Chapter 5

Kansas City Public Library

On 4 August 1994, at a preliminary hearing in Boone County, an exceedingly impartial, kind, and ethical judge made what in Missouri is a rare determination to dismiss a case. The Honorable Patrick Horner said that the "identification" of me was not "clear enough even to give rise to probable cause. Defendant is discharged."(1) Again, I enjoyed my liberty.

The Grand Jury of the County of Jackson, Missouri met in secret on 19 August 1994, and indicted me on the charge of receiving stolen property (the Book of the Law of the Lord), knowing or believing that it had been stolen, according to the "witnesses." The star witness at the event was none other than "Frederick M. Smith," if the proceedings actually happened the way that court documents portray.(2) Smith was the president of the RLDS Church from 1915 to 1946. Since he died on 20 March 1946, then as the key "witness" in my grand jury indictment nearly a half century later, his testimony was "beyond all description."(3) The indictment merely meant that the Grand Jury was misled to feel that the case was complex enough to have a trial where I could later defend myself. But "Frederick M. Smith" and Diane Shelton both failed to appear as trial witnesses on 30 January 1995 so the trial was postponed, and by 22 April 1995 it was canceled for lack of evidence to proceed.

Meanwhile, "Frederick M. Smith" was not the only spurious witness used to bolster the weakening case. Sara Hallier Nyman, the RLDS-affiliated librarian and outspoken antagonist who had previously said that she was "leery" of members of small churches, tried to incense the accusations against me. Hallier pretended that she identified me as a person who purportedly took a book from the Kansas City Public Library on a different day, 3 March 1992, in what became one of the most preposterous elements of the case. Nyman told Frank Brown that at 12:30 p.m., "She recognized him [Hajicek] when she saw him at the desk . . . she stopped and chatted with him for a few minutes as he turned the books in. He and the woman and child then went down the elevator."(4)

The accusation was too pat, excessively glib, and unconvincingly facile.(5) Again I referred to my receipts, and unveiled that a providential respite in the frigid Wisconsin weather permitted my family and me to leave our rural Mormon Road farmhouse and go shopping in suburban Milwaukee on that day, 3 March 1992--six hundred miles from the Kansas City Public Library--and so I had another irrefutable alibi of receipts with computer documentation and signatures.(6)

Nyman was unaware of the receipts on the day that she was questioned, "Where was John Hajicek when you saw him?", and she replied, "He was just on the other side of the desk."(7) The homespun framing was inevitably exposed by a second Kansas City librarian, who said that Nyman was not even on duty when the questionable patron left. That librarian explained that only she and a third librarian were stationed at the desk when the patron left, that she had not yet seen Nyman that morning, and that Nyman came up the elevator to begin her shift only after the patron went down.(8) When she finally did see Nyman, she related, "We described in some detail to Sara [Nyman] who this person was that we believed had taken our book. And Sara [Nyman] said, 'Well, that sounds like John So-and-So. And I know him. And surely it's not him.'"(9) Not until long afterwards, did Nyman fabricate her story of having "chatted" with me at the desk.

Nyman then propounded that, not only did I have the audacity to use a pseudonym to checkout and return books (and allegedly walk out with one) while "chatting" with her as a librarian who knew me, but that exactly one month later I had the gall to return to the library freely, and use yet another pseudonym in her presence, but was that time confronted.(10) Had any of those events occurred as she said, I could not then have had the additional temerity to go upstairs to the director of the Kansas City Public Library, as I really did ten months later, on 8 February 1993, and converse unfettered with him about their Mormon books removed from the collection and sold at an auction held 18 June 1992, and then give him my name and Mormon Road address as a person interested in buying their Mormon books.(11)

Nyman was not sufficiently creative to describe, or even name, a Mormon book to accompany her accusation. At first, she told colleagues like Debra Stroup, that it was "a Mormon tract."(12) Stroup was a former overseer of the reading room at the RLDS Library and Archives, who used to grimace whenever I requested a manuscript related to James Strang.

Next, Nyman told colleagues like David Farmer at Southern Methodist University, that more than two years after the alleged incident, "I did some searching and I think that I determined" the missing item.(13) Her indication that she did not even know which item she was purporting that I stole was an astounding admission from someone who did her master's thesis on Latter Day Saint books while at the University of Missouri. Clearly, there was no book stolen, or she could have named the item.

