Man Sentenced to Prison in Theft of Rare Books
A San Gabriel man who stole rare Benjamin Franklin books from the University of Pennsylvania was sentenced to one year and one day in prison Wednesday in Philadelphia.
William Witherell, 39, was convicted in August by a federal judge in a non-jury trial of stealing volumes valued at $60,000 from Penn’s Van Pelt Library.
One of the volumes stolen was a catalogue of books Franklin sold in 1774 and the other was Franklin’s treatise on the English education system.
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