Yale Thief Sentenced
for $1.5-Million Book Heist
A 22-year-old man who worked at Yale University’s Beinecke Library during the summer of 2001 was sentenced June 11 to eight years in prison for stealing and mutilating more than $1.5 million worth of rare documents. Prosecutor John Waddock argued that some of the stolen items “can be classified as national treasures,” according to the June 15 Hartford (Conn.) Courant. He added, “There is no way that many of those mutilated documents can ever be restored to their original state.”
University of Wisconsin/Madison student Benjamin W. Johnson pleaded guilty to three charges of first-degree larceny as well as three counts of criminal mischief. Superior Court Judge Roland D. Fasano, who immediately commuted the sentence to 15 months, told Johnson that his punishment was relatively light because he cooperated with authorities in recovering the stolen items, some of which were in his dorm room and others at his family’s Hamden, Connecticut, home. His father, a Yale graphic designer who collects rare books, and his mother, a school librarian, attended the sentencing.
Johnson was accused of cutting from the documents the signatures of historic figures to auction on eBay. Among the items was a 1780 letter valued at $350,000 from George Washington to French Gen. Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau.
Posted June 24, 2002.
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