The job of most historians is to preserve and protect timeless, important, and at times, priceless artifacts. But one Maryland historian, seen as one of the preeminent collectors of presidential memorabilia, is now in trouble for literally stealing pages of history.
According to CNN, Baltimore police have arrested Barry Landau, a historian who has worked with every White House since the Lyndon Johnson administration, for stealing millions of dollars of historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society.
A Historical Society employee called police after they saw Landau and another man, Jason Savedoff, acting suspiciously at the society’s museum library. In a Baltimore police report obtained by CNN, the employee said they watched Savedoff take a document, hide it in a portfolio, and walk out of the library with it.
The report says 60 documents were found in a locker owned by Savedoff near the library and that some had been signed out of the library by Landau.
According to CNN, included in the stash was a document signed by President Lincoln valued at $300,000 and signed commemorations of the Statue of Liberty and Washington Monument, both worth $100,000 each. The police report also says several invitations to inaugural balls and programs were found, those with a value of $500,000.
“These are only four of the (60) documents recovered from Mr. Landau and Mr. Savedoff,” stated the police report. “The staff of the Maryland Historical Society advised that the other 56 documents are of the same approximate value.”
President of the Historical Society Burt Kummerow says he is just pleased the documents are back.
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“It would have been a huge loss because then (the documents) are no longer in the public record,” he told CNN. “We’re in business to study the history of Maryland, and that’s why people come in. But there are others who would love to collect important documents and own them.”
Landau appeared on CNN just this month and commented on how he has collected more than a million presidential objects.
