The temperature-controlled room was set to 70 degrees, but the man couldn’t stop sweating. His eyes darted around the dimly-lit space, and rested hungrily on the yellowing books laid in front of him. He reached for his blazer pocket, as if to take out a handkerchief—then simply patted his lapel nervously. E. Forbes Smiley III had just stolen a map from Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. But he hadn’t gotten away with it yet.
A few floors above him, the library’s security team huddled around a screen showing grainy footage of the reading room below. One librarian clutched an X-acto blade she had found on the Beinecke’s floor earlier that afternoon: the first sign that June 8, 2005 wouldn’t be a typical Friday. In the search to find out who was responsible for the blade, Smiley had already piqued their suspicion on camera.
***
On Wednesday, October 8—nearly a decade after Smiley’s thievery—a crowd of book lovers and art historians gathered in the lobby of the Beinecke Library. In front of them, on a large presentation screen, was a familiar image. “Usually, I start with this slide,” Michael Blanding said with a chuckle, and pointed to the screen, which showed the distinct marble geometry of the Beinecke’s walls.
Blanding had returned to the scene of Smiley’s crime to discuss his new book, The Map Thief, which chronicles Smiley’s life before and after his rise to infamy. Blanding described how, when Smiley left the Beinecke that afternoon, a plainclothes Yale police officer followed him into the lobby of the Yale British Art Center, where he asked Smiley “if perchance by mistake he had taken anything from the library.” Smiley agreed to return to the Beinecke for investigation, and, there, drew from his blazer pocket a folded-up copy of one of the Beinecke’s prized acquisitions: Jon Smith’s 1631 Map of New England.
The FBI was summoned to campus, and Smiley spent the night in jail. E. C. Schroeder, current director of the Beinecke and, at that time, head of technical services, also called in Bill Reese, YC ’77. Reese, a rare book dealer and the chair of library associates for Yale, had helped the University with library theft in the past, dealing mostly with inside jobs that students carried out.
When Reese examined Smiley’s briefcase, he immediately noticed Gerard de Jode’s incredibly rare 1578 Terreni Globi. More importantly, he noticed the wormholes. Four tiny spots in the corner of Smiley’s map lined up perfectly with four moldy counterparts on the spine of Yale’s atlas.
During Wednesday’s talk, Reese sat in the lobby of the Beinecke, listening to Blanding, nodding along, smiling with the familiarity of the story. “This was something later on that the judge seemed to think was hilarious,” Reese told me later on the phone. “But it was like a fingerprint.” After he matched the wormholes, it was clear Smiley had cut the map from a book in the library’s collection.
Terreni Globi turned out to be one of the nearly 100 maps Smiley stole over the course of his four years as a robber. “Smiley really, really knew his stuff. That made him a very dangerous thief,” Reese said. “He knew what the great rarities were, and the institutions they were in.” According to Reese, Smiley had also worked hard at ingratiating himself with librarians, displaying genuine enthusiasm for the material. “A lot of people felt personally betrayed for those reasons,” Reese added.
Reese had already been betrayed by Smiley once before. “Yes, I’d known him for many years,” he said ruefully: in the 1980s, Reese had sold the first American coastal navigation atlas to Smiley for 50,000 dollars. When Reese tried to cash the check, however, it bounced. Reese recalls phoning Smiley and demanding his money back. “I’m afraid I just don’t have it,” Smiley had replied. “And I’m afraid your atlas doesn’t exist anymore.” Smiley had already aggressively disassembled the antique document and sold the New England maps to a prominent dealer. Eventually, Reese got his money back, but the map lovers’ relationship never warmed past “cordial.”
By June of 2006, a year after the Beinecke incident, Smiley had admitted to stealing from institutions such as the Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and Chicago’s Newberry Library, in addition to Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke. Because of his cooperation, he was only sentenced to three years and four days in prison. By the time Blanding began research for The Map Thief in 2011, he was back living in Martha’s Vineyard, making 12 dollars an hour working as a landscaper.
***
“That wasn’t much of a detective story, was it?” Harry Avakian, a New Haven resident who attended Michael Blanding’s talk, complained. True, Smiley seemed to have returned to the cushy life of a law-abiding citizen—he’d taken up watercolor painting in prison, and still lived minutes from the beach. But à la Nicolas Cage, he’d set himself up for a Map Thief: Part II.
“I do believe that Smiley stole more maps than he admitted,” said Reese. Schroeder, too, told me he is skeptical that Smiley only stole from five or six institutions, and that the list of buyers he had instructed the FBI to track down may have been incomplete. Schroeder says a question remains about what Smiley would have remembered at all, in his testimony. “He’d certainly remember maps, but I can see him forgetting who he sold them to,” Schroeder said.
Blanding himself holds suspicions about Smiley, especially after Smiley abruptly stopped agreeing to interviews for The Map Thief two years ago. After doing a few sessions, Smiley started stalling, canceling the night before, and not showing up to meetings. He finally claimed that his family counseled him against cooperating. “Maybe he realized he was in over his head, or that there were things that would get him into trouble if he revealed them,” Blanding mused. They had once chatted for hours at cafes on Martha’s vineyard, but had not talked in years. “If anyone has a chance to talk to him, I would love to hear what he thought of the book,” Blanding added, with a shake of his head.
As for the Beinecke, the librarians happily welcome Smiley’s self-induced exile. But Reese and Schroeder say that, if he—or someone like him—were to return, they would be ready. According to Reese, Beinecke has vastly increased security measures since 2005, employing a full-time librarian in the rare book reading room, improving their security surveillance cameras, and establishing a more comprehensive electronic cataloging system. Most libraries are prevented from tracking patrons who check out their books due to civil liberties issues; rare book institutions like Beinecke, however, now have data on every individual who reserves a piece. “You’re always struggling between wanting people to have access to material and protecting it,” Schroeder said.
It was on an ordinary day a decade ago that Smiley’s saga of theft first began, as he stood staring at a fading atlas in Sterling Memorial Library. His heartbeat quickened, as it usually did when he saw an especially beautiful map. In that moment, he realized something. Only one stretch of his fingertips, one swift ripping motion, one subtle cough separated him from this priceless artifact. The thought had been planted; there was no turning back.