The Birds of America Heist RoadyGoat
2004On December 17, 2004, four Transylvania University students attempted one of the most audacious rare-book thefts in U.S. history. Disguised as an elderly man, Warren Lipka entered the university's special collections library in Lexington, Kentucky, used a stun gun on rare-books librarian Betty Jean Gooch, then pulled a hat over her head, zip-tied and gagged her. The targets included the original double-elephant folios of John James Audubon's 'The Birds of America,' a two-volume 'Hortus Sanitatis,' and a first edition of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' — a collection valued at well over five million dollars. Unable to find their planned escape route and hampered by the sheer size of the Audubon folios, they abandoned the most valuable books and fled with roughly three-quarters of a million dollars' worth. They tried to authenticate the loot at Christie's in New York under a fake collector's name; the FBI traced them and raided their homes on February 11, 2005. All four were sentenced to about seven years in federal prison. The 2018 film 'American Animals' dramatized the heist.