Ex-Stanford Professor Indicted : Collectors Led to Break in Edison Theft Mystery

When Phillip Petersen offered rare Thomas Edison artifacts for sale a few months ago, the tiny community of Edison buffs and memorabilia dealers he contacted was buzzing about his remarkable collection.

But in a short time the small circle of Edison collectors was closing in on Petersen to solve the longstanding mystery of the 1976 theft of thousands of priceless historical documents from the Edison National Historical Site in West Orange, N.J.

It was the aroused suspicions of this select few that directly led to a renewed FBI investigation into the case and finally to a New Jersey federal grand jury indictment July 18 against Petersen, 63, on charges of concealing artifacts of national importance stolen from the Edison archives.

Petersen, who faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $5,000 fine, is scheduled for arraignment on the stolen property charge in New Jersey federal court on Aug. 5, said assistant U.S. Atty. Claudia Flynn. Petersen was not charged with theft because the five-year statute of limitations had expired, Flynn added.

In 1977 Petersen was fired by Stanford University, where he was an adjunct professor in the Spanish and Portuguese department, after his conviction for embezzling more than $62,000 of university funds. He was sentenced to one year in jail.

The trail leading up to Petersen’s current indictment began last March when North Carolina collector Bryan West received Petersen’s offer to sell rare Edison documents. It ended last month when West and Edison museum officials accompanied FBI agents to Petersen’s modest stucco home in the San Mateo County community of Redwood City, where thousands of Edison artifacts, missing for almost a decade, were recovered.

Museum officials, sifting through the recovered material, said the majority of items taken from the historical site revealed Petersen’s intense interest in Edison’s invention of the phonograph.

“(Petersen) made his selection very carefully,” said Edison archivist Mary Bowling. “The items taken are very important in tracing the development of how Edison invented the phonograph.”

On a wall in the front hall of Petersen’s home FBI agents found a framed letter, dated 1878 and written by Edison, calling the invention of the phonograph a “perfect success.” Bowling said the museum’s catalogue number was still on the back of this letter.

Talking Doll

Also recovered were 143 black binders stuffed with unique Edison documents belonging to the historical site--sketches, letters, photographs--detailing the development of the phonograph and inventions related to it, such as Edison’s talking doll.

Petersen visited the historical site several times between 1974 and the time the artifacts were discovered missing in 1976. Because of his Stanford connection and articles he had written on Edison, museum officials viewed him at the time as an important scholar of phonographic history, said Edward Pershey, the site’s supervisor of collections.

Based on an agreement with the museum’s archivist, Petersen was allowed to research materials alone in a vault at the historic site, a cluster of industrial buildings built by Edison in 1886 and used by the inventor and his staff as research facilities to develop many of his 1,093 patents.

When thousands of items were discovered stolen in 1976, the museum’s archivist contacted Petersen by mail asking him about the missing material. Petersen shot back an angry letter critical of the museum’s lack of security, pointing out how easily items could be taken from the site, Pershey said.

The FBI investigated Petersen as a suspect in 1976, but “didn’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant,” according to FBI spokesman Michael McDonnell in Newark, N.J.

A Matter of Time

“It was a just a matter of time waiting for the material to surface,” said Charles Hummel, museum coordinator for the Charles Edison fund in New Jersey and a trustee of the Edison historical site. “You can’t do anything in this field without everyone knowing about it--it’s too small.”

Hummel noted that Petersen surfaced briefly in 1978 as editor of a collectors magazine called American Phonograph Journal, which survived for four issues with fewer than 400 subscribers. Hummel noted that Petersen offered several rare Edison documents through an advertisement in the Phonograph Journal but there was no connection made at that time between Petersen’s collection and the missing artifacts.

Last March, however, Petersen contacted several collectors by mail asking for bids on such unique Edison documents as an 1878 sketch marking Edison’s invention of the tinfoil phonograph that was signed by Edison and his co-workers and an 1890 handwritten note from Mexican President Porfirio Diaz thanking Edison for his gift of a phonograph.

One of the dealers contacted by Petersen was Bryan West. At first overwhelmed by the opportunity to bid on these sensational artifacts, West soon became suspicious.

Pays $600 for Sketch

West bought the 1878 sketch from Petersen for $600 and then showed it to a friend, Bart Cox, an Edison scholar and collector from Maryland. Cox then showed the sketch to a friend, Edison museum trustee Hummel.

Hummel took the sketch to the Edison site, where museum officials examined it and found what they considered conclusive evidence that this was one of their long-lost documents: The sketch was still covered with the museum’s special lamination, while underneath this covering were the Edison archivist’s original pencil markings.

Museum officials contacted the FBI, who directed West, an artifacts collector and amateur sleuth, to arrange a meeting at Petersen’s home on June 10 to determine if the other missing Edison documents were there.

West took an FBI agent with him and introduced him to Petersen as a retired Air Force pilot interested in acquiring historic documents to place on the wall of a restaurant he was opening.

Petersen showed the two men one black binder containing missing Edison documents that West valued at $200,000. Two days later, armed with a search warrant, FBI agents and museum officials descended upon Petersen’s home and recovered 143 such binders and other missing historical artifacts.

“He devoted his entire life to the history of the phonograph,” West said in a telephone interview, noting that Petersen had several antique phonographs on display in his home. “While I don’t approve of his stealing, I admire his knowledge of Edison and the phonograph.”