filmography, then you know that
Speaker 2: that book was also adapted into a movie of the
Speaker 2: same name, and it came out first obviously in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. The Detective featured joe Leland as the officer
Speaker 2: investigating a supposed suicide, and joe Leland was played by
Speaker 2: Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 4: One of the.
Speaker 2: Biggest box office hits of Sinatra's whole career was The Detective.
Speaker 2: It was one of the highest gropasing movies in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty Ye you ever heard, I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people haven't. I've watched it. It's actually kind of enjoyable,
Speaker 2: really gritty. Yeah. So if Sinatra had returned to the
Speaker 2: role of John McClain, which they would have still called
Speaker 2: John Leland, Diehard would have been a sequel.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know whatdiculous? It's ridiculous. Do you want to
Speaker 3: know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Dude?
Speaker 3: Do I highbrow Kleptomania? Oh, this is ridiculous Crime a
Speaker 3: podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's
Speaker 3: always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3: You heard that. How many books do you think you owned?
Speaker 4: Zarin Books?
Speaker 2: Jeez?
Speaker 4: A lot?
Speaker 2: Like I have a pretty good library. I don't even
Speaker 2: have all my books with me, like in my living space,
Speaker 2: so I would thousands.
Speaker 3: Really. Yeah, My mom has a library in her house
Speaker 3: and then they are also well they are like bookcases
Speaker 3: in all the other rooms, so I think her total
Speaker 3: has to be well north of a thousand.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he is like, yeah, it's a ten thousand
Speaker 2: lot of books, a lot of books, stack, a lot
Speaker 2: of novels and stuff. Real quick.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, I like I have bookcases and then
Speaker 3: I have books stacked on the ground in my in
Speaker 3: my office. And I moved to ebooks because storage was
Speaker 3: becoming an issue. And then I moved to audio books
Speaker 3: because I'm an old lady. I'm really enjoying it, like
Speaker 3: in the garden.
Speaker 2: Okay, anyway, some old radio shows. I haven't even gotten
Speaker 2: audiobooks yet.
Speaker 3: I'm feeling the audiobooks right now. But speaking of books, Yes,
Speaker 3: what would you say are your top five books? Like,
Speaker 3: in no particular order. I know it's a tough one,
Speaker 3: like top five, you know, top five bands or songs.
Speaker 3: That's really hard. You know, we should we should just
Speaker 3: have an episode that's us listing our top fives of
Speaker 3: stuff and then accusing each other of the crime of neglecting.
Speaker 3: That's my indulgence. But anyway, what would you just, off
Speaker 3: the top of your head? Top five books.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go top five, not the top five I
Speaker 2: think that are best. I'm gonna go with most formative,
Speaker 2: because I think that's easier for me to exactly. Okay,
Speaker 2: Number one the Bible according to Mark Twain, Okay, the
Speaker 2: full title.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And number two Lynston Hughes, The Big Cu. Number three
Speaker 2: that's his auto that's his autobiography or one of his
Speaker 2: books is autobiographical. Number three, The Book of Laughter and
Speaker 2: Forgetting Wlankandera. I really liked that one Fear of Flying
Speaker 2: Erica Jong because of when I read it, it meant a
Speaker 2: lot to me, and I love Tropica Cancer by Henry Miller,
Speaker 2: so I put those kind of together. But if I
Speaker 2: said Tropic Cancer Hendry Miller is.
Speaker 3: Just like, really, you were perfect?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly once again, So I'm gonna go with the
Speaker 2: zipliss f of Erica Jeong on this one instead, So
Speaker 2: Fear of Flying and then lastly, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 2: I would say Fear of Fear and Loathing Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: I read it one day in a park and it
Speaker 2: was an amazing novel. And I was really young. I
Speaker 2: was in college, and of course it was the exact
Speaker 2: perfect time to read a book like that. I was
Speaker 2: blown away by the use of the language to tell
Speaker 2: you the storytelling. I mean, so, I thought that was
Speaker 2: a really powerful book. And I had read other stuff
Speaker 2: his prior to it. Yeah, I thought that one was
Speaker 2: just really great and I read it all one sitting,
Speaker 2: which is I recommend I read to Dartha like that.
Speaker 3: It's really weird formative.
Speaker 2: Also, your book Driftwood coming in at U number five
Speaker 2: is with an asterisk because I feel like you'd be like, no,
Speaker 2: you can't say that your book drift Woods.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you?
Speaker 2: What? Top five?
Speaker 3: That's good? Here are my top five. Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what are your no particular tell me what
Speaker 3: Joan Didion's Run River, or if I were to go
Speaker 3: like nonfiction slouching towards both the Him one hundred Years
Speaker 3: of Solitude, Gabriel because Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, or maybe
Speaker 3: like Travels with Charlie or with cortes Ian Rankins, Knots
Speaker 3: and Crosses. I don't know that that's the first Inspector
Speaker 3: Rebis novel.
Speaker 2: You told me about Inspector I like, I want to
Speaker 2: check this.
Speaker 3: And then The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson
Speaker 3: I think would be like some of these I love
Speaker 3: for the craft of them, and then some I love
Speaker 3: because they remind me of the place and time in
Speaker 3: my life. When I read them, like you were.
Speaker 2: To formative books, it stayed with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And so you know, like any like if
Speaker 3: I would have like a song or a movie or
Speaker 3: band list, it's shifting sands, you know. It's sort of
Speaker 3: like in this what you come up with off the
Speaker 3: top of your head. Listen, rude dudes, tell us your
Speaker 3: current five top current top five books in the comments
Speaker 3: on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Ridiculous crime book clubs.
Speaker 3: Really eager to see what people love seriously, So yeah,
Speaker 3: go to Instagram and put your top five in the comments.
Speaker 3: So anyway, books, I have a ton of books, but
Speaker 3: I don't have any rare ones. I have like the
Speaker 3: giant Old Family Bible, but like it's not worth money
Speaker 3: in the real world.
Speaker 2: You don't have like a first printing of the de
Speaker 2: camera On.
Speaker 3: No, just no, I have. I have assigned Anne LaMotte
Speaker 3: bird by bird, and she told me she doesn't sign books,
Speaker 3: but I was like, I was able to browbeat her
Speaker 3: in the signing.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's like the most you know, high level
Speaker 3: I have. Do you have any rare books? And then
Speaker 3: where are they located in your house? And how far
Speaker 3: are you from the nearest rare bookstealer. I'm just just curious.
Speaker 2: Just curious. Now. Actually, I do have some books that
Speaker 2: are worth something. A couple of them are like weird
Speaker 2: aesoteric books. I've got some really old Freemason books that
Speaker 2: a friend of mine gave me that are like from
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, wow, that are definitely worth something. I
Speaker 2: have some American history books that are some first printings
Speaker 2: that are like written by people from American history. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you about where they are
Speaker 2: because I don't trust you. Call me a freak.
Speaker 3: Well, there are people who dedicate their lives to rare books.
Speaker 2: And well some do you do you have any rare books?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I just told you you have none, none.
