Posted November 24, 2003.

Missing Library Cookbooks Recovered in Bettendorf, Iowa

Police in Bettendorf, Iowa, expect to charge a woman with first-degree felony theft in the disappearance of some 400 books from several libraries in the area after they were discovered in an apartment in the city. “The overwhelming majority of them were cookbooks,” Police Chief Phil Redington said in the November 21 Des Moines Register.

The woman, who was not immediately arrested or identified, had allegedly taken them from libraries in Bettendorf as well as neighboring Rock Island and Moline, Illinois, over the past two years.

Redington credited Bettendorf Public Library Director Faye Clow and her staff for pinpointing the suspect by cross-checking circulation records. “We’re poor, so when someone takes that much from your budget, you go crazy,” Clow said. “We’re just so happy to have them back.” She called the missing volumes “big, beautiful, specialty and general cookbooks—an amazing list of wonderful things,” the Davenport Quad-City Times reported November 20.

First-degree theft is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $1,000–$10,000. “You don’t just get away with stealing books from the public library,” Redington said.

Posted November 24, 2003.