Posted February 11, 2005.

Illinois Video Vandal Admits Playing Film Editor

Macon County, Illinois, resident Randall J. Wells, 40, has been ordered to pay $13,498 in restitution for adding images of naked people to some 150 videos in the Decatur Public Library collection. “Evidently, nobody ever taught you in school the difference between public property and private property,” Associate Judge Scott B. Diamond told Wells at the February 8 hearing after the defendant pleaded guilty to criminal mutilation of library materials.

Wells was also sentenced to two years of probation and has been barred from visiting any library or video store in the county or from renting videos. Although prosecutors dropped a second criminal charge for similar defacement of videos at the Mount Zion District Library, Wells’s restitution payment also covers those tapes, according to the February 9 Decatur Herald and Review.

Last fall, Decatur library staff members examined all 2,700 videos for alterations after a patron reported seeing out-of-context risqué footage added after the credits of a library video. Most of the added images were of naked people, but several vandalized videos contained excerpts from I Love Lucy.

Posted February 11, 2005.