Speaker 2: Zero, zero, second time.
Speaker 3: And LaMotte bird by Bird and then I have a
Speaker 3: gigantic old family bible that has like deeds in like
Speaker 3: real estate letters from the gold Rush era. That's all
Speaker 3: I have. But so people, there are people who dedicate
Speaker 3: their lives oh their books. Some are like they collect.
Speaker 3: Some are there to preserve. They really just want to
Speaker 3: preserve them, the first editions and such and zaren you
Speaker 3: know what happens when there are valuable objects that are
Speaker 3: portable and sold with little or no paperwork. Yes, crime, yes,
Speaker 3: exactly crime. Enter John Charles guilty. My dude was born
Speaker 3: in Modesto, California.
Speaker 4: I know where that is.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: I'm wearing a Modesto Nuts minor league baseball cap. Right.
Speaker 3: Their minor league team is called the Nuts, and you
Speaker 3: have a hat and you're wearing it. Go Nuts, Go Nuts.
Speaker 3: It's the craziest looking at Anyway, I've mentioned Modesto briefly before,
Speaker 3: and you know you laughed at it. But I think
Speaker 3: it's a I think it's a great Central Valley.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: No, I picked because I'm from Davis, so I'm out
Speaker 2: of the Central Valley, and therefore I look down on
Speaker 2: Stockton in California.
Speaker 3: Central Valley feeds the world, and you gotta respect, please,
Speaker 3: you gotta give respect. Modesto ninety miles east of San Francisco.
Speaker 3: It's like smack dab in the middle of robust farmland.
Speaker 2: San Franisco's on your way to the Gold Country.
Speaker 3: Do you know how the city got its name, by
Speaker 3: the way, Modesto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for being a very demure and modest environ Well.
Speaker 3: It started out as a stop on the railroad that
Speaker 3: connected Sacramento to Los Angeles. Yeah, Central Pacific. Yeah, eighteen
Speaker 3: seventies when it was created. One of the founders of
Speaker 3: the railroad company, Mark Hopkins, he wanted to name it
Speaker 3: after his associate, a banker named William Ralston, and yeah,
Speaker 3: Ralston told him to pick something else, don't call it Ralston.
Speaker 3: And then a railroad employee overheard this conversation and then
Speaker 3: said really loudly in Spanish that Ralston was a modest man,
Speaker 3: and so the other founder of the company, Charles Crocker,
Speaker 3: another big he decided to call the place modest though,
Speaker 3: in honor of Ralston's Yeah, exactly, the modest one. Moestah,
Speaker 3: so guilty Modesto's own. I'm not sure if you would
Speaker 3: call him modest. Well, judge, you'll judge for yourself when.
Speaker 2: You try not to judge Elizabeth just watching judging.
Speaker 3: When he was a little kid, he started showing his
Speaker 3: true colors, you know, as we all do. But his
Speaker 3: true color was a hue called kleptomenia.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, he could not The kid could not stop stealing.
Speaker 2: He rant color.
Speaker 3: When he was nine, he stole a baseball catcher's mitt.
Speaker 3: He got it home and he realized the mitt was
Speaker 3: for left handed people and he's right handed. Ramp So
Speaker 3: where did he get these thieving ways, you know, that's
Speaker 3: the big question. Well, his parents, they wound up helping
Speaker 3: him out with that in later years. So I think
Speaker 3: it was like a nature nurture even balance for this
Speaker 3: modesto nut Gilkey. He doesn't just love to steal. He
Speaker 3: has other passions like reading. Oh, he fell in love
Speaker 3: with reading. Thanks to Richie Rich comic books.
Speaker 2: Hey got to start somewhere. That's a good place.
Speaker 3: The Richie Rich character who's called the poor little rich Boy,
Speaker 3: only child of super wealthy parents, girl's richest kid. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you just want to like smack him. He was so
Speaker 3: rich that, like his middle name was a dollar sign,
Speaker 3: so gross, gold toilets all around. Did you ever get
Speaker 3: into Richie Rich?
Speaker 2: Look at me? Do you think I wanted to read
Speaker 2: a Little Rich Boy? No, I wanted.
Speaker 3: He never did it for me.
Speaker 2: My sister liked Actually, so they were in the house.
Speaker 3: I saw, okay, And I told you I had this
Speaker 3: weird thing where like I felt I could like probably
Speaker 3: beat him up, and I didn't respect that.
Speaker 2: I barely Casper the ghost. I mean, I can tolerate
Speaker 2: that kind of a kid like these, you know, and
Speaker 2: also like a Heathcliff another one. I'm like, I don't know, Garfield,
Speaker 2: what is this?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: You know what? When I was a kid, I had
Speaker 3: those Garfield books. I can remember like laughing hysterically at them,
Speaker 3: and then I've looked at them since and.
Speaker 2: Being like what my parents worried about me?
Speaker 3: I'm sure at the age of five, what was I on.
Speaker 2: Well, at least we've got two kids, because this one
Speaker 2: little that's not right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So for both of us, and we are speaking,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to just make my mom proud. So Richie
Speaker 3: rich comic books. They sent John Charles Guilty into a
Speaker 3: fantasy world of wealth and instant gratification. And he was
Speaker 3: there for it. He was living for it.
Speaker 2: It was his Calvin and Hobbes.
Speaker 3: Yes, so or bloom County County. So you know you
Speaker 3: love reading, you love books, you love stealing stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, talking about me or friends.
Speaker 3: We have a mashup on our hands. So in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, Guilty was twenty nine years old. He went
Speaker 3: to his first ever antiquarian book fair, Zarin, Where was
Speaker 3: your first antiquarian book fair?
Speaker 2: Elizabeth? I'm so pleased to you ask me this question.
Speaker 2: It's lying there in the promise of the future before
Speaker 2: me somewhere. I can't quite see it. It's not come
Speaker 2: into view, but I can feel it approaching an antiquary coming.
Speaker 2: Do you see it? Are you going to bring it
Speaker 2: to me?
Speaker 3: I think so, because it would be my first antiquarian.
Speaker 2: Did dawn break on the horizon?
Speaker 3: I bet you'd be cool. So in his first antiquarian
Speaker 3: book fair, he bought three tomes yes, a first edition
Speaker 3: of The Dunewich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft, Rosemary's Baby
Speaker 3: over eleven, and seven Gothic Tales by Isaac Dennison.
Speaker 2: Likes them dark tails.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a spooky boy. And then you know, he
Speaker 3: and the vendors, they're charmed by this whole thing. They're
Speaker 3: just having a great time until the vendors realized that
Speaker 3: he had paid for all three of them with bad
Speaker 3: checks and maxed out credit cards. Oops ooopsies. To quote Sophocles,
Speaker 3: profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception. Then,
Speaker 3: and to quote Homer, so Gilki he had. He had
Speaker 3: a real job. Sometimes. He got a holiday temp job
Speaker 3: at Saxsmith Avenue department store in San Francisco. He was
Speaker 3: the perfect employee. Everyone loved him. He even got a promotion,
Speaker 3: which I didn't think was possible for holiday temp work.