Farmer is a person who had in the past conveyed sentiments of a dislike for Mormons, and who seems vehement to disprove the statistics that most rare book thefts are committed by library directors. He responded to Nyman by putting the deep-pocketed Southern Methodist University into legal and financial jeopardy. He sent a libelous Internet message to fifteen hundred libraries with my social security number, past driver's license numbers, past addresses, and so forth. He posted: ". . . it may be assumed he has gone underground. Anyone with valuable Mormon material in their collections should be aware that Hajicek is no longer in custody of the police. If he shows up in your library, notify police immediately . . ." He added sheepishly: "He has traveled to Dallas, made two visits to DeGolyer Library [Southern Methodist University] to examine early Mormon books and James Strang manuscripts. All materials used at DeGolyer by Hajicek in 1989 and 1992 are present and intact."(14) Other libraries quickly concurred that their collections were "present and intact," and none reported any missing books. In an instant, a national survey was effectively performed for me to demonstrate that I was not the "international book thief" depicted by my enemies. A half million dollars in legitimate book purchases by me could not be countered solely by the accusations of local RLDS-affiliated librarians and archivists.

Nyman never did conclude precisely what tract or book she wanted to be the one that I was accused of stealing. In her deposition she was unable to match the call numbers with book titles correctly, nor decisively point to call numbers corresponding to the missing book.(15) Based on an aggregate of all of the testimony the missing book is pretended to be a "hymnal," is merely a "second edition," was printed in "1844," is distinctly "black," and is so tall as "seven inches."(16) So certain am I that no such book was even published, that I have recited the attributes for the enjoyment of talented bibliophiles who will see the humor in Nyman's distinct fiction. Nyman then admitted that she had never seen the book supposedly stolen, and that the only librarian supposedly ever to see the book said she did not remember either the author, title, publisher, place of publication, or edition.(17) An actual Mormon hymn book was, for Nyman, "beyond all description."

Nyman had another glitch in her accusation. There were no extant call slips, and she told Frank Brown that they had "since been destroyed."(18) After a lapse of more than thirty months, two call slips mysteriously "reappeared" in Nyman's possession. Brown had dispensed "the suspect's handwriting" examples to "book dealers, libraries, and historical centers," and "other appropriate interested parties,"(19) giving Nyman the opportunity for forgery, should she choose--however, the call slips that she advanced still did not match my handwriting.

On Nyman's two call slips, the "patron" had written call numbers for five books (three books on one slip and two books on the other slip), and Nyman had misspelled the unresolved name, "Hadijak?" next to the pseudonym. The library's internal system of check marks and slashes indicated that two of the five books were never successfully delivered to the patron. The other three were both checked out and properly returned.(20) Nyman had said that she also had call slips from what she called a second visit by the supposedly questionable patron, but her co-worker divulged that she was "absolutely positive" that the patron did not request any book on that second date, since she purposely had him under scrutiny during his entire time on the floor.(21)

When the materials from the day the library misplaced its book were sent to the state criminalist in Jefferson City, Missouri, the criminalist could not find my fingerprints on either of the two call slips or on the books used by the patron, and could not ascertain, beyond doubtful probability, whose handwriting appeared on the call slips.(22) Flustered, Brown seethed for three weeks and then faxed a note to the laboratory: "Please check the handwriting on the attached sheet for possible, more thorough examination." The criminalist evidently became annoyed by him, for no additional reports were ever completed.(23) The accusation by Nyman, the RLDS-affiliated librarian from the Kansas City Public Library, subsequently sputtered to an end for lack of evidence--left to the fantasy of Nyman to ruminate chimerical strategies for theft, and to her tongue to promulgate her craftiness.

1. Patrick Horner, Associate Circuit Judge, Preliminary Hearing, Missouri v. Hajicek, Circuit Court of Boone County, 4 August 1994, 39:24 - 40:1, emphasis added. See also "Judge Rejects Charge Against Book Dealer," Independence (Missouri) Examiner, 6-7 August 1994, and "Alleged Rare Book Thief Exonerated," Sunstone, April 1995.

2. See Indictment, Missouri v. Hajicek, Circuit Court of Jackson County, 19 August 1994; and Information in Lieu of Indictment, Missouri v. Hajicek, Circuit Court of Jackson County, 17 April 1995, which lists "Frederick M. Smith" as witness number one. There were no transcripts kept of the secret proceedings, so the content of the testimony of "Smith" cannot be ascertained.

