The Feather Thief

“To prevent the loss of the earth’s deep history, Wallace implored the British government to stockpile within its museums as many specimens as possible, ‘where they may be available for study and interpretation.’”

A primary interest of Wallace was better understanding the evolution of species. This scientific endeavor represents one of the reasons why he collected tens of thousands of natural specimens (in addition to building his wealth by selling some of them). Wallace firmly believed that museums, including the British Museum of Natural History, needed to protect these and future specimens at all costs. He recognized that these specimens hold the answers to questions that researchers might not yet know to ask.

“Before the Hermès bag or Louboutin heel, the ultimate status indicator was a dead bird.”

In the 19th and early-20th centuries, women’s fashion used bird plumes as status symbols, which Johnson coins feather fever. During this time, women did not want feathers from backyard birds. Instead, they sought rare and unique birds, especially those with bright and colorful plumage, for their hats and other articles of clothing. Wealthy women especially liked to wear whole bird skins on their hats. This feather fever resulted in the feather market becoming powerful and lucrative. Unfortunately, it also destroyed entire bird populations, some of whom were lost to extinction forever.

“Despite the gains of the conservation movement, some from the older generation of women found it difficult to give up the ‘time-honored’ custom of wearing feathers now shunned by their daughters and granddaughters. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a new profession emerged to meet their demand: the wildlife trafficker.”

Here, Johnson underscores a central tenet of his book: humankind’s destructive obsession to possess something beautiful can never be fully eradicated. In the first two decades of the 19th century, several women worked hard to end the feather trade. Despite facing slander from feather traders and opposing politicians, these early conservationists prevailed. They were able to force governments to pass laws ending the transport and sale of rare bird feathers. Despite this movement, some people still wanted rare feathers. Wildlife traffickers soon appeared and helped sustain the illegal transportation and selling of animals. Still today, we have been unable to eradicate illegal wildlife trafficking, largely due to humankind’s own selfish desires for something beautiful.

“He [George Mortimer Kelson] acknowledged that the dyed feathers of commons birds could be used when exotic ones were out of reach, but stressed that ‘however well hackles may be dyed…they never look so well, even when fresh, or are so effective in the water as natural ones. Take, for instance, the hackles of a Golden Bird of Paradise…the best dyed orange hackle in creation would simply be nowhere in competition with it.’”

George Mortimer Kelson is the author of the 1895 book The Salmon Fly. In this passage, he is reiterating the Victorian belief that dyed feathers are not as good as the actual rare bird feather. This belief perpetuated the slaughter of millions of birds for humankind’s desire to own beautiful things. People can catch salmon with ties that include normal everyday items. However, the Victorian aristocrats turned salmon ties into an art form. They created elaborate recipes for hundreds of different ties. While some of the specimens used in the ties were more widely available, including rare bird feathers due to their demand in fashion, this reality is not the case today. Men following this art form today still try to create these elaborate salmon fly-ties, which means they often resort to unsavory deals and thefts (as attested by Edwin Rist’s feather heist) to acquire the necessary materials.

“But Edwin’s artistic pursuits behind the fly-tying vise were hampered by the fact that he didn’t have the ‘real feathers.’”

Like many modern-day fly-tiers, Edwin became obsessed with using real feathers to create his flies. When he first began fly-tying, he had to use substitute feathers since the cost of real feathers was beyond his teenage budget. While Edwin was able to master the techniques, he believed his ties were sub-par because they lacked real feathers. The fly-tier community more broadly also holds this belief. Edwin would read other fly-tiers discussing their obsession with tying with old materials on ClassicFlyTying.com. Johnson believes that this obsession to use real materials and the fact that there was a market for rare feathers drove Edwin to commit his feather Heist at the Tring Museum.

“Standing inside the Tring museum was like being in the vault of Fort Knox, the repository of centuries of mining, where the United States’ gold bullion is stored. At some point, the value becomes incomprehensible.”

Johnson reiterates throughout the book the importance of museums. He presents two contrasting perspectives. The first group includes researchers, scholars, and curators who believe in the scientific value of museum collections. Johnson also falls within this group. The second group includes fly-tiers, like Edwin, who see the monetary and artistic value of museum collections. They would like access to museum’s bird specimens both to sell as well as to create their salmon fly-ties following traditional recipes.

