The Slasher's Lesson: Background Checks

Slasher. The word evokes images of the nineteenth-century mass murderer Jack the Ripper, sporting a shiny silver knife and a bloodthirsty eye. Stories of the legendary killer still linger into the late decades of the twentieth century, pervading dime store novels and Grade-B horror movies.

And now, Harvard has its very own slasher.

It's not nearly as spine-chilling as the mythical picture of Jack the Ripper lurking around the corner. Our venerable University's alleged slasher was a quiet middle-aged man, living at home in Arlington with his aging mother, secluded from his neighbors, seemingly without friends. His victims weren't wide-eyed lasses or unsuspecting orphans. They were books.

But not, dear readers, just any books. These were rare books, focusing mostly on church history, literature and organic chemistry. And for eighteen months, between 1990 and 1992, Stephen L. Womack allegedly used a knife and his hands to rip out pages from each book's spine.

It's just this senseless act of destruction that is so disturbing. More alarming is the fact that while Womack was allegedly wreaking havoc in Widener Library, he was doing it all on the University's payroll.

That's right. Womack was a University employee, more specifically, a Harvard library employee. Which meant he could spend many a blissful hour shredding pages and plunging his knife into dusty tomes without anyone raising a questioning eyebrow at his presence.

Part of the problem--at least in Womack's case--lies in the University's failure to conduct background checks on new employees. And if Harvard had looked into Womack's past, they might have discovered that he had a decade-long history of mutilating books--most notably at the Lexington Public Library, where he shredded hundreds of them.

To top it all off, Womack, who is also a part-time student at Northeastern, stole from their Library book collection, allegedly tried to extort money from the school, and also threatened to blow up a bank if ransom money were not left for him at Widener Library. In addition, he sent anonymous letters to Widener Library and Northeastern's Snell Library saying that if they did not fire their Jewish employees, he would bomb their buildings.

And this man was allowed access to some of the most valuable books in this country.

Harvard has had problems before with ITS employees, most notably in the case of Extension School student James A. Hogue, who was arrested on May 10, 1993, for stealing nearly $100,000 in precious gems from the Mineralogical Museum while serving as an employee there. And while Harvard museum officials now claim that tighter security prevents any such future disasters, Harvard Police have made clear their belief that background checks are necessary.

"Anybody who works for Harvard should be scrutinized carefully", Harvard Police Chief Paul E. Johnson told The Crimson last week. "It would make my job easier because the possibility of these things happening would be reduced to some extent."

Johnson is right. In the Womack case, even though police had suspected the slasher was a University employee, it took nearly four years and $50,000 in expensive security surveillance equipment--not to mention the loss of millions of dollars of valuable books--before the suspect was apprehended. And while the police were able to retrieve some of the stolen books and manuscripts from Womack's house, they will never be able to retrieve the thousands of pages already destroyed at this man's hands.

University officials have described Womack as an aberration, assuring the rest of the University community that there is no reason to overreact and impose checks on its new employees. "This person obviously has mental problems, and you don't make policy based on that", said Harvard College Librarian Richard De Gennaro. "This is just one person who happened to be a very bad apple."

A very bad apple, indeed. And given the University's meticulous investigation of potential students and faculty, the University should seriously consider instituting background checks in order to ensure that such episodes do not happen again.