On the morning of December 17, 2004, Betty Jean Gooch, a librarian in the Special Collections Library at Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky, was preparing for her 11 o’clock appointment with Walter Beckman, a man she had never met. Over the phone and by e-mail, Beckman had asked to view, among other items, a first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and four double-size folios of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. Wearing a heavy coat, gloves, and a wool cap, Beckman signed the visitors’ log. With a long, thin face and bleached-blond hair and sideburns, he appeared younger than Gooch had expected. He was also less cordial and more agitated in person, asking Gooch soon after arriving if he could invite a friend along to see the books. She agreed. A few minutes later, a short, dark-haired young man, also dressed in a winter coat, cap, and gloves, entered the library. He said his name was John. The two men followed the librarian into the Rare Book Room, and John closed the door behind them. As she was heading toward a display case, Gooch felt a tingling on her right arm and collapsed to the floor. By one o’clock that afternoon, the 227-year-old liberal-arts college was swarming with campus police, uniformed Lexington Police, plainclothes detectives, and forensic teams, as well as local news crews covering the developing “Transy Book Heist,” a crime that would one day be listed among the F.B.I.’s all-time most significant art-theft cases. From the facts that were available, it appeared that a team of four men, described as Caucasian, in their 20s, had stolen some of the most prized books and manuscripts in the university’s collection, and attacked a librarian in the process. The take could be more than $5 million. The thieves left no fingerprints behind, and there were almost no witnesses. The Lexington Police Department’s commercial-burglary squad was assigned to the case. In terms of the dollar amount involved and the extraordinary circumstances, the theft was one of the most significant in its history. The first call went out to the National Crime Information Center, alerting law enforcement to be on the lookout for a gray minivan with temporary plates, the description of a vehicle seen screeching away from the library. The L.P.D. notified all the airports in the area, dispatched officers to surrounding neighborhoods, and called the F.B.I. Still shaken from her ordeal, Gooch, in her 50s, told police that shortly after entering the Rare Book Room with the two men she had been struck on the arm with a Taserlike weapon, her hands and feet were bound with zip ties, and a wool cap was pulled over her eyes. Though she couldn’t recall much else about her assailants, one odd detail stood out. “[Beckman] said, ‘B.J.,’” a nickname her friends and colleagues used for her, she told officers. “‘Quit struggling, B.J., or do you want to feel more pain?’” she remembered the man saying. Good Boys, Good Families

The minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky, 125 miles from Lexington, houses approximately 1,200 inmates in multi-story cellblocks encircled by concentric layers of razor-topped fencing and fortified guard towers. Among the prisoners are three of the four unlikely masterminds behind the Transy Book Heist: Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard, and Eric Borsuk. The fourth, Charles “Chas” Allen II, had been transferred to a federal medical center in Lexington.) All four, now 22, children of privilege, products of elite Lexington high schools, are serving seven-year sentences for their parts in the crime. By far the most common theory was that the heist had been just a frat prank that spun way out of control. Behind the main building and through three blastproof security doors is the prison visitors’ room, where I meet separately with Likpa, Reinhard, and Borsuk for a series of interviews almost a year into their sentence. (Through his attorney, Allen declined to be interviewed.) Because the boys pleaded guilty, many of the case’s crucial details remain unknown even to law enforcement. What they would tell me, then, is their version of events—and the only complete account of the planning, execution, and aftermath of the heist. They’re all slim and dressed identically in cheap sneakers and a khaki uniform emblazoned with their incarceration numbers, and all have hair down to their shoulders. Each has a different style of facial hair—muttonchops (Lipka), a Fu Manchu (Borsuk), a Tom Selleck (Reinhard)—which Lipka informs me they had carefully trimmed for my visit. When the four boys were arrested the news was met with disbelief, as none of them had been in any serious trouble before. Far from being social outcasts, they had been popular athletes, and two were on some form of college scholarship. The press invariably described them as “good boys” from “good families”—upper-middle-class kids afforded every opportunity, the ones with the most to lose. There were all sorts of theories as to why they had done it: they were drug addicts; they had amassed large gambling debts—or Lipka’s father had, and the boys did it to save the family’s honor (the variant most popular with the local papers). By far the most common theory around town was that the heist had been just a frat prank that spun way out of control. A painting by Reinhard, a gifted artist, may offer some clues. Titled A Plan to Fail, it was part of a series he had done on the crime for a local art gallery while out on bond. The painting is a kaleidoscope of images, including what appears to be a computer, a cell phone, a bong, the Transylvania library, and loose sheets of notepaper, floating above a desiccated one-eyed young man in a watch cap, kicking back on a beat-up couch with a blue dog on his lap. Opposite him there is another young man, fully fleshed and with a neat haircut, resting in a chair, staring into space. The painting, in digital form, would become a popular screen saver on the F.B.I. computers in the Lexington field office. Freshman Funk

