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Arrests Made in Kentucky Rare-Book TheftFour 20-year-old college students were released without bail to their parents’ custody February 15 after a preliminary hearing on the charge of felony transportation of stolen goods. University of Kentucky students Warren C. Lipka, Charles T. Allen II, and Eric Borsuk and Transylvania University student Spencer W. Reinhard have been charged with the December theft of rare holdings from the special collections of Transylvania University Library in Lexington, Kentucky.According to the February 16 Lexington Herald-Leader, all the stolen items were recovered undamaged. Police traced a cell phone number left by one suspect with a Christie’s auction house representative to Reinhard’s father. At a December 21 meeting in New York City, two of the suspects told the Christie’s contact that they represented a “very private” collector named Walter Beckman in the sale of some rare materials. A man who identified himself as Beckman met Transylvania Special Collections Librarian B. J. Gooch at the library four days earlier for a tour. He and another man overpowered Gooch and shot her with a stun gun before fleeing with the stolen materials in a gray minivan believed to have been occupied by the other two suspects. All four men graduated from area high schools, and Lipka is the son of University of Kentucky women’s soccer coach Warren Lipka. If convicted, each could be serve up to 10 years in prison and be fined as much as $250,000. Library officials valued the recovered items at $500,000. Posted February 18, 2005; revised April 22, 2005. |
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