Is Harvard Checking Employees' Records?

The arrest of a former University library worker as the infamous Widener slasher has focused attention on Harvard's decision not to require background checks for many of its lower level employees.

Stephen L. Womack was arrested and arraigned this week on charges that he allegedly destroyed millions of dollars worth of books. He is sitting in a Cambridge jail cell today even as police continue their investigation into the 42-year-old Arlington resident's background and his possible motive for the crime.

In the past four years, Womack, a part-time library employee from 1990 to 1992, has stolen books from Northeastern University, tried to extort money from that university and threatened to blow up a bank if ransom money was not left for him at Widener, according to police. He also sent letters saying he would blow up libraries at Northeastern and at Harvard if they did not fire all their Jewish employees.

In announcing Womack's arrest this week, University officials described the suspect as a lone must of sorts. They said there was no reason for Harvard to overreact and impose new checks on its employees.

"We're very glad this disturbed individual has been caught," said Joe Wrinn, acting director of the Harvard News Office. "We're glad it's over."

Harvard College Librarian Richard De Gennaro, in fact, explicitly said that the University should not require background checks for library employees.

"This person obviously has mental problems, and you don't make policy based on that," he said Thursday. "This is just one person who happened to be a very bad apple."

But if Harvard had looked into Womack's past, they might have discovered that he had a decade-long history of mutilating books, according to officials at the Lexington Public Library. Wikje Feteris, a librarian there, said this week that Womack had taken out hundreds of books there, and returned only the covers.

Harvard Police Chief Paul E. Johnson said yesterday that employee background checks should be instituted in many parts of the University.

"Anybody who works for Harvard should be scrutinized carefully," Johnson said. "It would make my job easier because the possibility of these things happening would be reduced to some extent."

In addition, Johnson said that by developing extensive information on employees, Harvard could make it easier to solve complicated cases of employee theft.

In the Womack case, for instance, University officers had little background information available on the former library employee because Harvard had never bothered to ask for it.

Even though police had suspected an inside job from the time books were first found slashed in 1990, it took nearly four years, hours of Federal Bureau of Investigation assistance and a tip from Northeastern to crack the case.

"When you get into these investigations," Johnson said, "it is considerably more substantial [to have background information]."

Other Cases

Harvard officials attempted to emphasize the uniqueness of the Womack case. But police are currently investigating at least one other slashing case in which a University affiliate may be a suspect.

In fact, some of the biggest recent robberies on campus have been inside jobs, not break-ins. And Harvard continues to put employees without background checks in contact with some of its most valuable holdings.

Including the Womack case, a substantial amount of Harvard property has been stolen or damaged by three different University workers since May 1993.

James A. Hogue, a Harvard Extension School student and casual employee of the Mineralogical Museum, was arrested on May 10, 1993, for stealing nearly $100,000 in precious gems, minerals and other property from that museum.

"This is one of the largest, if not the largest recovery dollar-wise in the history of the department." Harvard Police Lt. John F. Rooney told The Crimson at the time.

That summer, Harvard police broke another case of employee theft. A volunteer at the Museum of Comparative Zoology was discovered to have stolen rare objects, including fossilized insects, from a collection there.

Johnson has cautioned that other universities have also been unable to do sufficient background checks. Before coming to the Extension School, Hogue, now 34, managed to enroll at Princeton University in 1988 under the alias "Alexi Indris-Santana," according to the Associated Press.

Applying under the cover story that he was a self-educated farm hand, "Santana" earned a $20,000 scholarship from the school.

Hogue had previously been enrolled, under his real name, in the University of Wyoming. After two years there, he transferred to Austin (Tex.) Community College.

In 1987, Hogue stole thousands of dollars worth of bicycle parts in California. He was arrested a year later in Utah, where he served six months in a state prison and a second six months in a halfway house before he broke parole and left the state, according to a May 1993 story in the Harvard Gazette.

In the summer of 1992, while Hogue worked at the New Jersey electronics firm Roscom, he stole at least $600 in electronics equipment.

Despite his past, Hogue was able to enroll in the Extension School under his real name. In turn, his status as a student helped him get a job with the Mineralogical museum.

He gained access to the stolen property through his work as a "casual employee" of the museum, according to Carl A. Francis, associate curator of the Mineralogical Museum.

With that access, he stockpiled gold, silver, rubies, opals and more than 100 other precious and non-precious gems and minerals during a period of nine months. He also picked up a microscope valued at $10,000.

Harvard police, including Sgt. Kathleen Stanford and Det. Richard Mederos, both of whom investigated the Womack case, finally cornered Hogue in his home in May 1993. There they found the jewels, the microscope and the equipment he stole from the New Jersey electronics firm.

Hogue pled guilty that December to one count of larceny over $250. Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Robert Barron sentenced him to one year in prison, with an additional three-year suspended sentence tacked on.

Hogue was sent to Cedar Junction prison in Walpole, Mass. Officials at the facility said yesterday that he is no longer being held there.

