On June 24, 2006, a joint operation of the Dutch, British and Spanish police arrested an unusual theft gang in the town of Malaga, northern Spain, where Picasso was born. Speaking of Marvin Perry and Peter Bellwood in the gang, it can be described as "famous" throughout Europe. Since the beginning of this century, these two "super masters" who specialize in stealing maps have traveled almost all over Europe's major libraries, successfully stealing thousands of maps from the Middle Ages. Since their mysterious disappearance in 2004, they have been the targets of the joint search by major libraries and police stations in Europe, and the famous British "Observer" magazine vividly called them "thieves who stole the world".
Copenhagen. An ancient map worth more than 150,000 euros was stolen at one time Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, the largest city in
Northern Europe , is home to the fairy tale The Little Mermaid statue, the beautiful Shennong Fountain and the world-famous Klembo Castle from Shakespeare's famous play "Hamlet" , The fairytale-like mysterious scenery makes many tourists linger.
On the morning of April 30, 2003, the weather was fine and the sun was shining brightly. A very unusual visitor came to the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. The man was in his thirties, neatly dressed and elegant, with golden eyes on the bridge of his nose, and looked like a university lecturer. When he checked in at the library, he seemed to hesitate for a moment, then quickly signed his name: Peter Bellwood.
Mr. Bellwood sat in the public periodicals browsing room for about 30 minutes, then walked into the library's map room and greeted the staff with a smile, asking them to help him find some old maps. The mild-mannered Mr. Bellwood made a "very good" impression on Miss Christina, the administrator, as soon as he entered. Not only did he not "flip around" like most borrowers, but he was very professional in filling out the borrowing list. No spelling mistakes. You know, this will save the administrator a lot of trouble. What's more interesting is that when Bellwood passed by the guard Jesper, he also handed him a 50-euro note said to have been picked up from the ground, which made Jesper suddenly smile.
The Royal Danish Library was founded by King Frederick III of Denmark in 1673. It specializes in collecting precious books and handwriting. It was originally a small building. After the efforts of successive kings, the scale has been expanded in the 1990s. a lot. The Wang Family Library officially opened to foreigners in August 1998 and has attracted tens of thousands of foreign tourists. On the one hand, it is necessary to keep it open to the public, and on the other hand, it is necessary to protect the safety of the collections and strictly guard against thieves who frequent the library. The map room and the precious book room have the most stringent security work, and the responsibility of the staff is also "very heavy". Every day, they must carefully watch about 7,000 atlases and 270,000 maps in it to prevent theft.
But this time Bellwood, who was sitting quietly reading in a corner by the window, did not arouse anyone's suspicion. After 40 minutes, he returned the borrowed book to Christina, smiling goodbye to her. However, it was absolutely unexpected that it was this decent looking Mr. Bellwood who unknowingly stole 3 sheets from an old atlas under the nose of the staff. precious map. Not only that, he also "taken" 5 medieval map inserts from another 16th-century German travel book!
Curtin, the director of the library, received a report from the security department on the afternoon of April 30. That afternoon, while sorting out the bibliography, Christina, the administrator, was surprised to find that the maps in several books she had read were missing, one of which was a travel guide published in Amsterdam in 1596, in which The map shows the African, Arabian and South American coasts known at the time, and the book is widely regarded as one of the most important travel manuals in the world. Another world map of Prantheus was also lost. The Asian part of the picture is a bit like a woman wearing a robe sitting on a buffalo. The unit price of this picture is 20,000 euros, and the total value of the stolen map is more than 150,000 euros. !
Kolding immediately checked the TV surveillance footage with Jesper and was taken aback - Bellwood was reading with a black pen in his left hand, spreading the book with his right, and then using a sharp The nib of the nib cut the next page and placed it under his chair. After a few minutes, he repeated the crime and placed another page under his desk. Then he slipped the maps quietly into his jacket pocket, and left the library calmly.
Sudden such bad luck, the curator Kolding is very frustrated. Before he could think about it, he immediately called the police.
Stealing Libraries in Europe After receiving a call from the Royal Library, the
Copenhagen Police Department immediately instructed Officer Brian Laudrup to take charge of the case. The young and capable police officer Laudrup is the new elite of the Danish police in recent years, known for his rapid detection of strange and big cases. But this time, he encountered a strong opponent.
After surveying the scene, Laudrup immediately arranged for personnel to conduct surveillance around the Royal Library, ready to wait for the thief to be apprehended if he reappeared. At the same time, fearing that the thief had fled Denmark and might choose another library to commit the crime again, Laudrup suggested that Kolding put the thief's photo on the Royal Library's website and expose his scandal. In this way, the originally quiet library world was like an atomic bomb was detonated. Within hours, Bellwood's "thief" spread around the world, prompting many libraries around the world to scrutinize their surveillance footage to see if there was any trace of him.
At the same time, the Copenhagen Police Service quickly issued an orange warning to the police in other European countries through the Internet. Soon, Laudrup received news from the Dutch police - it is said that 15 precious maps were stolen from the Dutch Royal Library in The Hague, in October of the previous year. The suspect is a British passport holder. A man named Marvin Perry.