Spencer Reinhard and Warren Lipka had grown up together in adjacent subdivisions on Lexington’s south side—fully planned residential tracts wedged in between the city and the gradually receding horse country that rings it. Built over old tobacco fields in the 80s, they feature ponds with fountains, cookie-cutter brick Colonial houses, street names like Ironbridge Drive and Turnberry Lane, and regulations authorizing penalties for unkempt yards and tacky lawn Santas. In high school, Warren, a lanky six-footer with a mop of brown hair, was a popular jock and a class clown who delighted his classmates by bear-hugging his nemesis, the dean of students, at graduation. Spencer, meanwhile, was short, wiry, distant, and in many ways Warren’s opposite: an over-scheduled, over-achieving, diamond-tipped drill of a kid who excelled at whatever he set himself to. He focused above all on painting, gaining admission into a prestigious Lexington arts program. Despite the differing temperaments—and the disapproval of Spencer’s parents—the two were best friends from the age of eight, a friendship that revolved largely around soccer. Though they attended different high schools, both were varsity captains, and both made all-state. In their senior year the two became local celebrities after a dramatic photo appeared in the Lexington Herald-Leader showing Lexington Catholic star goalkeeper Lipka and Tates Creek forward Reinhard battling midair during a playoff game. In the fall of 2003, Warren left for the University of Kentucky on a full athletic scholarship, eager to take his game to the next level, and with vague plans of getting into politics. Spencer, meanwhile, was accepted to Transylvania on an arts scholarship, his sights firmly set on a career in graphic design. Because their campuses were only a mile apart, they assumed they would stay close, but as with most freshmen, their assured identities and easy expectations muddied once they hit campus. For Spencer it all started with a series of mild disappointments. “I was expecting to play soccer quite a lot, but the coach was a completely different person once I got on the team,” he tells me. “And I pledged a fraternity, but I really didn’t get into that too much. In all my art classes I was the only guy—in with a bunch of girls who didn’t have any idea what they wanted to do. All these girls I could draw better than when I was in sixth grade.”

Across town at U.K., in a towering cinder-block dorm, Warren’s world was spinning apart at a much faster clip. His malaise was likely exacerbated by his parents’ impending divorce amid his mother’s allegations that his father, Big Warren, the celebrated coach of the university’s women’s soccer team, had gambled the family into bankruptcy. (Big Warren declined to comment on the gambling accusations at the time.) When not at practice, Warren spent his time smoking pot, watching Comedy Central, and reading German philosophy. “It was very punishing, that first couple of months in college. Not what I expected, not what I wanted it to be,” Warren says. “I want to say living that kind of life—the country clubs, sitting in a classroom and listening to two girls argue about turning down a BMW S.U.V. because she wanted a new Range Rover, like, what? These people’s perspectives, because they have money, they’re tweaked.” In October of his freshman year, Warren quit the U.K. soccer team, forfeiting his scholarship. He was still enrolled, but only nominally, and remained on the fringes of campus life. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to a Lexington Catholic alumnus who was making an easy living in identity theft. Seeing something in the wayward Warren, the preppy grifter pitched him the idea of selling fake Kentucky driver’s licenses in the U.K. dorms. Warren jumped at the opportunity and recruited another adrift freshman, his old high-school soccer teammate Eric Borsuk, as a partner. By early November the boys were selling fake IDs at a hundred dollars apiece, and had apparently branched out into more lucrative identity manipulations. “I can’t really get into too much specifics,” Eric says, “but we were doing all kinds of little scams: making fake IDs, making little things here and there. That’s what we were doing, kind of living this little Matchstick Men, college kind of life.” “Twelve million dollars, just sitting there? They got security around that?” Warren asked Spencer. The partnership flourished, with Warren as the face of the operation and Eric in charge of ID production, until the two had an argument over $2,000 that went missing from Eric’s drawer. They stopped talking entirely and disbanded. Suddenly without Eric’s mock-ups, software, and equipment, Warren thought of Spencer. Although the two hadn’t really been in contact in the first few months of school, Warren knew that Spencer’s artistic talents would be an asset. Spencer, feeling increasingly disaffected with school life himself, readily accepted the offer. Planting the Seed