Speaker 3: But what have you. Maybe they promoted him to a
Speaker 3: full time gig. Either way, he was working. While he
Speaker 3: was working, what do you mean, Elizabeth, What do you mean, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: Great question, Dave. So he was spreading holiday cheer and
Speaker 3: collecting credit card numbers oh.
Speaker 2: I love doing that. Hundreds of great way to holiday.
Speaker 3: He would record a credit card number and then wait
Speaker 3: a month before using it, which is smart. Yeah, No
Speaker 3: one suspects that the information was lifted at Sacks. You know,
Speaker 3: could be anywhere after a month. And I figure, if
Speaker 3: you're shopping at SAX in the holiday season, you're putting
Speaker 3: some miles on that card. The plastic is getting put
Speaker 3: through the paces to melting exactly. That back and forth
Speaker 3: teaching is that a lot of friction. So once he
Speaker 3: had the card and enough time had passed, he would strike.
Speaker 3: He'd hit up a payphone in a hotel lobby and
Speaker 3: from there he'd place book orders at rare booksellers and
Speaker 3: he'd either pick up the book and say that he
Speaker 3: was just a friend doing it as a favor for
Speaker 3: the buyer, or he'd have his dad go pick it up.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, Yeah, his dad was all about this.
Speaker 2: They did teach him the life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah. His dad loved criming. So but I
Speaker 3: don't know if his dad, like I think that Guilkey
Speaker 3: brought his dad into criming. But you have to have
Speaker 3: some element at home if you can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or at least you know, you lean that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Gilkey and his dad. They researched the Modern
Speaker 3: Library's list of one hundred best novels looking for potential
Speaker 3: high value targets. So if you want books that are
Speaker 3: or something, they have to have credibility with the people.
Speaker 3: So guilty steps were impressive. Autograph copies of Mayor of
Speaker 3: Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, an Invisible and an autograph copy
Speaker 3: of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Huh. A first edition
Speaker 3: of the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, unipper O Sarah, founder of the California Missions.
Speaker 3: Another one of.
Speaker 2: Those find edition.
Speaker 3: Just cursed. First editions of Jack Kerouac's On the Road Tennessee,
Speaker 3: Williams the street Car Named Desire, Kay Thompson's Elouise in Paris,
Speaker 3: and Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi first edition. He
Speaker 3: was racking him up.
Speaker 2: He's also going for all big names.
Speaker 3: He was, though, about to cross pads with another character
Speaker 3: in this tale, a white hat on the horizon, ready
Speaker 3: to take down such a vile thief, Ken Sanders, a
Speaker 3: man named Ken Sanders.
Speaker 2: Future Kentucky chicken owner, Yeah exactly, and Colonel in the army.
Speaker 3: Dude was born in nineteen fifty one to some lapsed
Speaker 3: Mormons in Salt Lake City, Utah, and early on he
Speaker 3: decided the best way to approach religion was to quote
Speaker 3: stay the hell away from it. Yes, head, So, Ken
Speaker 3: Sanders is more than a non Mormon. Though he's a
Speaker 3: book dealer. He's also the head of security for the
Speaker 3: Antiquary and Booksellers Association of America a BAA A BAH.
Speaker 3: Another thing about Ken Sanders, he's an amateur detective, a
Speaker 3: self appointed quote biblio Dick.
Speaker 4: Yes that I.
Speaker 3: Cannot stress how much I love this, the whole thing.
Speaker 3: I'm savoring all the details, so biblio Dick. Sanders. He
Speaker 3: noticed a trend. He heard about more and more book
Speaker 3: dealers who'd been the victim of bounce checks, fraudulent credit
Speaker 3: card charges. Dealers. You know, they report thefts to the
Speaker 3: ABAA A BAA in what are called pink sheets, and
Speaker 3: they're piling up. So when when he notified the police
Speaker 3: of this pattern he was seeing, they just did not care.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 3: Nerds poured a keg on him and like push him
Speaker 3: into a locker.
Speaker 2: I could, biblio Dick, because it sounds like something Vincent
Speaker 2: Price would play like this really confident nerd.
Speaker 3: You just would Would the biblio dick be dissuaded?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I gotta know, are you I doubt it?
Speaker 3: Are you pickling kidding me? So Sanders he sounded the alarm.
Speaker 3: He let other book dealers know about the rash of thefts,
Speaker 3: and he said, most dealers in rare books are quote
Speaker 3: a very small mom and pop operation, So losing five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars book is pretty serious adverse economic impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's huge rrect Yeah.
Speaker 3: You can't have that. So the biblio dick he took action.
Speaker 2: Oh so he got to like not to shoe leather
Speaker 2: but book leather.
Speaker 3: Right, he just bounded on up. So Sanders he developed
Speaker 3: an online system to track thefts, and he also came
Speaker 3: up with a way to get the theft notifications to
Speaker 3: other booksellers as quickly as possible, less smart so no
Speaker 3: more pink sheet filing stacking up nineties baby. So, with
Speaker 3: his data set established, he saw a pattern. There was
Speaker 3: one thief who worked pretty much only on the West coast,
Speaker 3: using stolen credit cards, and the books were later picked
Speaker 3: up by a quote friend. But there was a curious
Speaker 3: detas tail in this. The books never resurfaced on any
Speaker 3: market for resale, never came up. Let's take a break.
Speaker 3: When we come back, we'll continue this developing Guilty Biblio
Speaker 3: Dick Cat and Mouse game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Hello was.
Speaker 2: Aaron, Hello Elizabeth. We're talking biblio dis.
Speaker 3: Biblio Dick Modesto's own Charles John, Charles Gilkey Utah's finest
Speaker 3: ken Biblio Dick Sanders. I just love saying.
Speaker 2: It's your heart out Montana.
Speaker 3: Books are important to both of these fellas, and so
Speaker 3: let's look at Sanders' backstory. His love of books and
Speaker 3: books selling started at a young age, just like Gilkey.
Speaker 3: It started with comic books. He'd sell comic books to
Speaker 3: his pals in grade school. His favorite character not Richie
Speaker 3: Rich spider Man, like it, Gordon spider Man, dds spider Man.
Speaker 2: I love the crime fighting dentist.
Speaker 3: Sanders explained quote he had powers, but he was messed up.
Speaker 3: What awkward kid wouldn't be attracted to him? God bless My.
Speaker 2: Best friend of was a huge Spider Man. J Charlesworth
Speaker 2: loved the Spider Man.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: I know so much about him just from our bike
Speaker 2: riding conversations.
Speaker 3: So this guy biblio Dick. His grandparents would take him
Speaker 3: to Bertrand Smith's Acres of Books. You ever heard of Acres? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a huge independent bookstore in Long Beach, California.
Speaker 3: It's no longer, but at the time it was the
Speaker 3: largest and oldest family owned secondhand bookstore in California. It
Speaker 3: had more than a million books in stock. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: sounds like heaven and it was for Sanders. The future
Speaker 3: Biblio Dick would talk to the owner Bertrand Smith himself
Speaker 3: about Edgar Allan Poe, Maxfield Parrish, Lewis Carroll, which I
Speaker 3: love Maxfield Parish art. It's cheesy, but I love it.
