Kirk Wallace Johnson, author of The Feather Thief, joins us to share the wild tale of a world-class fly tyer who broke into a British museum and stole nearly 300 rare bird specimens—all to tie classic salmon flies. We explore the strange subculture behind the heist, the science lost with those birds, and how a flute-playing prodigy nearly got away with it. This conversation digs into conservation, obsession, and the ethical line between passion and crime.
Show Notes with Kirk Johnson on The Feather Thief. Hit play below! 👇🏻
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(The full episode transcript is at the bottom of this blogpost) 👇🏻
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Episode Chapters with Kirk Johnson on The Feather Thief
How Fly Fishing Helped Kirk Johnson Heal
Kirk didn’t grow up fly fishing. In fact, he was taught it was just for the rich. But after surviving a year in Iraq and a near-fatal accident triggered by PTSD, everything changed. While recovering from serious injuries, a friend invited him to try fly fishing in Maine. At first, he resisted. But within minutes of casting, he knew this was something different—something he’d do for life.
Fly fishing gave Kirk peace when nothing else could. It helped him sleep, eased his mind, and became his escape from the stress of daily life. He says it best: the world faded away, and it was just him and the trout.
How a Fly Fishing Trip Led to an International Crime Story
Kirk first heard about the bizarre true story behind The Feather Thief during a guided fly fishing trip in New Mexico. While chasing trout, his guide casually mentioned a young man who broke into a British museum and stole nearly 300 rare birds—all to sell feathers to a niche group of Victorian salmon fly tyers. That moment changed everything for Kirk.
What started as a casual cast on the river turned into years of investigation, deep dives into museum records, and exposing an underground world few anglers know about. Kirk reveals that most of these elite fly tyers aren’t even anglers, yet their obsession with rare feathers has fueled a black market—one that’s still active today. He didn’t plan on writing a crime story, but the deeper he went, the more twisted it got.
Meet the Feather Thief: Who Is Edwin Rist?
Before becoming infamous for one of the strangest museum heists ever, Edwin Rist was just a gifted kid who loved fly tying. He was a flute prodigy, a national fly tying champ by age 13, and completely obsessed with creating perfect salmon flies. But he didn’t have the exotic feathers needed to tie the “real thing.” Those rare feathers cost thousands—and Edwin didn’t have that kind of money.
That obsession eventually led him to break into the British Natural History Museum and steal nearly 300 rare bird specimens. Why? To tie flies with feathers most anglers wouldn’t even fish with. Kirk sat down with him for a rare, hours-long interview. What he found was a mix of genius, obsession, and a community willing to look the other way when it came to the birds behind the art.
Turns out, the heist wasn’t just about birds—it was about identity, status, and a hidden world where some still refuse to give up endangered feathers in the name of tradition.
Was It Just Obsession — or a Crime Against Science?
Edwin wasn’t some cartoon villain. He was smart, gifted, and deeply obsessed. But obsession doesn’t excuse theft, especially when the victims are priceless scientific specimens, some collected in Darwin’s time. While Edwin walked away with barely a slap on the wrist, the damage to science—and trust—still lingers.
“Your values or your ethics are meaningless until they’ve been tested, until you’re alone in a situation and it’s up to you to decide how you’re gonna act.” —Kirk Johnson
Preparing for the Interview with Edwin Rist
When Kirk finally sat down to interview Edwin, he didn’t take it lightly. He flew to Germany without even knowing if Edwin would show up. With over 100 hours of prep and a detailed question flow, Kirk planned the interview like a chess match. Every early question was designed to lock Edwin into answers that couldn’t be contradicted later. Even then, Kirk found Edwin sharp, calculating, and quick to adapt.
In the end, while Edwin left plenty of digital breadcrumbs, he still managed to dodge real consequences. No jail time. No real accountability. And for Kirk, that made the story even more haunting.
The Feather Thief and the Ethics of Fly Tying
Kirk leaves us with a clear message: he’s not attacking all fly tiers—only the dark corner of the hobby where ethics are ignored. Most fly anglers and tyers care about conservation and protecting wildlife. But there’s still stolen bird skins from museum heists out there, and parts of the salmon fly tying community continue to trade them.
Kirk’s challenge? If you’re in this world and you see or suspect something, do the right thing. Report it. Return it. Because whether it’s 1800s bird skins or warming trout streams, it’s all part of the same conversation about how we care for what’s left of the natural world.
You can find Kirk Johnson and his books at kirkwjohnson.com.
Resources Noted in the Show
Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below
Episode Transcript
Dave (2s):
The story in today’s episode is pretty bizarre. Why would a Phenom fly tyer who fly Fisherman Magazine call one of the great fly tyers, commits a felony robbery to steal almost 300 rare birds? And this gets even more bizarre as we find out how today’s guests avoids jail time after committing a felony robbery. And today, you’re gonna find out the why behind the Feather Thief and the crazy characters that make up this real life thriller. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to fish species we all love. How’s it going? This is Dave.
Dave (42s):
We’ve got Kirk Wallace Johnson on the podcast today, author of The Feather Thief, and one of the greatest books that you likely will read this year if you’re new to it. We find out about the Victorian salmon flies, this classic fly tying forum, and the members who purchased some of these stolen goods. We get into some of that background. We find out about Edwin’s diagnosis with Asperger’s and how that actually changes this whole dynamic in the book here Today, we find out how Sasha Baron Cohen’s cousin was actually the man behind this diagnosis. Another interesting spin, and it’s just one bizarre turn after another. Definitely conservation. We talk about, you know, pretty much everything around the salmon flies that we talk about here today.
Dave (1m 27s):
Plus you’re gonna find out why this feather thief and the person behind the heist is now covering Metallica Master of Pub’s albums on his flute, and why he’s not tying flies in the public. Anymore respect, here he is, Kirk Wallace Johnson. How are you doing, Kirk?
Kirk (1m 45s):
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Dave (1m 46s):
Yeah, I appreciate you putting some time aside today to talk about this topic. I think this is really an interesting topic, the Feather Thief, the book that you wrote, which, you know, in our world of fly fishing, I feel like, you know, even though this is so extreme, I feel like it’s not too far off because we’re all so dedicated to fly fishing that you feel like almost you can almost put your place in the yourself in his place a little bit. You know, these fly tires, we get so addicted to it, but we’re gonna talk about this crazy story about a person who essentially commits a crime. And, and then we can talk about that a little bit around tying flies and stuff. But first off, take us back to fly fishing real quick. What’s your experience in fly fishing? Do you have a kind of a first memory?