Several weeks before Spencer was approached by Warren about the fake-ID business, he had been on a freshman-orientation tour of Transy, including the library and its exceptional collection of rare books and manuscripts. “They take you in the Special Collections and show you these books,” Spencer remembers, including Transy’s prized Birds of America, by John James Audubon, a four-volume set of life-size engravings the pioneer wildlife artist completed in London in 1838. The set was one of fewer than 200 produced. “I’d heard about them before, but I didn’t know anything about them. And the woman there says, ‘We had a set just like this that we sold four years ago for like $12 million.’ It could have been eight. I’m not sure, but it was a lot. It immediately had kind of sparked my imagination, like a fantasy.” “O.K., so we’re sitting in the car, smoking weed,” Warren recalls, “and then Spencer said, ‘I just took a tour in that library, and there’s shit sitting there you wouldn’t believe. They said that this set, Birds of America, sold for $12 million.’ 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?’ Just like . . . very unofficial.” Between studying for his first semester’s finals, working out, and painting, Spencer made time to scope out the Special Collections section of the Transy library, reporting back to Warren weeks later that there was zero security other than an old lady librarian named B.J. and having to “sign a fucking book.” By hitting the ball back into Warren’s court, Spencer thought he would keep that thrilling flicker of criminality burning for a bit longer, while fully expecting there to be an insurmountable obstacle somewhere down the road. Even if they did steal the books, for example, how would they ever sell them? Spencer had underestimated his friend’s resolve. Warren was already busily working out the problem, returning for advice to his underworld contact: “What if we had some artwork that we wanted to sell?’” Warren remembers asking him. “‘How the hell would we do this?’ And he said, ‘I know a guy in New York.’” After several phone calls Warren managed to arrange a meeting in New York. The contact, who identified himself only as Barry, stipulated that Warren had to bring $500 in good-faith money. Late one Thursday afternoon in mid-February, the two friends bought a bag of weed and drove the 700 miles to Manhattan in Spencer’s Acura Legend. They checked into the Hilton Hotel in Midtown, Warren signing in under the nom de guerre Harry Ballsani—a name backed up with one of their fake Kentucky driver’s licenses—and paying in cash. (Having seen their fair share of heist movies, they knew how dangerous it was to leave a paper trail.) The meeting was scheduled for the next morning on the southern edge of Central Park near the Plaza Hotel. Barry described himself as an older man with a long ponytail and said he’d be wearing a green scarf. The meeting initially hit a snag when Barry was put off by the boys’ youth. “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.” After an awkward back-and-forth, Warren finally handed the man the $500. In exchange, Barry slipped him an e-mail address with instructions to sign off any communication with the name Terry.

Once safely back in Lexington, the two created a Yahoo account and sent off the e-mail in which they claimed to have unspecified rare books in their possession, using the name Terry, as instructed. A week later came a terse reply, telling Terry that, if he wanted to sell something, he was going to have to come in person to Amsterdam, “as that is where I do business.” Both Spencer and Warren were thrilled—until they realized it would require traveling with a passport. Spencer believed it was an insurmountable problem. Again, Warren thought otherwise. “So we go back to the guy in Lexington and we say, ‘Listen, we want to go somewhere, we want to go out of the country, and we need documentation,’” Warren explains. “‘We can do a license, but now we need a passport.’ So he says, ‘Come see me in a couple of days or a week, but I need money, $2,500.’ All right, you know, just another thing, O.K., 2,500 bucks. Bam. Bam. So we get the passport from the dude, plane tickets. Boom. Spencer drives me out to Lexington [Blue Grass Airport] on a Friday. Spencer gives me 500 bucks, in my pocket. Can’t have any of this documented. Like if we ever get caught, we’re talking about international issues, way past interstate commerce or whatever the hell it is.” Because of the expense, only Warren made the trip, touching down at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on a Saturday morning in early March 2004. He took a cab to Dam Square, an old hippie hangout in the center of the city he had read about on the Internet. He scored a joint before checking into “a hole-in-the-wall” and falling asleep. The next morning, all nerves, he left for the meeting site, a café within walking distance. He was told to look for a bearded, heavyset man in a solid-blue sweater. When Warren arrived, he saw a man fitting that description seated with three other men. Undeterred, Warren introduced himself as Terry, firmly shaking hands before sitting down. Like Barry, the men were immediately put off by Warren’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. The meeting lasted no more than 15 minutes, but still, it was a turning point because the men explained to Warren a crucial step of selling rare books, stolen or otherwise: appraisal by a legitimate auction house. “I was nervous. I’m not going to lie. Because this is so much bigger than anything we’ve done before,” Eric says. “They were skeptical,” Warren recalls. “And then they came up with the issue of getting these appraised. He said, ‘You do that and you are free then to give them to us when you can.’ O.K., great. So I walk off happy, come back to the States, and blow Spencer’s mind.” “We figured, All right, well, now we just got what we thought would be impossible . . . possibly taken care of,” Spencer tells me. After researching auction houses online, Warren singled out Christie’s in New York. “I was kind of skeptical,” continues Spencer, “but the way I rationalized it was: it’s the biggest auction house. If we go in there they’re not going to suspect that we stole these. Because no one would go to Christie’s with stolen books to get them appraised—that’s how we did a lot of stuff, like, we would smoke weed directly under the [security] camera on the Transy campus, park a car right underneath it and then smoke for like an hour. We figured the more obvious [we were], the less likely [we would be suspected].” As it was already nearing the end of the school year, and there was a lot of planning yet to be done, they agreed to postpone the theft until at least the fall. But even at that point, it became apparent that Warren and Spencer wouldn’t be able to pull it off alone. “We’re going to need more people,” Warren remembers thinking. “Who do we trust?” “Warren called me one night and he’s like, ‘We need to get together. We need to just get over this stuff,’” Eric tells me, explaining how Warren re-entered his life after their falling-out the previous semester. “So we ate at Pazzo’s pizza pub. We had a few pitchers, feeling each other out. He’s probably thinking I blamed him for [stealing] the money, which I never really did. And one thing led to another and we were just like, ‘Let’s put this behind us.’ And once we get past all of that, we started talking about this plan that he and Spencer have. “Warren was like, ‘I’ve talked to these guys. I’ve met with them,’” Eric continues. “‘They think we have [the books]. Now the hard part—we have to steal them.’ I was nervous. I’m not going to lie. Because this is so much bigger than anything we’ve done before.” When summer break began, the three returned home to the subdivisions of South Lexington. Spencer received a commission to paint murals at a local school and kept up his soccer training, Eric started a lawn-care business with his friend Chas Allen, and Warren landed a job at a local day camp. The guys hung out together when they could, with Warren frequently conjuring up fantasies—through billowing clouds of marijuana smoke—of post-heist life for them in the Mediterranean, complete with sleek catamarans and topless women. A Working Plan

Wedged in among the other houses on Beaumont Avenue, a quiet residential street near the U.K. campus, is a beaten-down yellow cinder-block bungalow, with two bedrooms on the second floor and two on the first. In the fall of 2004, Warren Lipka moved into the unfinished basement. At only $200 a month, the price was right, as Warren was broke after having shut down his and Spencer’s fake-ID business and dropping out of U.K. for the semester to focus full-time on the heist. More important, the basement was secluded. Warren sectioned off a bedroom by hanging bedsheets from the rafters and furnished it with an old mattress and a tangerine easy chair he had picked up from Goodwill. Near the boiler he also jerry-rigged a greenhouse for growing marijuana. He topped off his new living quarters with the last of his worldly belongings: a large-screen television, a DVD player, and a Sony PlayStation. Eric rented a proper bedroom upstairs, while Spencer moved back into the dorms at Transylvania. During a meeting in the basement, Warren convinced the other two that they were going to need a fourth, principally to help haul the nearly 250 pounds in Audubon folios out of the library. After a brief discussion they chose Chas Allen, a handsome, clean-cut U.K. business major who had started the lawn-care company with Eric the previous summer. Chas not only lived in the yellow bungalow but also was a part owner of it with his father, a prominent Lexington real-estate investor. When Eric let him in on the plan, Chas mocked the three as deluded potheads, he recalls. But after stewing in the magnitude of the potential dollar amount involved, and once convinced of the ease of the heist, the logic of the appraisal, and the legitimacy of Warren’s Amsterdam connections, they say, he threw his lot in with the others. In between soccer practice, classes, painting, and studying, Spencer drew detailed sketches of the inside of the Special Collections Library and the adjacent Rare Book Room, making several appointments with the Special Collections librarian, Betty Jean Gooch, to scout the premises. The others spent time in the library, too, taking notes on staff routines and viable escape routes. They surveyed the offices of the campus police. They climbed onto dorm roofs, where they’d stake out the library for hours at a time, marking down the comings and goings of teachers, students, and security personnel. They also did considerable research on the Internet, using such key terms as “auction house appraisals,” “stun guns,” and “Swiss bank accounts.” For inspiration, they watched heist movies like Ocean’s 11 and Snatch.

