Well the idiot’s getting his day in court yet again, and now we learn that he actually mutilated the book in a moronic attempt to somehow disguise it:
Raymond Scott, 53, ripped the binding, boards and pages from the 1623 Shakespeare First Folio before claiming to have discovered it in Cuba, Newcastle Crown Court heard.
So much about this story makes me angry. To steal anything is bad enough. To steal a nearly one-of-a-kind item, that much worse. To then deface it, because you’re too stupid to realize that every smudge on every page of the book has been micro-catalogued, and changing page 1 does not mean that pages 200-300 are not exactly the same? That’s criminal. On top of that the guy has totally make a mockery of the whole system, showing up to court in various silly costumes, usually climbing out of a horse and carriage or some other ridiculous means of transportation.
Send him to jail, fix the book as best we can, and let’s move on.