One of the most brazen art heists in US history went down
in an unlikely place.
A scene so unbelievable one would think it was a movie.
We were taking our cues from film and TV.
Four middle-class college students
decided to become art thieves, and the crime...
...shocked Lexington and became one of the city’s most notorious,
the Transylvania Book Heist.
We were all 19 years old.
Some of it was just so amateurish.
I mean, my grandkids could have done a better job.
I trained the gun on his face.
He’s pointing a gun at Chas, Chas is pointing a gun at him.
And everything kind of came together
and came crashing down at that moment.
[THE TEENAGE ART HEIST]
My name is Chas Allen, and when I was 19 years old,
I was involved in one of the largest art heists in American history.
The biggest question everybody has when they hear this headline is:
how do four normal, seemingly happy college guys
decide to become art thieves, right?
At 19, I was arrogant, brash, and angry.
My parents went through a divorce, and I found myself at odds.
You were bored. You were a little bored.
Lexington is a... it’s a small town,
and it’s the type of place where everyone seems to know everyone.
I grew up with the other three guys,
and we were each kind of going through tumultuous times.
One of the guys, he was actually an art student there at Transylvania.
He said, “Hey, can you believe that there are books of paintings
worth about $12 million in this one special collections room?
What would it take to get those?”
Buried within the musty manuscripts of the special collections room
sits more money than you’d find in most bank vaults.
Transylvania University’s special collections
has a particular specialty in natural history books.
We were actually watching heist films for inspiration
and to kind of psych ourselves up
to actually turn this fictional thing into reality.
So the original idea to use disguises,
it was actually an offshoot of an inspiration from the film
So in
We kind of created a variation off of that.
We came up with old men.
We actually created facial putty masks,
complete with makeup and wrinkles to make us look aged,
bald caps, hats, and suits that we purchased from thrift stores.
Because you thought that would be inconspicuous in the library?
Although it’s a college library, so not so much.
We actually did a trial run wearing these costumes.
We had to walk across the entire university lawn.
We were kind of hobbling and limping,
acting like we were elderly people.
And rather than being inconspicuous, our costumes had the opposite effect.
We had to abort the mission.
After going through that first trial run,
I really didn't even want to be involved at all.
But I agreed to just drive the car.
The day of, I picked up the van, came back,
and picked up the other two guys,
who were planning on going into the special collection library.
It was a pretty solemn drive.
We were just kind of alone with our thoughts.
I felt like... I was almost underwater.
When we pull up to the special collections library,
we found a parking spot right next to the emergency exit.
We’d gone in ahead of time
to actually cut the alarm on the exit escape.
The art student at Transylvania was the lookout
because we were worried that someone might recognize him.
One of the guys went in.
He had originally wanted to use a taser.
We had kind of vetoed that.
He was supposed to just talk to the librarian
and let her know we’re here for the books.
So please just cooperate with us. It’ll all be over soon.
Lipka says to Borsuk, “Grab her hands.”
And then he’s pressing the stun gun into my left arm.
I’m waiting in the van with the other guy,
and he gets a call to come up to help carry out the books.
Gooch was stunned and tied up,
and she told the
the library was being robbed.
I’m waiting,
and it feels like it’s taking forever.
It was supposed to be in and out.
Finally, I see one of the guys just kick open the door,
running at full speed,
and one of the assistant librarians was chasing after him.
We opened one of the side doors of the van,
he dives into the van,
and I hit the gas into oncoming traffic,
running red lights, running stop signs.
They open the backpacks
and we realize that they got all of these things,
like Charles Darwin’s
an illuminated manuscript from the 1400s,
sketches from Audubon.
We got away with roughly $1 million worth of rare books.
My name is Pat Murray.
I’m a retired police sergeant with the Lexington Police Department.
I supervised the Transylvania Book Heist investigation.
I gave them a lot of credit initially.
I go, “These guys have already come and gone.
It’s already on a plane.
It's down the interstate. It's already sold.
It’s going to a buyer already.
We’ll never see this stuff again.”
The forensics people, they seized the librarian’s computer
because there had been some emails exchanged
between the librarian and the suspect.
Those emails came from a Yahoo account,
Walter Beckman.
So we did a preservation letter
and then follow up with a search warrant,
and about ten days later, we got multiple CDs.
Not only did we see the emails to the librarian
setting up the appointments with her,
there were other emails after the fact
going to Christie’s auction house in New York.
When these guys wanted to take the stolen books to an auction house,
I said, “There’s no way that will actually work.”
They were positive that Christie’s
was going to be able to sell the books.
When we saw Christie’s auction house,
they’d crossed state lines, so we had to bring in the FBI.
We had a conference call with Christie’s auction house,
and they had video of two of our suspects walking in.
The two guys that actually went into Christie’s auction house
for the meeting,
their back story was that they had a very wealthy relative,
and they were there to sell the books on his behalf.
And they had fake names
and even made fake IDs to go with the fake names... yeah.
I thought that was kind of a far reach myself.
If I have $7 million worth of books,
I’m not sending a 20-year-old to represent me.
I have a son the same age,
and he attended local high school.
It was probably a shot that he might know one of these kids.
So he looked at the photographs,
instantly recognized Spencer Reinhard
and knew the kid Warren Lipka.
One of them gave their cell phone number up,
and of course, that was a huge mistake.
And I said, “You mean the cell phone in your pocket
that’s registered to your name?”
I called his phone, and I put it on speaker.
His voicemail had his actual name,
you know, “Hey, this is Spence. Leave it.”
It was just a matter of time until we were actually caught.
When the FBI actually arrested us,
it was about 5:30, six o’clock in the morning.
My girlfriend woke me up
and she was screaming, “Chas, Chas, someone’s in the house,
someone’s in the house.”
I ran over to the closet, grabbed a gun.
That’s when I heard someone beating on the door.
I’m standing at the top of the stairs
with the gun trained at the bottom of the stairs.
Next thing I know, someone in full SWAT gear
comes through the doorway at the bottom of the stairs.
And my first instinct is I trained the gun on his face,
and we locked eyes for just a brief second.
I hear one of my guys challenging an individual on the stairs,
telling him to drop the gun.
And for whatever reason, my guy did not pull the trigger.
Chas put the gun aside.
In that moment, I realized that I was caught,
and I realized that... that we were going to prison.
I went downstairs, and that’s where the books were found, downstairs.
I’ve still got a visual image of those books
and artwork being in duffel bags.
And I looked through there,
and I said, “I think it’s all here, guys.
I think it’s all here.”
Eric Borsuk, Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard,
and Chas Allen, the getaway driver, all pled guilty.
The men served seven years in prison for their crime.
So, according to the FBI, the heist that we committed
is one of the most audacious art heists in American history.
Yet, at the time we were kids,
we were 19 years old, and we made a lot of mistakes.
The sad part was the force they used on the librarian
and the amount of psychological trauma inflicted on her.
I had expectations of professional criminals
when I first got into this case.
And even though it was very challenging,
it was a little bit of a blow to feel that I was dealing with amateurs.