Speaker 3: I love a lot of things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love a lot of cheesy.
Speaker 3: So what do you always say?
Speaker 2: What everybody corny?
Speaker 3: Everybody corny? When you embrace that, yeah, it's all okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, once you realize you hang out, he probably surprised.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, man, I was hanging out these people
Speaker 2: I thought were whatever, cool, tough with it, and they're
Speaker 2: like they were just because you know why I hung
Speaker 2: out with everybody? Everybody corny?
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, So the biblio Dick he corny too. Smith,
Speaker 3: the owner of the bookstore. He was impressed by the
Speaker 3: boy's curiosity, so he would let him into the rare
Speaker 3: book room at the store, and that's where Sanders got
Speaker 3: to see first hand stuff like first edition Edgar Allan Poe,
Speaker 3: the Rate. And so this is how he recalled it, quote,
Speaker 3: I have always been a bookseller. I created Cosmic Aeroplane
Speaker 3: Books out of Steve Jones's old hippie head shop in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five, founded my own publishing company, Dream Garden
Speaker 3: Press in nineteen eighty and I've been running Ken Sanders
Speaker 3: Rare Bookstown Salt Lake City for the past twenty five years.
Speaker 3: My dad joked that when my mom gave birth to me,
Speaker 3: I was clutching a book. It's the only world I
Speaker 3: ever wished to know. Wow, Yeah, I love this guy.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: So you take that love of books and then a
Speaker 3: sense of justice and you get biblio Dick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that that little bit of spider Man. I
Speaker 2: can do this, Yes, example don't expect me to, but
Speaker 2: I can do this.
Speaker 3: So this is how he said quote. I would certainly
Speaker 3: be the last person to deny that I'm obsessed with books.
Speaker 3: If you want to say I'm obsessed with book thieves
Speaker 3: as well. I probably wouldn't argue that point either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair point.
Speaker 3: So one time Sanders chased a book thief on foot
Speaker 3: and then smashed their car window as they were attempting
Speaker 3: to drive away. Like he does not play, Ye, Biblio
Speaker 3: Dick does not play.
Speaker 2: He's reminding me more and more of my friend exactly.
Speaker 3: Sanders, driven by the love of books, justice detecting, he
Speaker 3: coordinated a sting. Oh yes, so January twenty ninth, two
Speaker 3: thousand and three. Gilky's now thirty four years old.
Speaker 2: He got heel like he would bring in furries to
Speaker 2: help him, Like you now, I like this guy. Do
Speaker 2: you see the furries who did like the hacking recently,
Speaker 2: there's like a team of furries who've been out there
Speaker 2: like hacking all these like spaces like then, like shutting
Speaker 2: things down and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: They go, they put on a furry costume, like a costume.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like amateur superhero furries. So there, their superhero
Speaker 2: costume is a furry.
Speaker 3: They just sweat it up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, smells bad exactly. But I imagine like that
Speaker 2: would be his kind of friends. You know, he could
Speaker 2: like call a friend, his friend shows up and like
Speaker 2: he's driving over to furry costume in a Honda Civic.
Speaker 3: See. I didn't connect him to the furries, but that
Speaker 3: same sense of like righteousness, like and like interest your
Speaker 3: own way. Yeah, okay, I'll give it to you. So guilty.
Speaker 3: Thirty four years old. January of two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: he got on the phone and he called a rare
Speaker 3: bookstore in Santa se California, San is So he ordered
Speaker 3: up a rare edition of the Grapes of Wrath by
Speaker 3: John Steinbeck, six thousand dollars out the door. So guys like, great,
Speaker 3: can I get your credit card numbers? Like sure, it's one, two,
Speaker 3: three for jan five, Potato six. Cool. Like what are
Speaker 3: you going to pick this book up, mister page r
Speaker 3: Bookington And he's like, oh, you know what, ship it
Speaker 3: to my hotel in Palo Alto. It's like San Jose
Speaker 3: and Palo Alto aren't that far apart. Palo Alto is
Speaker 3: a lovely town that's been ruined by Facebook. Another tech nonsense.
Speaker 3: That's another crime for another time. So ship it to
Speaker 3: Palo Alto, he says. Little does he know the bookstore
Speaker 3: in santase was working with Sanders the Biblio Dick. So
Speaker 3: as soon as they got the call and it matched
Speaker 3: all the other Hanky patterns, they alerted him and Biblio
Speaker 3: Dick went right to the cops. That credit card number
Speaker 3: they ran it stolen, So the cops they go to
Speaker 3: the hotel and they wait and Guilkey he showed up
Speaker 3: and the police nabbed him. He told him, dude, I'm
Speaker 3: nothing but a transient, a mere drifter. Really yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I just made that up.
Speaker 2: I am nothing but a mere drifter.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to where there's like police activity
Speaker 3: and just walk up to them and be like, I
Speaker 3: am nothing. I am a mere transiend I'm mere drifter.
Speaker 2: I want you to promise me that you've ever see
Speaker 2: news cameras ever walk up and act like you saw
Speaker 2: whatever the crime was, and start giving an impromptu interview
Speaker 2: on camera.
Speaker 3: Now, my grandfather, oh I want for my birthday, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: did you doing a on camera interview as a character.
Speaker 3: My grandfather, when I was growing up, he would call
Speaker 3: us at the house and be like, you gotta watch
Speaker 3: Channel seven six o'clock news, and he's like, just watch
Speaker 3: because he would see them doing like in San Francisco
Speaker 3: he'd be you know, they'd be filming something like that,
Speaker 3: and he would walk back and forth in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And we just watched him walk back and forth, back
Speaker 3: and forth, and he'd be like, did you see me?
Speaker 3: I'm like totally grand book. That's awesome anyway.
Speaker 2: See, you got a family tradition double I do.
Speaker 3: So I'm a I'm a TRANSI and the moondrifter h
Speaker 3: And he's like, someone paid me twenty bucks to just
Speaker 3: pick up a book. I don't know what it's about,
Speaker 3: but I'll take twenty bucks.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: So the police let him go, but then they followed
Speaker 3: him to where he said the exchange point was going
Speaker 3: to be, you know, the like I'm supposed to pick
Speaker 3: up this book and take it over here to this
Speaker 3: Wiener Schnitzel or whatever. No one shows up, so they
Speaker 3: arrest him. He gets booked for credit card fraud and
Speaker 3: grand theft. And because of this, a search warrant was
Speaker 3: issued for his apartment on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
Speaker 2: And where is that, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: It's a fake island. It's landfill. It's a fake island.
