Crooking the Books

[TexasStooge]

Cookbook thief caught with 117 volumes lifted from Iowa library

BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) — Maybe this scofflaw can pay off library fines in cookies and cuisine.

Police have recovered 117 cookbooks that have disappeared a few at a time from the Bettendorf Public Library since early 2001 — and they found about 300 more books missing from other area libraries in a search of an apartment.

Officers expect to charge a suspect with first-degree felony theft, which in Iowa is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $1,000 to $10,000.

"You don't just get away with stealing books from the public library," Bettendorf Police Chief Phil Redington said.

Exactly how the books were spirited out of libraries and why remains unclear.

Police are giving a lot of the credit for solving the case to library workers, who carefully examined the dates when each book was last checked out and when it could no longer be found.

"Library staff looked into it and we were so diligent in solving this because it was bothersome," Bettendorf Public Library Director Faye Clow said.

At the time of their initial disappearance, Clow called the missing volumes "big, beautiful, specialty and general cookbooks — an amazing list of wonderful things."

At a bookstore, they would have cost more than $2,300. The value listed by the library was $1,391, which represented about 5 percent of its $28,000 budget for purchasing nonfiction books.

No books were found to be missing from other subject areas at the Bettendorf library, but various types of publications were stolen from other area libraries.