#279 American Animals

True Crime Guys

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 June 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Four students hatched a plan to steal some very rare books and it became known as the Transylvania University heist in 2004, or Transy Book Heist. The plan was to break into the school's Special Collection in the Rare Books Room, swipe the books and sell them for millions of dollars….easy peasy. But of course things didn't quite go all Oceans 11, but the heist did inspire its own docu-movie! Check out our other shows!: Cryptic Soup w/ Thena & Kylee Strange & Unexplained True Crime Guys YouTube EVERYTHING TRUE CRIME GUYS: https://linktr.ee/Truecrimeguysproductions True Crime Guys Music: True Crime Guys Music on Spotify OhMyGaia.com Code: Crimepine Patreon.com/truecrimeguys Patreon.com/sandupodcast Merch: truecrimeguys.threadless.com Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csnx6likOPg. <<<<< American Animals Movie! Book - American Animals: A True Crime Memoir Paperback by Eric Borsuk Book - Mr. Pink The Inside Story of The Transylvania Book Heist by Chas Allen https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/15/inside-the-2004-6-million-transy-book-heist-and-how-they-got-caught.html https://www.transy.edu/1780/2020/09/transylvania-special-collections-librarian-retires-after-26-years-of-connecting-researchers-with-historical-treasures/ https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article212180224.html https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/02/transy-book-heist?srsltid=AfmBOoq7CCVxnBFhXtGw5xoWvCgeiaFK4NGOgcgm2i39Rj7rbkAHHrLu

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to True Crime Guys podcast. I'm your host Michael and I actually don't have Andy with me today.
0:11.1	I know, right? You guys were going to be like, oh, I know Andy's with you. No, he's not. He's not. I gave him the week off. It's nothing crazy. You know, sometimes people need a break. And so I gave Andy this week off. I think of it as a Father's Day present, Andy, you know, because you're a father. I mean, so am I, but, you know, I hate holidays. So in true spirit of hating holidays, I have to, I have to ignore the ones that even cater to me, right? That's just how it is. It's just how it is.
0:38.1	But nevertheless, guys, I have an amazing episode for you guys that I am extremely
0:43.3	passionate about.
0:44.2	One of my new favorite cases.
0:46.4	And it has an amazing true crime docu-movie.
0:52.1	Not series.
0:52.9	Docu-movie, though, is what I would call it.
0:55.2	A documentary slash movie, but I would say 80% movie, 20% documentary.
1:01.4	It's amazing.
1:02.9	And that doesn't mean 80% of it is made up.
1:06.7	No, it's extremely, extremely factual.
1:10.5	There's a link to that below description of the episode, and I will talk about that documentary quite a bit today.
1:16.3	But before we get into that, guys, I got to remind you, you can check out these episodes early and ad free on Patreon.
1:22.8	Patreon.com slash true crime guys.
1:25.0	Well, usually you can, but this episode was an exception.
1:28.8	It went out a little late. It doesn't matter matter but usually you can catch the episodes early on patreon okay is what i'm that's what i'm
1:32.6	getting at patreon.com slash true crime guys there's a link right below the description of this episode
1:37.7	also here on the free platform you can check out our other shows like strange and unexplained
1:41.5	sand do stories and also Cryptic Soup with
1:44.5	Thina and Kylie. Even though Cryptic Soup has not stopped making episodes, there are still a huge
1:50.0	back catalog for you guys to listen to. And a lot of those episodes, we may revisit on True
	...

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