Autopsy of a Book Heist

A story about how even when book thefts are solved, the results are sad all around

Autopsy of a Book Heist

I’m going to start in the middle, one morning this past spring while I waited at the Portland airport to start a long-planned vacation.

My phone buzzed. The person on the other end of the call was special agent Dale Cooper of the Portland FBI.

Dale Cooper is not his real name. Agent Cooper is a character from the Twin Peaks TV show, played by Kyle McLaughlin, who also played the mayor of Portland in another TV show, Portlandia. Since I have never met him, I imagine the real Agent Cooper looking like Kyle McLaughlin.

Agent Cooper said he was from the art crimes team and that he wanted to talk about some stolen photobooks.

The FBI art crimes program handles a lot more than stolen Monets and Picassos. All sorts of cultural property falls under its umbrella, like Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz, forged Peter Max paintings, and looted Syrian artifacts. They even have an app.

Back in February, a fellow named Jimmy (not his real name) in Twin Peaks (not his real city) emailed me about what he said was his father’s estate. Among the books were six copies of Helmut Newton’s Sumo, a massive retrospective of the fashion photographer’s career that is so heavy that the publisher, Taschen, shipped it with its own stand. There were also stacks of Peter Beard books, as well as lots of individual titles signed by the photographers.

Helmut Newton’s Sumo, with stand

“My father was a big collector of photography books,” Jimmy wrote in an email. “He just passed away and I ended up with these books. We had no clue of the amount of books until me and my mom started going thru his garage.” That last part rang true.

Many collectors buy duplicate copies of books, sometimes by accident; sometimes through compulsion; and sometimes because they think a book is undervalued, and if they wait long enough, they will be able to sell their duplicates for a profit. I once acquired a collection with more than 70 copies of Stephen King’s 1982 graphic novel, Creepshow. I never figured out what the late collector had in mind for them, but he worked on that acquisition project for many years.

I offered to come look at Jimmy’s books. It’s always better to see books in their natural environment; it helps me understand the collection better. Going in person is also a bulwark against buying stolen books. It’s much harder for thieves to sell stolen books if they are still in the original owner’s house. Jimmy told me he’d come to Portland or meet me halfway. “It wouldn’t be a problem,” he wrote. “All the books have to be moved anyway.”

Things started to get fishy when I asked about the books in Jimmy’s father’s house and not just the off-site storage. Jimmy avoided the question, and then stopped responding when I pressed him. If his story was true, I'm pretty sure his father would have filled up the house before he started sending the overflow into storage.

About this time, I googled Jimmy and found he had been arrested a few times on drug and related charges. I wouldn’t automatically hold drug charges against someone, particularly since half the booksellers in decriminalized-drug Portland would be guilty of possession of controlled substances if they lived in Twin Peaks. Still, an arrest record and books in storage were two red flags. When Jimmy ghosted me I thought, fine. I promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Two months later, a notice about a collection of stolen photobooks in Twin Peaks circulated on a booksellers listserv. I recognized the titles and double-checked the list I had received from Jimmy. Same books.

Pretty soon I was on the phone with the victims, a husband and wife, but I mostly talked to the wife, who I will call Summer (not her real name). They own an antiques-related business and used to sell books before the Internet. Now people just use their shop as a book showroom, Summer’s husband explained to me. They come into the store, look at the books, get out their phone, and buy them cheaper online.

When Summer and her husband needed space in the shop, they moved most of the store’s books and their personal collection to a nondescript building in a run-down, industrial part of town.

Scene of the crime

One day in the spring of 2023, a young man came into their shop looking to sell books. Summer told him they weren’t interested. When she related the story to me she added, “certainly not from a street punk.”

The punk said that he had just been to a nearby antiquarian bookshop. The bookstore owner told him that Summer would really want to see these books.

Ok, she said, show me the books.

When he did, Summer recognized her husband’s books and knew then that they had been robbed.

The street punk swore he hadn’t stolen them. He said he bought them on the street from somebody named Jimmy. He was willing to help, but, he added, it might be too late. Jimmy said he was driving the books to Portland (fortunately for me he didn’t follow through with that plan).

Summer took the kid’s name and contact information and then went to the warehouse. Most of the books were gone. She reported the theft to the police, and as with many property crimes these days in big cities, local law enforcement had no time for a non-violent offense.

During one of my frequent calls with Summer during the first few days after I responded to her stolen books notice, I suggested that maybe the FBI art crimes agents would be interested. Summer and her husband drove to the FBI's field office in Twin Peaks as soon as she ended the call with me.

Two weeks later, nearly three months after my last email with Jimmy, Agent Cooper was asking me to re-initiate contact. This is going to be an interesting vacation, I thought.

Agent Cooper wanted me to draft an email to Jimmy. Spitballing ideas on the phone, he asked about potential locations where I could plausibly meet Jimmy. The FBI might want me to convince him to cross state lines, which would definitely make this a federal case.

I wrote a “Hey, Jimmy, what’s up? Can we meet in Dallas?” email.

Agent Cooper, like many FBI agents I have subsequently learned, can be superstitious. They worry constantly about small details that will cause a case to collapse by accident. I suppose they learn those lessons the hard way.

