The Feltham Warehouse Heist: A Night Books Nearly Vanished
Let me tell you a story that initially has a fictional feel. But this is true. It commenced in the evening, January 29th, 2017. Two lawless robbers are either acting wrongly or rightly, based on interpretation. A nondescript warehouse known as the Frontier Forwarding customs warehouse in Feltham, a sprawling area close to Heathrow Airport
Ironically, that very year, industry headlines about Heathrow boasted of a “flying start to 2017.” But no one imagined the phrase would take on a darker twist just outside its perimeter.
As The Guardian recounted, "Late on the evening of 29 January 2017 ... Daniel David and Victor Opariuc ... scaled a wall to the roof … cut through a skylight and lowered themselves on to shelving inside the building" — all without tripping the warehouse alarms. Like some modern-day Spidermen, they lowered themselves into the warehouse on ropes, never triggering the alarms. The actions would be at home in Hollywood or at SXSW for the indie crowds.
Picture these books being raised, smelling their age, the loveliness of old, priceless works of scholars and artists, handled by gloved thieves for a gig. David and Opariuc shared a level of intimacy that few will ever experience in the literary world. This is the pinnacle of the process: unrestricted access to treasures as these novels. Imagine the great works of science and philosophy bundled like stolen electronics. And then, they were gone.
By morning, the discovery stunned everyone. The shelves were empty. No more Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (English Translation: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Gone was Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (English: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). Vanished were Galileo’s great texts, along with around 240 precious works of literary history. It shook the literary world. Scholars called it a cultural catastrophe. The world awoke to what appeared to be the erasure of human memory and culture alike.
Following an interesting beginning, the story moved forward with efforts to find the thieves and the books. British police collaborated with Europol, the Italian Carabinieri, and Romanian authorities in the investigation across three countries. Given the raids, arrests, and organized crime whispers, what further elements could this true story hold? But concerning the books? Their location remained a mystery throughout a difficult three-year period. Concerns arose that they were dismantled, secretly sold off to private collections, or, at worst, annihilated.
As with any great novel, there came a turning point. Plot point, cue a win for the A-team. As The Guardian reported— and Europol confirmed — the turning point came in September 2020, when Romanian police discovered a cement pit beneath a house in Neamț. Inside were nearly 200 volumes, carefully wrapped in plastic, dusty but intact.The missing books were hidden inside, carefully wrapped in plastic. Close to 200 volumes survived intact, albeit dusty and shaken.
As The Guardian noted, “There was an ongoing risk to London and to the UK from this organised group,” says Durham. “But the other main objective was recovering these books.”
Those books survived revolutions, wars, and fire. They carried centuries of ideas, ink pressed onto paper that changed how we understand the universe. Still, in 2017, their near demise occurred because some people accepted an offer driven by their own motives. That's how fragile culture is; it could be lost forever with just one skylight break-in. The future constantly threatens to erase the past.
It’s easy to marvel at the audacity of the crime, the theatrics of it all. But the real story is what we almost lost. Unlike diamonds, books can’t be replaced. They’re not just objects; they’re vessels of memories. To lose them is to lose a part of our world, ourselves.
So when I walk into a library now, I pause a little longer. I notice the shelves, the spines, the quiet hum of preservation. Hidden among the literary shelves of our modern world are pieces of history waiting for their time to age into the collection era of their creation. These books may not glitter, but as Feltham proved, they are worth more than gold.
The lesson might be that stories, though vulnerable to theft, concealment, and near-loss, can be cherished by our future selves if we preserve them carefully.
📚 Sources
Jason Holland, “‘Flying start to 2017’: Heathrow handles record 5.27 million passengers in February,” Moodie Davitt Report, March 10, 2017. Read here
Mark Wilding, “Tome raiders: solving the great book heist,” The Guardian, December 13, 2020. Read here
Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Read on Internet Archive
Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). Read on Internet Archive
Europol, “Stolen books worth €2.5 million recovered in Romania,” Press Release, September 18, 2020. Read here