Transylvania University Book Heist
This crime, also known as the Transy Book Heist, has made its way to notoriety through the extensive media coverage, inclusion on the FBI’s list of most significant art crimes, and movies and TV shows being based on the events.
Let’s Go Back to the Beginning
We need to set the stage and get a little background information on our key players in this story before we dive into it. Spencer Reinhard and Warren Lipka had been best friends since they were eight years old. They grew up in Lexington, Kentucky and attended elementary and high-school together. In high-school they met and became friends with Eric Borsuk and Charles Allen II. All four boys had a very privileged and seemingly positive upbringing, none were even so much as social outcasts with all of them playing sports and being popular.
Fast Forward to 2002
In the fall of 2002 Reinhard was in his first year at Transylvania University in Lexington on a prestigious arts scholarship, aiming for a career as a graphic designer, while Lipka had accepted a full ride to the University of Kentucky for athletics (he was varsity captain of his high-school soccer team). Both schools are in Lexington so the boys assumed they would stay close as they always had but they began to drift apart.
During Lipka’s first year things started to fall apart. His journey on the soccer team wasn’t what he expected and he wasn’t playing as much as he wanted, his parents were also getting a divorce and his mother was accusing his father of gambling the family into bankruptcy (this hasn’t been officially confirmed). In October he officially quit the soccer team, causing his to lose his scholarship, and though he wasn’t officially out of the school itself he was very much on the fringes. Soon after he was introduced to the idea of making money selling fake IDs to college students and he recruited his high-school friend Eric Borsuk to help him. Soon the two were selling these IDs for hundreds of dollars apiece and were part of other scams and illegal businesses.
However, soon Lipka and Borsuk had a falling out over money, of course, and Borsuk, who had provided the artistic talent and software left Lipka to fend for himself and who did he think of when he needed some fresh graphic design chops? Reinhard.
For his part, Reinhard had also had a rough first few months of college. The one thing he had enjoyed was getting to see and learn about the exceptional library at Transy and their rare book collection on a freshman orientation tour. On this tour they learned about a set of Audubon books, Birds of America, that the college had sold a few years before for around $12 million. They still had another set just like it in the library. Aside from this, he was feeling disenchanted with his program and life there, feeling like he was better than the other people in his program and increasingly wanting to rebel against what he felt was expected of him. So when Lipka approached him with this fake ID business he happily agreed to come on board.
One day, when Lipka and Reinhard are sitting in the car smoking weed, Reinhard brings up Birds of America and how much the books sold for. “I said, ‘Twelve million dollars, just sitting there? They got security around that?’ Nonchalantly, very nonchalantly, I mean, just kind of shooting it between us. So I kind of go, ‘That would be pretty crazy, wouldn’t it?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that would be kind of crazy.’ I then said, ‘You know, why don’t you look into it more and we’ll go from there?’” (Falk, 2015).
Even though this was supposedly a casual conversation, over the next few months Reinhard does check it out. He reported back to Lipka that there was zero security in the special collections other than a librarian named Betty Jean (B.J.) Gooch and having to sign in in the book. By doing this, Reinhard felt like he was participating in this fun fantasy of criminality with his friend and it was reinvigorating him in an otherwise disappointing year. He expected there would be some huge obstacle somewhere in this plan that would ultimately prevent them from going through with it, the most obvious one being even if they did steal these books, who would they even sell them to? He asked Lipka who responded with; “I know a guy in New York” (Falk, 2015).
So the two boys arrange a meeting with this contact known only as Barry in New York. In February the two boys make the 700 mile journey to New York City using fake names and paying for everything in cash. The following day they met with Barry in the Plaza Hotel on the edge of Central Park. The meeting started on an awkward note, “He was visibly unnerved,” Warren remembers. “It was hard for us. We weren’t, like, hardened criminals, so we kind of had to really put up a front.” Warren deepens his voice: “‘How ya doing?’ That kind of stuff” (Falk, 2015). After a bit of conversation, and $500 being exchanged, Barry gave the boys an email address and instructions to sign off only as Terry.
Once back in Lexington, Reinhard and Lipka created a Yahoo account and sent off an email in which they claimed to have unspecified rare books for sale. A week later the reply came. The sender said that if “Terry” had books to sell he would have to come in-person to Amsterdam as that is where he did business. The boys were thrilled by this development but again Reinhard thought this was an insurmountable issue (travel requiring passports), but not Lipka. He used his connections in the fake ID world to have a passport made for $2,500 in just a few days.
