Man Writes Novel Chapter in Annals of Library Thefts : Crime: He became the most prolific book thief in U.S. history, taking 24,000 volumes and many rare works.

It was almost midnight on April 19, 1988, when Sharla Desens, night supervisor of the UC Riverside library, saw a custodian coming toward her, escorting a wiry, dark-haired man in a loose-fitting suit.

Custodian Richard Hanley said he had found the man in the locked rare books collection on the third floor--twice. The first time, the man said he was looking for a lost notebook. Then he reappeared as if from nowhere. Hanley took him in tow and came looking for Desens.

The man showed Desens a card identifying himself as Matthew McGue, a Minnesota psychology professor. But she had just read a library alert about a possible thief who was using that name. She called the campus police, who discovered in the man’s satchel lock-picking tools, schedules from several libraries, and an article from the student newspaper about a shortage of campus security officers. “McGue” was convicted on two misdemeanor counts of trespassing and possessing burglary tools and fined $1,000.

Then he vanished.

Now, the man who called himself “McGue” is finally behind bars. Stephen Carrie Blumberg, 42, the most prolific book thief in American history, stands convicted after a trial in Des Moines for stealing hundreds of rare books from university libraries in California and 44 other states. He faces a June 13 sentencing on four federal felony convictions stemming from possession and interstate transportation of stolen goods.

Over 16 years, Blumberg systematically stole more than 24,000 volumes--19 tons--of rare books and manuscripts from 327 libraries and museums across the United States and Canada. The value of the “Blumberg collection,” as librarians begrudgingly call it, is estimated between $5 million and $20 million.

“In terms of the number of libraries raided and the number of volumes known to be stolen, Blumberg is the No. 1 thief of books in American history,” said William Moffett, director of the Huntington Library and an expert in the science of book theft.

Particularly hard hit by Blumberg were USC, the Claremont Colleges’ Honnold Library, the University of Oregon and Washington State University. From Honnold, he took 684 books worth about $644,000. One volume, the Nuremburg Chronicle by Hartmann Schedel, published in 1493, has an estimated value of $35,000. It is one of the last histories of the world not to mention Christopher Columbus.

Librarians and investigators believe Blumberg was driven by bibliokleptomania, called the “gentle madness” of book theft. An independently wealthy college dropout, he had the time, intelligence and compulsion to painstakingly study weaknesses in the security systems at each of the libraries he burglarized.

Blumberg knew how to pick locks, fake identification cards (McGue is a Minnesota professor whose ID he stole) and thwart electronic security systems. He was adept at scaling rooftops and dumbwaiters to gain access to hidden collections. One associate described the 130-pound, 5-foot-9 man as “Spiderman.”

His career came to a halt last May when FBI agents, acting on an informant’s tip, raided his Ottumwa, Iowa, home, and confiscated his “collection” virtually intact. In February, a federal jury in Des Moines convicted Blumberg after rejecting his defense that he was innocent by reason of insanity.

A man with a history of mental problems, Blumberg wore the same burgundy cardigan, brown plaid shirt and blue jeans through much of his trial. His attorneys portrayed him as a man trapped in the past, fascinated by a Victorian age he had known through stories handed down by his grandmother and aunts. His fixation on the era extended to buying antique underwear from the period, which he reportedly wore for weeks at a time.

When the FBI went to Blumberg’s home they found a 17-room, three-story house crammed from floor to ceiling with thousands of old books, as well as a large collection of old stained-glass windows and 50,000 antique brass doorknobs.

“It was musty, an amazing place, an old Victorian firetrap that would have been a lot easier to rob than the places he stole books from,” said Dennis Aiken, assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s regional office in Omaha, Neb.

When he walked through the house, Aiken said, he found books stacked in every room, including the bathroom, all categorized according to subject. An agent accustomed to dealing with less artful criminals, Aiken said he was awed by Blumberg’s collection of books bearing brilliant illustrations with gold inlays. There was Shakespeare, Civil War diaries, books about Salem witch trials, and a copy of the original “The Wizard of Oz.”

Blumberg specialized in Americana: books, journals and manuscripts about different regions of the United States. He acquired whole collections of diaries written by American explorers, the first book ever printed in the state of Connecticut, and 19th-Century collectors’ books on fishing. He also took dozens of elaborate, oversized 15th-Century volumes from the incunabula, the period between 1450 and 1500 after the invention of the printing press.

Dangling above the books he obviously treasured were loose electrical wires.

Aiken said it took agents two days to remove Blumberg’s books and antiques, many of which are also believed to have been stolen. In the end, agents removed 867 boxes of books and tons of stained-glass windows and antiques, which included one antique fireplace mantel he is believed to have stolen that weighed nearly two tons.

“We bought 3,000 linear feet of shelving on an emergency purchase just to house the books,” Aiken said. “We got 40 volunteer librarians here just to catalogue the books.”

Not all the books were old. Among those Aiken said agents came across were a history of the FBI, prison systems and how to pick locks. Blumberg not only stole books, he read them.

Blumberg may have been born with a compulsion to collect.

His great-grandfather, Moses Zimmerman, a Civil War-era horse trader, reputedly had a collection of junk that included 2,000 used horse collars and 100 buffalo coats. He also owned hundreds of acres of apparently worthless land he had received in trade for horses. That land turned out to be in what is today the Twin Cities--St. Paul and Minneapolis--and the resulting estate provided Blumberg a $72,000-a-year income from a trust.

“Stephen’s present difficulties have a genetic link,” Don Nickerson, one of two attorneys representing Blumberg, said in an interview. Evidence presented at trial showed that Blumberg’s mother was found to have paranoid schizophrenia, and his father, a prominent Minneapolis physician who runs the family’s real estate business, also has demonstrated symptoms of mental illness.

