![]() ![]() Robert FitzRoy during the six-year voyage of the HMS Beagle, and, more importantly for Rist, the extensive collection of Alfred Russel Wallace, that included rare originals needed to complete authentic Victorian flies. ![]() ![]() Included are nearly 700 skins collected by Charles Darwin and Capt. After his arrest, Rist estimated he’d made northwards of $165,000 selling feathers to private collectors as well as through niche fly-tying forums and on EBay.Īccording to its website, the museum’s avian skin collection is the second largest of its kind in the world, with almost 750,000 specimens representing 95 percent of the world’s bird species. ![]() This may seem an odd way to finance a $10,000 instrument, yet individual skins can sell for $2,500 or more in an underground fly-tying market bordering on the fanatical. As the title implies, this is one bizarre crime: on a June evening in 2009, 20-year-old American music student and accomplished fly tyer Edwin Rist smashed an alley window and hoisted himself into the renowned British Museum of Natural History in Tring with a singular purpose, to steal some of the world’s rarest old birds to finance buying a gold flute. Just in time for summer reading, this engaging true-crime thriller is actually three books in one. ![]()
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