Disappearing Ink

by Travis McDade

  Lethem, in particular, should come in for criticism. Authors like Kluge seemed to understand that, even if Breithaupt deserved mercy, he was, in fact, guilty of the crimes he pleaded to. Lethem, on the other hand, did not believe Breithaupt was guilty; or he did not, in the face of evidence, want to believe it. Either way, he went quite above and beyond the call of duty to defend his friend, not letting his sad letter to the federal court be the end of it. For instance, in his 2012 collection titled The Ecstasy of Influence, the book’s very first essay (originally published in 2006) offered a brief defense of Breithaupt. Lethem noted that the felon was one of the “best and purest” book clerks he ever worked with and that his crime at Kenyon was merely “rescuing deaccessioned antiquarian books and papers” with what “a judge considered excessive zeal.” This is, of course, utter nonsense. It’s what Breithaupt told his friends happened; the most credulous ones, like Lethem, parroted it back to the public. Lethem even wrote an introduction to Breithaupt’s (as yet unpublished) book of short stories—though whether this was out of general kindness, a belief in the power of the literature itself, or simply his end of the bargain Breithaupt offered regarding the page of the Pynchon manuscript, only he knows.

  The prosecution’s response to the twelve page defense memorandum and the letters of support was simple, and devastating. It was a mere paragraph long and recommended that Breithaupt be sentenced to one year in prison, as had been recommended by the probation office. Then the prosecution attached nearly a hundred pages of material, mostly taken from the documents surrounding the civil trial. These pages demonstrated to anyone who read them that Breithaupt was a thief and a liar. That is—there were no arguments or flowery language or testimony from people who barely knew Breithaupt. There were simply facts, many of which came from Breithaupt, that directly contradicted what the defense was claiming. What these showed was that Breithaupt was a bad guy who had offered very little help to Kenyon in trying to get their books back and who, at almost every turn, had been evasive and dishonest. One example stood out among all others.

  Kenyon College knew fairly early on that Breithaupt stole from Special Collections a first edition copy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unfortunately for Breithaupt, he and his brother Jim—the man to whom he had sent the book—memorialized the transaction in a series of emails. Not only did Jim joke about the 1885 book being stolen from Kenyon—the notorious “five finger discount” letter—but he noted that he had seen similar copies selling for more than $5,000 on the Internet, a clear indication that both men knew what the score was. Kenyon had these emails and, in the approach to the civil trial, asked Breithaupt about the book in a set of legal interrogatories. He replied “I, David Breithaupt, deny that I have ever owned, obtained or otherwise acquired a first edition copy of Huckleberry Finn.” It would become his standard line on the matter. He later lied—perjured himself, in fact—about possessing the book at least two more times. Once was in a deposition before the civil proceeding in Knox County (Lovering asked him if he ever had in his possession the 1885 version of the book; “No,” Breithaupt answered, “I think I would have known that. No. I gave [Jim] a kids’ version.”) and another was while being cross-examined in that trial. But this lie, mentioned in court, in a deposition and in writing, was only brought into stark relief thanks to a line in his own defense sentencing memorandum. In an attempt to get leniency from the judge by offering evidence of Breithaupt’s cooperation, defense attorney Clark noted the fact that recently “Mr. Breithaupt has returned nine additional books, which include an 1885 first edition… of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.”

  After five years of denying so much as touching the book, he was asking the judge to credit him for giving it back.

  Concerning His Possession

  On May 6, 2005—five years and two weeks since his crime was discovered—United States District Judge James Graham sentenced Breithaupt to one year in federal prison. He also ordered restitution to Kenyon College in the amount of $50,281.84. Further, Breithaupt was told to help the government and Kenyon with the recovery of property and “provide the probation officer with information concerning his possession of rare books and documents.” This is a standard stipulation attached to all of these sentences and it never has any real, practical meaning. That is, none of these library thieves ever actually help get the books back. That was true in this case, too.