Hogue is now believed to be serving a five-year sentence in New Jersey on a warrant for leaving Utah under a false alias, according to reports in The Daily Princetonian and The Peninsula Times-Tribune last year.

Upgrading Security

Harvard museum officials now claim that a case similar to the Hogue heist could not happen again.

Frances A. Beane, deputy director for finance and administration in the University art museums, said yesterday that Hogue's thefts barely outpaced improvements to Harvard's security in the museums.

"When [the Hogue thefts] happened, we were in the process of upgrading the entire security system," Beane said.

In recent months, the University has used a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to improve security. A crime similar to Hogue's now cannot occur, Beane said.

While some employees know how the museums' security systems work, workers are not allowed to go into a room or gallery without a fellow employee in tow, Beane said.

"It would be impossible for a security person to take something out of the gallery," Beane said.

Still, the art museums continue to hire employees without doing background checks. "We do not have a process for doing security checks for all our staffs," Beane said.

James Cuno, the Cabot director of the University art museums, said the extent of the background checks on employees depends on the responsibilities given to each individual.

"It differs according to the position the person has, how close to sensitive materials they are," he said. "Secondly, if they are security staff there is a different kind of background check than if they are curatorial staff."

An Inside Job

Still, a smart employee with knowledge of an internal security system can foil even the most sophisticated surveillance, police said.

That, at least, is what happened in the Womack case, according to police.

Womack, who worked as a library assistant, evaded not only numerous surveillance cameras but also officers who took turns doing stakeouts in the stacks. Routine door checkers also did not appear to present a problem for the suspect.

Targeting books on religious subjects, Womack used a knife and his hands to rip out pages. Instead of sneaking the book or torn pages out of the library, he copied the books onto microfilm.

When he was caught, Womack allegedly had 300 rolls of microfilm. Each roll had approximately 15 different texts.

Johnson said the Widener slasher had been on the department's "short list" of the 20 most wanted suspects as early as 1991. Harvard police spent more than $50,000 on expensive closed-circuit TVs and video recording equipment. Some cameras were even set up to look like books.

The slasher, however, was able to elude police monitoring devices and was never seen exiting the library with stolen items.

Ultimately, Harvard's investigation took four years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it was information developed by the Northeastern University police which broke the case.

During a monthly meeting of officials from local university police departments. Northeastern officers mentioned that they had experienced a series of book thefts and mutilations at their libraries. The perpetrator often left threatening notes.

Harvard police investigators at the meeting immediately suspected a connection to the slasher, who had left several notes at the University. One note said he would continue cutting out the insides of books "until the voices tell me to stop."

After an intense few weeks of investigating the case 12 hours per day, police identified Womack as a suspect.

At his home in Arlington Wednesday, authorities said they found a cache of stolen books, manuscripts, typewriters, photography equipment, cutting implements and other objects allegedly stolen from the University.

All had been taken while Womack was being paid to do Harvard's work.

'Anyone who works for Harvard should be scrutinized carefully.' Harvard Police Chief Paul E. JohnsonCrimson File PhotoThe above is a picture of one of the slashed Widener books.

Harvard College Librarian Richard De Gennaro, in fact, explicitly said that the University should not require background checks for library employees.

"This person obviously has mental problems, and you don't make policy based on that," he said Thursday. "This is just one person who happened to be a very bad apple."

But if Harvard had looked into Womack's past, they might have discovered that he had a decade-long history of mutilating books, according to officials at the Lexington Public Library. Wikje Feteris, a librarian there, said this week that Womack had taken out hundreds of books there, and returned only the covers.

Harvard Police Chief Paul E. Johnson said yesterday that employee background checks should be instituted in many parts of the University.

"Anybody who works for Harvard should be scrutinized carefully," Johnson said. "It would make my job easier because the possibility of these things happening would be reduced to some extent."

In addition, Johnson said that by developing extensive information on employees, Harvard could make it easier to solve complicated cases of employee theft.

In the Womack case, for instance, University officers had little background information available on the former library employee because Harvard had never bothered to ask for it.

Even though police had suspected an inside job from the time books were first found slashed in 1990, it took nearly four years, hours of Federal Bureau of Investigation assistance and a tip from Northeastern to crack the case.

"When you get into these investigations," Johnson said, "it is considerably more substantial [to have background information]."

Other Cases

Harvard officials attempted to emphasize the uniqueness of the Womack case. But police are currently investigating at least one other slashing case in which a University affiliate may be a suspect.

In fact, some of the biggest recent robberies on campus have been inside jobs, not break-ins. And Harvard continues to put employees without background checks in contact with some of its most valuable holdings.

Including the Womack case, a substantial amount of Harvard property has been stolen or damaged by three different University workers since May 1993.

James A. Hogue, a Harvard Extension School student and casual employee of the Mineralogical Museum, was arrested on May 10, 1993, for stealing nearly $100,000 in precious gems, minerals and other property from that museum.

"This is one of the largest, if not the largest recovery dollar-wise in the history of the department." Harvard Police Lt. John F. Rooney told The Crimson at the time.

