Anatomy of a Campus Heist
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2023
⏱️ 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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, Original Podcast. |
| 0:30.0 | Like they are characters in a movie. |
| 0:33.3 | Everything is thrilling, larger than life, sometimes scary. |
| 0:37.6 | And reality is about to come crashing in. |
| 0:44.5 | Around 6am, a SWAT team breaks down the door of that little yellow bungalow in Kentucky. |
| 0:52.3 | Most of the college students living inside have no idea what's going on. |
| 0:56.1 | They emerge lyried in their boxer shorts. |
| 0:59.4 | One of them, a young guy in flannel pajamas, thinks at first that the house is being robbed |
| 1:05.4 | until he realizes, oh no. |
| 1:09.1 | The feds are here for me. |
| 1:12.6 | Agents arrest Warren Lipka, Eric Borsick, and Chaz Allen the second. |
| 1:19.4 | At the same time, they're picking up another accomplice, a guy named Spencer Reinhardt, |
| 1:24.4 | from his dorm at nearby Transylvania University. |
| 1:28.4 | And in the basement of the little house at 613 Beaumont Ave, |
| 1:32.9 | the agents find all the evidence they're going to need. |
| 1:36.9 | Stung guns, disguises, a how-to for opening a Swiss bank account, |
| 1:43.1 | and a first edition of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, |
| 1:49.1 | plus four other rare manuscripts. |
| 1:51.6 | All stolen in a heist that, until very recently, |
| 1:55.6 | has had the authorities mystified. |
| 2:00.9 | Today, four friends go Oceans 11. |
| 2:04.2 | How did these disillusion college students decide to steal almost a million dollars worth |
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