3. Ruth Smith, Concerning the Prophet Frederick M. Smith (Kansas City: Burton Publishing Company, 1924); Larry Hunt, F. M. Smith: Saint as Reformer (Independence, Mo.: Herald House, 1982); and Paul Edwards, The Chief: An Administrative Biography of Fred M. Smith (Independence, Mo.: Herald House, 1988).

4. Sara Hallier Nyman, interview by Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, Report Narrative, 8 September 1994.

5. She merely rearranged what she remembered of an innocent meeting that she knew occurred the autumn prior to the spring date in question, during which she did not recognize me and I inconveniently went aside to reintroduce myself and present my family.

6. See especially "The Gold Card Summary of Account" (American Express), closing date 2 April 1992, for charges on 3 March 1992 at Kids "R" Us, Office Depot, and Olive Garden, all in Greenfield Wisconsin. See also Kids "R" Us, credit card receipt, 2:35 p.m., 3 March 1992, Greenfield, Wisconsin; Office Depot, credit card receipt, signed by John Hajicek, 3:06 p.m., 3 March 1992, Greenfield, Wisconsin; and Olive Garden, credit card receipt, signed by John Hajicek, 3 March 1992, Greenfield, Wisconsin. These records were disclosed to the court and attached to Defendant's Exhibit List, Missouri v. Hajicek, Circuit Court of Jackson County, 29 January 1995. See also Journal of John Hajicek, 3 March 1992.

7. Deposition of Sara Hallier Nyman, 2 March 1995, 7: 1-3, emphasis added.

8. Deposition of Kathryn Maciel, 17 April 1995, 29: 14-23, 31: 17-20, 32: 2-5, 9-10.

9. Ibid., 34: 1-5.

10. Deposition of Sara Hallier Nyman, 2 March 1995, 28: 13-25. The ineffectiveness of not conspiring was demonstrated when Sara Hallier Nyman alleged that I was at the Kansas City Public Library the second time at noon on 3 April 1992, at the exact time that her colleague Diane Shelton said that I was contributing my time to Graceland College, in Lamoni, Iowa. See Statement of Diane Shelton to Lamoni Police Department, 16 May 1994, in which she states that I arrived from Wisconsin on 29 March 1992 (Sunday night), worked for one week (Monday through Friday) with an employee scheduled to assist me, and finished at the end of the day on Friday, 3 April 1992. See also Journal of John Hajicek, 29 March to 3 April 1992.

11. The visit is documented by Anna Horn, Associate Director for Main Library, for Dan Bradbury, Director of the Kansas City Public Library, letter to John Hajicek, 8 February 1993; and enclosed Americana catalog, Swann Galleries, Inc., 18 June 1992.

12. Debra Stroup, interview by Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, Report Narrative, 2 December 1993.

13. Sara Hallier Nyman, Librarian, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, to David Farmer, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, 13 May 1994, emphasis added.

14. David Farmer, Director, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, to Rare Books and Special Collections Forum, EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET, 13 May and 11 July 1994, emphasis added. Farmer was assisted by Carol Miller, of the Free Library of Philadelphia, who circulated a flyer which contained similar information and my photograph. Interloc News, an electronic bookseller's magazine, published a defamatory article in its October-November 1994 issue.

15. Deposition of Sara Hallier Nyman, 2 March 1995, 33: 11-22.

16. Sara Hallier Nyman, interview by Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, Report Narrative, 8 September 1994; Deposition of Sara Hallier Nyman, 2 March 1995, 27: 7, 18; 33: 11-22; and Deposition of Kathryn Maciel, 17 April 1995, 23: 9-10, 20, 22.

17. Ibid., 22:23 - 23:7.

18. Sara Hallier Nyman, interview by Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, Report Narrative, 2 December 1993.

19. Ibid., 8 September 1994; Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, Report Narrative, 21 and 26 May and 7 June 1993.

20. Two call slips, Kansas City Public Library, 3 March 1992, photographs in possession of John Hajicek.

21. Deposition of Kathryn Maciel, 17 April 1995, 42:16 - 43:11.

22. Donald Lock, Criminalist, Forensic Laboratory Report, Criminal Laboratory Division, Missouri State Highway Patrol, 21 February 1995.

23. Frank Brown, University of Missouri Police Department, faxed letter to Donald Lock, Criminalist, Criminal Laboratory Division, Missouri State Highway Patrol, 14 March 1995.

Book Copyright � 1995 John Hajicek.  All rights reserved.