Dealer Arrested In Yale Library Map Theft

Yale Police have charged a former Manhattan map dealer with the theft of what could add up to several hundred thousand dollars worth of antique maps from Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Edward Forbes Smiley III, 49, of Martha's Vineyard, Mass., was arraigned on three separate larceny charges in New Haven Superior Court and posted bail set at $175,000 on July 8.

A website for Smiley's business listed him as having operated offices for the past 25 years at "16 East 79th Street, New York, galleries at 175 East 57th Street, New York, and a private business on Martha's Vineyard."

Smiley's initial arrest for larceny in the first degree came on June 8, when a staff member at the Beinecke facility became suspicious after finding an "Exacto knife blade" on the floor of the reading room during the morning hours. The blade was described as being a "type of instrument used to illegally remove (steal) rare documents, maps, signatures and other authentic pages from rare books."

Suspecting that the person that had dropped it might still be in the library, a walk through the rooms was conducted which revealed a man "looking at books containing rare maps." The employee checked the library register and identified the gentleman as Smiley. A further check on the Internet revealed he was a dealer in "early maps, atlases and globes."

After further checking with the Sterling Memorial Library, also on the campus of Yale, it was confirmed that Smiley was a suspect in a missing document case there, yet charges were never pressed due to a lack of evidence.

Yale police were notified and surveillance of Smiley began, including video. Smiley then left the Beinecke facility and was tailed by a detective to the Yale Center for the British Arts where he check his briefcase at the security desk. Yale police officer Detective Martin Bounfiglio confronted Smiley at the museum and asked if the blade that had been found in the library was his. He reportedly confessed that it was and a search of Smiley's personal property ensued, revealing what was believed to be the stolen maps. Seven rare maps worth more than $700,000 were reportedly discovered in Smiley's briefcase, three of which were identified by library personnel as possibly having been stolen from the library.

A recovered 1614 map, that had been removed from the book Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England or Anywhere, by Captain John Smith, founder of Jamestown, is valued at $50,000. Smiley reportedly pulled the missing map, regarded as one of the earliest accurate maps of New England, out of the inside pocket of his blazer when questioned by authorities.

Among the other maps recovered was a "Septentrio vniuersalis descripto" authored by Richard Hakluyt, 1552-1616, that had a comparable value of $500,000 placed on it, according to the affidavit used to obtain the arrest warrant.

Smiley had also signed out the book North West Passage by Foxe Luke, 1586-1635, which was found to be missing the map "Part of America part of China" that had been earlier inventoried and found to be part of the book. A map of the same title was one of the maps discovered in Smiley's briefcase.

Smiley's website states that during his 25 years in business that he has "built several of the largest collections of American cartographic materials in this country, including the Norman Leventhal Collection of New England maps and the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection of English maps and atlases - now at the New York Public Library."

His website also touted the sale of the "best English map of America to date," a Morden and Berry map of New England from 1676 that was listed as having been sold for $70,000. A lengthy list of Seventeenth to Nineteenth Century maps were also listed for sale.

Smiley was formally charged in late June with two additional larceny charges. The FBI is involved in the investigation and concerns that he may have targeted other libraries surfaced after maps that did not belong to Yale were recovered.