As a child, Nickerson said, Blumberg grew close to a grandmother, whose middle name “Carrie” he took for his own, and began a reversion to the past. While he was growing up, a neighborhood was being demolished to make way for a freeway, and he began rummaging around old, abandoned homes. It was at that time he began taking home doorknobs, light fixtures and stained-glass windows.

As he grew older, his interest in doorknobs extended to locks, and his passion for collecting drove him to burglary. Small and wiry, he reportedly scaled steep rooftops to make off with weather vanes and stained-glass windows. Eventually, his interest in abandoned homes brought him in touch with homeless young men who, evidence indicated, followed him around the country in his pursuit of books. Books, he collected. Antiques, he sold.

In the early 1980s, he became itinerant, driving around the country with young men he had met, and using them occasionally as accomplices. For a period in 1987 and 1988, it is believed that he lived in Los Angeles. At Clark Library, one of UCLA’s off-campus special collections, he was spotted one day shortly before the Riverside arrest, and stole library keys from a staff member’s key ring, carefully returning her car key. Locks were changed, and nothing was taken.

“He made a study of each place, institution by institution, to determine their unique weaknesses,” said Victoria Steele, head of the department of special collections at USC. “We have taken a variety of measures, including electronic ones, since Stephen’s theft here, and we’re very confident that this could not happen again.”

At some universities, Blumberg reportedly had accomplices throw books out the window to him in possible imitation of one 18th-Century papal nuncio who was a renowned bibliokleptomaniac. That he knew of the papal nuncio’s famous method is likely; he stole several copies of “Bibliokleptomania,” an authoritative history of book theft.

At the University of Oregon and Washington State University, officials believe, he drove a truck up to loading docks after hours and hauled books away by the boxful. At USC, he is suspected of gaining entrance by scaling an elevator shaft to reach a collection the public could not even see. At Claremont, he apparently used the library’s own book carts to whisk away more than 600 volumes.

At other libraries, he would mark his desired volume with a stolen stamp from another library, and show the book to the librarian on the way out the front door. While he was waiting for campus police to arrive at UC Riverside, Blumberg later told a friend, he ate a rubber stamp with the name of a fictitious literary society on it.

Though a jury rejected his insanity defense, Blumberg has been hospitalized for mental problems several times. A defense psychiatrist said he was suffering from delusional paranoia that compelled him to “rescue” books he felt were being kept from the masses.

A prosecution psychiatrist said he found “not one shred of evidence” of current mental illness. “Just because he wears his underwear a long time doesn’t mean he’s mentally disturbed,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Linda Reade, who prosecuted the case. She pointed out that he had asked an informant to destroy a trunk filled of evidence as soon as he learned he was being investigated by the FBI.

The trunk, which agents confiscated, contained thousands of bookplates, catalogue cards and library cards.

When Blumberg got his books home, he set about removing library marks. Where libraries had used embossed identification stamps, he soaked and ironed pages. As a last resort, he cut out the identifying stamp.

The result of Blumberg’s painstaking cover-up is the virtual obliteration of what librarians call “provenance,” or history of book ownership. A nonprofit group in Ohio, Online Computer Library Center, has set up a database for the Blumberg collection. Thousands of the volumes may never be traced, librarians say.

Book theft has been a problem throughout history. In the Middle Ages, manuscripts often contained curses threatening anyone who stole the books with eternal damnation. Later, librarians took to chaining books to walls.

Traditionally loathe to acknowledge embarrassing thefts for fear of alienating potential donors, some libraries did not publicize the Blumberg losses. Others, such as Claremont’s Honnold, moved quickly to make the theft known to booksellers in case the thief tried to sell his booty.

Susan Allen, head of the special collections department at Honnold Library and an expert in university response to theft, said Blumberg’s thefts have cost universities millions, and wreaked emotional havoc among librarians who in some cases blamed themselves.

Book theft is a particular danger in the 1990s as government funding drops and the investment value of books soars, librarians say. Many do not have the resources to maintain adequate security or inventory controls. Aiken said the “vast majority” of victimized libraries never knew of their losses until informed by the FBI.

Roger Stoddard, curator of rare books at Harvard College Library, said he now believes 670 books valued at $150,000 were taken from open shelves at Harvard’s Widener Library.

“This is a nightmare case,” Stoddard said. “The objective of a library is to make it easy, not difficult, to read books. . . . The trouble that you face is that someone asks for a book, it’s not there, and you do a search. Weeks go by. Another book is missing. An enormous amount of displaced effort goes into just searching for a book, let alone 670.”

At the University of Oregon, 19th-Century manuscripts were found to be missing during an embarrassing incident in which a donor’s children showed up to look at them.

Moffett of the Huntington, which had no books stolen probably because of the private library’s extensive security, said in an interview that librarians are asking the FBI to set up a national clearinghouse for stolen books such as one that exists for art. FBI spokesman Mike Kortan said the FBI is considering the request.

One Saturday during the trial, Blumberg called up New England author Nicholas Basbanes, who had come to observe for a book he is writing on collectors, and asked if he would like to spend a day with him. Blumberg picked him up in an old Cadillac and took him on a tour of abandoned houses, homeless shelters and the Ottumwa home lined with empty bookshelves.

Every time Blumberg saw a green commercial dumpster, he would stop and spryly jump in. Finally, he emerged triumphant with a 1927 book of President Warren G. Harding’s memoirs.

Observing perplexity on Basbanes’ face, Blumberg said: “But we rescued a treasure, didn’t we?”