Hundreds of books stolen in a warehouse raid in west London including rare works by Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton have been returned to their owners after being found buried under a tiled floor at a house in rural Romania. Around 240 “irreplaceable” books, worth around £3.3million were taken in a sophisticated heist at a Heathrow warehouse while waiting to be shipped to an auction in the United States. Thieves cut holes in the roof and abseiled down to avoid motion sensors, winching the haul back up in 16 large bags.
They included works from 17th-century Italian astronomer Galileo, mathematician and astronomer Sir Isaac Newton and the late 18th and early 19th-century Spanish painter Francisco Goya. They were smuggled to Romania by an organized crime group and found hidden underground in Neamt, Moldavia, on September 16 this year. The Met’s Specialist Crime South traveled to Bucharest to formally carry out the identification of the books.
Detective Inspector Andy Durham and his team met with four of the five victims along with colleagues from Romania’s organized crime and terrorism directorate at the National Library of Romania. Unfortunately, 83 books suffered some water and mould damage due to how they had been stored. Twenty-eight had substantial damage and two are beyond repair. They belonged to three book dealers, two Italian and one German, and the books were later found buried under a house in rural Romania.
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