Art history is full of remarkable tales about museum heists and crime, yet one particular instance stands out. In 2009, an American student broke into the British Natural History Museum and stole 300 dead exotic birds. The specimens were priceless treasures for scientists since some of them were collected in the nineteenth century by the pioneers of ornithology. However, the thief had no interest in the birds’ scientific value—all he cared about were their bright feathers. Read on to learn more about the bizarre case of Edwin Rist.
The Feather Thief’s Origins: Dead Birds and Victorian Fashions
Despite taking place in the 21st century, our story starts decades earlier in the Victorian era. It was a time of rapid and rarely careful exploration (and, by sequence, colonization) of exotic faraway lands populated with strange animals and rare birds. These explorations led to the emergence of a new fashion trend of wearing exotic feathers as parts of headwear and clothing. While some women stuck to a single bright accent, others mounted entire birds on their hats. At the time, people hardly believed their actions could endanger the bird populations, so the demand for exotic feathers was shocking.
While women used feathers for abundant decoration, men also found an equally obscure use for them. They indulged in the hobby of fly-tying or the craft of mastering artificial insects from feathers. Originally intended for fishermen, these artificial flies were used as baits for types of fish that prefer to hunt insects in the top layers of water. Some fish, like freshwater trout, have a very keen and specifically targeted eyesight, so fly-tyers would imitate the appearance of insects taking into account their desired age and current season.
The craft of fly-tying has been known since at least the third century CE, yet it reached its peak in the Victorian era. Fueled by the competitive spirit of the members, it turned into an absurdly complex way of entertainment. The flies no longer relied on the preferences of the fish but on the skill, taste, and affluence of the tyer.
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Unlike the dead bird hats, the fly-tying tradition did not die off with the demise of the Victorian era. Many fishermen still use it, yet usually, they are content with mass-produced flies from artificial materials. However, the craft of fly-tying itself turned into an exclusive and expensive elitist hobby. These fly-tyers do not even fish with their flies, focusing on the creative side of the hobby. Many of them still insist on using real bird feathers and animal furs for their compositions. Each professional tyer has their own style, tricks, and signature compositions, known within the community as recipes.
The traditional recipes for flies include the feathers of now-extinct or highly endangered birds—particularly, exotic ones with bright feathers—and materials like polar bear fur and silkworm gut. Due to present-day customs regulations, these materials are mostly impossible to ship across borders, forcing the fly-tyers to look for alternative sources. Many tyers use the same Victorian hats and accessories, bought from auctions and deconstructed for salvaging the precious feathers.
Edwin Rist, The Obsessed Fly Tyer
Edwin Rist was lucky to be born into an affluent and understanding family in the late 1980s. His parents, both Ivy League graduates, eagerly pursued every interest of their son and immediately became deeply invested, hiring the most expensive private tutors and arranging meetings in prestigious institutions. After a string of rapidly changing and generously funded interests, a ten-year-old Edwin settled with flute playing, soon winning several competitions. Another fixation consumed him at the age of eleven when he watched a documentary on fly-tying. Immediately, Edwin decided to make his own flies, first stealing feathers from his parents’ pillows.
Soon, Edwin acquired all the necessary materials and started to attend fly-tying events, quickly attracting attention for his young age and exceptional skill. The materials for basic fly-tying were rather cheap, but Edwin was too invested to limit himself to the basics. His obsession intensified after one of his mentors introduced him to the Victorian salmon flies made from hundreds of brightly colored exotic feathers. By the age of fifteen, Edwin Rist established connections with zoos and aviaries which allowed him to collect feathers almost for free. He also published a book of his own fly-tying recipes that received much praise in the community.