Kirk (2m 26s):
Oh, yeah. Well, so the truth is, I grew up in the Midwest, in Illinois where my dad taught us that fly fishing was really just for like elitist snobs. And that’s not, that’s not what our family did. And so I, I grew up, we had a, literally a radioactive river running through our backyard that I would just spin cast for, for carp and bullheads and things like that. And I, I just never once even considered fly fishing. And this will seem like a crazy detour, but I studied the Middle East and Arabic and college, and I ended up in the war in Iraq. I was working for the US government.
Kirk (3m 6s):
I was in charge of the reconstruction efforts in Fallujah, which was a, I don’t expect people to even remember it at this point, but oh yeah, it was not a, not a friendly place. And after a crazy year, that was capped off with, ironically, after surviving all kinds of stuff. I had a, a near death experience while I was on vacation from the war. I sleepwalk out of my hotel window. It was some PTSD triggered thing, but I was, I was in what’s called a dissociative fugue state, but I basically fell a couple stories to concrete, geez, broke both my wrists, my jaw, my nose. I cracked my skull in a couple places.
Kirk (3m 47s):
I had, you know, 150 stitches in my face. And I was like, kind of circling the drain. But I, I survived and basically came back to the states for a year of surgeries and just general badness. I, I just was totally screwed up by the war in all of this. And at the time I was living in, in Boston and a friend of mine said, Hey, you should, you should try, come out and do some fly fishing. Let’s give it a shot. And I did the ki I kind of hemmed and hawed and just had some mental block up about it that was really, truly just like a hereditary, nah, no, I don’t, I don’t fly fish.
Kirk (4m 28s):
But I went up, we hired some guide and it was on the Pset River in Maine. I think we, it must have been two hours north of Boston and had my guard up was being just generally close-minded. And then it was about, honestly, it was about like eight or 10 minutes into casting for the first time and realizing what was being activated in my mind that it sounds so melodramatic, but like I, I knew I was gonna be doing it for the rest of my life. I was, you know, in a loving way, annoyed with my dad that I hadn’t been exposed to this earlier, but I saw this whole world of knowledge and skills and things that had nothing to do with my normal life at that point.
Kirk (5m 16s):
’cause at the time I was in a very intense battle with the US government, which took up the better part of a decade. But to help my Iraqi colleagues who were being assassinated because they worked with us during the war. When I got back from that first day fishing, I slept better than I had slept in years. I remember closing my eyes and I could, I could see trout kind of fanning on my eyelids, and I just, I just fell into this deep sleep. And that really became something of an addiction where any chance I could get, I would just throw my gear in the trunk of the car at four in the morning and just basically flee up into the mountains.
Kirk (5m 58s):
I was trying to get away from the stresses of my job, the, my cell phones. I would excitedly wait until my cell phone signal dropped and, and the world kind of just would be walled off and it would just be the trout in me. And however much I had sort of absorbed or learned or improved from the last time that I went out fishing. And that really, I just, I think I kind of unwittingly or luckily just stumbled into fly fishing as some form of, I don’t know, therapy or Yeah. Or mental health. It was just right. Your listeners will all know this better than I will, I ever did at that point, for sure. But it was, it was demanding enough of my concentration that I would be relaxed at the same time, but I would be so focused on trying to balance all these different variables that nine hours would truly feel like about 45 minutes to me.
Kirk (6m 52s):
And now, I mean, my wife, like I don’t, I live in Los Angeles now, and I, it’s not a mecca for, for anglers, right. But she knows that if we are in a spot in the country where I’m, I can go fly fishing, and I, you know, she knows if I tell her that I’m, I’m just gonna go out for the morning, I’ll be back by noon. Like, she, she knows that I, I may not be back for until after dinner. So that, that’s really the origin. But I didn’t, I did not cast a, a fly for the first time in my life until I was probably 27.
Dave (7m 22s):
That’s amazing. I think that’s the great thing about fly fishing or any of these hobbies or sports or whatever, right? You, it doesn’t matter when you start. We’ve talked to people that have fished for, you know, 80 years and people that just got started yesterday. And it’s always, there’s very similar, right? That passion seems to be the thing with fly fishing and the project healing waters, you know, we’re doing an event with them, the project, and they’re, I mean, I think that’s kind of what you’re speaking to, right? This stuff, you know, people that are in war and things like that, and what fly fishing can do, you know, to help you, right? So you’ve, part of that is what you’ve seen. So how did, how did for you, you know, you have that going on, and when did the, the whole Feather Thief, when did you first hear about that, this story, about this kid essentially committing this crime?
Kirk (8m 2s):
So it was a, I believe the fall of 2011, there’s a writer’s residency down in Taos, New Mexico. So I was, I was running my nonprofit, but I was also supposed to be working on, on a book about this whole sort of battle on behalf of my Iraqi colleagues. And I’m down in New Mexico. I was not really making any progress on the book. I didn’t really know how to write a book at that point. I didn’t even have an agent. I didn’t have a book deal, and the war was still kind of raging. And so I just felt really trapped. I wanted to do something else with my life. At some point, the nonprofit that I started had gotten thousands of people out.
Kirk (8m 46s):
And So that, it was rewarding, but I just, I felt like if I didn’t have some big change, that I was gonna be doing this for the rest of my life. And I, I wanted to try other things, things. I didn’t even support the war in the first place. And now I was, I had spent almost like a decade of, of my life trying to kind of mitigate the consequences of it. So that was my, my mental state was basically just feeling trapped. And I brought my, my fly fishing gear down with me to Taos. But I, I was still pretty, I mean, I still think of myself as, as pretty nude to it all, even though I, I probably always will feel that way, but I was like, all right, I know there’s, there’s waters all around here. I gotta hire a guide. Just ’cause I had done enough on my own to know that I needed to just fork over the money for a guide, at least the first, first time out on, on a new stream.
Kirk (9m 33s):
So I go on Google, it’s just like a few results. I just honestly picked one at random and I get this guide by the name of Spencer Simon. He takes me out, I think the first day we went out was on the, on the Red River, and I just want to fish. I’m like, I’m drilling him with questions about fly fishing. And he had like, Googled me. So he’s trying to talk to me about the war, but I didn’t really, I didn’t really want, like, I wanted to escape all that, right? But I mean, it was a, it was a good conversation. We were like quickly becoming friends, but he could tell, like I just, you know, what my priorities were, we’re like hooking into some, some decent fish. And then at some point he opens up one of his fly boxes, we’re like in the, the middle of this, of this stream.
