[MSN] Men in Transy heist tell their story

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Posted on Mon, Nov. 12, 2007 
Men in Transy heist tell their story
LAWYER FOR ONE LAMENTS TIMING, CLOSE TO COURT DATE
By Delano R. Massey
DMASSEY at HERALD-LEADER.COM 

The scheme was hatched in a haze of marijuana smoke, with inspiration from popular heist flicks. And the motivation stemmed from a desire to escape the "mundane, nickel-and-dime existence" of suburbia, according to a new article in Vanity Fair about one of Lexington's most notorious crimes.

But execution failed the four college-age men who nearly pulled off a theft of rare and valuable manuscripts and sketches from Transylvania University's Special Collections Library.

The story of the four men convicted of the crime -- Charles Allen II, Eric Borsuk, Warren C. Lipka and Spencer W. Reinhard -- is told through the eyes of three of them by writer John Falk in December's Vanity Fair magazine, which will be available Tuesday.

Falk visited three of the four (Allen, who was transferred to Lexington's Federal Medical Center, declined to be interviewed) at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, where they are serving seven-year sentences for the Dec. 17, 2004, crime.

The story, titled "Majoring in Crime," gives readers a look into the minds of the three men, all 22. But an attorney for one of the three says the timing of the article is unfortunate. The story hits shelves about a month before the men make a scheduled appearance in front of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where they are appealing the length of their sentences.

Fred Peters, who represents Borsuk, said he knew Vanity Fair has been trying to do an article about the book heist, but he had advised Borsuk not to talk. Peters said "if he did grant them an interview, it would be against my objection."

"He shouldn't do anything until the appeal is over," Peters said. "A judge could see the story and make a different ruling."

"I think it's coming out at an unfortunate time since their case is coming up next month," he said, adding that he "can't imagine it helping" the case.

Lipka's attorney, Adele Burt Brown, said that in her opinion, the article is "not going to make a difference."

Last year, a federal judge ruled that the four men could sell their story and keep the proceeds, but a spokesperson for Vanity Fair said they weren't paid for the article.

Sarah A. Emmons, a spokeswoman for Transylvania University, said she was interested in seeing what the article says. She said she was concerned about inaccuracies and embellishments. And she's concerned about how the school's librarian would be portrayed.

During the robbery, Lipka and Borsuk assaulted special collections librarian B.J. Gooch. Lipka used a stun device -- they said it was a stun pen -- on Gooch while Borsuk helped blindfold and "hogtie" Gooch, binding her hands and feet.

Without seeing the story, Emmons said, she didn't know whether it would be good news or bad news for the university.

"It's really been quiet for a while, which has been good," Emmons said. "I don't know how much this will bring the theft back in the news."

Gooch declined to comment about the Vanity Fair article.

The article focuses mostly on the heist -- how it came together, how it was executed and where it went wrong -- and covers ground familiar to many in Lexington who followed the crime, the arrests and the court case. But Falk's article also offers new insights into the friends from suburban Lexington. Lipka, Allen and Borsuk had attended Lexington Catholic High School together. Reinhard attended Tates Creek High School but became friends with Lipka and the others through soccer.

The three men who were interviewed tell Falk about how their friendship was formed, how Lipka and Borsuk teamed up to sell fake IDs to their peers in University of Kentucky dorms, and how Reinhard, who was on a freshman orientation tour of Transy, came across the university's collection of rare books and manuscripts, including John James Audubon's Birds of America, a four-volume set of life-size engravings completed in 1838 while Audubon was in London.

"They take you in the Special Collections and show you these books," Reinhard says in the Vanity Fair interview. "I'd heard about them before, but I didn't know anything about them. And the woman there says, 'We had a set just like this that we sold four years ago for like $12 million.' It could have been eight. I'm not sure, but it was a lot. It immediately had kind of sparked my imagination, like a fantasy."

While sitting in a car smoking marijuana, Reinhard told Lipka about his library tour, and Lipka asked whether the collection was protected by security, according to the article. Reinhard began scoping out the library; Lipka made contact with an "underworld friend" to figure out how they could sell the stolen items.

Reinhard and Lipka, with a bag of marijuana and a phony ID, traveled 700 miles to New York to meet that friend, and, in March of 2004, Lipka flew to Amsterdam, where he said he found a buyer for the items. When Lipka returned from Amsterdam, Borsuk told Falk, he said "I've talked to these guys. I've met with them. They think we have (the books). Now the hard part -- we have to steal them."

After stealing the works, the four men tried to sell the items to Christie's, a New York City auction house, in late December 2004. But the deal never went through. An e-mail account used to set up appointments at Christie's and Transylvania led police and federal authorities to the four men.

They were arrested in February 2005 at a Beaumont Avenue house where Allen, Borsuk and Lipka lived at the time. Reinhard was arrested at his dorm at Transy. Two months later, they pleaded guilty in federal court to robbery, conspiracy and theft of major artworks. They were sentenced in December 2005.

In the magazine article, the men express no regret for the crime, except for harming Gooch, the librarian.

In his interview, Borsuk talks about never returning to life in the "sterile, suburban world of the subdivisions." Had they pulled off the crime, he said, they would have lived a "crazy life thinking we were Ocean's 11 types," a reference to the movie that portrays a Las Vegas casino heist.

Lipka said the friends felt liberated. And Reinhard said he "loved" that one of his paintings, A Plan to Fail, which is about the crime, has been made into a screen saver on an FBI computer, according to Falk's article.

"In a few years we'll be released," Lipka says in Vanity Fair. "We'll all be ... still young. We will be stronger, better, wiser for going through this together, the three of us. Before, in college, growing up, we were being funneled into this mundane, nickel-and-dime existence. Now we can't ever go back there. Even if we wanted to, they won't let us."



http://www.kentucky.com/454/story/228345.html