Around Halloween, Warren drafted a working plan, which he presented to the other three in the basement. The day of the heist was to be Thursday, December 16, one of the last days of final exams—the library would be nearly empty. Warren, under an alias, would make an appointment with Gooch for that afternoon to view the books they wanted to steal. The plan for the actual robbery sets out three distinct phases. Phase 1 begins at the bungalow when all four get into what Warren designated the G.T.A.V., or the “Go-to-and-Away-Vehicle,” all disguised as old men. Phase 1 ends when the G.T.A.V. is parked in front of the library and the four “are in 1st Position at bottom of stairs of library.” Phase 2 involves the actual theft, and begins when Spencer takes his position at an upper-floor window of the nearby athletic center, where he will be on lookout. (Because Spencer was a Transy student, he risked being recognized in the library.) Warren and Chas go up to the Rare Book Room, on the third floor, and Warren “brings Gooch down hard and fast” with a stun gun, making her “a non-factor throughout the operation.” Warren and Chas then let Eric in and they begin wrapping the Audubons in bedsheets and put any smaller books in backpacks. The three then take the staff-only elevator down to the bottom floor and escape out the west fire exit. Phase 2 ends when the “loot” is loaded into the G.T.A.V. Phase 3 is the escape, which involves switching the G.T.A.V. for a second vehicle at a secret location, which, according to Warren’s plan, “is used to transport team and loot to temporary resting place.” After the heist, since it is certain that the stolen books will be entered into art-theft databases within a week, they have to get the books appraised at Christie’s in New York immediately. On the morning of December 16, Warren’s carefully scripted plan began to unravel almost immediately. Lifting a technique straight from the film Reservoir Dogs, Warren assigned code names based on color: Mr. Green (Spencer), Mr. Yellow (Warren), and Mr. Black (Eric)—as in the film, emotions turned testy when he assigned Mr. Pink, in this case to Chas. The reaction to the plan was generally positive—shortly after Thanksgiving, they moved forward. Warren made an appraisal appointment at Christie’s in New York for Walter Beckman, a pseudonym inspired by the soccer star David Beckham. He covered his tracks by using public phones and campus computers. Writing from walter.beckman@yahoo.com, Warren sent B. J. Gooch an e-mail confirming Beckman’s December 16 appointment at the Rare Book Room to view the Audubons and a few other items. “I know the collection is extensive and anything you think I might be interested in seeing, by all means, share,” he wrote. Warren also ordered four stun guns over the Internet. Meanwhile, Eric lined up the G.T.A.V. from an unsuspecting friend and got his hands on zip ties, a wool cap, electrician’s tape, and bedsheets. Spencer assembled a small wardrobe of fake beards, gray wigs, and costume glue. To have time to properly apply the disguises, he tried to reschedule his art-history final for later in the day on the 16th, but was unsuccessful. Warren called Gooch back to change Walter Beckman’s appointment to three P.M. On the morning of December 16, Warren’s carefully scripted plan began to unravel almost immediately. Eric couldn’t get hold of his friend’s car, leaving Chas to borrow a Dodge Caravan his mother was fortuitously selling the next day, the boys say. The stun guns Warren had ordered never arrived, so he drove around town and returned with a Black Cobra Stun Pen, and had Spencer zap him and Eric to test its knockdown power. When they arrived on campus in the replacement G.T.A.V., they couldn’t find a parking space anywhere near the library. Once the boys were inside the library, students stared at the ridiculous old-man disguises. (Spencer had had to do a rush job on them because his art-history final had run long.) They also noticed a group of people lingering in the Rare Book Room. After a quick powwow in the stacks, the conspirators decided to abort the mission for the time being and retreated to the bungalow. By five P.M., Warren—as Beckman—was back on the phone with Gooch explaining that he had missed his appointment because he had been out of town on business. Gooch agreed to reschedule for 11 the next morning. According to the revised plan, they would ditch the old-man disguises and only Warren and Eric would enter the library. Eric would stay on the main floor while Warren subdued Gooch in the Rare Book Room. Afterward, he was to call Eric up to haul the books in two trips to the G.T.A.V., which was to be driven by Chas. Spencer would communicate with Warren from a cell phone, which Warren would steal from a student in the morning. The whole operation would have to be completed by 12:30 P.M., as the boys say Chas needed to return the Dodge Caravan to his mother in time for her to sell it, and Spencer and Eric had to get to their final exams in sociology and tennis, respectively. For added anonymity, Warren bleached his hair blond that night. Lifting a technique straight from the film Reservoir Dogs, Warren assigned code names based on color. At 11 the next morning, Chas slipped the G.T.A.V. into a perfect parking space and watched as Eric and Warren entered the library. Warren went up to the third floor to meet Gooch, while Eric waited downstairs for him to call. The Heist