That summer, Harvard police broke another case of employee theft. A volunteer at the Museum of Comparative Zoology was discovered to have stolen rare objects, including fossilized insects, from a collection there.

Johnson has cautioned that other universities have also been unable to do sufficient background checks. Before coming to the Extension School, Hogue, now 34, managed to enroll at Princeton University in 1988 under the alias "Alexi Indris-Santana," according to the Associated Press.

Applying under the cover story that he was a self-educated farm hand, "Santana" earned a $20,000 scholarship from the school.

Hogue had previously been enrolled, under his real name, in the University of Wyoming. After two years there, he transferred to Austin (Tex.) Community College.

In 1987, Hogue stole thousands of dollars worth of bicycle parts in California. He was arrested a year later in Utah, where he served six months in a state prison and a second six months in a halfway house before he broke parole and left the state, according to a May 1993 story in the Harvard Gazette.

In the summer of 1992, while Hogue worked at the New Jersey electronics firm Roscom, he stole at least $600 in electronics equipment.

Despite his past, Hogue was able to enroll in the Extension School under his real name. In turn, his status as a student helped him get a job with the Mineralogical museum.

He gained access to the stolen property through his work as a "casual employee" of the museum, according to Carl A. Francis, associate curator of the Mineralogical Museum.

With that access, he stockpiled gold, silver, rubies, opals and more than 100 other precious and non-precious gems and minerals during a period of nine months. He also picked up a microscope valued at $10,000.

Harvard police, including Sgt. Kathleen Stanford and Det. Richard Mederos, both of whom investigated the Womack case, finally cornered Hogue in his home in May 1993. There they found the jewels, the microscope and the equipment he stole from the New Jersey electronics firm.

Hogue pled guilty that December to one count of larceny over $250. Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Robert Barron sentenced him to one year in prison, with an additional three-year suspended sentence tacked on.

Hogue was sent to Cedar Junction prison in Walpole, Mass. Officials at the facility said yesterday that he is no longer being held there.

Hogue is now believed to be serving a five-year sentence in New Jersey on a warrant for leaving Utah under a false alias, according to reports in The Daily Princetonian and The Peninsula Times-Tribune last year.

Upgrading Security

Harvard museum officials now claim that a case similar to the Hogue heist could not happen again.

Frances A. Beane, deputy director for finance and administration in the University art museums, said yesterday that Hogue's thefts barely outpaced improvements to Harvard's security in the museums.

"When [the Hogue thefts] happened, we were in the process of upgrading the entire security system," Beane said.

In recent months, the University has used a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to improve security. A crime similar to Hogue's now cannot occur, Beane said.

While some employees know how the museums' security systems work, workers are not allowed to go into a room or gallery without a fellow employee in tow, Beane said.

"It would be impossible for a security person to take something out of the gallery," Beane said.

Still, the art museums continue to hire employees without doing background checks. "We do not have a process for doing security checks for all our staffs," Beane said.

James Cuno, the Cabot director of the University art museums, said the extent of the background checks on employees depends on the responsibilities given to each individual.

"It differs according to the position the person has, how close to sensitive materials they are," he said. "Secondly, if they are security staff there is a different kind of background check than if they are curatorial staff."

An Inside Job

Still, a smart employee with knowledge of an internal security system can foil even the most sophisticated surveillance, police said.

That, at least, is what happened in the Womack case, according to police.

Womack, who worked as a library assistant, evaded not only numerous surveillance cameras but also officers who took turns doing stakeouts in the stacks. Routine door checkers also did not appear to present a problem for the suspect.

Targeting books on religious subjects, Womack used a knife and his hands to rip out pages. Instead of sneaking the book or torn pages out of the library, he copied the books onto microfilm.

When he was caught, Womack allegedly had 300 rolls of microfilm. Each roll had approximately 15 different texts.

Johnson said the Widener slasher had been on the department's "short list" of the 20 most wanted suspects as early as 1991. Harvard police spent more than $50,000 on expensive closed-circuit TVs and video recording equipment. Some cameras were even set up to look like books.

The slasher, however, was able to elude police monitoring devices and was never seen exiting the library with stolen items.

Ultimately, Harvard's investigation took four years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it was information developed by the Northeastern University police which broke the case.

During a monthly meeting of officials from local university police departments. Northeastern officers mentioned that they had experienced a series of book thefts and mutilations at their libraries. The perpetrator often left threatening notes.

Harvard police investigators at the meeting immediately suspected a connection to the slasher, who had left several notes at the University. One note said he would continue cutting out the insides of books "until the voices tell me to stop."

After an intense few weeks of investigating the case 12 hours per day, police identified Womack as a suspect.

At his home in Arlington Wednesday, authorities said they found a cache of stolen books, manuscripts, typewriters, photography equipment, cutting implements and other objects allegedly stolen from the University.

All had been taken while Womack was being paid to do Harvard's work.

'Anyone who works for Harvard should be scrutinized carefully.' Harvard Police Chief Paul E. JohnsonCrimson File PhotoThe above is a picture of one of the slashed Widener books.