“If he owned these birds, he would have an unrivaled stash of feathers for the rest of his life. In a community defined by its longing for the unobtainable, he would be king, and his extravagantly plumed flies would be unmatched. Even better, he could feature them in the book on fly-tying that he hoped to write, cementing his place in history alongside Kelson.”

Despite the severity of his crime, Edwin ultimately does not spend time in prison. This lack of justice deeply troubles Johnson, especially when he believes that Edwin intentionally stole the bird specimens for status and wealth. In Chapter 8, Johnson tries to show some of this intentionality to readers. The above passage is just one example. Here, Edwin is clear about his reasons for wanting the bird specimens. 

“Edwin had an unrivaled supply of product in a marketplace not dissimilar from the drug trade—crowded with self-professed feather addicts, white- and blue-collar, young and old, near and far.”

Johnson compares the modern-day feather trade for fly-ties to the drug trade. Like the drug trade, there are a lot of grey areas with the feather trade. While some of the trade is legal, the methods are often strange. Fly-tiers will search estate states, call zoos, scavenge e-Bay and consignment shops for Victorian-era hats, and even line up to take feathers from recently deceased fly-tiers. In other cases, the trade is illegal. People gain access to feathers through unsavory ways, including through wildlife trafficking. Fly-tiers are generally unconcerned with the legal status of the feathers. Their addiction to the feathers is so great, similar to drugs, that they only care how they can acquire them. Those individuals that do have access to especially rare feathers are highly sought after in the fly-tier community and hold great status, similar to kingpins or drug lords.

“As the tally of missing skins mounted, so did the scale of the Tring staff’s sense of failure as custodians of natural history. Mark Adams was hit hard by the burglary; he saw himself and the others as just one link in the centuries-long chain of curators entrusted with looking after the specimens, and they had failed.”

Johnson maintains deep respect for museums and museum curators throughout the book. Similar to Adams, Johnson views curators as protectors of humankind’s culture and history. Museums contain an untold amount of wealth in the form of knowledge. Curators help keep this knowledge safe for current and future research. For this reason, the Tring staff were particularly upset about the heist. They believed they had failed in their duties to keep the bird skins safe, which resulted in many becoming unusable for further scientific research.

“He [Edwin] knew that their addiction to these birds meant they wouldn’t ask questions to which they’d rather not know the answers.”

One of the astounding aspects of this story is how the fly-tier community did not initially realize that Edwin was behind the Tring heist. The Tring press release detailing the heist spread rapidly throughout the fly-tier community, so they all would have known to be on the look-out for a sudden onslaught of rare birds in the online space. For this reason, Johnson remains deeply skeptical that at least some of the fly-tiers hadn’t realized where Edwin’s source of bird skins was from. Instead, he believes that many ignored Edwin’s dealings due to their obsession with the feathers. Edwin himself exploited this addiction. He knew that very few fly-tiers would ask him where he had suddenly gotten all of the rare feathers and bird skins from.

“‘Where’d you get this?’ he [Irish] asked casually. Nearly a year earlier, he had seen reports about the Tring heist, so when he saw the Dutchman’s museum-grade skin, something fired in his mind, and his suspicious flared. ‘Some kid in England named Edwin Rist.’”

This passage represents the moment when Edwin’s feather selling operation starts to unravel. Here, a retired detective and avid fly-fishermen Irish is asking a Dutchman about where he got one of his bird skins. When the Dutchman showed Irish the bird skin, Irish immediately became suspicious. He remembered hearing about the Tring heist and believed the bird skin looked museum quality. While Irish did not tell Adele to search for Edwin Rist, he did tell her to look-up Fluteplayer 1988. Adele linked this eBay account to Edwin Rist. From here she secured a warrant and arrested Edwin.

“‘I was having some psychological problems,’ he [Edwin] said. ‘I was depressed. I regretted it…I was going to put the stuff back the next day, and I’m sorry.’”

Edwin accepts responsibility for the Tring heist and associates it with his depression. Johnson is skeptical of Edwin’s diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, especially after spending significant time interviewing him. Johnson wonders if Edwin manipulated the psychologist who diagnosed him.

“It was a very amateur burglary.”