‘I get the call on the cell phone. [Warren’s] like, ‘Come on up,’” Eric remembers. “I’m expecting when I get up there it’s going to be taken care of and I’m just going to start lifting books. That was the plan. When I get up there, B.J. opens the door for me and I’m just like, ‘Holy shit.’ I quickly came up with some fake name and started walking in and I’m like, ‘Oh, shit, this is gonna happen at any moment.’ So while I’m shutting the doors I look back and Warren took her to the ground. And that’s when I came up.. . . I took my zip ties and I put them around her feet and put them around her arms.” It was about at that point that Gooch remembers Warren saying, “Quit struggling, B.J., or do you want to feel more pain?” Once Warren had pulled the cap over Gooch’s eyes, the two laid a bedsheet on the ground and began piling on the seven Audubon folios they intended to steal (the four-volume Birds of America plus three volumes from another Audubon series). The books were much heavier than the boys had projected, and the pair could handle only three at a time. They stuffed some of the smaller books Gooch had pulled out for them into their backpacks. With each taking one end of the Audubons, they made their way to the staff-only elevator. “We told B.J. as we left we were going to make an anonymous phone call so they knew she was up here,” Eric continues. “We felt bad.” Warren and Eric rode the elevator to the basement, but they couldn’t find the fire exit. They went back up in the elevator, accidentally stopping on the main floor, where they were spotted by another librarian. “[This librarian] doesn’t know what we’re carrying, but she’s like, ‘Where did these kids come from?’” Eric says. “So we go back down to the bottom floor just to get away from her. I guess when we did that she went upstairs to check on B.J.” Realizing that the only way out was through the main floor, they took the elevator up once again and carried the books into a back stairwell that led to another exit. As they scooted down the stairs their arms gave out and they stopped to catch their breath. Eric had propped the folios on the steps with his foot when the librarian appeared at the top of the stairs, beside herself with rage after finding Gooch hog-tied in the Rare Book Room. Eric dropped the books, and he and Warren made a run for it. “I see Warren and Eric bust out of the back door,” Spencer says, describing what he saw unfold from his lookout position. “They were 20 steps ahead [of the librarian]. Chas backs up [the van] and almost hits the woman as Eric comes around to the door. Warren had run up the side of the hill and frantically ran off. And Eric calls to him. And so I see Warren go back.. . . They jump in the van and peel out around the loop.” Chas turned the G.T.A.V. onto nearby Fourth Street and careened through traffic before stopping a mile farther on, in front of a predominantly black housing project. Improvising on the plan, he kicked Eric and Warren out on the street, believing three men in a gray minivan would draw too much attention. Chas promised to return to pick them up in another car after dropping the minivan off at his mom’s house. Warren and Eric got out of the G.T.A.V. believing that they had escaped with next to nothing. In fact, wedged in their backpacks was nearly three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth of books and manuscripts: 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). The two boys sought cover from the cops in the sprawling grounds of the housing projects. But before long they were put to chase once again, this time by two local thugs. Frightened and alone in an unfriendly neighborhood and weighed down with priceless books, Warren and Eric barreled down the street, frantically trying to hail a police cruiser to rescue them. As they ran, they stumbled again into Chas, who had returned in another car as promised, just in time to save them and drive Eric to U.K. for his tennis-class exam. “It was only a tennis final,” Eric says, “but that final that day was actually harder than I thought it was going to be. It had some tennis trivia in there that I wasn’t expecting.” Back at Warren’s later that afternoon, the boys were transfixed by local coverage of the “Transy Book Heist.” According to the news, it appeared that neither Gooch nor anyone else was able to provide the police with an accurate description of the boys. (The librarian who chased them out of the library did tell police the correct total of four thieves, even though she had seen only three.) A witness had written down a license-plate number, but it was way off. They tried to come up with some link the cops could make between them and the theft, but they couldn’t. In the early evening, they say they smoked some celebratory “Kentucky Bluegrass” weed they had stashed away for the occasion. Having told their parents that they were going on a ski trip to West Virginia, that weekend they loaded the loot into Eric’s Ford Explorer and took off on the 12-hour drive to New York for their Christie’s appointment. Along the way a stoned Spencer read aloud from the purloined first edition of On the Origin of Species, particularly fascinated by the section on how the ears of domesticated animals have drooped over generations “due to the disuse of the muscles of the ear from the animals not being much alarmed by danger.” Road Trip

The crew arrived in New York City early Sunday morning. They had reserved a room in the same Midtown Hilton that Spencer and Warren had stayed in nearly a year earlier. That night they had dinner at a Japanese restaurant, followed by drinks at the hotel bar, where Warren chummed up to an Iraq veteran, Spencer almost started a brawl after knocking a table full of drinks over, and Eric picked up a middle-aged Brazilian tourist. Warren and Chas left the other two and staggered to the nearby China Club, a tacky West Side nightclub, which they knew about from the famous “Rick James” episode of Chappelle’s Show.

