Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast · Moms and Mysteries Podcast

The Art of the STEAL: When Passion Drives Crime

·49 min·1 clip

They found both artworks shelved in the wrong spot, 80 feet away, after a year-long search.

Hosts Mandy and Melissa, true crime enthusiasts and moms, explore thefts driven by obsession rather than profit. They recount three distinct cases of unusual thefts from cultural institutions. The first story details the 2015 scandal at the Boston Public Library, where Albrecht Dürer's "Adam and Eve" engraving and a Rembrandt etching went missing for over a year. Library president Amy Ryan resigned after the artworks were discovered misfiled just 80 feet from their proper location. The incident exposed the library's lack of a reliable inventory system for its 1.7 million rare items. The second case follows John Charles Gilkey, who stole over $200,000 in rare books between 1997 and 2010 using stolen credit card numbers. Gilkey targeted first editions from the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list to cultivate an intellectual self-image, not for resale. Rare book dealer Ken Sanders eventually helped police arrest Gilkey in a 2003 sting operation using a rare Steinbeck edition as bait. Experts later described Gilkey's condition as biblio-kleptomania, a compulsive need to steal books. The third subject is map dealer Edward Forbes Smiley III, who stole 97 maps worth over $3 million from institutions like Yale and the Boston Public Library. Smiley used an X-Acto blade to surgically remove maps from centuries-old atlases to fund his lavish lifestyle. His thefts were uncovered in 2005 when he accidentally left his blade on the floor of Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library. Smiley cooperated with the FBI, leading to the recovery of most maps, and served 42 months in prison. A surprising insight is that these thieves often saw themselves as righteous, with Gilkey rationalizing his crimes as a protest against greedy dealers. The Boston Public Library scandal revealed that a "theft" could be a simple filing error, wasting hundreds of staff hours searching 320,000 items. Edwin Rist's 2010 theft of 299 rare bird skins from the Tring museum for Victorian fly-tying highlights how niche obsessions can drive major crimes. The episode notes that these cases forced institutions like the rare book and map trades to implement stricter security protocols. The tone is conversational and humorous, with the hosts sharing personal anecdotes about CrimeCon and escape rooms alongside the historical cases. Mandy and Melissa maintain a lighthearted, relatable style while discussing the psychological motivations behind the crimes. Listeners who enjoy quirky, non-violent true crime stories about unusual obsessions will appreciate this episode. Those seeking narratives about violent crimes or mysterious disappearances might find the subject matter too niche or academic.

As heard by us

A rare-book theft story that lets John Gilkey's logic and Ken Sanders's pushback do the heavy lifting.

Moms and Mysteries gives the rare-book theft story a human scale. John Gilkey's rationalizations land as the real subject here, along with the tidy math he uses to excuse himself and the steady pushback from rare-book dealer Ken Sanders.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a rare-book theft story with a thief who thinks he is the reasonable one.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Moms and Mysteries: A True Crime Podcast