During Edwin’s first court appearance, his lawyer at the time, Andy Harman, described Edwin’s crime as “amateur.” Harman claims that Edwin only spent a few weeks plotting the heist and did not even use “exotic tools” to help with the burglary. Johnson vehemently disagrees with this assessment. From the previous chapters, readers know that Edwin spent months planning the heist. He also clearly brought tools he knew would help him break into the museum. Johnson implies that Harman intentionally tried to mislead the judge. Harman’s ploy ultimately did not work.

“According to Baron-Cohen, it wasn’t greed that drove Edwin but an ‘obsessional interest in fly-tying’ that made him ‘so over-focused on this art-form (and all of its intricate detail) that he developed a classic form of tunnel vision in only being able to think about the materials and the products he aspired to make, and not about the social consequences (for himself or others).”

Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen led Edwin’s psychological evaluation. He believed that Edwin displayed characteristics of Asperger’s syndrome, including that he did not believe stealing the bird skins was bad or that members of his own fly-tying community would be upset with him. While this diagnosis ultimately prevented Edwin from going to prison, Johnson’s investigative reporting suggests Dr. Baron-Cohen misdiagnosed Edwin. In earlier chapters, Johnson documents how Edwin is deeply concerned about getting caught because he knows people will be mad that he stole the bird skins. Edwin also sells some of the feathers and bird skins for profit, further nullifying the psychologist’s argument because greed and money partly drove Edwin.

“‘Mr. Gibson’s case,’ he [Judge Gullick] went on, ‘in terms of his obsessional behaviour is in one sense no different from yours.’ As he neared his ruling, Gullick explained the bind Gibson had put him in: ‘were I to pass a substantial prison sentence upon you, which would be wholly merited by the value if not pricelessness of the items you stole, no doubt on one view, the public would commend me, and on another view the Court of Appeal in my judgement would severely criticise me in the light of the attitude which they display in the case of Gibson as to the appropriate course that trial Judges should take when faced with somebody suffering from this syndrome.’”

While Judge Gullick believes Edwin stole the bird skins from the Trist museum for financial gain and to help fuel his fly-tying hobby, he does not give Edwin a prison sentence. Judge Gullick decision is based on precedents from other similar British cases, especially Crown v. Gibson. Despite all of the evidence pointing to the fact that Edwin might not actually have Asperger’s syndrome, because a psychologist suggested it to court, Judge Gullick felt compelled to base his decision on the diagnosis. Thus, Edwin’s defense lawyers successfully used a developmental disorder to minimize the severity of Edwin’s sentencing.

“Within a few months, members began to post Indian Crow and Blue Chatterer feathers again. Birds of Paradise and Resplendent Quetzal feathers made regular yet brief appearances on eBay—suggesting they were being scooped up quickly. Whether any of these feathers had been plucked from the Tring’s missing skins was unclear, but the community’s hunger for feathers only continued to grow.”

This passage further reinforces Johnson’s central tenet that it is impossible to curb our destructive instinct to obtain and preserve beautiful things from nature. It is perhaps surprising that fly-tiers returned so quickly to selling and buying rare feathers when one of their very own community members had nearly been sentenced to prison for these activities Yet, the behavior of the fly-tier community illustrates how obsession with beautiful feathers for an archaic art form overshadow commonsense and compassion and respect for nature.

“‘They didn’t count them!’ he [John McLain] exclaimed, as he stood up. ‘They didn’t count them the day before Edwin came. They didn’t count them once a year. They didn’t count ’em!’”

At an international symposium on fly-tying, Johnson met with John McLain. McLain told Johnson his theory about the Tring missing bird skins, suggesting that the museum did not know the actual missing count since they rarely conducted an audit of the collection. This theory initially led Johnson to cast doubt on whether there really was a mystery. Johnson realized that the only party who might help him determine whether there was merit to McLain’s theory were the Tring museum staff.

“‘We will be doing work on this for decades to come.’ He [Dr. Prys-Jones] continued, ‘trying to work out what information we might be able to restore to some of these specimens. Not necessarily succeeding. There are decades of wasted time in this.’”

Based on Johnson’s conversation with Dr. Prys-Jones and Mark Adams, the museum staff are clearly devastated by what happened to the bird skins. During this conversation, they reiterate to Johnson the scientific loss that has occurred because of Edwin’s selfish actions. While the museum staff will work to see what information they can salvage from the bird skins, they recognize that it is a futile task due to the removal of many of the biodata labels from the specimens. Johnson spends a lot of time throughout the book making sure that readers understand the severity of Edwin’s actions. He does this partly because it might seem as if Edwin’s crime is not serious since he only stole bird feathers. Yet, Johnson tries to get readers to see that these bird feathers held critical unknown scientific knowledge, which was lost as a result of Edwin’s feather heist.

