Plot twist: Rare books worth $3 million stolen decades ago resurface in Manhattan
Gothamist • • entertainment
Key Points:
- More than two dozen rare books, including a collection of love letters by poet John Keats, were stolen from John Hay Whitney's Long Island estate between 1982 and 1989, with 17 resurfacing in 2025 when a man attempted to sell them in Manhattan.
- The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office seized the books after rare book dealers alerted authorities, and the recovered items, valued at about $3 million, will be returned to Whitney's family for auction and donation.
- The most valuable item is Keats' handwritten letters to his fiancee Fanny Brawne, worth approximately $2 million, alongside letters by Oscar Wilde, a signed James Joyce edition, and original drawings by Walter Crane.
- DA Alvin Bragg emphasized the office's commitment to ensuring antiquities are legally acquired in Manhattan and praised the dealers for reporting the illicit items, while the investigation into the theft and remaining missing books continues.
- The man who tried to sell the books, reportedly inheriting them from his grandfather, has not been accused of wrongdoing as he was not born at the time of the thefts.