The next day, they worked off their hangovers by checking out Ground Zero before strolling into the bustle of Chinatown for lunch. That afternoon they worked their way back uptown, to scope out Christie’s steel-and-glass headquarters before their Tuesday appointment. Afterward, they returned to the Hilton for an early night. Back at Warren’s that afternoon, the boys were transfixed by local coverage of the “Transy Book Heist.” It had been agreed that Warren, with his smooth talk, and Spencer, with his artistic knowledge, would go to the meeting. The other two would wait around the block in the S.U.V. Warren and Spencer readied themselves early without waking the others, silently showering, shaving, and putting the finishing touches on their outfits. Dressed for success in a tailored dark-blue suit his parents had bought for special occasions and future job interviews, Warren cultivated the young-conservative look, using a Windsor knot on his red tie and giving his wing tips a last-minute buff. Spencer assembled his outfit with even greater care. Starting with a 1970s Pierre Cardin canary-yellow blazer that had belonged to his grandfather, he wore a dress shirt with an ostentatiously large collar and a gold silk scarf. For footwear he went with clean white sneakers. Eric and Chas dropped Warren and Spencer off around the corner from Christie’s. As a precautionary measure, they left the books in the car. A uniformed doorman cheerily welcomed both boys into the lobby, where they informed reception that they were there for Mr. Walter Beckman’s appointment with Thomas Leckey, Christie’s rare-book specialist. After a short wait, a young Christie’s employee, Melanie Halloran, came out to apologize, as Mr. Leckey, due to an impending public auction, would be unable to see them. She offered to take his place. The boys readily agreed, and she escorted them through the offices to a small conference room. Warren introduced himself as Mr. Williams. Spencer called himself Mr. Stephens. As they took their seats in the conference room, Warren explained that he and Mr. Stephens “are the sole representatives of Walter Beckman,” whom he described as “a very private individual from Boston” who had recently inherited several valuable rare books and manuscripts. Mr. Beckman now wanted these books appraised. When Halloran inquired about them, Spencer spoke up and offered to fetch them from the car. Returning five minutes later with a rolling red suitcase in tow, Spencer opened it on the conference table. Inside were the books, wrapped in sheets and pillowcases. As she inspected the items, Halloran dutifully took notes, then asked a few questions regarding their provenance, which Spencer answered as best he could under the circumstances. The meeting ended after 30 minutes, and Ms. Halloran escorted the two out, assuring them that she’d be in touch after conferring with her superiors on the best way forward. When she asked for contact information, Spencer gave her his cell-phone number. Afterward, Warren and Spencer briefed the others, and the four went to lunch, where, the boys say, Chas insisted they spend another night in New York and attempt to see Mr. Leckey the next day. In the morning, Warren says, he left two messages with Leckey’s secretary and two more that afternoon. No response. That night Chas snapped, they say, fearing the Christie’s book appraisal—the Jesus bolt holding Warren’s entire heist plan together—was in danger of falling through. Chas cursed Warren as an incompetent, and condemned the other two as burnouts, demanding that the three figure out a way to get the books appraised so they could move on to the next phase of the plan. They simply ignored him, and the four returned to Lexington. (Throughout the interviews with the three, it became clear that Chas was the odd man out among the group. During our interview Eric told me, “He was like just a weight on us. He was just so unbearable. He thought he was much better than everybody else, and he got to the point where he wasn’t like us. Us three, we were much thicker than he was.”) And what Chas likely didn’t know was that, for Warren, Eric, and Spencer, the actual appraisal and sale of the stolen books had become irrelevant to the mission. Endgame

In the weeks following the book heist, law enforcement followed leads at Transy and reviewed countless hours of security footage from the U.K. computer lab, to which a police technician had traced the e-mail from Walter Beckman to Gooch. Nothing panned out until mid-January, when, following a federal subpoena, Yahoo delivered all the data on its servers related to the walter.beckman@yahoo.com address. Buried in the files was a series of e-mails to Christie’s in New York. The F.B.I. sent a team to interview Melanie Halloran, who told the agents about her meeting with Mr. Stephens and Mr. Williams. She described one of the young men as about six feet tall, with bleached-blond hair, well dressed in a nice suit, and very talkative. The other was short and quiet, wearing a yellow jacket two sizes too large and a matching scarf. “He looked like he was dressed from a thrift store,” Halloran told the agents. She