to recover stolen items
By Linda Bloom
MADISON (New Jersey) – Officials at United Methodist-related Drew University hope to recover valuable historical documents –including original letters written by John and Charles Wesley – allegedly stolen by a student who tried to sell them.
William John Scott, a freshman from Longmeadow, Massachusetts, was arraigned on theft charges on March 15 in the US District Court in Newark, New Jersey, after the FBI found 11 of the stolen letters in his dormitory room.
Among the missing items was a letter written in December 1766 by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, to George Merryweather, a friend and supporter.
Also found in Scott’s room were letters from US Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, William McKinley, Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and letters to prominent Methodist Bishop Herbert George Welch from such notables as Madame Chiang Kai-Shek of China, then-Vice President Richard Nixon and US Senator Robert Kennedy.
Mr David Muha, Chief Communications Officer at Drew University, said: “From our perspective, the fact that this was handled so swiftly and thoroughly by the FBI is one of the reasons we’re so optimistic we’ll be able to recover all the missing documents.”
The documents – including 20 Wesley letters valued at US$5,000 to US$12,000 each (S$7,000 to S$16,800) – were stolen from the United Methodist Archives Center on campus, where Scott had been on a work-study programme. The centre includes the Methodist Library, the Wilson Reading Room and the archives of the United Methodist Commission on Archives and History.
The Rev Robert Williams, the commission’s top executive, said the missing items appeared to have been those owned by the university and not from the denomination’s collection. The commission does have copies of the stolen documents. “All of the Wesley letters that were taken had been scanned and are in our database,” he explained.
Mr Muha said university officials became aware of the theft on March 9 after being contacted by a dealer of historical documents in London. The dealer had received a sale offer for about 10 of the Wesley letters, which arrived in Federal Express package with a return address of William Scott in Longmeadow.
The dealer’s representative became suspicious, according to the FBI complaint, “in part because these important and valuable documents were shipped in an unprofessional manner – two of the letters were damaged in transit”. The representative contacted the Archives Center because it is a “well-known repository of significant Wesley letters”.
On March 13, using a search warrant, the FBI found a folder in a dresser in a closet of Scott’s dormitory room that contained six Wesley letters and 11 other historical documents. He was arrested the following day and charged with theft of an object of cultural heritage from a museum.
Scott, who was released on bail following his appearance before United States Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo, faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of US$250,000 if convicted. – United Methodist News Service.
Linda Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.