Ernest Heyneman, who admitted to the theft of more than 3,000 books and videos worth $26,000 from Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks libraries in California, was banned from all area libraries and placed on three years’ probation November 12.
The 85-year-old had hoped for a deal that would have let him visit his favorite reading rooms under supervision. “He loves books,” Stanley D. Sumalpong, Heyneman’s attorney, said in the November 13 Los Angeles Times. “He found solace in books. The penalty is jail for him. Worse than jail.”
“It’s always sad to see a senior citizen committing crime,” said Deputy District Attorney Audrey Rohn, “but we need to protect the libraries from Mr. Heyneman. He can’t control his compulsion to take books.”
Posted November 18, 2002.