True crime or
Unraveling a 40-year-old By Phillip J. Wajda
I
t’s unusually quiet on campus as another academic year winds down. The day before, 350 graduating seniors and their families filled the College grounds for Union’s 176th Commencement.
But now the campus is nearly empty. As night falls on this pleasant Sunday on the thirteenth of June 1971, two men sneak over to a rear window on the ground floor of the Schaffer Library’s east side.
ge Special Collections
Cour tesy of Union Colle
ge Special Collections
Cour tesy of Union Colle
Schaffer Library crime scene— case that held Birds of America, and a thief’s footprint
Breaking the window, the men climb into the main reading room and scramble to an oversized locked display case. The thieves, professionals who had plotted their visit for months, eye their target: a leather-bound volume containing 100 of the 435 rare prints from John James Audubon’s Birds of America, an unrivaled masterpiece of art. Fewer than 200 were produced, and Union’s president, Eliphalet Nott, paid $1,000 for the double elephant folio in 1844. In 2010, an original four-volume set sold at auction for $11.5 million, making it the world’s most expensive book.
4 | Union College Summer 2011
One of the crooks smashes the quarter-inch thick glass with a hammer. Pulling the 40-pound volume out of the case, he cuts himself on the glass shards. Blood spatters on some of the prints and the floor. The burglars quickly disappear into the darkness. It will be hours before the heist is discovered. The Audubon Caper is under way.