The Feather Thief

Johnson recounts Edwin’s plan to return to the Tring museum. This time Edwin planned to take some of the bird skins. Edwin desperately wanted these specimens for his own flies, to feature in a book he hoped to write on fly-tying, to help cover costs of being a student (including buying a $20,000 golden flute), and to help his parents who were experiencing financial difficulties. 

Edwin kept a running list of his ideas and tools he would need in “a Word document titled ‘PLAN FOR MUSEUM INVASION’” (96). Edwin did internally war with himself on whether he should go through with the heist. After stealing a pair of latex gloves from his doctor’s office, he decided to move forward with his plan. Edwin began ordering other supplies, including a glass cutter and mothballs to protect the specimens from insects, using his eBay account Fluteplayer1988. He also studied his photographs and maps of the museum. Based on the latter, he put a plan together which included using an alleyway to access the museum, cutting barbed wire on a fence he needed to scale, and going through a window.

Since Edwin planned to return to the US for the summer break, he needed to break into the museum before he left. Initially, Edwin planned to take just a few of each species, “but when the moment came, he couldn’t resist emptying out entire trays” (98). He did leave the smaller females and juvenile males behind since there were less colorful than the adult male specimens. He even took several specimens that had tags with Wallace’s handwriting. Edwin spent three hours in the museum. He did eventually make it back home with “nearly a million dollars’ worth of birds in his suitcase” (100).

Johnson documents the first few days after Edwin stole the bird skins. The museum guard noticed the broken window when he was making his rounds. He informed the curators, who called the police. Both Mark Adams was the senior curator responsible for the bird skin collections. Initially, he was concerned that someone might have targeted this collection. After checking some of the cabinets, he concluded that none of the bird skins appeared to be missing.

Police and museum curators were both puzzled over what the intruder had been looking for, since nothing of value was missing. The museum did not conduct a systematic audit of its collections for this reason. The police closed the case of the broken window.

Johnson turns next to Edwin. Initially, Edwin was deeply concerned that someone would discover his theft, especially since he left a few drops of blood on glass shards. He even considered anonymously giving back the specimens. Yet, Edwin ultimately decided to keep them. He created an inventory. The numbers astounded him. He had stolen 299 skins from 16 different species and subspecies.

Edwin began thinking about he would sell the bird skins. He came up with several approaches. The first was to approach affluent tiers and offer to sell them a whole skin. He would make a lot of cash initially upfront, but the total revenue would be less than if he sold the feathers as individual packages. He could also sell the collection to one single tier. Edwin did not like this idea, however, because he would lose access to tying materials for himself. The third approach was that he could sell the feathers in smaller increments, but this came with greater risks than the other two approaches. Edwin decided to try the first and third approach.

In the concluding few paragraphs, Johnson documents how Edwin removed feathers from the bird skins as well as some of the biodata labels. He would be able to sell the individual packets once he returned to London from the US.