American flutist Edwin Rist, nicknamed the "Feather Thief," was so obsessed with exotic birds that he even went on a crime spree for them.
Art history is full of amazing accounts of museum robberies and crimes, but one case stands out in particular. In 2009, an American student broke into the British Museum of Natural History and stole 300 dead exotic birds. These specimens were priceless treasures for scientists, as some of them were collected in the XIX century by pioneers of ornithology. However, the thief was not interested in the scientific value of the birds - he was only interested in their colorful feathers.
Dead birds and Victorian fashion.
Although set in the twenty-first century, this story begins several decades earlier, in the Victorian era. It was a time of rapid and cautious exploration (and, as a consequence, colonization) of exotic faraway lands inhabited by strange animals and rare birds.
Research led to the emergence of a new fashion trend - to wear exotic feathers as elements of hats and clothing. While some women limited themselves to a single brightly colored accent, others put entire birds on their hats. At the time, people hardly believed that their actions could threaten populations of
birds, so the demand for exotic feathers was shocking.
Photo: thecollector.com
While women used feathers for decoration, men found equally obscure uses for them. They took up a new hobby called "fly fishing", or the craft of creating artificial insects from feathers.
Originally designed
for fishermen, these artificial flies (fly baits) were used as bait for those species of fish that prefer to hunt insects in the upper layers of water. Some fish, such as freshwater trout, have very keen eyesight, so the flies mimicked the appearance of insects based on their development and the current season.
The craft of fly fishing has been around since at least the 3rd century AD, but it reached its height in the Victorian era. Spurred on by the competitive spirit of its participants, it became an absurdly complex form of entertainment. The appearance of the flies no longer depended on the preference of the fish, but on the skill, taste and wealth of the owner.
Unlike dead bird hats, the tradition of fly tying (or fly dressing) did not die out with the passing of the Victorian era. Many anglers still use it, but usually settle for mass-produced flies made from artificial materials.
Photo: thecollector.com
However, the craft of fly fishing itself became an exclusive and expensive elitist hobby. The main thing for people was no longer to fish with flies, they focused on the creative side of
the hobby. Many of them still insist on using real bird feathers and animal fur for their compositions. Each professional fly maker has their own style, techniques and signature compositions known in the community.
Traditional fly making techniques include using feathers from now extinct or endangered birds, especially exotic birds with brightly colored feathers, as well as materials such as polar bear fur and silkworm innards.
Due to modern customs regulations, these materials cannot be shipped across the border in most cases, forcing fly makers to find alternative sources. Many use the same Victorian accessories bought at auctions and dismantled to salvage precious feathers.
Edwin Rist, obsessed with fly fishing.
Edwin Rist was fortunate to be born into a wealthy and understanding family in the late 1980s. His parents, both Ivy League graduates, eagerly followed their son's every interest and immediately became deeply involved, hiring the most expensive private tutors and arranging meetings at prestigious institutions.
Photo: thecollector.com
After a succession of rapidly changing and generously funded interests, ten-year-old Edwin settled on playing the flute, winning several competitions. Another passion took hold of him at age eleven when he watched a documentary about fly tying. Edwin immediately decided to make his own flies, first stealing feathers from his parents' pillows.
Edwin soon acquired all the necessary materials and began attending fly tying competitions, quickly attracting attention for his young age and exceptional skill.
Materials for basic fly tying were fairly inexpensive, but Edwin was too enthusiastic to limit himself to the basics. His obsession intensified after a mentor introduced him to Victorian salmon flies made from hundreds of brightly colored exotic feathers.
Photo: thecollector.com
By the age of fifteen, Edwin Rist had developed connections with zoos that allowed him to collect feathers for almost free. He also published a book of his own fly tying recipes, which was highly acclaimed in the community.
However, his passion was interrupted when he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music in London. Unable to take his billets with him, Rist moved abroad with the aim of becoming a professional flautist.