Kirk (10m 20s):
And I catch this glimpse of like, this just hulking huge fly in there that was unlike anything I had seen before. And I was like, what is that thing? Like, it was just had a dozen different colors on it. It was, you know, whatever, 15 times the size of a, of a normal fly. I had never seen a, a salmon fly, much less a sort of Victorian dress salmon fly. And so he starts sort of introducing me to the, that realm of fly time and about the species and about the Victorian era that gave rise to it. And he starts talking to me about Kelson and blacker and these other, you know, the, the feather trade and you know, we’re fishing and working our way up this stream, but I’ve, I’m just pumping him for, ’cause I just had never heard of this world much less this subculture of, of guys that are tying it.
Kirk (11m 12s):
And I swear I’m in the middle of a cast and he is like, like mean, man, if you think all this is so interesting, you ought hear about this kid that just broke into the British Museum of Natural History. And he, he stole like, like a million dollars worth of these dead birds in order to sell to this, this cultish community of Victorian salmon fly tires. And as he was saying it, I kind of just froze because it was, it was such a bizarre idea that it didn’t even seem like it could be true. But I felt like I could see like the whole book right there in front of my eyes. And for the rest of the day, I just, like, I was peppering him because he, he knew the, the feather thief at that point.
Kirk (11m 57s):
He, Spencer is a, you know, one of the best salmon fly tires there are. He is an incredible guide. And at first when I got back to my place, I, I didn’t even think, you know, it’s like all love to Spencer, I’m guilty of it too, but you know, the, it rises the closer you get to a a, a riverbed, right? Right. And so it’s like, right. And so I was like, how much of this is really happening? Like, how much of this is true? And I just started this descent into this forums and then into these private Facebook groups. And I, I had never, I did not think of myself as even a journalist at that point, or an investigative journalist I had, again, I had never written a book.
Kirk (12m 39s):
I had this dream of writing this memoir about my Iraq stuff, but it became this truly like an obsession for me. So whenever I couldn’t fish and whenever I was not working on my nonprofit work, I was basically just following this crime, figuring out how to get people to talk to me, doing screenshots and just amassing this, you know, mountain of evidence and information and trying to basically figure out what happened. Because at that point there were still tons of aspects of the crime that had not been solved.
Kirk (13m 19s):
That’s
Dave (13m 19s):
Right. So the crime just, when did it happening? Was it 2009 or 2010?
Kirk (13m 23s):
2009 was the crime. And then
Dave (13m 27s):
They caught him a year later.
Kirk (13m 28s):
Caught him, yeah, I think around 15 months later. And then I think he had just received what they call a suspended sentence. But basically, you know, they said, go on your way. No real punishment.
Dave (13m 42s):
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Dave (14m 23s):
But I’m interested, you said, you know, you could see the book at the start, like early on. Did the book that you saw early on, how did that compare to the book that actually came out later?
Kirk (14m 33s):
I would say that there’s something about this story that every step of the way got way more absurd and crazy and bonkers than I expected back on the river that day. And so there are, there are times where even now, like, I mean, sometimes I’ll think about it, I’m like, I can’t believe that happened. And we can get into this, but it’s not an isolated incident anymore.
Dave (14m 54s):
Now what, what do you mean what’s not an isolated?
Kirk (14m 57s):
A month ago I would’ve said that I’m at five separate museum heists that have been done in the name of stealing these exotic birds for fly tires. Edwins was the most egregious, but now we’re at six because a, a museum in France in a kind of smaller town museum in France just got, there was a big heist of I think roughly 600 birds. And I’m figuring out where, like I’m talking to all these ornithologists and curators ’cause we’re trying to get the, the list of species to see if they match those that were, that are mostly targeted by this community. But the demand for these things is only increasing.
Kirk (15m 37s):
And I think one of the consequences of the book is that, I mean, I’ve been told by several sources that after it came out, it basically pushed the trade deeper underground and made it harder to buy and sell these feathers. And a result of that is that the value now has roughly quintupled.
Dave (15m 56s):
Oh wow. So it’s gone. It’s just getting crazier. That’s the really interesting thing about this story. I think you hit on that, right? The fact that, you know, you’ve got this kid essentially who was a kid who stole these things because of this addiction to fly tying, you know, but it’s really interesting ’cause you have this whole other piece, and you talk about in the book about the Darwin and, and Wallace, about how there’s this whole history of these biologists, ecologists, I mean most, I mean, Darwin, right? Nobody’s bigger than that. And there’s that piece where they’re doing it for research and to improve humanity, right? And everything and our knowledge. But then you have these fly tires, essentially they’re stealing it for fly tying, right? I mean, what’s your take on all that? Like, because it seems so crazy. ’cause at the same time I also think of fly fishing and fly tying is very conservation minded.
Dave (16m 38s):
Like I think that’s a big thing people talk about. We are, we’re all interested in protecting these species even as we see climate change and stuff going on. What is your take on the book? Did you think about that when you’re writing it? That that’s was gonna be a theme, a big part of it?
Kirk (16m 50s):
No, it’s a great question. I mean, when I started I knew Darwin, but I didn’t know anything about the historical stuff that’s in the book. And it really is just for people who haven’t read it, it’s kind of fascinating because some of the birds that were stolen by Edwin were central to us unlocking the theory of evolution. They have been used by scientists that have gone into the Natural History Museum for centuries. The same specimens have been interrogated by generation after generation of scientists. Each of them bringing new technology and new questions. Alfred Russell Wallace, the naturalist that gathered a number of the birds that Edwin stole, he really incredibly described these specimens as the individual letters that make up the words of the deep history of the earth.
Kirk (17m 44s):
And that if we allow these things to disappear or to be damaged or stolen, we’re basically losing a glimpse into the past. And so a, a biologist now can pluck a single feather. And with the technology that that exists with, you know, isotopes and all that stuff, like they can completely reconstruct what the food web was for that bird. At that moment in time, scientists have understood that these birds and all specimens in these natural history museums, they hold answers to questions that people haven’t even thought of yet. And you know, I started this investigation with basically a grade schooler’s understanding of natural history museums that I, I thought you just go, there’s a, you know, a hundred birds in glass cases and then that’s it.
