Editing Widener Library (section)

==="The Slasher"===

Around 1990, empty bindings stripped of their pages began to appear in the Widener stacks. Eventually some 600 mutilated books were discovered, the vandal particularly targeting works on early Christianity in Greek, Latin, or unusual languages such as [[Icelandic language|Icelandic]].{{r|destroyer}}
Notes left at Widener, and later at [[Northeastern University]], threatened graphically described mutilations of library workers, cyanide gas attacks,{{r|slasher}}
and bombings of libraries and a local bank.{{r|calder}}
Other notes instructed that $500,000 be left in a Northeastern library, demanded that Northeastern "terminate all Jew personnel", and directed that $1{{nbsp}}million be left in the Widener stacks:
{{sic|"pUt THe mONEy FucKer BEhiNd THE eLevATOR on D{{nbsp}}WEST in THE basemENT WhERE tHe 1,000,000.00 dollaRS IN rare GreEK bOOks wAS slASHEd ApARt [[Jacques Paul Migne|MIGNE]] [[Patrologia Graeca|GREEK PATROLOGIA]]."|hide=y}}
These "ransom drops" were staked out by the [[FBI]],{{NoteTag|
{{r|slasher}} According to the ''Harvard Crimson'', officers on stakeout duty were easily recognized: "not browsing the great literature on the shelves, but perusing a ''Boston Herald'', coffee in hand."{{r|stakeout}}
}}
and surveillance cameras installed in ersatz books, without result.{{r|without_result}}

In 1994 police connected an incident at Northeastern, in which a library worker there (a former Widener employee) was caught stealing chemistry books, with the fact that chemistry texts had been among the works mutilated at Widener.{{r|destroyer}}{{Dead link|date=December 2024}}
Officials found "a kind of renegade reference room" in the worker's basement,{{r|zoll}}
including library books, piles of ripped-out pages, a [[microfilm]] camera, and hundreds of unusable microfilms he had haphaz{{shy}}ardly made of the books (worth $180,000) he had destroyed.{{r|destroyer}}<!--add in Northeastern stats if they can be found-->
At trial "The Slasher" said he had acted in revenge for the eighteen months he had been detained in a state [[psychiatric hospital]] after expiration of a six-month jail term he had received for a minor offense.{{r|slasher}}