Speaker 3: It was built for the nineteen thirty nine Golden Gate
Speaker 3: International exposition, the World's Fair. It's in the middle. It's
Speaker 3: at the midpoint of the Bay Bridge that connects San
Speaker 3: Francisco to its better half. Oakland t I as we
Speaker 3: call it, or as I call it, or as no
Speaker 3: one calls it. It's attached to a real island. You're
Speaker 3: a buena. It was a military base top Island, Traysure,
Speaker 3: I call it Treysure Island. It was a giant film
Speaker 3: stage at one point. Right now it's been developed out
Speaker 3: with housing and little dude had an apartment there. So
Speaker 3: when the cops get into his place, he.
Speaker 2: Lived in the middle of a bridge on a fake
Speaker 2: If you have to take a bridge to leave house
Speaker 2: in either.
Speaker 3: Direction, whatever you're going to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to go east, you gotta take
Speaker 2: the bridge twice.
Speaker 3: Yep, exactly. So they go in and they find twenty
Speaker 3: six confirmed stolen rare books, and then they found way
Speaker 3: more rare books that they thought are likely stolen, but
Speaker 3: they didn't have evidence for those, so they you know,
Speaker 3: left and b where Jesus flaying him. But they got
Speaker 3: the twenty six that were like, okay, these were actually
Speaker 3: reported stolen, so guilty. He told the police that he
Speaker 3: was unemployed, and he had no place of residence, which
Speaker 3: is surprising since they were to his apartment.
Speaker 2: Since they're in his house.
Speaker 3: And then he threw another supreods all your stuff, you
Speaker 3: have a house, so like queen for a day. So
Speaker 3: he posted bail for fifteen thousand dollars and so where okay,
Speaker 3: where'd you get that? Then off he goes, Yeah, off
Speaker 3: he goes. So the cops they keep their fingers crossed
Speaker 3: that he's going to show up for his hearing scheduled
Speaker 3: for February eighteenth, two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take a flyer and say he did not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did not. He did not. So we have
Speaker 3: we have this fantastic tension with Gilkey the Fraudster book
Speaker 3: thief and Sanders the Unstoppable biblio dick. Oh yes, I
Speaker 3: think we need to add a new character up the
Speaker 3: action of attention. Can I give you Alison Hoover Bartlett.
Speaker 3: I know Bartlett. She's a journalist. She wrote a book
Speaker 3: called The Man Who Loved Books Too Much. Yeah, she
Speaker 3: saw this crazy thing playing out and she not only
Speaker 3: wrote about it but inserted herself into the story too.
Speaker 2: Joists Oh god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bartlett said quote, we were all tenacious hunters. Guilkey
Speaker 3: for books, Sanders for thieves, and me for both of
Speaker 3: their stories.
Speaker 2: Me for the story.
Speaker 3: So Bartlett is sympathetic to Guilkey. She even compares them
Speaker 3: to mister Rogers.
Speaker 2: Well, they both like sweaters. I suppose they got a
Speaker 2: comfortable shoe thing going on.
Speaker 3: Railway to a magical world. So here's her assessment of
Speaker 3: the biblio dick though quote when people steal from anyone
Speaker 3: in the trade, Ken Sanders feels an almost personal attack
Speaker 3: on him, and he wants to do anything he can
Speaker 3: to catch these guys. He is determined to catch book
Speaker 3: thieves as guilty was in stealing the books.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think I think it's a bad read. I
Speaker 2: think that he's more determined. You're selling him short totally.
Speaker 3: So Bartlett spent lots of time with Guilkey trying to
Speaker 3: understand his motivations. Apparently he used the term quote getting
Speaker 3: things for free when he talked about his thefts. I
Speaker 3: got this book for free library box, someone handed it
Speaker 3: to him. He also complained how he quote didn't want
Speaker 3: like to spend his own money. Yeah, no kidding, right,
Speaker 3: So me neither kid, But what you know, this is life.
Speaker 3: Bartlett figured that guilty quote actually stole for love the
Speaker 3: love of rare books. That is so apparently rare book
Speaker 3: theft is actually more common than fine art theft.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, more access.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and forgery is also popular, which makes sense. So
Speaker 3: like there aren't crazy minting marks and seals on old books,
Speaker 3: and the materials aren't too hard to source, like if
Speaker 3: you can find old stock of stuff like but when
Speaker 3: I talk about the forgery, here's an example. The Great
Speaker 3: Gatsby without a dust jacket, like a first edition no
Speaker 3: dust jacket is worth one hundred and fifty bucks. Throw
Speaker 3: an original dust jacket on that puppy and you're looking
Speaker 3: at four thousand dollars. So thieves are going to want
Speaker 3: to conjure up some old looking books.
Speaker 2: You've got to stop getting rid of my dust jackets.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm missing the moral of the story.
Speaker 2: And also what about when I put in the fake
Speaker 2: signature autograph from the author? Should I be doing that?
Speaker 2: Is that good?
Speaker 3: You just got to want to source older ink. You
Speaker 3: want to make sure that you're using the time contemporary materials.
Speaker 3: Just it's easy. So back to guilty, he eventually went
Speaker 3: to trial. He did show up. He didn't plead out
Speaker 3: during his trial. You know, he claimed to be innocent,
Speaker 3: but at the same time he's telling everything to bartlet
Speaker 3: So over the course of a year after the sting.
Speaker 3: He then eventually pleads guilty to conspiracy, grand theft, identity theft,
Speaker 3: credit card theft, and possession of stolen property.
Speaker 2: Did they just run out of charges? Well, that's all
Speaker 2: we got. The book is done, bro.
Speaker 3: He stole like about two hundred thousand dollars worth of books,
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars with the books mostly inner around
Speaker 3: San Francisco between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: So he gets sentenced to eighteen months in San Quentin Prison. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty that has a pretty robust library.
Speaker 2: As far as that's actually, I've.
Speaker 3: Been in San Quentin before. Yeah, it's you know, looks
Speaker 3: like a prison from the thirties. It's crazy views outside,
Speaker 3: spectacular right on the bay. Did you know that there's
Speaker 3: actually a college located inside the prison.
Speaker 2: I did know that, Elizabeth, because you told me.
Speaker 3: It's called Mount tamil Pias College. It's an independent, nonprofit,
Speaker 3: actual college in a prison. It's not connected. It's like
Speaker 3: not a state college. The professors are all volunteers from
Speaker 3: places like Callan Stanford's amazing, so look it up. Guilkey,
Speaker 3: he cooled his heels in sand Do.
Speaker 2: Have a podcast?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Houseley, So Gilkey, he's in San Quentin. He gets
Speaker 3: released on parole less than two years later. And what
Speaker 3: did you do when he got out?
Speaker 2: Started stealing books?
Speaker 4: Bee?
Speaker 3: Hey Bartlett? It was it.
Speaker 2: What's that girl?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So Bartlett, I couldn't stop thinking about you.
Speaker 3: Bartlett asks him, like, what are you going to do
Speaker 3: for a job, and he says, quote work. Actually they
Speaker 3: do have an opening at a bookstore. Like, oh, your horror,
Speaker 3: you nave So they did go to a bookstore together though, okay,
Speaker 3: and not for a job.
Speaker 2: Search a date.