Kirk (18m 32s):
I had no clue about the vastness of the scientific collections. And so the Natural History Museum in tr, which was the museum that, that Edwin targeted second largest collection, ornithological collection in the world behind New York, if my memory serves, it’s something like three quarters of a million birds in there. And these are not, their wings aren’t outstretched, they’re not on display. They’re in, everything’s drawn tight to the body and they’re in thousands of cabinets in tens of thousands of drawers. And they are, you know, it’s a vault you have to have, it’s not easy to get in there. Well, it’s not that easy to get into, right?
Kirk (19m 12s):
And literally some of them have been there for five generations of curators. So I didn’t know any of that. I had no clue about any of that. There, there’s two and a half miles of shelving just for birds that are preserved in spirits. There’s a half million eggs there, efforts to sort of ward off extinction. They’re drawing on DNA from these old specimens. Anyways, it’s endless what these things can be used for. The other touch point, since you talk about conservation is that in the Victorian era, you know, Victorian salmon fly time didn’t come out of a vacuum. It’s the result of what has been described as the single largest direct extermination of wildlife in the history of the planet was hunters killing all these exotic birds for women’s hats.
Kirk (19m 58s):
And anyone listening to this who’s tied a a classic or a salmon fly understands they know all of this. They know that there was the, everyone’s looking for their great grandma’s hat in the attic because it might still have some of these birds in it. And so all of the stuff, blacker Kels and all of that coincides with this sort of glut of literally hundreds of millions of birds being killed and showing up in the feather districts in London and in Paris and New York. And so they, all these guys started, you know, inventing their own salmon flies. And it was also just as women were using these birds to sort of display status, these guys were, were sort of showing off and flaunting what exotic feathers they could tie into their patterns.
Kirk (20m 42s):
So again, all of that I started out with zero knowledge of. Now there’s one point in your question that I like, I always feel like I always want to jump at, which is there is a like laser beam, bright red line in the fishing community between guys who actually know how to fish, who actually go out and fish. And then this tiny subset of Victorian salmon fly tires, the overwhelming majority of whom have never even fished with any of them.
Dave (21m 16s):
Oh, really? So most of these tires have not, are not fly anglers.
Kirk (21m 19s):
No. That’s
Dave (21m 20s):
Amazing. I didn’t know that.
Kirk (21m 21s):
To this day, I don’t think the feather thief has ever fished.
Dave (21m 24s):
Oh wow. No kidding.
Kirk (21m 26s):
Yeah. And so there is a, you know, I give talks all over the, everywhere about the Feather Thief. And if I meet an angler, I know, like, this guy’s a fan and he, and he loved the book. If I meet a Victorian fly tire, like I’ve got my, yeah. I’m like wondering, you got your work
Dave (21m 43s):
Cut up for, it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a battle.
Kirk (21m 45s):
Those guys hate me. They hate you. Oh yeah. And so, you know, which fine, no big deal. I don’t, I’ve got a full life. But, but there is a, so you talk about the sort of conservation ethos and, and fly fishing, that’s exactly what I’ve seen. But that’s because these guys are out there, they’re seeing the impacts of, of humanity on these streams that they love and on the fish and all of this. And so you’d have to be an idiot if you love fly fishing to not take up that call and to try to do something about it. These guys are completely divorced from reality. And as you know, there’s no f-ing fly in the world that looks like a green Highlander. No real bug in the world. You don’t have to be like a, some PhD biologist to understand that there’s no reason on earth that a salmon in Scotland is going to be naturally attracted to a bird of paradise feather from the highlands of New Guinea.
Kirk (22m 38s):
Those two creatures are never gonna meet each other. And so there’s, there’s an artifice to all of this. There’s a and like, listen, I haven’t done hardly any salmon fishing. I had tons of salmon anglers write to me and sent photos of flies that they’ve caught salmon on. I know they’re not easy to catch, but I also know that they, I have seen flies where it’s a literally a candy bar wrapper tied to a hook and desperation, you know, dog fur, everything. Everything. Yeah. And so these guys have all bought into this religion that the only way you can tie these things is if you’re using the exact species referenced in these 19th century books that they look to, like monks, look to religious texts.
Kirk (23m 24s):
When it was, it was then and it’s now, yeah, none of this stuff matters. And the result of this kind of monastic adherence to recipes that should be updated, that should be like, for God’s sakes, just dye some, some pheasant or chicken feathers or whatever. And, and it’s incredible what people can do now with dying. Oh yeah. But they won’t do it. And as a result, it is like a conveyor belt to breaking international laws. And I see these young kids that are getting hooked just like Edwin. And they’re, they’re being told that the only, the real deal, only the true tires are tying with CES’s protected species.
Kirk (24m 7s):
And lo and behold, I mean, some of the other crimes I can’t get into now, but they, you know, there’s a lot of museums that have been broken into where these guys, this is the end point of this obsession is basically just thievery and lying to others and lying to yourselves. And I’m just, you know, it’s like I sound like a moral scold, but no, if there’s an edge to my voice, it’s that one of the results of this book coming out is that Spencer, the fly fishing guide that first told me about this story, he has twice had to go to law enforcement for, for death threats that he has received from this community for the sin of telling me this story. So this is not like I’m so tired of the kind of crocodile tears that these guys have about this book, calling them out because they have not reformed at all and they cannot defend what they’re doing.
Kirk (24m 57s):
The only thing that we’re seeing here is that they’re not embracing sustainable tying, they’re not embracing dyed feathers. Because I get it, if you’ve spent stupidly 50 or a hundred grand over your life on exotic feathers, you’re gonna view suddenly tying with some, you know, whiting, chicken hackle dyed or something like that’s a threat to you. Yeah. You know, that’s a And so they, they, there’s a hostility that they have towards all this. Yeah.
Dave (25m 25s):
It’s a crazy story. So this is, and I didn’t even realize this. I mean, I’ve known about Atlantic salmon flies for a long time, always thought they were beautiful. Didn’t know this. In fact, I know I’ve had a few guests on who have tied Atlantic salmon flies and you know, I have some videos and stuff too. And they are actually fishermen, right? Steelhead fishermen, stuff like that. So I think there is some, there are some people out there, but this extreme thing you’re talking about is crazy. And, and I think Edwin is, is such a good example. That’s why your book does such a good part of it, because it explains about this person. So maybe take it there because you actually interviewed him, right? I mean, you, you sat down with this person and then there was other people who thought you were, may have been accomplices who you talked to. What do you say, you know, what, what do you talk for somebody who hasn’t read the book about Edwin, what did you learn about that person?
Dave (26m 10s):
Yeah.