Now, if I were Reinhard in this situation I’d be like ok this has gone way too far for just a fun fantasy thing. However, of course, he doesn’t think that and he goes (because of budget only one of them could go) to Amsterdam. In early March 2003 he touches down and heads to the meeting with their contact, introducing himself as Terry. “Like Barry, the men were immediately put off by Reinhard’s youth, and even more so by the fact that he hadn’t brought any of the books with him to Amsterdam. He also didn’t have photos, photocopies, documentation, or even the slightest ability to intelligently discuss the books” (Falk, 2015). He did gain one very important piece of information from this meeting though, he now knew that in order to sell rare books, stolen or otherwise, they needed to be appraised by a legitimate auction house.
The men tell Reinhard that if he can get these books appraised somewhere legit, he can bring them to them anytime. This is the moment where it seems to solidify for Reinhard and Lipka that they’re really going to do this.
So they start researching auction houses and eventually land on Christie’s in New York. Their thinking was that no one with stolen art would walk right into Christie’s to get it appraised, the more obvious they could be the less they would be suspected. At this point they knew they had a lot of planning to do before even getting to the appraisal point and it was nearing the end of the school year so they decided to wait until the fall. It also became clear to them that they wouldn’t be able to do this alone, they needed more trustworthy help. Lipka contacted his old pal Borsuk (his old business partner for the fake IDs) and pitched him the idea. He was nervous but ultimately agreed.
The boys spent the summer in the suburbs of Lexinton, Kentucky, working and daydreaming about their future life in the Mediterranean after they made millions. During the summer, Borsuk started a lawn care business with his friend Charles Allen, a business major at the University of Kentucky, and he quickly joined the little gang.
In the fall Reinhard moved back into the dorms at Transy and Allen, Borsuk, and Lipka rented rooms in the same house in town. Lipka rented the basement because he was broke after having dropped fully out of college to focus on the heist full time.
Fall 2003
In between classes, painting, and playing soccer, Reinhard drew detailed maps and sketches of the Special Collections Library as well as the adjacent Rare Book Room. To do this he made several appointments with the librarian, Betty Jean Gooch, to scope out the premises. The others also spent time in the library making note of the comings and goings in the space.
Around Halloween Lipka started creating a working plan for the heist itself and presented it to the others in his basement apartment. The day of the heist was set for December 16, 2003 as it was one of the last days of exams and many students would have left campus already for the holiday break. From there the plan was set out in three distinct phases:
The four boys get into the GTAV (Go To and Away Vehicle) all disguised as old men. They drive to the library and park in “Position 1” at the bottom of the stairs leading to the entrance to the building.
Reinhard would take his position as lookout in an upper floor window of the next building (since he was a student at Transy they didn’t want to risk someone recognizing him), Lipka and Allen enter the Rare Book Room, take out Gooch with a stun gun and let Borsuk in. The three wrap the Audubons in sheets and put smaller books in backpacks before taking the elevator to the basement and escaping through a fire exit. They then load the “loot” onto the GTAV.
Then they make their escape, switching the GTAV for a second vehicle at a secret location to transport the books and boys to a temporary resting place. From there they’d go to Christie’s for the appraisal since they wanted to be there before the books get entered into any art-theft databases (which they assumed would be within a week).
So they have a plan and they start to make moves putting it into action. Lipka emails Christie’s in New York to make an appointment for the appraisal under yet another fake name and another email to the librarian, Gooch, confirming his appointment on December 16, 2003 at the Rare Book Room to view the Audubon and other items. He also ordered four stun guns over the internet. Borsuk lines up the GTAV and purchases zip ties, a wool cap, electricians tape, and bed sheets. Reinhard got together a small collection of fake beards, wigs, and costume glue for their old man disguises.
The Heist
On the morning of December 16, 2003 the plan began to fall apart almost as soon as it starts. Borsuk couldn’t get his friends car to use as the GTAV and has to borrow his mum’s Dodge Caravan. The stun guns never arrived so Lipka had to drive around town and could only find one. And, because Reinhard has a final earlier that day he rushes to apply everyone’s fake beard and wig and as soon as they enter the library everyone is staring at the four. So they decide to postpone the plan to the following day and set a new appointment with Gooch for 11:00am on December 17.
At 11:00 the following morning the GTAV, still Borsuk’s mother’s car, driven by Allen slipped into the parking spot at the bottom of the library steps. This time only Lipka and Borsuk went inside for their appointment and there were no old man disguises this time. As Lipka and Borsuk enter the Rare Book Room and close the door behind them, Lipka uses the stun gun to subdue Gooch and the two boys zip tie her wrists and ankles and pull the wool cap over her face so she can’t see anything.
The two put the sheet on the ground and started piling the Audubons on top. However, they misjudged how heavy these books would be and found they could only carry three (out of the four volume series) at a time. So they stuffed some smaller books in their backpacks and each took one end of the large bed sheet wrapped stack of books and headed for the elevator. When they got to the basement they couldn’t find the fire exit and were spotted by another librarian who they assume went upstairs to check on Gooch.
