How was Blumberg discovered and investigated?

Special thanks to the Omaha office of the FBI, especially Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge Hallock and Amy Adams for sharing with our class about the Blumberg investigation and trial. 

Blumberg’s arrest represented a success for the detectives who had been investigating his long string of thefts. The search for Blumberg began in 1988. Sgt. J. Steve Huntsberry of the Washington State University Police Department had been tasked to investigate the theft of six rare books and some valuable eighteenth-century Mexican documents at the Holland library in Washington. He expected these thefts to be a case of a student forgetting to return their library books, but it instead was the first of a unique course of events that lead to the identification and arrest of Stephen Blumberg.  (Huntsberry, 1991)

Later,  Sgt. J. Steve Huntsberry received a tip that a Blumberg alias, Matthew H. McGue, had been recently used at the Clark Library in Los Angeles. Library staff tipped off Los Angeles authorities about a suspicious patron under the name Matthew H. McGue, and the investigation progressed as Los Angeles Police Department Detective Bill Martin notified Sgt. Huntsberry about McGue’s concerning behavior. Further investigation discovered that the ID that contained this alias was fake. Blumberg had been using this ID and alias to enter a number of libraries.

While this information was critically important, investigators got a big break in April of 1988 when University of California Riverside campus police arrested McGue/Blumberg for trespassing in library archives in possession of burglary tools. Once again, police notified Sgt. Huntsberry because they had found a Washington State University library card among his belongings.

Sgt. Huntsberry sent evidence about McGue/Blumberg to the Minnesota State Criminal department, who were able to discover that this so-called Matthew H. McGue was actually Stephen Blumberg by tracing fingerprints. That’s when the investigation was passed over to the FBI.

A multi-year investigation involved tracking Blumberg's purchases and movements, as well as setting up surveillance cameras in libraries. His friend Kenny Rhodes also became a paid informant for the FBI and shared details about Blumberg and his exploits. This provided the FBI with enough information to arrest Blumberg. Acting with Rhodes' help, the FBI raided Blumberg’s home in Ottumwa, Iowa on March 20, 1990. ( Hallock & Adams, 2023; Huntsberry, 1991)