Kirk (26m 10s):
So one quick thing about your friends that are fishing for steelhead. My guess is that they’re probably like, it’s not like I have some beef against salmon fly tying in, in principle. Like I, sometimes I always feel like I need to say, like, it’s not like I got, it’s not like I got bullied when I was a kid by fly tire and this is my revenge. But my guess is that they’re probably tying with, with dy with subs. ’cause some of these flies to tie them right, require thousands of dollars of feathers. So I don’t know, there’s not that many anglers that have that kind of money to, to chuck a $2,000 fly into, into a river. So they’re just so the audience understands, it’s like there’s a, these things are ultimately the ones that are tied with exotics are meant to be put in a display case.
Kirk (26m 54s):
They’re pieces of art. Okay.
Dave (26m 55s):
Yeah. And, and I am thinking about, now I think about the flies. I’ve actually got two of ’em on my, he tied me. They’re more like spay flies and defies. So they are a little bit different than the Atlantic Sam and stuff.
Kirk (27m 4s):
Yeah. So on Edwin, I’ve often said this, that if we had met in a different context, I think we probably would’ve become good friends. He’s a remarkable guy. You know, he grew up in like Hudson Valley area and was not an outdoorsy kid. He was homeschooled with his younger brother, you know, pretty gifted. He was a virtuo flutist. And So that was the kind of ordering influence in his life, was practicing the flute night and day. But when he was around 10, his dad, who was a journalist, was, was working on, I think it was for Popular Mechanics or something, but it was an article about the physics of casting a fly.
Kirk (27m 51s):
And as part of his research, he was watching one of those Orvis 1 0 1 videos. It was A-A-V-H-S back then. I don’t know if it was Rosenbauer doing it or what. Right. And there was a brief section on just tying a, a rudimentary trout fly. And young Edwin is walking through the living room at that moment when the host was demonstrating how to Palmer hackle around the hook. And Edwin saw this kind of ordinary chicken feather. And as it was coiling around the, the shank of the hook, it just transformed. And suddenly it was like just splayed out in every direction.
Kirk (28m 31s):
And, and how could something so ordinary just suddenly with this little bit of thread becomes something different. And for whatever reason, that just transfixed him. And he, he like sprinted to his parents’ room. He pulled some feathers out of his mom’s pillow. He went, he ran to the garage looking for hooks, and he just started trying to tie a fly very quickly. His parents doing what? You know, any, I mean, I would, I’m doing this now with my own kids, like they’ve just fed it. And so they, they set up trout fly tying classes at the, at the local fly shop. And that led to, he was so good at it and so sort of devoted to it that they start bringing him to fly time, you know, shows and festivals throughout New England.
Kirk (29m 18s):
And he starts competing as like a 12-year-old, 13-year-old in fly time competitions where, you know, they’re like, whoever ties the most perfect wooly buggers in an hour wins a trophy. And he, he is like, he’s like dominating, right? Just mopping up these older dudes that have been doing this forever. And in one of these shows he is, is wandering around, I think he is waiting for the, the judges to, to sort of tally up his flies. By the way, I think he was tying in one of them. I think he tied over 60 perfect flies in one hour. Oh
Dave (29m 53s):
Wow. 60.
Kirk (29m 54s):
Yeah.
Dave (29m 54s):
Wow. That’s amazing.
Kirk (29m 56s):
Yeah. My son is now getting into fly tying and he is a friend of mine was like, just make sure you don’t get him into the flute. Like, we’re right. But, so anyways, he’s wandering, Edwin’s wandering around this, this show, and he stumbles across the booth of a kind of legendary classic fly tire named Ed Seral out of Maine. Everyone calls him Muzzy. And it’s like this alien art form to Edwin. He’s been tying all these, you know, IES and stuff and, and they’re, they’re not beautiful. And suddenly they’re, here’s all these gorgeous, just other worldly looking colorful flies that have a completely different sort of heritage to them.
Kirk (30m 41s):
And he’s just gripped and he starts talking to Muzzy and, and he’s, how do you do this? And his dad sets up a, a weekend that they’re gonna go get private lessons with Muzzy to basically start learning how to tie a classic salmon fly over the course of the weekend. You know, they’re doing eight hours to tie a single fly. And Muzzy is kind of introducing him to this world that Spencer introduced me to when he was first telling me about fly tie. And sure enough, Edwins gifted at this too. And it’s, it’s different from, I mean, I can tie an LK or CAS that’ll catch me some trout, but this is like, this is a world apart, you know, you’ve gotta like, you’ve gotta marry fives together and
Dave (31m 25s):
Takes out, it’s the opposite of five dozen per hour. So literally these could take you hours to tie one flyer, right?
Kirk (31m 30s):
Yes. I had Spencer, I wanted to tie one just to see what it was like, and I think I was, I wanted to see if it activated anything in my brain. And after about seven hours, I’m like, yeah, okay, this is not like too much. Yeah. It’s just not, I don’t, I know not really getting it. But at the end of that weekend, during which they had been tying with dyed feathers, Muzzy gives Edwin a a little envelope and he goes, you gotta, you gotta earn the right to use these, you gotta work your way up here. But this is the real deal, essentially, this is what separates the men from the boys. Yeah. And Edwin opens it up and it’s, I think it was like around a few hundred dollars worth of, of exotic feathers.
Kirk (32m 11s):
They weren’t illegal, they were just expensive. But that sort of set up the kind of stakes of this all. So, you know, Edwin was, he starts just tying like a maniac, but he’s just using, you know, Turkey and chicken and pheasant stuff. And he’s, he is so good at what he does that he is hailed as the future of fly time in Fly Tire magazine. But as he told me, there was this, the way that he described it was he knew he was tying fakes. They weren’t the real thing because they weren’t the real species. And he said that the, he could tie one that looked almost virtually identical to a, a, a lay person, but that the knowledge of the falsity of the feathers would eat away at him.
Kirk (32m 60s):
Wow. But whenever he would find some bird that would pop up on eBay, he was always getting outbid by, you know, grownups who had disposable income. And so as good as he was, it was a sort of, there was this longing for, for more and for being able to tie the real thing. And there are some, this is getting into it, but there are some like series of flies. Like there’s a, something called the series, I think it’s maybe 20 or 25 flies, I can’t remember that literally only a few living people have tied the complete set. And so there’s huge bragging rights to basically have acquired enough of the feathers in order to tie the whole series.
