Lou’s View – Feb. 19, 2015

The Detective Story Theif

by Lou Bernard

I feel guilty.

I didn’t mean to, but apparently I’ve been aiding and abetting a potential felony. At least, if a 1948 article in the newspaper is to be believed.

But I was just doing my job. That’ll be my defense. I work at the Ross Library, and I often have to take shifts on the desk—Checking people in and out, loaning out books. Which is where the felony comes in.

I found this in an article that ran on February 2, 1948. It began with a minor crime spree.

In January of 1948, there was a rash of thefts from stores and parked cars. People would leave their homes to get in their cars, and find things missing. Store owners would find their inventory missing—Candy, gum, or other small items. There didn’t seem to be much consistency to the thefts, which included clothing, groceries, and a .22 caliber rifle.

Most of these thefts were reported to the police, who looked into it. But most of these cases are solved through luck—It’s not like the cops go out beating the bushes to see who has gum, or whatever. Often, they catch the guy in the act or find him trying to sell his stolen items.

That’s about what happened with this guy—They caught him in the act.

The police found a kid trying to steal from two parked cars. He’d already gotten a sewing machine from one of them, but he got greedy. He saw a set of false teeth in the other car that he just had to have, and was caught in the act while stealing them. Based on the items he was taking, I have to assume that there wasn’t a lot of profit margin in the thefts—It seems to have been a thrill-seeking thing.

City police took him down to City Hall, on Church Street, not far from where some of the thefts had occurred. The brilliant thief was twelve years old, and had been stealing for a while at this point. He was one of those criminals who, when given the least opportunity, spills his guts about his master plan and his methods—You know the type; James Bond faces at least one per movie.

So the twelve-year-old kid told the cops all about how he’d started out and where he got his ideas. He’d begun his life of crime by stealing from his mother’s piggy bank, small amounts at a time, so as not to be noticed. He confessed that the most he’d ever taken at any one time was twenty dollars.

How did he learn to be a thief?

From books.

“I get my ideas out of funny books and detective stories,” he informed the stunned police, who evidently up until that point had assumed reading was a good thing. This strikes me as choosing the wrong fictional role model, but what do I know? I wanted to be Indiana Jones at that age.

The boy, who was not named in the article due to his age, described a lengthy list of crimes. The newspaper said,”He willingly told the officers of a list of robberies which add to an appalling number.”

All of which he learned from books. And when I think of all the detective books I’ve checked out, over the years I’ve been at the library….Technically, I may have been indirectly responsible for crime waves of epic proportions. (We’ve never really tried that approach to publicity: “Get a library card! Commit felonies!”)

The boy concluded, “And to think I’ve been caught, after all I’ve read.”

He was sent home under the supervision of his father, who I assume took away the detective books and kept a close eye on the piggy bank for a while.

It occurs to me to do the math here: This happened in 1948, when the boy was twelve. That would mean he was born around 1936, which would make him seventy-nine years old now. Chances are, he’s still alive. This one-boy crime wave is still out there, very likely living locally. And presumably still reading.

You heard it here first—If gum or false teeth are stolen from your car, chances are it’s this unrepentant criminal reader. We’ll check to see who has a library card, and track him down. I practically have him cornered.