Speaker 3: There is a date, sharn close. I want you to
Speaker 3: picture it. Yes, you are John Crichton, owner of the
Speaker 3: brick Row Bookshop in San Francisco. It's founded in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 3: The brick Row one of the oldest antiquarian book businesses
Speaker 3: in the whole United States. Today it's quiet and you're
Speaker 3: behind the counter organizing a new batch of small Victorian
Speaker 3: books you picked up recently. Charming little tomes no bigger
Speaker 3: than your hand, each with beautifully embossed art new vague covers.
Speaker 3: You have KCSM, the local jazz station playing quietly in
Speaker 3: the background. The bell dings as the door opens, and
Speaker 3: two people enter your shop, A shorter, balding man and
Speaker 3: a pleasant looking woman Guilty and Bartlett for those of
Speaker 3: us in the know, you're currently not in the know
Speaker 3: Zarin aka John Crichton. So these two they chat quietly
Speaker 3: to each other as they enter the store and begin
Speaker 3: to look around. The guy looks familiar, but you can't
Speaker 3: really place him. You ask if they need any help.
Speaker 3: They tell you they're just browsing. Where do you know
Speaker 3: that guy from it's driving you crazy? Does he live
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood? But there's like something about him that's
Speaker 3: giving you.
Speaker 2: Bad vibes, say my bowling league in the seventies.
Speaker 3: But then that's it. You got it. A couple of
Speaker 3: years ago you sold a copy of Hardy's The Mayor
Speaker 3: of Casterbridge to a guy. Of course, great sale, twenty
Speaker 3: five hundred dollars. Then a month after that you got
Speaker 3: a call someone was complaining of a twenty five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars charge on their credit card, even though they'd never
Speaker 3: been to brick rope. For that is the castor bridge
Speaker 3: guy man f that guy, you think, so you begin
Speaker 3: to follow the pair around. Gilkey loudly complains about rare booksellers.
Speaker 3: He moans about how the first editions he bought weren't
Speaker 3: first editions after all, how books get described as having
Speaker 3: dust jackets but they arrive naked. He goes on and
Speaker 3: on about how antiquarian booksellers are all cheaters and liars.
Speaker 3: The woman with him is like cringing. She looks like
Speaker 3: she's dying inside. You're made to tough stuff. You don't
Speaker 3: survive in the cutthroat, scheming, ultra violent, rare book world
Speaker 3: without having some grit. It's you just keep following him around,
Speaker 3: waiting for him to make a mistake, try and pocket
Speaker 3: a book or something. That's when you're gonna go full
Speaker 3: John Wick on the guy. He doesn't know about the
Speaker 3: network of book assassins that you have, or quick staple
Speaker 3: the upstairs filled with tattooed telephone operators waiting to put
Speaker 3: a price on this guy's head. Or maybe that's all
Speaker 3: just fantasy. Maybe whatever, you're tailing guy and you're enjoying
Speaker 3: the jazz playing in the background. Then finally they leave
Speaker 3: the store, the bell on the on the door bidding them,
Speaker 3: I do you get on the phone? Who are you
Speaker 3: gonna call? Kenny Sanders Biblio dick himself. Let's take a break.
Speaker 3: When we come back, we'll see how this butting friendship
Speaker 3: between the journalist and the thief develops. Welcome, what's up, hi, Bartlett? Yes,
Speaker 3: he went with Gilkey to the scene in one of
Speaker 3: his crimes, and he peacocked around the place, rubbing it
Speaker 3: in dude's face. In your face. Darn ever, he rubbed
Speaker 3: it in your face. So when Sanders found out about
Speaker 3: this visit to brick Row, he was pissed. But he
Speaker 3: was so pissed he dashed off a strongly worded email
Speaker 3: to Bartlett.
Speaker 2: Downed a glass of pepsi, and said that man has
Speaker 2: it coming.
Speaker 3: Quote, I don't want to hear about your sick games.
Speaker 3: Ever again, he's not having it. So Bartlet, though, just
Speaker 3: kept going deeper and deeper into the enigma that was Guilkey.
Speaker 3: She visited with his family and was told by his
Speaker 3: mother quote, I mean it's innocent. Maybe he was just
Speaker 3: wandering around or looking around with a book, and he
Speaker 3: must have forgot about it and then he got caught.
Speaker 2: Ma'am, mom, come on, come.
Speaker 3: On, missus Gilkey. She showed Bartlet Gilkey's bedroom quote. His
Speaker 3: shoes were neatly lined up on the floor, and artwork
Speaker 3: he had collected hung on the walls. I made a
Speaker 3: move to leave, but his mother motioned toward the closet,
Speaker 3: which she opened. See how he keeps his things neat,
Speaker 3: she said. And look more books, Yes, more books, stacks
Speaker 3: and stacks of them. Their spines faced the back of
Speaker 3: the closet, as if in hiding. This seemed the most private,
Speaker 3: most intimate corner of Guilkey's room. But instead of looking
Speaker 3: inside to see if I recognize any of the books
Speaker 3: he had stolen, I turned away. I was afraid of
Speaker 3: what I might find if I drew the books from
Speaker 3: the pile, what degree of crime and what degree of
Speaker 3: responsibility I might bear in knowing the books were there.
Speaker 2: I'm less of an investigative journalist and more of an accomplice. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 2: So so he's living with his mom basically in his
Speaker 2: little boy lifestyle, and his mom I want to see
Speaker 2: his room, she like. I made the bed so please
Speaker 2: forgive this, and then yeah, the whole like, do you
Speaker 2: want to see my boy's room? And then she's say
Speaker 2: the books all turned backwards, no spines forward, and she's like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to touch the book pile. What did
Speaker 2: she glean from this trip?
Speaker 3: A book? She wrote a book from it. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: Guilkey and Bartlett they keep meeting for interviews over the
Speaker 3: course of three years.
Speaker 2: Wow and slow dating totally.
Speaker 3: Not speak dating. Per book reviewer Joel Hyde quote, it
Speaker 3: is easy to blame Bartlett for not cooperating more in
Speaker 3: the apprehension of a thief, for embarking instead the fool's
Speaker 3: errand of trying to understand his heart. It is easy
Speaker 3: to blame her for blurring the distinction between the desire
Speaker 3: to possess books and the desire to steal them, not
Speaker 3: to mention the distinction between the desire to possess books
Speaker 3: and the love of them. And then he goes on.
Speaker 3: Every profession affords ethical dilemmas, and being reminded of how
Speaker 3: difficult and necessary it is to struggle with those dilemmas
Speaker 3: is of some value. It just isn't anywhere near as
Speaker 3: valuable as it would be to get back books that
Speaker 3: were stolen from.
Speaker 2: Us exactly, so you can do both. You can return
Speaker 2: the books and then wonder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Guilkey, he'd been hard to catch because rather than
Speaker 3: resell the pieces he acquired, he hoarded them for himself.
Speaker 2: And they never had the markets again.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's totally true. According to biblio Dick, these
Speaker 3: are iconic, valuable books that everybody knows and they're very distinctive.
