Sean Cole
Alfred Wallace’s birds survived Hitler, but not Edwin Rist. The investigators didn’t have a lot of obvious clues to go on. There was almost no physical evidence. But had the police or the museum looked in the visitors log, they would have found Edwin’s full name, which, if someone had Googled it, they would have found edwinrist.com, on which he was selling some of their specimens, using their Latin names.
They also would have quickly discovered that he played the flute. And if they had gone looking for the birds on eBay or the fly tying forums, they would have found birds for sale from someone with the handle FlutePlayer1988. One of the posts was titled, “Indian crow feathers for sale- buying new flute.” If any of the buyers asked, Edwin made up stories as to where the birds came from. But mostly, no one asked. They didn’t want to know.
The way Edwin finally got caught was sort of random. A tip came in from a fly tyer who had seen a bird skin at a festival- in the Netherlands of all places- that looked like it might have come from the Tring. And the guy traced it back to FlutePlayer1988 on eBay.
It took some doing, but the police finally tracked Edwin down and showed up at his apartment with a warrant, one year after the break-in. He confessed immediately. Brought the officers into his bedroom where his girlfriend was still sleeping and showed them the birds.
Since he confessed and plead guilty, the case went right to sentencing. Edwin was looking at 10 years for burglary and 14 years for selling stolen goods. But during the sentencing process, Edwin’s lawyers brought in a psychologist who diagnosed him with Asperger’s syndrome. That changed everything.
The judge in his statement said that Edwin’s crime wholly merited a lengthy prison sentence. He said the crime amounted to, quote, “a natural history disaster of world proportions.” But he said, because of the diagnosis and a legal precedent in the UK involving Asperger’s, a long prison sentence would probably be overturned on appeal. So he sentenced Edwin to one year, suspended. There was a financial penalty, too, but no time behind bars.
Of the 299 birds, a third of them came back to the Tring unscathed. Another third had been plucked at, or dismantled, or in some way compromised. Chiefly, their bio-data tags had been removed with the date, and species, and Alfred Wallace’s signature, which meant those specimens were now useless to science.
And the last third did not come back to the museum. They were gone, missing. Some of them were sold, but certainly not all of them. Where were they?