Laudrup immediately checked the registry of the Royal Danish Library and found that this Malvern had been there before and had borrowed the same titles as the stolen atlas. At this time, the library guard Jesper reflected another important clue——
It was one day in December 2002, and a young man with dark brown hair and glasses swaggered into the Royal Library in Copenhagen and asked the staff to take him to the map room. He had a folded newspaper under his arm at the time, and even though it was against library rules, he slipped past the first security guard. Jesper saw him as a serious reader, not like those architecture students running around, so he let him in. As a result, when he entered the map room, he began to pretend to study the map, focusing on the works of the early Dutch mapmakers Abraham and Jansen and the 17th-century British mapmaker Speed. However, Jesper quickly became suspicious of him, both because he always carried the newspaper and because when the administrator asked him to register the subject he needed to study, he had misspelled even the most basic spelling. Later, the young man also seemed to have noticed that there were always vigilant eyes staring at him, so after browsing for 25 minutes, he left the library angrily.
Jesper recalled: "Obviously, he was wearing a very large T-shirt, the purpose was to easily hide the stolen goods and not be found." For the sake of prudence, Jesper also specially preserved the electronic equipment at that time. Image data on the monitor.
After a series of thorough investigations, the identity of the thief gradually emerged. Surprisingly, the two thieves used their real names every time they went to the library to register! According to the information: Peter Bellwood, born in Yorkshire, England in 1971, was a garden worker, and later became a An antique book broker in Leeds. In 1996, he was jailed for four years for stealing Victorian sports scrolls and precious maps from books from the Leeds National Library and Birmingham Library. Marvin Perry was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and studied at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom in his early years. During his time at school, Marvin Perry had a bad record of stealing from the British Library and Cambridge Library in the past. Later, he was removed from the school due to "bad conduct" and almost went to jail.
The Hague police also provided Laudrup with an important piece of information. The staff of the Royal Library found a map of the neighborhoods around the Royal Library of Stockholm from the book that Perry forgot to take away. The book also wrote five British With the name of the atlas drawn by the Dutch map masters. Laudrup immediately contacted the National Library of Stockholm, and the results were horrific: from August 2002 to March 2003 they hosted Perry and Bellwood several times, and from 1579 to 1635 At least about 40 precious maps were stolen from the atlas published in 2009. The records also indicate that the last time they visited was April 25, 2003, five days before Bellwood "visited" the Royal Danish Library.
It seems that these two are really old map stealers! The question now before the police is how to bring them to justice before their next crime.
Dressing up in disguise, London, England showed its "skills" again.
Looking for two map-stealing thieves in the vast European continent is tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack. Laudrup contacted the police department in the birthplace of Peter Bellwood and Marvin Perry, but both said they could not help, because the suspects had been away from their hometown for many years, and it was also difficult to find their whereabouts.
Why did the thieves only steal maps? Laudrup found the answer in a later conversation with Curdin’s curator – from the stolen maps, no matter from the color matching, or from the mountains and water , the fine and accurate drawing of the land, all have high aesthetic value. Graeme Allard, one of the world's largest map collectors and distributors, who runs a successful chain of map pavilions in North America, once said: "A good map brings the The progress of science and so on has a very high aesthetic value, and I often indulge in the process of appreciating them." In
this way, these are two thieves who pay attention to "taste". However, the next thing the police learned was their cunning.
Oddly enough, the two thieves seemed to be aware of the police's actions, and in the more than a year since the theft of the Royal Danish Library, they were never seen again in major European libraries. Did the thief stop and wash his hands in the golden basin? It seems unlikely. In the eyes of Officer Laudrup, they must be looking for the right "prey" and waiting for the right opportunity.
In early September 2004, the Copenhagen police learned a piece of news: at the end of this month, a grand international exhibition of ancient books will be held in London, England. Antiquities and Books Exhibition? Laudrup immediately had a keen premonition that this exhibition might be a good opportunity to capture the two thieves! After a period of silence, according to the usual practice, they should "do it" again.
On September 29, 2004, the International Antiquities and Books Exhibition was grandly opened at the British Library in London as scheduled, attracting antique dealers and collectors from all over the world. A large number of ancient books, picture albums and maps were all displayed at the exhibition, many of which are the world's top works. At the same time, a six-member Danish police special operations team led by Laudrup, with the cooperation of the local police in London, was closely monitoring the entrance and exit of the British Library. They watched footage of the two burglars together beforehand and distributed photos of Peter and Malvern in preparation for a "please enter the urn".
