'Theft Case Rattles Sedate World of Rare Maps'

article by ALISON LEIGH COWAN here.

 

With his neat blazer and scholarly air, it was not hard for E. Forbes Smiley III to blend in at the Yale rare-books library and make himself at home among its atlases and maps.

 

But this visit to the Beinecke Library at Yale on June 8 by Mr. Smiley, a 49-year-old dealer in antiquities who plied his trade on both sides of the Atlantic, took a turn that has jolted the closed and covetous world of map dealers and collectors, as well as the serene if starchy institutions that hold treasured maps.

 

According to the local police, a library worker's discovery of an X-Acto knife blade on the reading room floor near Mr. Smiley was the first hint of trouble. By early afternoon, they say, librarians had video images of Mr. Smiley removing from a book an antique map valued by Yale at $150,000. Later that day, the police say, they found in his jacket a fragile map that appeared to have been taken from a 17th-century book; others that also appeared to be stolen, worth more than $700,000, were in his briefcase.