In 2008, the global financial crisis hit, which severely damaged several of the Rists' businesses. Money was tight, but Edwin was desperate for a new flute - and not just any flute, but a special, golden one.
His self-esteem, carefully cultivated by his parents since childhood, could not allow him to settle for less. Moreover, he was desperate to regain his status as a fly fishing expert and needed materials to regain his influence. Thus, Rist began planning a robbery of the museum.
The Tring Museum robbery
His choice was a branch of the Natural History Museum in Tring, a town a couple of hours' drive from London. The Tring Museum housed one of the world's most valuable collections of exotic birds, assembled by the famous naturalist
Alfred Wallace. Some of Wallace's bird specimens are now extinct, while others have helped scientists trace
climate change from the 1800s to the present day. The museum's bird collection has been hidden from ordinary visitors and is only available to researchers and journalists upon request.
Photo: thecollector.com
On June 23, 2009, Edwin Rist broke into the Tring Museum after closing time. After smashing a first floor window with a rock, he spent nearly three hours inside the museum and stole nearly three hundred priceless bird specimens, many of which had tags handwritten by Wallace himself. The museum security guard was too busy watching soccer to notice the alarm going off.
The next morning, museum staff noticed a broken window on the first floor, but did not see any obvious damage and thought it was a prank by teenagers, and it wasn't until a month later that one of Tring's curators noticed that entire crates full of brightly colored tropical birds were missing.
The perpetrator left out the females, focusing on the males, known for their brightly colored feathers.
Rist spent the next year carelessly selling his stash, enjoying his new life of independent wealth and impressing his hobby brothers with his collection. Buyers rarely asked questions, but for those who did, Edwin concocted elaborate stories of unexpected flea market finds, gifts from wealthy collectors, and friends from Papua New Guinea supplying birds.
Rist's scheme has collapsed. During one of the fly fishing lure fairs in the Netherlands, a local collector boasted that he had recently bought bird plumage from a young man in the UK.
Photo: thecollector.com
Another Irish visitor to the fair, with a background in law enforcement, noticed that the exotic feathers had been handled and bound in a manner more typical of research institutions than private collections. Aware of the Tring robbery, he informed the English police and gave them Rist's contact details.
In November 2010, police finally arrested 22-year-old Edwin for allegedly robbing the museum.
Trial and sentencing for the feather thief.
Edwin Rist immediately confessed to what he had done. Shortly thereafter, museum curators began to scrutinize the remaining species. Of the 299 stolen exhibits, 174 were intact, but only 102 of them still had tags. These tags contained extremely valuable information about the time and place of collection. Other bird pelts were damaged beyond recognition, with feathers ripped out and bodies torn apart.
During a psychological evaluation, Rist was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (now considered part of autism spectrum disorders and not used as a separate diagnosis), which allowed his attorneys to exonerate him.
According to the defense, Rist committed the crime not for monetary gain, but because of his hyper-focus on fly tying, which caused him to ignore norms and rules of conduct. As a result, Rist received a sentence of twelve months probation, meaning he could simply walk out of the courtroom after the sentence was announced. He was also ordered to forfeit $200,000 worth of property.
The verdict outraged both the public and the investigators. After all, according to Rist's own testimony, there were enough financial motives in his actions - from buying a new flute to covering student debts. People who knew Rist personally at the time strongly doubted the diagnosis.
Photo: thecollector.com
Researchers also argued that the $200,000 was not enough to cover the damage caused by Rist's actions. Despite his father's efforts to buy the feathers back from Edwin's buyers, most of the collection has yet to be found.
After the trial, Edwin Rist changed his name. He now lives in Germany, where he still plays the flute. In interviews, he discreetly blames the theft on the Tring Museum, complaining that they hoard useless specimens rather than share them with the world.
His story became widely known after the 2018 publication of Kirk Wallace Johnson's book The Feather Snatcher or the Strangest Museum Theft. Johnson went to great lengths to unravel the case and find some of the missing birds.