  Punishment in these cases rarely fits the crime, but even the most avid proponent of draconian sentences for cultural heritage thefts—a group of which this author considers himself a member in good standing—must admit that Breithaupt was made to pay a steep price. While his one year in prison was hardly severe, it came at the end of a series of civil court setbacks that not only ruined Breithaupt financially, but caused him and his family members no small amount of personal turmoil. For this, he has the civil suit filed by Kenyon College to thank—a civil suit that could have been avoided if Breithaupt had listened to anyone but Christa Hupp. And a year in prison is still a year in prison—a stretch made longer, he later noted, because he was kicking his drug habit cold turkey “in a loud, overheated prison while trying to sleep on a wrestling mat.”

  Because Breithaupt did not have money to give to Kenyon after the judgment, the college took his land. This meant that Breithaupt was pestered by the Knox County Court for years as Kenyon tried to get their judgment enforced. For instance, on August 16, 2006, Kenyon received $39,516.06 from the Knox County Sheriff’s Department after some of Breithaupt’s family property was sold at public auction. The US Attorney’s office credited Breithaupt that much toward his restitution. In addition, Breithaupt was subject to depositions, law enforcement interviews, and the various bits of unfriendly correspondence routine to court proceedings. Breithaupt will never be able to pay off all the money he owes Kenyon, nor will he be able to repair the harm he did—most of the books and manuscripts he stole are simply gone forever. But he certainly cannot be said to have escaped punishment. Hupp, on the other hand, like most instigators, avoided almost any consequences at all. She continued to live on the Caves Curve Farm—eventually reuniting with her ex-husband—even as Kenyon, and several banks, pursued her for money owed them. She died there in May 2013.

  Upon release from prison, Breithaupt stayed in Ohio and got a job working for a sports publication founded two decades earlier by a friend of Jim Breithaupt. The man with lofty literary pretensions was put to work, at $10 per hour, writing about the whims of teenage sports stars. From the beginning, because of money still owed Kenyon, even those wages were subject to garnishment.

  He also began something of a rehabilitation tour. In a May 2007 interview on the subject of some postcards Kurt Vonnegut had sent him years earlier, Breithaupt let readers of The Nervous Breakdown know about his own story. The interviewer noticed that Breithaupt had listed on his MySpace page his occupation as “writer.” Breithaupt noted a few things he had written, including a piece in Andrei Condrescu’s online magazine. Then he said, “Last year I had the sad and strange fate to serve a year in Federal Prison for the bizarre charge of illicit sales of archeological artifacts. This was a bogus charge involving the sale of what was eventually deemed to be stolen library books.” He continued on by saying that he had just finished a memoir titled American Felon. A little more than a year later, the same online magazine ran a bit of this memoir. Its first line was: In 2005 and 2006, I spent a year in federal prison for the alleged crime of “illicit sale of archeological artifacts.” By this point, according to his bio, he had just finished writing “Dada Entry: Picasso, Proust and Federal Prison.” He was looking for publishers.

  The Breithaupt Collection

  On July 11, 2000, a few days after the initial meeting between the Kenyon College folks, their attorneys, and Agent Stout, Dan Temple sent out letters to four Ohio libraries. He explained to folks at Ohio State, Ohio Wesleyan, Kent State, and Denison that some of their books “were not legitimately removed
” from their libraries, and were found in David Breithaupt’s possession. At the time, this included only those things Barth had grabbed from the Caves Curve Farm on his two visits, but it would grow. Temple, for instance, listed four books in his letter to Ohio State director Joseph Branin. Four years later, the number thought to be taken from OSU reached closer to thirty. It is fair to say that whatever number of books these Ohio libraries got back, it is a small percentage of Breithaupt’s haul.