Speaker 3: But I could never find any trace in the marketplace
Speaker 3: of them resurfacing or being sold, so it's not this
Speaker 3: is like, oh, he's living on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Guilkey confessed to Bartlett that what he really wanted was
Speaker 3: a rare book collection that would be worth millions all
Speaker 3: to himself.
Speaker 2: Totally. He's like that collector in the Twilight Zone, or
Speaker 2: his glasses break, or he's got all the books.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, so Bartlett, She wrote that Guilkey was
Speaker 3: obsessed with quote the image of an English gentleman with
Speaker 3: a grand library, and Bartlett said, quote he told me
Speaker 3: he wanted to have a fine gentleman's library, and he'd
Speaker 3: have a big oak desk with a globe on it,
Speaker 3: and he would wear a smoking jacket. People would look
Speaker 3: at his book collection and see that this was a
Speaker 3: man of culture, an aeradype man, and that's what really
Speaker 3: drove him.
Speaker 2: So he wanted to be Thomas Jefferson politics. He wanted
Speaker 2: to be Richie rich You want to Ben Franklin. He
Speaker 2: wanted to be one of those guys with a big He.
Speaker 3: Wanted the world to see him as cultured and debonair.
Speaker 3: And that's what he thought would be his ideal self.
Speaker 2: Books that smelled of leather.
Speaker 3: And so, according to Bartlett, quote, he has the love
Speaker 3: of books, but he also has a love of what
Speaker 3: the ownership of books.
Speaker 2: Says, Yes, what it means to others.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like collectors talk about their books on the
Speaker 3: shelves is kind of a memoir that reflects on who
Speaker 3: they are and what their interests are. Sure, Guilty's no different,
Speaker 3: he told Bartlett. Quote, there's a sense of admiration you're
Speaker 3: going to get from other people. So he's doing it,
Speaker 3: you know, for four others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, collecting books that no one ever will see. But
Speaker 2: he's doing it so that he could imagine that other
Speaker 2: people would find him more interesting, his imagination of others
Speaker 2: would perceive them.
Speaker 3: So she said that Guilty was trying to build an
Speaker 3: identity for himself, and he was trying to keep it
Speaker 3: in the world. Yeah, but guilty said quote I never
Speaker 3: take books from libraries, yet many people do and then
Speaker 3: sell them at large profits. That would be stealing.
Speaker 2: I think they're both stealing. I think you can qualify.
Speaker 2: It's not like only one of them can be stealing.
Speaker 3: So most of his thefts remain unrecovered, and they're believed
Speaker 3: to be in a storage unit somewhere in northern California.
Speaker 3: Let's get hunting, let's figure this out.
Speaker 2: You could probably find it. I would bet on you.
Speaker 3: I could probably find it. So the full extent of
Speaker 3: his thefts and the exact whereabouts the whereabouts of all
Speaker 3: the books he stole totally unknown. Some think that the
Speaker 3: mysterious storage unit contains not just rare books, but like autographs, prints, maps, stamps,
Speaker 3: comic books, like Hollywood memorabilia, coins, maybe Guyeri's Lamba Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: and like since there isn't a.
Speaker 2: Set on like basically a lottery ticket, and people know
Speaker 2: that he's alive and it's somewhere, yeah, I feel for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's not a specific list of actual items
Speaker 3: that have been stolen. And are believed to be in
Speaker 3: the unit, So even if they knew where it was,
Speaker 3: they don't have probable cause for a warrant. A judge
Speaker 3: would never sign up. H Bartlett had all this access
Speaker 3: to Guilkey, and Sanders, who'd never actually met him, had
Speaker 3: a request. He told Bartlett, quote, ask him to tell
Speaker 3: you the location of his storage unit where he hides
Speaker 3: the books. It must be near his home in Modesto.
Speaker 3: Gives me a clue. Guilty refused. He heard that request,
Speaker 3: was like no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, He's like, are you kidding? Whatever reason I did all.
Speaker 3: This, He's like, whatever, girl, Yeah, you're not mad.
Speaker 2: You're not my mom. Only she can make me make
Speaker 2: my shoes be straight.
Speaker 3: I'm picturing Sanders biblio dick in his like film noir
Speaker 3: office with theories and evidence and red string on the walls,
Speaker 3: slamming his hand down on the desk when he hears this,
Speaker 3: and then the furry at the desk and go for yeah.
Speaker 2: You got it.
Speaker 3: It's like, I'm so close to like triangulating the location.
Speaker 3: Let me just call Elizabeth and we'll work on this.
Speaker 3: It's amazing that it is a much better story, right.
Speaker 3: I just imagine like a big lavender tale.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, like an NFL mascot that's sexier. Totally to
Speaker 2: that Directionndy, what you want.
Speaker 3: Well, this is what biblio Dick has to say.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 3: He has this irrational belief that he deserves to have
Speaker 3: a fine library, and since he can't afford it, we
Speaker 3: who are in the trade, who have all of these
Speaker 3: lovely books, deserve to just give them to him, And
Speaker 3: since we won't, it's his or ordained right to steal
Speaker 3: them from us. He's a dirty little book thief and
Speaker 3: there's nothing romantic about it. There's nothing noble about him.
Speaker 3: He might have a passion for books, but his passion
Speaker 3: is for thievery. As far as I'm concerned, he's the
Speaker 3: man who loved to steal books too much. And that's
Speaker 3: where you good. Then he's a dirty little book thief.
Speaker 2: He ain't no Robin Hood no.
Speaker 3: According to Bartlett, quote, he has absolutely no remorse for
Speaker 3: his crimes. He told me the details of how he
Speaker 3: went about it, which I described in the book, but
Speaker 3: he feels that it was his right to take the books.
Speaker 3: During a phone conversation, he told Bartlett that it's like
Speaker 3: he feels like he's sixty percent wrong and forty percent right,
Speaker 3: and that well, he said that like book dealers are
Speaker 3: like keeping these books from the public, which like you
Speaker 3: with shoving them.
Speaker 2: In them from the public. They're offering them for sale
Speaker 2: to the public.
Speaker 4: These books.
Speaker 3: One point, he said, quote, how am I supposed to
Speaker 3: build my collection unless I'm like this multi millionaire?
Speaker 2: Well, has he ever met a thought that actually followed
Speaker 2: through on? Or did you always stop in the middle
Speaker 2: and make a turn?
Speaker 4: Apparently not so.
Speaker 3: During two thousand and nine, a bookseller in Canada got
Speaker 3: in touch with Sanders. She'd sold a book for five
Speaker 3: hundred dollars, but the check was bad. Name on the check,
Speaker 3: John Charles Gilkey, whoa chase was on He's back Fall
Speaker 3: twenty ten. Gilkey gets arrested.
Speaker 2: Oh so it wasn't like a copycat doing a little nod.
Speaker 3: No, he was just put his actual name on a check.
Speaker 2: That was like a loopan move. He like blaming someone else.