also said that she was so suspicious and put off by the young men’s youth and demeanor that she had recommended to her boss that they not pursue the business. After the Halloran interview the F.B.I. received two additional pieces of evidence from Christie’s: security-camera footage of the meeting and a cell-phone number the men had left behind. The phone number was registered to a Gary Reinhard of Lexington, Kentucky. When an agent called, he got a voice-mail recording, “This is Spence. Leave a message.” A Google search of Spencer Reinhard brought up numerous hits for soccer in the Lexington area. Among them was the 2002 photo from the Lexington Herald-Leader of Spencer and Warren playing soccer. Both boys were spitting images of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Williams. In early February 2005, the F.B.I. and Lexington police put the pair under surveillance. A female detective went undercover as a Transy student, tailing Spencer while a team staked out the yellow bungalow. It didn’t take long to tie in Eric and Chas. By that point Warren, Eric, and Spencer knew for certain they were going down. Warren had been convinced after spotting a suspicious man loitering near the yellow bungalow—when he stepped outside, the man disappeared into an unmarked white van with tinted windows and sped off. One evening it occurred to Spencer that they had used the Walter Beckman Yahoo account to contact both Christie’s and Gooch. Waiting for the law to snatch them was nerve-racking, but they went on with their lives as if nothing had been amiss. Spencer continued with his heavy schedule of classes, studying, painting, and working out, while Warren returned full-time to U.K. With the pressure mounting, however, Warren was caught shoplifting a TV dinner from a local supermarket, Eric was arrested and charged with D.U.I.—police pulled him over not only for running red lights but also because Warren was on top of the car, hanging on to the roof rack—and Spencer crashed his Acura Legend. Just days before their arrests the three even took in a movie: Ocean’s 12. “It was just funny because we’ve been in a lot of places that they’ve been,” Eric says. “Like, they were doing something serious, talking about the heist, going over the plan, and somebody would make a joke. So we would see parts like that and we would be ‘Oh, this is just like us.’” Little did the three know that F.B.I. agents were sitting behind them the whole time, listening to their every word. The investigation of the Transy Book Heist came to an explosive end on the morning of February 11, 2005, as a SWAT unit broke down the front door of the yellow bungalow with a battering ram, blasting stun grenades throughout the building. A 20-man task force of Lexington police and F.B.I. agents poured in over the wreckage. The ground floor quickly filled with shouting cops, screaming young women, and a few dazed men in boxer shorts. On the second-floor landing, Chas, in high-end flannel pajamas and thinking they were being robbed, pulled out a derringer, only to drop the weapon at the last moment. “Oh, yeah, he almost got shot,” says Eric, laughing. “I was surprised he didn’t.” Cops entered the basement, a dank pit reeking of marijuana, and found Warren sprawled out on a mattress. He was whisked into a squad car. In a duffel bag by his bed an F.B.I. agent discovered the stolen books, all undamaged, as well as the five-page typed plan for the heist, an accounting ledger, wigs, instructions for opening a Swiss bank account, and stun guns, which had apparently arrived after the robbery. Spencer was arrested in a simultaneous raid on his dorm room at Transy. All four were brought to Lexington police headquarters and individually interrogated by F.B.I. and local detectives. Faced with overwhelming evidence, they all eventually confessed. Two months later, amid a local media frenzy, the four formally pleaded guilty to all six federal charges, including theft of cultural artifacts from a public museum and interstate transportation of stolen property. During their sentencing hearing, in December 2005, the federal prosecutor asked for 11 to 14 years each for Eric, Chas, and Spencer, and 14 to 17 years for Warren, deeming him the leader, organizer, and recruiter. The severity of the requested sentences was predicated on the dual propositions that, although the Audubon volumes had never been physically removed from the library, according to the letter of the law they were nonetheless stolen—increasing the monetary value of the crime—and that the Black Cobra Stun Pen used to subdue B. J. Gooch not only inflicted “physical harm” but was in actuality “a dangerous weapon.” Worse still for the defendants, B. J. Gooch’s ordeal had become a cause célèbre among librarians, many of whom wrote letters to the judge arguing against leniency. “The truth is, but for one big mistake, they probably would have gotten away with it,” an L.P.D. detective says. 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. “The truth is, but for one obvious, big mistake”—the trip to Christie’s—“they probably would have gotten away with it,” a Lexington police detective told me. Escape Plan