Agent Cooper wrote me back, “I think on this first email it would be a good idea to keep things as open as possible. Murphy’s Law says if you introduce Dallas he will reply that he moved them to a warehouse in New Jersey.”

In the end, I sent a one-liner: “I’m still interested in your collection. Let me know if it’s still available and what your schedule looks like.”

Sending that email made me extremely nervous. I worried that I would accidentally copy Jimmy on emails to the FBI or that I would cc the FBI instead of blind copying them.

I really hoped Jimmy would not reply, and after three days of silence, I started thinking I was in the clear. I had done my duty.

On the fourth day, Jimmy wrote back:

“Awesome I’m sorry things just been ruff... do you have an estimate of what your willing to pay for this collection. There’s 5 Helmut Newton sumo books still in the original shipping box. 5 or 6 peter beard sumo art edition...50 jock Sturges signed books. Linda McCartney...just to list a few from them what’s an estimate cause I will have to get a loan just to move them.”

Special Agent Dale Cooper and I began working on two parallel tracks: Luring Jimmy back into the deal and building a fake connection between me and his undercover identity as the dealer-collector “Dell Cowper” (not his real fake name). I emailed “Dell” to tell him about Jimmy’s collection; Dell wrote back to say was interested. We pretended to consider options. When we had several days worth of emails, I added Jimmy to the mix.

My extended vacation proved useful as it gave us a solid reason that I needed to bring in Dell. Jimmy was anxious to do a deal; I was going to be out of the country.

Jimmy wrote back, “Is there anyway y’all maybe interested in buying just a few books till Mr Scott gets back from vacation? Times are pretty hard right now...” Dell wrote back and asked Jimmy to send him a text.

Jimmy did, and I knew his goose was cooked. Instead of exchanging messages with an antiquarian bookseller in friendly Portland, Oregon, he was texting directly with a trained FBI agent.

Jimmy really didn’t have a chance, and I felt kind of sorry for him.

I had to keep in mind, of course, that Jimmy had stolen from Summer and her husband and that he was trying to take my money under false pretenses.

Jimmy surely had enough experience with the Twin Peaks police to know they didn’t usually investigate warehouse break-ins. The collection he robbed, however, was too valuable and he took too much of it, and Jimmy ended up with undercover feds on his trail.

Jimmy turned out to be a homeless drug addict, living in a tent with his girlfriend. Whether they cared about books or just wanted to protect their booty, I don’t know, but they scraped together enough money to rent a storage unit for them.

How Jimmy was eventually caught, no one told me. I made a public records request to the Twin Peaks district attorney and obtained a copy of the paperwork filed when Jimmy was arrested. Jimmy’s report is just a single page, with most of the details reduced to “during the course of the investigation...” What the course was, the police did not say, which, I suppose, is a way of making it harder on the accused to fight the charges.

Reportedly, 98% of federal cases end in plea bargains, and almost all of the cases that go to trial end in guilty verdicts. Now that I have seen a couple of FBI investigations close up, I can see why. They don’t leave anything to chance.

There are two ways to read the account of Jimmy’s arrest, which happened while he, his girlfriend, and another friend were moving the books out of their storage facility.

In one version, they were trying to stay one step ahead of the cops by relocating the books minutes before the police arrived with a search warrant. In this telling, the police got lucky and caught Jimmy and his crew red-handed. If the cops had arrived an hour later, the books would have been gone, and this story would have another act.

I don’t think that’s what happened.

I think Agent Cooper set up Jimmy to take the books out of storage. It was no accident that the police and FBI arrived in the middle of the move. By catching Jimmy and his friends in the act of moving the books, they were guilty of possessing stolen property. Their only defense would be that they didn’t know the books were stolen. A couple of homeless people living in a tent just happened to have six copies of Helmut Newton’s Sumo valued later by proseutors at more than$100,000? That seems like a hard sell to a jury.

As soon as law enforcement turned up at the storage facility, Jimmy confessed. While it’s not in the written documentation, Summer told me that Jimmy broke down crying and said that he thought he was going to get $100,000 for the books and that he and his girlfriend would buy a house and not be homeless anymore.

After unsuccessfully trying to suppress the confession, Jimmy, who had been in jail since April, pleaded guilty in August. His plea deal called for a three year prison sentence, which might be cut in half with good behavior. According to Summer, she and her husband read statements to the judge explaining their personal connection to many of the stolen books, which had been inscribed to them by the photographers. They also talked about the importance of the books as art objects. The judge then handed down a five-year sentence, with no option for parole. He told Jimmy to use the time to get sober and plan for a better life when he gets out.

I don’t think anyone is optimistic about that.

The whole thing is such a waste. FBI agents in two cities worked on this, as did local police, prosecutors, lawyers from the public defender’s office, several judges, not to mention my small efforts. Based on his criminal record, Jimmy supported himself through petty theft and burglary, a path his girlfriend was also following in a quest to get money for drugs. Putting Jimmy in prison (and his girlfriend in a drug diversion program; charges were dropped against their friend) will prevent him from stealing from other people, at least for a while, but at a very high cost.

Prison isn’t really a solution to crime, drug addiction, or homelessness. But doing nothing to address theft isn’t a solution either. In the abstract, working with the FBI to catch book thieves sounds pretty cool, but the reality of broken lives just leaves me feeling sad.

—Scott Brown, Downtown Brown Books