  In the end, Kenyon College will never know all of what Breithaupt stole, but what they do know suggests a gigantic looting. A Special Collections survey done by Barth in the months after the Breithaupt affair showed that hundreds more items were missing than merely those that were accounted for by his eBay records, email transactions, and the items found in his house. This is not even taking into consideration the Kenyon Review material or items in the general collection, for which no accurate survey could ever be done. Because Breithaupt and Hupp sold items for many years before there was any semblance of an electronic record—and before 1995, his bank retained no records—there is no way to ever know all he stole, where it went, or how much he made from it. Of the selling he did travelling to individual dealers—sales for which no paper record would have been generated—Breithaupt said he sold “probably around 35” books but, considering his tendency to underestimate in his own favor, the truth is likely several times as many as that. The best estimate of the books they sold came from Christa Hupp, who kept some records of their book transactions in two large three-ring binders. She described these inventories as “pretty fat.”

  It is not blaming the victim to say that Kenyon College bears some responsibility in the looting of its collection. Breithaupt was clever and duplicitous, but he would not have been nearly as successful if it was not for the breathtaking lack of key security on the part of the library. Kenyon College’s response to this crime was exemplary; but a response might not have been necessary if steps had been taken in advance. Still, it is nearly impossible to prevent a theft by a dedicated insider, and Chris Barth deserves praise for recognizing security lapses before the Breithaupt thefts became known. But the fact remains that for years and years, a man with malign intentions had ready access to some of the most important treasures at Kenyon College. It is difficult to believe that a safe full of jewels or cash, housed at the central administration building, would have been similarly unprotected.

  There has long been a rumor that at least one person at the Olin and Chalmers Library aided Breithaupt in his crimes. This person was said to have, at the very least, put some of Kenyon’s books on the back dock so that Breithaupt could retrieve them. Whatever truth exists in this rumor, it is important to note that if Breithaupt had had substantial help from another person besides Hupp and Shiftlet, he would have mentioned it at trial. More importantly, even if Breithaupt had an ally who put books out back on his behalf, this still does not explain the many other places he said he got books—the Johnstown Village Antique Mall, the Mount Vernon book dealers in the 1970s, a store on North High Street in Columbus, the used book sale Phillip Rice book, etc.—nor does it excuse his not returning these books to the college. The FBI investigated this rumor thoroughly, and the ultimate conclusion was that while some books from the general collection could have been found on the back dock, nothing from the Special Collections could have. In short, books had been thrown away by Kenyon College—the same way they have been by every other college or university in existence. But there was certainly no concerted effort on the part of the college to routinely jettison its most valuable treasures.

  At the far end of the middle row of compact shelving units in the stacks of the Kenyon College Special Collections sits the remnants of the “Breithaupt Collection.” This includes many of the books claimed from the Caves Curve Farm, the few that Kenyon was able to buy back from eBay purchasers, and the nine returned to the school by Jim Breithaupt in the runup to the federal prosecution. The books occupy a few shelves of space and have been, since the end of the trial, slowly re-incorporated into the collection.

  A Note on Names

  The names of all of the principals are their own. Breithaupt, Hupp, their friends, relatives and apologists, Kenyon librarians, booksellers, attorneys, judges, and other people who can be considered public officials are all named. On the other hand, people who I felt were victimized by Breithaupt and Hupp—e.g., certain Kenyon employees, students, and the man who accompanied him to the Village Antique Mall—have had their names changed. For pseudonyms, I used characters from the stories of Flannery O’Connor.

  Acknowledgements

  I first became aware of, and interested in, this story as it was still unfolding, in 2005. One of the reasons it maintained my interest was because Breithaupt continued to exclaim his innocence to any and all who would listen. Many book criminals do this, but none, in my experience, has done so more loudly and for longer than David Breithaupt. His continual denials kept him on my radar screen, as it were—as did the people who contacted me directly on his behalf. I never had a chance to forget him because he always seemed to pop up and remind me.

