Alleged map thief Joseph Gilbert Bland has told authorities that the 18 rare maps stolen from the University's Special Collections Library last December, valued at more than $23,000, are among those that have been recovered by the FBI, said Robert Byrd, acting University Librarian and director of Duke's Special Collections Library.
At this time, however, University officials have not seen the maps or heard confirmation that their maps are in the possession of the FBI, Byrd said. Damages to the University's collection, including the value of the maps, total more than $60,000.
Bland, whose first appeared in federal court on Monday, is suspected of stealing rare 17th and 18th century maps valued at approximately $200,000 from a score of East Coast universities. Bland, who is currently imprisoned in Charlottesville, will appear in federal court on Thursday for a bond hearing.
Virginia dropped its charges of grand larceny against Bland last week in favor of federal charges-two counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods and one count of stealing historic items of cultural importance, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Rusty Fitzgerald.
The two counts of interstate transportation of stolen goods were trips from North Carolina into Virginia and from Virginia into Maryland, said Fitzgerald, the federal prosecutor handling Bland's case.
Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Jim Camblos, who was prosecuting Bland's case for the state, said earlier this month that Bland would probably plead guilty to federal charges and pay restitution for any damages caused by the thefts.
Federal authorities are still trying to figure out which recovered maps belong to which institutions.
"There are some maps that we don't know where they came from and victims who are still missing items," Fitzgerald said. "We're trying to find a one-to-one correlation."
The materials are available in Charlottesville for viewing, said U.S. Attorney Robert Crouch.
The University of Virginia, who originally pressed charges against Bland, has positively identified their six missing maps among those recovered, said Michael Plunkett, director of UVa's Special Collections Library.
Florida police arrested Bland, an antique art dealer from Coral Gables, Fla., on Jan. 2, after receiving a lead from UVa police, and he was extradited to Virginia to undergo trial there. FBI investigators, with the help of UVa police, found the missing maps in a rental storage unit in Florida two months later.
Bland's activities were discovered when he was witnessed slicing maps out of books at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in December. Campus police captured Bland, but subsequently released him after he paid a restitution. Authorities then found his bag, containing a list of universities as well as documents that Bland had allegedly stolen.
Hopkins officials notified the universities on the list about Bland's activities, which led to the discovery of the map thefts at Duke and Bland's alias, James Perry, on the Special Collections Library's ledger.
Bland is suspected of stealing maps from several other universities, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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