• By Nassim Benchaabane St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  
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• Apr 23, 2017

COLLINSVILLE • A man stole a 90-year-old copy of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” from the historical museum here because he was “fascinated by it,” police say.

Robert Charles LeCompte, 30, of 201 John Street in Collinsville, was charged Friday with one count each of burglary and theft, both felonies.

Surveillance footage caught a man later identified as LeCompte walking out of the Collinsville Historical Museum February 21 with a special edition of the Nazi dictator’s book that was printed in Munich in 1927 and presented to Nazi leaders, police said. The book is estimated to be worth at least $3,000 and possibly up to $10,000.

The video shows LeCompte walking up to the book, which was in an unlocked glass case on a bottom shelf. The video then shows him looking around to see if anyone was watching him, taking the book out of the case and walking out of the building, Assistant Police Chief Rich Wittenauer said.

“He was in there for less than 46 seconds,” he said. “You could tell from the video that he’d been there before and knew where it was.”

Museum officials didn’t notice the book was gone until April 4. Police released surveillance photos Wednesday of a suspect later identified as LeCompte.

Tips were called in to police as soon as the photos were put on the department’s Facebook page, Wittenauer said. On Thursday, a few hours before he was arrested, LeCompte dropped the book off at the museum. “He knew we were looking for him,” Wittenauer said.

Officers on Collinsville Road in State Park Place later spotted a car belonging to a man they knew to be a friend of LeCompte’s, police said. Officers approached the car after it pulled into gas station lot in the 8400 block of Collinsville Road.

When the officers got to the car to talk to the driver, they saw LeCompte lying on the floor in the back of the car, police said. He was taken into custody without incident and his bail was set at $60,000.

LeCompte admitted stealing the book, police said.

“He would only say that he was just ‘fascinated by it,’” Wittenauer said. “He wouldn’t talk about it after that.”

The book had been given to the museum by the family of the late Irving Dilliard, a Collinsville resident who obtained it while an Army officer in Europe during World War II. Dilliard, who died in 2002, was a retired editor of the Post-Dispatch editorial page. He also was a past president of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Museum officials declined comment. They told police they would take the book out of display and were considering permanently removing it from public viewing, according to a police news release.