However, one day, two days, three days passed, and the two thieves never showed up. On October 2nd, the last day of the exhibition, at 9:20 in the morning, an unexpected incident happened in the library -
at that time, an old gray-haired woman was accompanied by a young red-haired woman. , come to the exhibition area of the US Library of Congress to see their most famous collection - "Dance of Death". "Dance of Death" was published in the 19th century, and the glossy tan leather cover of this book looks like a normal book, but it is eerie that the cover is actually made of human skin! The book was bound by the British craftsman Joseph Zensdorf. At that time, because there was not enough human skin, he made two pieces of the human skin, of which the outer skin was rough and used for the cover of the book; The skin is relatively smooth, like suede, and is used for the spine and back cover.
When the old man reached out and touched the cover of the human skin book, he didn't know whether it was because of excessive fright or some other reason. This time, the red-haired girl beside her was so frightened that her face turned pale, and she screamed desperately: "God! Hurry up and call an ambulance! Hurry up..." The entire exhibition hall suddenly became a mess.
After people rushed the old woman to the ambulance, the exhibition hall gradually became quiet again. At this time, a bad news shocked all the police officers, including Laudrup - the "Dance of Death" in the exhibition area of the Library of Congress was missing! At the same time, there was also a more precious set of The collection "Chinese Ancient Maps", which includes hundreds of long-rolled maps, fan maps and stone-carved map rubbings from about 100 Chinese picture books since the 12th century, is invaluable
!
, which brought great disgrace to the Danish and British police, and the police officer Laudrup's ability to handle the case was questioned by his superiors. In the face of such a thief with such a high IQ, Laudrup has no intention of defending himself, he wrote in the report: "According to an eyewitness, it was a 'tall Arab woman' who took advantage of the chaos to steal. The 'Arab woman' was most likely Peter Bellwood, and the 'fainted old woman' in the showroom was Marvin Perry. As for that A beautiful redhead, a new accomplice..."
Officer Laudrup's analysis was right, it was the "golden partners" of Bellwood and Perry, Bellwood's new girlfriend Daisy successfully staged a good show of "Hiding the Sky" together at the British Library. After they succeeded, they also disappeared mysteriously.
The news that can give people a little comfort is that at the end of 2004, the heads of major libraries and police stations across Europe held a joint meeting in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, and issued the "Copenhagen Declaration of Principles", determined to join hands to hunt down Bell. Wood and Perry, the gang of thieves and other library thieves involved. Perhaps these two big thieves may have also heard the wind, so they dare not go to the library to commit crimes. In short, since 2005, they have never appeared in European countries. But the police did not let up for a moment in their pursuit.
On June 18, 2006, the Copenhagen Police Department obtained an important piece of information from the Spanish police. An American couple who called themselves "Simpson" entered the port city of Llanes, and the destination was Malaga in northern Spain. And their personal health practitioner. Officer Laudrup's eyes lit up when he saw the faxed photo: Isn't this Mrs. Simpson the red-haired girl who appeared at the British Library? Yes, they are!
Malaga, Spain It is the birthplace of Picasso. On the eve of Picasso's 125th birthday, the Malaga Museum will hold an unprecedented exhibition of Picasso's works. To this end, the organizers also specially borrowed a large collection of Picasso paintings from the Grimaldi Castle Museum in France, including 23 oil paintings and 44 other paintings. This is the first time that these treasures have been exhibited outside of France.
On June 24, 2006, the Dutch, British and Spanish police worked closely together and finally caught the Bellwood gang when they were about to steal again. When asked about their motives for their trip, it was very absurd - Bellwood actually planned to "get" a Picasso painting for his wife Daisy, who loves oil painting, as a birthday present.
During the interrogation of Bellwood, people were surprised to find that, as the principal criminal, not only his modus operandi was "smart", but also the tools he used were very "advanced"! For example, he used a "black pen" in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. , which actually contained a very sharp blade, which could easily cut the whole map down along the binding line; the other end of the pen could squeeze out the extremely viscous glue, which was used to restore the book to its original shape. When searching his carry-on items, the police also found a large number of other "high-tech equipment", such as master keys, decoders, electronic compasses, miniature walkie-talkies, etc., and even a pocket sewing machine...
Marvin Perry Said that his modus operandi with Bellwood was partly an imitation of Gilbert Brandt. This man stole 2,500 precious maps from library atlases throughout the United States in the 1990s. Later, the British writer Miles Harvey wrote a book for him called "The Island on the Lost Map". As for the disguise that was almost fake, it was Daisy's "masterpiece"—_This American girl who later became Mrs. Bellwood was a professional make-up artist in Hollywood.
Bellwood and Perry also laughed at the lax security work of the major libraries, and it was quite easy to succeed. Although they later strengthened their vigilance, this only aroused their desire to steal. During their time in the United States, they were not idle. The two stole hundreds of precious maps from the New York Library and the Huntington Library, with a total value of more than $300,000. But what makes people feel incredible is that so far, American municipalities have regarded these situations as "scandals" and "controlled the spread to the smallest possible range."
The heads of the police in Dan, Ying, and Western countries said that they will contact the police bureaus of other countries in Europe and the United States as soon as possible to integrate the crimes of this group of thieves in the past for stealing maps, and submit them to the court as soon as possible, so that they can receive the punishment they deserve.
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