Anatomy of a Campus Heist
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
February 11, 2005. FBI agents bust down the door of a cinder block house near the University of Kentucky campus. Amid flash grenades and screaming teens, they arrest three students – plus a fourth student in a nearby dorm. The crime? Stealing almost $750,000 of rare books and manuscripts from the library at Transylvania University. Why did four freshmen decide to actually go through with their real life version of Ocean’s Eleven? And how did they plan to get away with it?
Special thanks to our guests, BJ Gooch, retired special collections librarian; Eric Borsuk, whose memoir is called American Animals: A True Crime Memoir; and Tom Lecky, rare book and manuscript specialist.
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** This episode originally aired February 6, 2023.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | This episode contains descriptions of assault. |
| 0:06.3 | Listener discretion is advised. |
| 0:09.8 | History this week. |
| 0:11.8 | February 11, 2005. |
| 0:18.3 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:22.8 | For months, some of the guys living in the little yellow bungalow at 613 Beaumont Avenue |
| 0:28.8 | have felt like they are characters in a movie. |
| 0:33.4 | Everything is thrilling, larger than life, sometimes scary. |
| 0:37.6 | And reality is about to come crashing in. |
| 0:44.3 | Around 6 a.m., a SWAT team breaks down the door of that little yellow bungalow in Kentucky. |
| 0:52.0 | Most of the college students living inside have no idea what's going on. |
| 0:57.0 | They emerge leery-eyed in their boxer shorts. |
| 1:00.3 | One of them, a young guy in flannel pajamas, thinks at first that the house is being robbed |
| 1:06.0 | until he realizes, oh no, the feds are here for me. |
| 1:14.7 | Agents arrest Warren Lipka, Eric Borsick, and Chaz Allen II. |
| 1:20.2 | At the same time, they're picking up another accomplice, a guy named Spencer Reinhart, |
| 1:24.5 | from his dorm at nearby Transylvania University. |
| 1:28.6 | And in the basement of the little house at 613 Beaumont Avenue, the agents find all the evidence |
| 1:35.3 | they're going to need. |
| 1:37.0 | Stun guns, disguises, a how-to for opening a Swiss bank account, and a first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, |
| 1:49.0 | plus four other rare manuscripts, |
... |
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