[1][2] The library at Transylvania University was the beneficiary of book collectors, particularly Clara Peck, a wealthy New York sportswoman.
[3][1] Betty Jean Gooch was the librarian who oversaw the Rare Books collection—she had started working at the university in 1994.
[2] On the morning of 17 December, Reinhard watched from a neighboring building with a stolen mobile phone to communicate with Lipka.
[2][3] Lipka attacked her with the stun gun, then pulled a woolen hat over her head and bound her with zip ties and gagged her.
[2][3] The thieves took the books they had to the New York offices of Christie's, where Lipka introduced himself as "Mr. Williams" and Reinhard as "Mr.
[2] Yahoo provided law enforcement with all the information they had on the Walter Beckmann email account in response to a federal subpoena.
[2] This led law enforcement to the social media account of Lipka and Reinhard, who resembled the men seen at Christie's.
[2] The judge ruled they were all equally culpable, that the value of the theft should be of the books actually removed from the building and that the stun gun used was a dangerous weapon.
[2] Betty Jean Gooch suffered psychological trauma as a result of the raid, though she forgave the thieves.
[4] The saga of the Transylvania University book heist was adapted by writer-director Bart Layton into the 2018 feature film American Animals, a docudrama that fuses a fictionalized account of the heist with interview segments with the real-life people involved, with Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard, Chas Allen, Eric Borsuk and Betty Jean Gooch all appearing as themselves.
The film's title comes from Borsuk's memoir, which derives its name from a passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, one of the books stolen by the gang.