The Manchester Evening News (England) reports that Norman Buckley, a librarian at the city's Central Library, has entered guilty pleas on ten counts of theft after he pilfered more than 400 rare books and other items and began selling them on eBay.
More than £250,000 worth of stolen items were discovered in Buckley's apartment, including a 16th-century edition of Chaucer and a 1654 volume of John Donne's elegies. Buckley had already sold items for more than £11,000 when an alert rare books librarian at Central recognized an item up for auction and called the police.
After the raid on his apartment, Buckley admitted the thefts, "telling police that he had started to steal after breaking up with his long-term girlfriend." He issued guilty pleas on ten of the counts, and according to the paper "has asked for 445 offences to be taken into consideration." He could face a maximum of six months in prison for each count. Buckley will be sentenced on August 25.
My thoughts on this one: include all 445 counts when calculating prison time. And that still wouldn't be enough punishment for this guy.