His hobby, however, was interrupted once he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music in London. Unable to take his supplies with him, Rist moved overseas to become a professional flute player. In 2008, the global financial crisis struck, severely damaging several businesses owned by the Rists. Money became tight, but Edwin desperately needed a new flute—and not just any flute, but a special, golden one. His sense of entitlement, carefully cultivated by his parents since his childhood, could not possibly allow him to settle for less. Moreover, he desperately wanted his status of an expert fly-tyer back and needed materials to re-establish his influence. Thus, Rist started planning a museum heist.
The Tring Museum Heist
His choice was the Natural History Museum branch in Tring, a town a couple of hours away from London. The Tring Museum housed one of the most valuable collections of exotic birds worldwide, gathered by the famous naturalist Alfred Wallace. Some of Wallace’s bird specimens are now extinct, while others helped scientists track climate changes from the 1800s to the present day. The Museum’s bird collection was hidden from general visitors, available only for researchers and journalists on request.
On June 23rd, 2009, Edwin Rist broke into the Tring Museum after closing hours. He smashed the ground-floor window with a stone and spent almost three hours inside the museum, stealing around three hundred invaluable bird specimens, many of them still with tags handwritten by Wallace attached. The museum guard was too busy watching football to pay attention to the activated alarm.
The following morning, the museum staff noticed a broken window on the ground floor, yet noticed no obvious damage, and waved it off as a teenagers’ prank. Only a month later, one of the Tring curators noticed that entire drawers full of brightly colored tropical birds had gone missing. The perpetrator left behind the bleak skins of female birds, focusing on male specimens, known for their rich-hued feathers.
Rist would spend the following year rather carelessly selling his stash, enjoying his new life of independent wealth, and astonishing fellow fly-tyers with his collection. The buyers rarely asked questions, but for those who did, Edwin crafted elaborate stories about sudden flea market finds, wealthy collectors’ gifts, and friends from Papua New Guinea supplying the birds.
Rist’s scheme would come crashing down. During one of the fly-tying fairs in the Netherlands, a local collector bragged about a recent purchase of an entire bird skin from a young man in the UK. Another visitor, an Irish fly-tyer with a law enforcement background, noticed that the exotic skin was treated and tied in a manner more typical for research facilities than private collections. Knowing about the Tring heist, he notified the English police and gave him Rist’s contact details. In November 2010, the police finally arrested the 22-year-old Edwin for the alleged museum heist.
The Feather Thief’s Trial and Conviction
Edwin Rist confessed immediately. Soon after, the museum curators started a careful examination of the remaining species. Of 299 skins stolen, 174 were still intact, yet only 102 of them still had their tags attached. These tags contained extremely valuable information about the time and place of collecting. Other skins were damaged beyond salvation, with their feathers plucked out and bodies torn apart.
During the psychological evaluation, Rist was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (now considered part of the Autism Spectrum Disorders and not used as a separate diagnosis), which allowed his lawyers to justify his actions. According to the defense, Rist committed his crime not for monetary gain but because of his fly-tying hyper-fixation, which led him to ignore acceptable norms and regulations. As a result, Rist received a sentence of twelve months suspended, meaning that he could simply walk away from the courtroom after the announced verdict. He also received a confiscation order of $200,000 yet managed to extend the deadline, complaining about how he would hate to lose his precious flute.
The sentence outraged both the community and the investigators. Indeed, according to Rist’s own testimony, there was enough financial motivation in his actions—from buying a new flute to covering his student debts. People who personally knew Rist at the time highly doubted the Asperger diagnosis. Researchers also claimed that the $200,000 was not enough to cover the damages caused by Rist’s actions. Despite the efforts of his father to buy back the feathers from Edwin’s customers, a large part of the collection is still missing.
After the trial, Edwin Rist changed his name. He now resides in Germany, where he still plays flute. In his interviews, he discreetly blames the Tring Museum for the heist, complaining that they stack useless specimens instead of sharing them with the world. His story became widely known when the 2018 book The Feather Thief by Kirk W. Johnson came out. Johnson made a tremendous effort to untangle the case and locate some of the missing birds.