Finally, the boys realize they’ll have to go back out the front door since they can’t find the exit they planned to use. In the stairwell they set the heavy Audubon books down to catch their breath. At this moment the librarian reappears after having found Gooch tied up in the Rare Book Room. Lipka and Borsuk panic, leave the Audubons, and book it (get it??) out of the library. They jump into the back of the minivan as Allen peels away from the school.
Once out of the campus, Allen dropped off Lipka and Borsuk and promised to pick them up in a less conspicuous car soon. Later that afternoon the boys all safely arrived back at Lipka’s basement apartment to watch the news coverage of the heist and smoke weed to celebrate.
In total they had taken “an 1859 first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection ($25,000), an illuminated manuscript from 1425 ($200,000), a set of the two-volume 15th-century horticultural masterpiece entitled Hortus Sanitatis ($450,000), 20 original Audubon pencil drawings ($50,000), and Audubon’s A Synopsis of the Birds of North America ($10,000)” (Falk, 2015).
The Aftermath
The following Sunday morning the boys arrived in New York, fresh from their 12 hour road trip. They agreed that Lipka, a smooth talker, and Reinhard, the only one with artistic knowledge, would be the ones to attend the appointment while Allen and Borsuk waited in the car around the corner.
The meeting itself went smoothly, a Christie’s associate inspected the books, took notes, and told them they’d be in touch after conferring with higher-ups at the company on the best path forward. They never heard back and the four returned to Lexington the following day.
Meanwhile, the police were following whatever leads they could find at Transy and were reviewing countless hours of security footage from the University of Kentucky computer lab where the emails to Gooch setting up the appointment were traced to. Everything seemed to be a dead end until Yahoo delivered the data on their servers from the boys fake email address and they found the correspondence with Christie’s in New York.
The FBI interviewed the associate who had met with the boys (calling themselves Mr. Stephens and Mr. Williams) who provided descriptions of each of them. The police also retrieved the security footage from Christie’s of the meeting and the contact number they had left, Reinhard’s real cell phone number registered to his father Gary Reinhard, and where his answering machine said “this is Spence, leave a message”. So the pieces were put together and a quick search for Spencer Reinhard was a match. They also found pictures of Reinhard and Lipka together, a perfect match for the men described by the Christie’s employee.
As the police surveilled Reinhard and Lipka, it didn’t take long to identify Allen and Borsuk as the other two culprits.
The culmination of the case happened on the morning of February 11, 2005 with the police breaking down the door of the house where Lipka, Borsuk, and Allen lived with a battering ram while a separate team stormed Reinhard’s dorm on campus. All four were placed under arrest and later pled guilty to six federal charges including theft of cultural artefacts from a public museum and interstate transportation of stolen property.
“Before rendering her decision, the judge made preliminary findings that each of the boys was equally culpable, that the value of the books stolen would include only those physically removed from the building, and although Gooch suffered no “bodily injury,” the stun pen was in fact a dangerous weapon. Because the boys made the highly unusual decision not to accept the prosecutor’s offer to testify against one another during sentencing in exchange for leniency, they were each sentenced to identical seven-year terms. In early 2006, they began serving their sentences in federal prison, with no possibility for parole” (Falk, 2015).
The End
The weird thing is that somewhere in the middle of the heist the money stopped mattering as much to Lipka, Reinhard, and Borsuk. They now say that they performed the robbery as an act of escape from a traditional life in the suburbs. They only saw two ways out; get arrested for this crime or get away with it.
Borsuk said, “I think we all knew that we wanted something different, and we had to break away from where we were living. If we got away with it, we’d be in Europe living this crazy life thinking we were Ocean’s 11 types. If not, we were going to get caught and it was going to be a crazy story” (Falk, 2015). Lipka added, “we will be stronger, better, wiser for going through this together, the three of us. Before, in college, growing up, we were being funneled into this mundane, nickel-and-dime existence. Now we can’t ever go back there. Even if we wanted to, they won’t let us. That was the point all along. See, we have no choice now but to create something new, someplace else. Believe me, you haven’t heard the last of us yet” (Falk, 2015).
All four were released from prison in 2012 and Reinhard is now a working artist, Lipka graduated from Temple University with a master’s degree in film studies, Allen wrote several books about the heist and his time in prison, and Borsuk also took to writing and created American Animals: A True Crime Memoir which was made into a movie in 2018.
Works Cited
Falk, John. “Majoring in Crime”. Vanity Fair. 2015. https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/02/transy-book-heist?srsltid=AfmBOop2XIJcN5lwD5RcsIs3uonho2EvO5hWRqtHKFsThhNUtRbGNcTt
Huddleston, Tom. “How 4 College Students Tried to Steal Rare Books Worth Millions from a School Library - and What Got Them Caught”. CNBC. 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/15/inside-the-2004-6-million-transy-book-heist-and-how-they-got-caught.html