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The Book Slasher
Linda, another library assistant, and I sat on the floor at opposite ends of an aisle in the stacks. We stared at each other in disbelief. Could it possibly be over? Had they really caught him after a year of watching and searching for him? We were guarding his latest and hopefully last victims.
It had started with just one or two at a time. It took awhile to even find them. Reference books with shiny hard covers had had their back cover carefully cut off. We didn't think much of it at the time, but when we found two more, and then three more, we realized that we had a continuing problem on our hands. The police were called in to fingerprint the books. They recommended that we install a security camera with a monitor. The fingerprints didn't bring up anyone with any prior convictions. We installed the camera and monitor with a video taping machine. Every time we found more mutilated books, we watched tapes from the previous days, searching to find any clues as to the perpetrators identity. The book mutilation was disturbing enough, but what truly bothered us was the fact that someone was in the library on a regular basis with a sharp knife and a disturbed mind. What if someone happened to come upon him in person as he was destroying a book? What would he be capable of doing?
Finally, nearly a year after finding the first books, we saw a man on the video tape placing large books on the shelf where we had just found six of his latest handiwork. The number of books cut up at one time was slowly increasing over time. From the angle of the camera, the man almost looked like he was wearing a Groucho Marx mask. How had this man gotten by us several times? We called the police and showed them the image on the video.
The next day I came upstairs from eating lunch and saw Brian sitting in front of the security monitor. I saw our perpetrator walking toward the camera. I asked "Why are you watching that video again?" He responded, "I'm not. This is live. He's here. We've called the police." When the police came, they escorted him outside. They searched his car and found several of the cut off backs in his trunk. He had several more tucked inside his shirt. Linda and I searched the shelves near where Brian had seen him walking. We discovered eight newly cut up books. We sat down on the floor at opposite ends of the shelving to prevent any other patrons from coming in and tampering with the evidence.
The police searched his house and discovered that he had been removing the slick backings from the back book covers and then covering his own books with them. When they questioned him as to why he did what he did, he explained that he was angry. Swell, we had had an angry man with a knife walking around unknown in our library.