Kirk (33m 43s):
And so he had kind of these, these dreams that could only be unlocked with real feathers. And so he, he’s still doing the flute. He wins admission into one of the best schools in the world, the Royal Academy of Music in London. And right before he gets there, one of his mentors in the fly time world tells him about this museum and says, you gotta, you gotta get in and see these birds. You’re all weak in the knees. Like it’s, it’ll change your life.
Dave (34m 9s):
And who was that? Who was that person that told him about
Kirk (34m 12s):
That? That guy was a, a French Canadian by the name of Luke Ture.
Dave (34m 17s):
Yeah.
Kirk (34m 18s):
Right. Yeah. And so he, who Edwin referred to as the Michelangelo of fly Time. And so basically that first visit, which he basically lied in order to, to get access to the museum and into that sort of research vault, from that point on, he started plotting the heist to go and, and, and ultimately steal these things.
Dave (34m 39s):
So that’s it. So that’s where the whole plot, you know, thickens and you know, and then he goes through the whole thing of doing the act and doing it, and then you’re unsure if he did it alone and, and everything. But yeah, there’s just so much going on. And like we said, we got these different ends of it, all the people. But at ultimately, you know, you’re, you’re wondering whether he did it alone at, at, are you pretty convinced now that it was just Edwin that was out there? It sounds like from the book that’s what you, you kind of, the conclusion you drew?
Kirk (35m 7s):
Yeah, I mean it’s, it was one of the most sort of devilish parts of the whole investigation, which is there were moments in my interview with him and it, it took me by the way, I think almost four years to get him to agree to an interview. Oh,
Dave (35m 22s):
No kidding. So it took four years to get him and then, And then you spent like eight hours with them or something like that, right? Yeah.
Kirk (35m 28s):
Yeah. And so there, there were moments in that interview where there were some answers where I was like, oh, that’s, that’s a little odd. That’s, I don’t know if, you know, I asked him like, what kind of suitcase? Right. How big was a suitcase? And then he didn’t, and then I asked him what color it was that he stole the birds in and he didn’t remember what color it was. And I was like, I might be weird, but I feel I, like, I know what color my suitcases in my life have been, you know? Right. But after a ton of back and forth and actual studying the, the specimens themselves, I do think that a single person could have gotten them all out themselves that night.
Kirk (36m 8s):
But I, I can never be 100% sure that he didn’t have some kind of help that night. And I, I certainly know that he did not act alone when it came to selling them.
Dave (36m 20s):
No. And that’s what you get into with the, one of the, the people you are you interviewed as well. Right. That somebody who was helping to get, and then it gets back to the whole fly time, right. Where you get into that piece where, you know, they sold ’em. So there was 299 right. That he stole. They recovered some. And then there’s about, I think, what was it, 60 or something like that, that, that were never recovered. Is that what’s left?
Kirk (36m 40s):
The numbers were always so frustrated. ’cause I was also going up against the Natural History Museum, which has always been trying to kind of minimize the severity of this to, as a sort of face saving exercise. ’cause they, they’re just embarrassed. But he stole 299 birds, I think about a hundred were recovered with their tags intact. Meaning that they were still good for science. There was about a third that were recovered in fragments. And so to me what that means is that they might have gotten like a breast patch from a red ruff fruit crow and then counted that as a red ruff fruit crow returned. But that’s, they
Dave (37m 21s):
Lost the best feathers.
Kirk (37m 22s):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s not like the, that’s not the whole thing or whatever. Right. And so it roughly broke down into I would estimate a hundred, a hundred, a hundred and the value, especially now since the book has come out. But I mean, it’s still, there are still hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of materials stolen in this heist that are out there circulating. Right.
Dave (37m 44s):
And they’re circulating between, essentially, I mean, they’re the fly tires. That’s who these people they’re tying have these, these stolen necks and or whatever.
Kirk (37m 53s):
Yeah. And they’re, some of them, like I have tons of sources in this community that their heads are screwed on straight, but they, they still love tying classics and, you know, they were people calling me from fly time shows. I just got a call recently. The earlier ones were right before the book came out. Multiple sources called me to say they had overheard conversations of from the Fly Time show saying, we’ve gotta sell this before Kirk’s book comes out. Oh wow. And the feds come, come down on us. Another source just called me two weeks ago to say that they had the, I went to one of these fly time shows early on in my investigation, and I was a, apparently there were a ton of the T tring birds, a ton of Edwins birds being sold in the hotel room while I was there.
Kirk (38m 41s):
And so I was, I was right there when it happened. It’s just this one guy finally revealed this knowledge that he was in the room when they were discussing where they came from. And so again, it’s like there are Victorian salmon fly tires that have their heads screwed on straight that have not become sort of compromised by this. And they’re totally happy to tie with, with dyed feathers. Or they, they do the due diligence to make sure that they’ve got lawfully acquired feathers. There are also a ton who don’t ask questions because they don’t, they don’t wanna know the answer. And there’s also a kind of silliness that I have witnessed in parts of the subculture where they think that if they just say this magic phrase that this is a pre-site bird CES being the convention that will outlaw the, the trade of, of endangered species.
Kirk (39m 39s):
They think that if they just say this phrase, oh, it’s a pre-site bird that it, it gives them license to, to buy or sell it. It doesn’t,
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Kirk (41m 46s):
Right. And so what they don’t understand, and this is just the most basic like legal framework. If you find a Victorian hat in your grandma’s attic and you’ve got these birds, and obviously like society was 71, I think Okay, then yes, you can tie with those feathers, but just because you found it in grandma’s attic, even if it’s pre 71, you can’t then sell them. You’re not grandfathered in to sell. It bans the trade of these things. And so you can, you can go on eBay right now and there are people selling illegal species of feathers for fly tying and they do this little tap dance like, oh, it’s pre-site. It’s, it’s nonsense.
Dave (42m 24s):
Oh wow. So everybody and, and eBay’s not, I mean, it must be a, a big, so they’re not doing, how do they get around that? Because there’s a law there. How do they not get cracked down on
Kirk (42m 34s):
What they do is they’ll take a listing down if someone flags it. And so they, eBay when I started sending questions, when I was writing the book saying like, how can you explain like you guys are making money off of these sales. I would send them numerous listings of, in some cases critically endangered species that were being sold. And then the listings would just disappear. eBay would just swat them down, but it was just damage control. And so, so the, the fly tires are using, you know, slang words and things like that to try to, they’re not putting the, the Latin binomial name of the species on there. I gotcha. So at any rate, there are ways for them to get around it, but honestly, a lot of this now happens in private Facebook groups where they Oh, they’re quite clear.