  If Breithaupt and Hupp had simply cooperated with Kenyon and aided the school in getting their books back not only would they have avoided a lot of trouble, but I could never have written this book. The legal aftermath of the Kenyon College theft produced an enormous amount of paper: Transcripts, motions, interrogatories, bank records, emails, police reports, FBI reports, sworn affidavits, letters, notes, and various types of memoranda—there was simply an astonishing amount and array of material, running to several thousand pages, that allowed me to recreate this story. The bulk of the documents I used came from the Knox County Court, the Knox County Sheriff, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Nevertheless, I could not have told parts of it without the help of people who worked at Kenyon at the time of the thefts and who agreed to speak with me. This includes Chris Barth, who helped me a great deal, Lynn Manner, Jami Peelle, Carmen King and Dan Temple. I also spoke with other people who have asked to remain unnamed; the information they provided me, which was mostly speculation, has been left out of the story. Lynn Manner and Ethan Henderson gave me a terrific tour of the Kenyon College Special Collections, and were patient in answering my periodic questions in the years since.

  Unlike my other books, I wrote this one mostly without getting feedback from readers. Still, Irene Sakellarakis read a very early version and offered helpful advice and direction. Mark Mitek read a more complete version, with the eye of a man used to reading contracts, and, as he has in the past, made comments of the sort that really improved the story. Randall Klein at Diversion Books has been a terrific editor, offering great advice, but never being heavy-handed. The treatment I’ve received at Diversion has been exemplary—a few minor tweaks aside, all of what I included in this book has remained. An author cannot ask for more than that.

  After many years of living with this story I eventually spoke to David Breithaupt on the phone. He was polite and kind—and gainfully employed—but told me that he did not want to revisit the events I was researching. I followed up, with his permission, with an email explaining my motivation and thoughts on the case. He again considered my request for an interview and declined. Nothing he said to me on the phone, or in the email, is used here. All of his quotes come either from documents related to the case, or his own publicly available writings on the matter. I never spoke with Christa Hupp, who passed away before I finished this book.

  References

  Introduction

  Author interview with William Richards, Nov. 5, 2009

  Letter, Flannery O’Connor to John Crowe Ransom, Dec. 30, 1952. (Kenyon College Special Collections)

  Dave Itzkoff, “Voters Choose Flannery O’Connor in National Book Award Poll,” New York Times, Nov. 19, 2009

  Sally Fitzgerald, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Vint
age, 1979) 46–52

  No One to Watch Over Him

  The descriptions of Kenyon College, its library, and its surroundings, are the result of a personal visit, unless otherwise credited

  P. F. Kluge, Alma Mater (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993) 1–4

  “Lawyer Enters Congress Race,” Coshocton Tribune, Feb. 11, 1972

  David Breithaupt, Review of “Red Plenty,” New Pages, January 9, 2012. [www.newpages.com/bookreviews/archive/2012/01-09/]

  Kenyon College v. David Breithaupt and Christa Hupp, Breithaupt testimony

  Patricia Marx, “Wanna Buy a Book?” New Yorker, June 2, 2008

  KC v. B&H, Breithaupt Testimony

  Email, David Breithaupt to Jim Breithaupt, Oct. 25, 1999

  Letter, P.F. Kluge to Alison Clark, Sept. 16, 2004

  Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence (New York: Vintage, 2012) 10

  Author Interview with Dan Temple, Nov. 16, 2009

  KC v. B&H, Jami Peelle Testimony

  KC v. B&H, Donna Wilson Testimony

  KC v. B&H, Carmen King Testimony

  A Fledgling Activist

  Leslie Lapides, “Women for Direct Action Hope to Make Things Happen,” Chronicle Telegram, June 12, 1981

  Christa Hupp, “No Right to Restrict Abortion Ads,” Chronicle Telegram, June 9, 1973

  FBI Document, 87B-CI-70839-11, 9/08/00

  FBI Document 87B-CI-70839, 11/06/00

  KC. B&H, Christa Hupp Testimony

  FBI Document, 87B-CI-70839-55, 2/02/01

  FBI Document, 87B-CI-70839-56, 2/02/01

  C.B. Galbreath, Sketches of Ohio Libraries (Columbus Oh, 1902) 194