[MSN] Edward Forbes Smiley III. For Dealer, Stolen Maps Point Way to Jail.

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June 23, 2006
For Dealer, Stolen Maps Point Way to Jail 
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN
NEW HAVEN, June 22 — A map dealer who specialized in finding elusive
treasures for rich collectors admitted in federal court on Thursday to
having stolen 97 antique maps worth more than $3 million from more than a
half-dozen universities and libraries over the last seven and a half years.

One of the hardest-hit institutions was the New York Public Library, which
lost 32 maps, but rare book collections in Boston, Chicago and London were
also victims, according to federal prosecutors.

The admissions by the map dealer, Edward Forbes Smiley III, came roughly one
year after he was caught with five rare maps in his briefcase and tweed
jacket minutes after leaving Yale University's rare-book library. A video
surveillance system showed him removing a map valued at $150,000 from a
book.

The New Haven police arrested Mr. Smiley and charged him with larceny, but
federal prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched their
own investigation to determine whether Mr. Smiley might also be responsible
for missing maps at other institutions.

Mr. Smiley's arrest last June rattled many institutions that had allowed him
to visit their collections. But the scope of his pillaging was not fully
appreciated until his back-to-back guilty pleas in federal and state court
in New Haven on Thursday. 

Though he pleaded guilty to one count of theft of a major artwork in federal
and three counts of larceny in state court, he admitted in plea agreements
with prosecutors to having stolen 97 maps from seven institutions, including
the 5 maps he was caught with last June after leaving Yale's Beinecke
Library.

Standing before Judge Janet Bond Arterton on Thursday in federal district
court in a wrinkled olive jacket, Mr. Smiley, 50, was asked to describe his
crimes. He said he "knowingly and willfully" removed five maps from the
Beinecke Library. 

"I concealed them in my briefcase with the intention of removing them from
the library," he said, adding that he knew at the time that his actions were
wrong.

"I very much regret my actions and apologize to the court and to all the
institutions that have been harmed by my conduct," he said.

Boston Public Library suffered the biggest loss in terms of numbers. It lost
34 maps to Mr. Smiley, according to an accounting by federal prosecutors.
Yale's Sterling Memorial Library lost 11 maps; Beinecke lost 9; the Houghton
Library at Harvard University lost 8; Chicago's Newberry Library lost 2, and
the British Library in London lost one. 

The oldest map was a 1524 map of the New World by Hernán Cortés belonging to
Houghton.

Assistant United States Attorney Christopher W. Schmeisser told the court
that 86 of the 97 stolen maps were in the possession of federal agents and
that 6 more had been located, but not returned, by their current owners.
Prosecutors called the other five maps "unrecoverable." 

Those five include an early 18th-century map of east and west New Jersey by
John Thornton and a 1770 map of Pennsylvania, both owned by the New York
Public Library; a 1646 map of Chesapeake in a book titled Dudley Charts and
an undated map of Carolina and part of Georgia that were in the collection
of the Boston Public Library; and a 1532 map of Cordiform World by
Huttich/Fine that belonged to Beinecke.

A spokesman for the New York Public Library, Herb Scher, said the library's
recent renovation of the map division had "allowed us to take advantage of
the latest security technology" and added in a statement that the library
was pleased that most of the maps would be returned. 

Federal sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 21; state sentencing is to
take place the following day. Mr. Schmeisser credited Mr. Smiley for his
prompt cooperation and acceptance of responsibility. As a first-time
offender, Mr. Smiley can expect a federal prison sentence of 57 months to 71
months, if the judge follows the sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors said
they would be willing to seek a further reduction in the sentence because of
his cooperation.

In addition, he has agreed to serve a concurrent five-year prison sentence
for the crimes he is admitting in state court, according to Kevin O'Connor,
the United States attorney for the District of Connecticut.

Mr. Smiley, who studied church history and classics at Hampshire College
before spending a post-graduate year at Princeton Theological Seminary, has
also agreed to establish a restitution fund, lawyers said Thursday. Toward
that end, his lawyer, Richard A. Reeve, said Mr. Smiley was prepared to sell
his half-interest in his home on Martha's Vineyard and property he and his
wife own in Sebec, Me. Mr. Reeve said that his client deserved a lot of
credit for agreeing to make restitution, when he was pleading guilty only to
the theft of one map in federal court and three maps in state court.

Prosecutors and Mr. Reeve agreed that without Mr. Smiley's cooperation, the
government could have established his guilt in only 18 thefts, and that his
assistance was critical in the other 79 cases. 

For all the grave implications the case has raised about the adequacy of
safeguards at some of the nation's top libraries, the courtroom drama had
its lighter moments.

At one point, Judge Arterton asked Mr. Schmeisser to detail the evidence the
government was prepared to bring had it tried Mr. Smiley. The prosecutor
said he had experts to testify that wormholes in the maps found on Mr.
Smiley lined up with wormholes in the books on Yale's shelves that contained
the maps .

"That's an interesting forensic piece of evidence, isn't it?" the judge
said.

Mr. Smiley's lawyer told the judge he wanted to correct assertions in a
police affidavit about the discovery of an X-Acto knife blade belonging to
Mr. Smiley on the floor of the Beinecke Library last June. He said that the
knife was Mr. Smiley's but had nothing to do with that day's thefts.

"None of the maps were removed in that fashion," Mr. Reeve said of the maps
taken from Yale that day.

"No disagreement on the wormholes?" the judge persisted.

"No, your honor, these are very distinctive wormholes, I agree," Mr. Reeve
said.

http://www.nytimes.com/