“It felt as though I was barging into a speakeasy that had already been tipped off: they had done a frustratingly good job cleaning up any trace of their connection to the Tring heist. But then I found a time machine.”

Here, Johnson is describing his frustrations with his search for the missing bird skins as well as his big breakthrough. Initially, Johnson was unable to access old postings from ClassicFlyTying.com because the site’s administrator, Bud Guidry, deleted any that were potentially incriminating after Edwin’s arrest. Johnson’s luck changed, however, when he uncovered the Wayback Machine. This initiative enabled Johnson to recover many of these old postings. In doing so, Johnson got his first big break when he discovered that a person with the screenname “Goku” helped Edwin sell the bird skins.

“I had seen this painting during a late-night trawling of the forum a year earlier, but thought little of it. I rushed back to the forum, searching for the handle of the person who had posted the painting. It was Goku. Goku, who had posted numerous links to eBay auctions of Edwin’s stolen birds, was, in fact, Long Nguyen.”

This passage highlights the power of investigative journalism. By diving deep into the crime and searching for multiple sources, Johnson was able to uncover clues about the mystery of the bird skins that the police had missed. In doing so, he was able to determine that Goku or Long Nguyen at least helped Edwin sell some of his bird skins. This realization represented a breakthrough in the case for Johnson.

“I cycled through the highlights of the interview in a state of disbelief. I wondered if he had truly duped Dr. Baron-Cohen. Had he duped me? Edwin had told the truth about some things and lied about others. He didn’t seem very remorseful. Even though he’d sat through hearings in which museum curators spoke of the catastrophic blow to scientific research, he remained skeptical about the mission of the Tring, at one point laughingly referring to it as a ‘dusty old dump.’ He compartmentalized, drawing a distinction between stealing from another person and robbing an institution like a museum. He spoke like someone who knew he had got away with it and who had help doing so.”

From the beginning of the book, Johnson believes that Edwin committed a crime and was not held accountable for said crime. Johnson’s interview with Edwin solidifies his belief. From the interview, it is clear that Edwin does not hold remorse about the heist. He also seems to admit that Long was an accomplice. While this interview does not bring Johnson closer to uncovering more information about the missing bird skins, he is strongly interested in interviewing Long to see what new information he might be able to glean.

“He sighed. ‘It’s really hard to just number because there’s a low number in each package. And I didn’t count those packages, like how many packages and how many feathers…I don’t remember how many were sold. I think maybe I sold half of them, and then I had half the packages.’ I knew he had a number in mind, and that he was fighting like hell not to mention it.”

Chapter 23 represents a pivotal moment in Johnson’s investigation of the Tring heist. He finally convinces Long to tell him the number of feather packets that Edwin sent him. This admission is important for several reasons. The first is that it solidifies the connection between Edwin and Long. While it does not appear that Long helped Edwin with the actual heist, he did help him sell some of the feathers. It also continues to paint Edwin in a bad light. Edwin did not tell Long where the feathers were from. Instead, he used Long to help him fence stolen goods.

“Ostoj and others weren’t thrilled to see the Tring heist rehashed. Several complained that I was just ‘stirring the pot.’ One member angrily suggested that if I cared so much, I should donate money from my book advance to the museum. Val Kropiwnicki called me an ambulance chaser, before asking: ‘Maybe I’m just sick of witch hunts? Maybe we are all poisoned by this?’”

With Johnson slowly winding down his search for the missing bird skins given he did not have any new leads, he decided to post to ClassicFlyTying.com. He asked members to help him search for the missing skins. As the paragraph above demonstrates, members were mad. Johnson found their reaction puzzling since many had publicly disavowed Edwin and stated that his actions did not represent all fly-tiers. Their reaction reveals important facts about human nature and our relationship to the natural world. The fly-tying community did not want to be labeled as thieves or terrible humans; yet, they did not actually consider what they did (i.e., buying and selling endangered bird parts) wrong. They cared far more about how something beautiful would enhance their own status then they did about the wellbeing or story of that natural specimen.