Speaker 3: My god, that would be perfect Fall twenty ten. He
Speaker 3: gets arrested, not for kiting checks, stealing credit card numbers
Speaker 3: so that he get like a first edition of Ojy's
Speaker 3: if I did it. No, he was arrested for threatening
Speaker 3: to burn down a print gallery in San Francisco after
Speaker 3: the manager declined to sell him an item.
Speaker 2: See I'm telling you the boy I wrist.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, the boy ain't right, Like
Speaker 3: he just burned it all down. December fifteenth, twenty ten,
Speaker 3: he gets arrested again in San Francisco trying to steal
Speaker 3: two antique maps. Okay, I don't know what became of
Speaker 3: those arrests. July of twenty eleven, John Waite the security
Speaker 3: chair of a baa Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He
Speaker 3: posted a circulation please be aware that convicted fraudster and
Speaker 3: thief John Gilkey is operating once again, likely out of
Speaker 3: northern California. And like the alarms went off and there
Speaker 3: were people like, oh my god, put my pants on,
Speaker 3: I got to do this on the phone. Totally, there's
Speaker 3: a hustle, there's like network lights loading their weapons the continent. Totally.
Speaker 3: That's all I keep saying with this. Antiquarian Booksellers is
Speaker 3: like a complete John Wick universe in my head, but
Speaker 3: not as ultra violent.
Speaker 2: Okay, sure for you whatever for me.
Speaker 3: Cartoon violence, Yeah, I love cartoon violence. A comic book
Speaker 3: dealer in New York State is his latest victim. In
Speaker 3: addition to rare books, he's moved on to print stamp
Speaker 3: comics like.
Speaker 2: She worked on LPs. Go Vinyl Right.
Speaker 3: He was arrested late last year in San Francisco following
Speaker 3: a parole violation, but he was released after he or
Speaker 3: someone posted seventy five thousand dollars bail.
Speaker 2: Bartlet.
Speaker 3: This is this is the detail that's driving me nuts.
Speaker 3: He's driving me modesto nuts. He's not selling the books
Speaker 3: for cash. His family isn't rich, Bartlett. She wasn't there
Speaker 3: for the first bail out, and she's not rich. Who's
Speaker 3: bailing him out?
Speaker 2: I'm telling you it's Bartlett's my guest.
Speaker 3: Do you think so?
Speaker 2: I think she loves it over that three years, but
Speaker 2: a time I think she's like started to see something
Speaker 2: in him. Maybe she's looking for book too. I don't know.
Speaker 3: But he's skipped bail, of course, and there's an outstanding
Speaker 3: warrant for his arrest and an ongoing San Francisco police investigation.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, good luck with that. He basically disappeared, but
Speaker 3: he's still active. So John Gilkey, if you're listening, you
Speaker 3: are welcome to come on the podcast and tell your story.
Speaker 3: We promise not to call Biblio Dick, although I probably will.
Speaker 3: She will because amazing for her too. Biblio Dick, if
Speaker 3: you want to come to hook it up, I want
Speaker 3: to hear all your ridiculous crime story. I git one
Speaker 3: hear your side, Gilkey, hit us up online. Let us
Speaker 3: know you're still alive. Tell us what you're going to
Speaker 3: steal next. Tell me where the where do you? Where's
Speaker 3: your storage in case you need to ride? Do you
Speaker 3: need to ride to your storage studio?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I'm gonna be a modesta for a game.
Speaker 2: We can go nuts.
Speaker 3: I can take you anywhere, just I'll drive you there
Speaker 3: as Aaron. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 2: For this one, I think it's got to be that
Speaker 2: Bartlett thought that she would learn anything from this hanging
Speaker 2: out with him for all these years. Because everything the
Speaker 2: quotes you told me and what we've learned about him,
Speaker 2: you're telling of his story, I did learn something. I
Speaker 2: don't think we learned anything from her version, because it
Speaker 2: seems like her perspective was kind of skewed, if that
Speaker 2: makes sense. So I feel it's kind of like ridiculous
Speaker 2: that she spent so much time around a person that
Speaker 2: she should have just been dating, and then apparently she
Speaker 2: got a book out of it, you know, So I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you missed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fat. I'm fast.
Speaker 2: You're ridiculous takeaway. Thank you for I did not try
Speaker 2: that sometimes, Okay, I will.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by her and her getting sucked into this.
Speaker 3: You know, it makes for a good story. Biblio Dick
Speaker 3: hero of all heroes.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love me a good Jack Mormon. I grew
Speaker 2: up in a town with a lot of Mormons, and
Speaker 2: the ones who are ex Mormons fascinating. Well, a lot
Speaker 2: of strength of character going against all of your family
Speaker 2: and your culture. And really I often like.
Speaker 3: This guy's like so dedicated to books and literature, and
Speaker 3: his investment in not just the value of the books
Speaker 3: is like you know, commerce, but what they.
Speaker 2: Mean and you know to others, not just to him.
Speaker 3: Right, And when we're talking about like our top fives,
Speaker 3: you think about what those books mean to us, and
Speaker 3: that if you could have like first editions of those
Speaker 3: or signed copies, how important that would be to you
Speaker 3: and how connected you'd be because of the stories that
Speaker 3: these writers have crafted. So if you want a first
Speaker 3: edition signed driftwood.
Speaker 2: That just about a second. If I had the first edition.
Speaker 3: Signed paperback has the better cover, I always go with
Speaker 3: the paperback on that one.
Speaker 2: I would be willing to steal one of those. You know,
Speaker 2: do you have one? Don't answer that, don't ask.
Speaker 3: Well, that's all I have. You can find us online
Speaker 3: at ridiculous crime dot com. There's merch there. I heard
Speaker 3: sometimes no, sometimes yes. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on
Speaker 3: Twitter and Instagram. I quit Twitter? What I deactivated my account?
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 3: I did?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: You know up his.
Speaker 2: I'm not as brave as you do.
Speaker 4: Not email?
Speaker 3: Do it? Do not email ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: And then, but please god, why aren't you people leaving
Speaker 3: talkbacks on the iHeart app?
Speaker 2: We do like those. We'll start playing with you.
Speaker 3: I ask very little of the root is and I
Speaker 3: give so much and all I wanted some talkback?
Speaker 2: You have the woman a pete.
Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, that's it. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth
Speaker 3: Dutton and z Aaron Burnett, produced and edited by First
Speaker 3: Edition Dave Cousten's Who Research is by Marissa handbound copy
Speaker 3: of Leaves of Grass Brown and Andrea Brahmstoker's Dracula printed
Speaker 3: on a silver dagger song Sharpened Hear. The theme song
Speaker 3: is by Thomas Original Nancy Comic in a plastic sleeve
Speaker 3: Lee and Travis Moneyball with no dust jacket. Totally naked,
Speaker 3: totally legal, totally cool. Dutton Executive producers are Sergeant at
Speaker 3: Arms of the A B A A. Ben Bollen and
Speaker 3: Shadow Chancellor of the A B A A. Noel Brown.
Speaker 2: Dus Crime Say It One More Time.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four More Podcasts,
Speaker 1: my heart Radios, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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