Kirk (43m 19s):
They just, it’s a trusted community. They explicitly say don’t publicly talk about deals if you do delete it right away. So they they know what they know what they’re doing.
Dave (43m 29s):
Yeah. And it’s a private group, right. So, and Facebook, again, it gets into that whole thing of why Yeah. I mean you’ve got all these social media groups and ways to get around it. But, you know, getting back to Edwin, which I mean, there’s some amazingly crazy characters in this story, but one of them was, I think this is kind of bizarre too, Dr. Barron Cohen, right? Like Sasha Barron Coen is the, the LEG, right? I mean it’s his cousin or brother or which one was it?
Kirk (43m 54s):
It’s a cousin.
Dave (43m 55s):
A cousin. So literally Ali G’s cousin is this, well talk about him a little bit and how Asperger’s comes into this because did Edwin know he had Asperger’s at any point before this came up?
Kirk (44m 6s):
He told me that he had never even heard of it, if I recall. He certainly didn’t have a diagnosis or anything before all of this. But basically right around the, the time that Edwin was arrested, there was this huge case playing out in the UK of an autistic kid that had hacked into the Pentagon, I think, and had disabled something. And the US was trying to extradite this kid to hear, I mean, there it was a huge, there were members of Parliament, pink Floyd recorded a song like in, in support of like, to defend this kid against being sent to, and ultimately it was Baron Cohen’s diagnosis and recommendation against incarceration.
Kirk (44m 54s):
That was the decisive thing that allowed the Brits to basically reject the extradition request. Oh wow. So, right. That’s the kind of context of what’s happening. And so, you know, I can’t say exactly what discussions happened in the, or what was going on in the mind of Edwin’s attorneys, but here you have a gifted kid who had a obviously obsessive love of these feathers and a fly tie that the case or the theory of the case that they put forward was that it was a mental disorder. That it was an obsession. It was a compulsion driven by an Asperger’s diagnosis that he ended up getting from Baron Cohen that basically he wasn’t even really in control of his own, he was, he was almost like autopiloted into committing this thing.
Kirk (45m 45s):
And it was impulsive, right. And, and impulsive.
Dave (45m 48s):
And for this crazy, he’s a fly tire, this girl who would go for just fly tire, right? Yeah. He’s, because he is this passionate, impulsive thing,
Kirk (45m 54s):
Right. And that resulted from, I mean, and you know, I had some exchanges with Baron Cohen about this, that diagnostic that Baron Cohen invented to do this assessment. You could download it and you could also download basically like the grid for, for scoring it. And so I asked him, I was like, well, is it possible that it could be gamed? Could someone fake it? And Baron Cohen did tell me paraphrasing, but essentially yes, he said, yes, it could be faked, but you know, this is where expertise comes in, into it. But Baron Cohen, I don’t think spent more than a, a couple hours with him and was kind of charmed by him and really marveled that the beauty of these flies.
Kirk (46m 37s):
So he, he wrote a letter to the court basically saying, you can’t put this kid in prison. Like it’s gonna be bad for him. He cited the lawyers were able to cite another case of a kid with Asperger’s whose, whose sentence was tossed out on appeal because of that diagnosis. And so basically the judge’s hands were, were tied. And so Edwin was essentially given a slap on the wrist. He was, he was given a suspended sentence. So a a year or so for just don’t commit any other crimes and you’ll, you’ll be good. He had to cough up what money he had in his bank account, maybe like, I think it was maybe 15 grand or something. And then there was some kind of restitution that that, that he’s supposed to pay back, but that rarely happens.
Kirk (47m 18s):
Astonishingly, he was still awarded a degree by the Royal Academy of Music. Wow. After all of this, I’ve known people that have, you know, stolen a hundred bucks or something and they, they ended up, they get expelled from their university, you know, so and so, one of the hardest parts of the, the book to write was that one, because I wanted to make sure that, you know, I’m not a clinician. I don’t, I’m not some expert on this. So I wanted to treat it with the sensitivity it deserved, but I I think the reader can make their own conclusions about where I fall on the, the validity of that.
Dave (47m 51s):
That’s right. Did justice prevail, right? Is the, and you have this thing here and you kinda, that’s interesting about being an author, and you probably know this now obviously, is that you get in the characters of the people even when they’re potentially criminals or have done some violent, you know, even violent crimes, right? That you have these stories you get and you’re like, oh, oh, I could see how Edwin could do that. You know, oh, maybe it’s not that big of a deal. You know, like the birds, you know, do we really need 300 of those bird or whatever it is, hundreds of thousands of those birds. Right? And you start to convince yourself, I think that’s what Edwin probably did. And and I think a lot of people you can do that. You can justify it. Right. Do you find that that’s a common theme out there with a lot of the, your experience in talking to people with the story?
Kirk (48m 33s):
Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s a great point. It’s that as outlandish as this crime was, I think all of humanity is on the same spectrum with Edwin. And I think all of us have something that we love so much that it might cloud our judgment a little bit. There aren’t so many hobbies that so quickly push you to the other side of the law as classic salmon fly time. Right. But to me there’s a simple clear moral line of like, Hey, I know you like this stuff, but sorry, it’s illegal. You may not agree with the law, but you certainly can’t go break into museums and steal this stuff. It’s not yours. Right. However, however much sort of moral justification you can sort of dupe yourself into, into buying like that, that’s on you.
Kirk (49m 18s):
But this is still like a, a theft from humanity because we don’t, we don’t have those birds And we don’t know what kind of breakthroughs they, they might have afforded because you can’t go back and get a bird from 1840 anymore and the world has changed since 1840. And so there might be something in that specimen that is crucial.
Dave (49m 38s):
Yep. That’s why this is such a huge, I think, story is that, you know, we’re talking about Darwin and the evolution and like the what, what is lost, you know, in those a hundred or 200 skins. But
Kirk (49m 50s):
You know, you and I are like, I mean I’m, I’m talking to you on an iPhone, right? It’s chockfull of rare metals that are rare earth metals that are being, in some cases there are armed conflicts where there are militias that are destroying countries and devastating communities in order to get access. The Democratic Republic of Congo has basically reinstated slavery in its cobalt minds. Geez, there have been, you know, allegations of like child labor on the, to assemble these things, but I’m using it, right? And we’re both, it’s, we’re benefiting from it. Like, there’s one of the bigger themes of this book is like, it’s about our relationship to a, a, a natural world that is kind of disappearing before our eyes.
