On February 23, 2001, professor Thomas Guderjan accompanied other Texas Christian University (TCU) researchers and a librarian to the locked door of storage room L10C in the basement of the Mary Couts Burnett Library. The group intended to locate pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles donated to the university between 1995 and 1997, along with pottery and ritual artifacts, in order to move some items to the university’s design department. As an anthropology professor, Guderjan felt excited: He’d heard of the collection’s existence when he joined the faculty the year before, but had never seen it.
But when they entered the room, Guderjan and the others found only a series of plain cardboard boxes of various sizes stacked on wooden pallets. As the group proceeded to search for textiles, they realized they had stumbled onto a crime scene.
Box after box revealed only bubble wrap, while others held only bits of broken pottery. Very few cartons still contained intact objects. The group shared their discovery with Head Librarian Bob Seal, who contacted the TCU Police Department. Detective Kelly Ham, dispatched to investigate the theft, noticed more shards of broken pottery in a hallway close to an external exit. Further investigation later revealed that the thief had, over weeks or months, absconded with the antiquities a few at a time, restacking the empty boxes upside down to show the unbroken tape on the undersides.