Kirk (50m 33s):
And whether or not we can pull back from the brink, the Victorian feather trade is the reason why we have wildlife areas in the United States. The very first conservation laws were passed to stop feather poachers from basically pushing the, the eg grit into extinction. The very first game wardens ever appointed to protect wildlife in 1901 to two or whatever the first game wardens ever sent to protect birds were were murdered by feather poachers. And they were basically exonerated because people couldn’t imagine why there would be a law to protect wildlife or to set aside natural areas.
Kirk (51m 16s):
And so in some ways, the modern conservation movement emanates from the excesses of the feather trade. And it has been a, an incredible result, at least as far as the recovery of a lot of these bird populations that were pushed to extinction, near extinction. So this is a very niche crime, but what it is touching is are these central sort of veins of modern existence and we’re all complicit to some extent. And it’s impossible to live a, a kind of totally pure like, but you have to try, right? Yeah.
Dave (51m 53s):
You gotta do your best. I think that’s where it comes back to the, the recycling, all this stuff. It’s like, Hey, what am I gonna do by recycling one plastic bottle? But you know, that’s the wrong mentality, right? It should be like, I’m gonna do every bit, even if it’s small, and then that’s gonna add up the small, you know, these little small things will add up over time.
Kirk (52m 10s):
Yeah. And so I, and I think that’s the kind of central devil and angel on either shoulder. It’s like, you know, there’s a, yeah, whatever. I could do this and this’ll be mine or no, what’s, what are my values here? And like your values or your ethics are meaningless until they’ve been tested, until you’re alone in a situation and it’s up to you to decide how you’re gonna act. And I think a lot of people are surprised by how they act in that moment, but I can, at least for all of the kind of rationalizations, and I have critiques of the museums as well, but like, I at least can say very black and white. Like, sorry, this was wrong. Even people that bought this stuff that know it’s from Edwin to this day, years after the book came out, they should send it back to the museum.
Kirk (52m 58s):
Even though it will do nothing for scientific research. It’s wrong to have it.
Dave (53m 2s):
Yeah. It’s wrong. Yeah. I feel like when I look at this again, I’m trying to make comparisons and I, I go back to the, the kid thing in it. I mean, Edmond wasn’t a kid, he was an adult. But I think in myself, you know, and, and he probably shouldn’t say this, but when I was a kid, you know, I was probably 12, I don’t know what, I was 1110. I got around this one older kid who was stealing stuff from the local store. And I found myself eventually doing that and, and I got caught. And I remember sitting down with my dad that night, it was like the scariest thing ever. And it was like I had to wait for him to get home. I’m acting like I’m sleeping in my room. And he comes in and says, get up. You know? He has that conversation and it was actually a really good one. And to this day, I haven’t stole anything. Right. Yeah. And I feel like, like I, that’s a kid.
Dave (53m 42s):
Right. But do you think, like, looking at Edwin, yeah, I don’t know, You know what I mean, I’m not trying to make a comparison, but is there, does that mean anything? Like, does Edwin have some, maybe that’s the Asperger’s thing that you’re kind of more like on that mentality, if that was true. If that was true.
Kirk (53m 56s):
Yeah. Well, so anyone who, and by the way, Asperger’s doesn’t even exist as a standalone diagnosis anymore. Oh, it doesn’t. It’s just been folded into autism spectrum disorder. My son is on the spectrum, and anyone who has met anyone who is on the spectrum can tell you in a heartbeat, they have a heightened sense of right and wrong. They are deeply wounded if there’s something unfair or there’s something. And so from a young age, I mean my, when my son was four, we weren’t paying attention. He watched some, it was a documentary on, it was for grownups, but it was on the destruction of the oceans and all the trash and stuff.
Kirk (54m 38s):
And the next vacation, he spent the entire time not swimming, just combing the beach, looking for trash to pick up. Oh, wow. You know, to your point, I was five when I stole a pack of gum that my mom went by me, and I was a 5-year-old. I had a 5-year-old brain. And so my genius self, I started and I, I couldn’t wait to get home. And I started chewing the pack of gum in the car so she could, she could smell it. And she like whipped the car around and dragged me into that shop. And I was bawling. And, and the, the shop owner was upset and I, I had to basically do all of these chores to earn the money back. And I, you know, same. But I, that was a cauterizing moment. Yeah. In my, in my mind of like, oh God, no, you can’t just ’cause you can get away with something doesn’t mean you, you can do it.
Kirk (55m 22s):
There’s a such a thing as a, a, a value or, or, and so, you know, Edwin did tell me, he is like, well, I was homeschooled, so I never really got in trouble. I had to call up like some national homeschoolers organization, some advocacy group, and ask them like, Hey, do homeschool kids have like an increased Oh yeah, right. Like amount of, of crime that they commit later. And they were like, who told you that? Now? Of course not. And so I don’t think, and also just to close one point, like his lawyers argued to the court that this was impulsive. I don’t know how to just say it other than that they gave wrong information to the court in suggesting that it was only a couple weeks of planning.
Kirk (56m 5s):
He planned this thing for something like seven months. There was nothing impulsive about it. It was so deliberate. And he got away with it.
Dave (56m 13s):
He got away with it. Although he’s not really Italian flies anymore, I’m guessing. Or at least in the public.
Kirk (56m 18s):
Yeah. Not in public. If he, if he is, he’s not posting them anywhere. That I’ve seen, part of the reason why that diagnosis bothered me so much was there’s a, there’s a sense that like, people who are on the spectrum should be given a pass because they don’t know the difference between right and wrong. And I just fundamentally reject that and so does the sort of just evidentiary record. So no, I don’t, you know, I, if I were to guess this is just armchair analysts. Yeah. But I think as a general rule, I think Edwin usually is the smartest guy in the room. And I think, you know, when that’s the case, that can get you into trouble. That can lead to a sense of, I don’t wanna say Im immunity, but just sort of like, well, you know, they’re never gonna figure this out.
Dave (57m 3s):
Yeah. I mean, that’s on Edwin, I think that’s one of the interesting things. You know, he’s obviously the kind of the main character in this story, but, you know, in that interview, like how did you, and I’m interested on this because I obviously do these interviews too. How did you prepare for that interview with Edwin? What was that like? Did you have any, were you nervous at all to talk about there? Take us there a little bit.
Kirk (57m 21s):
I don’t think I’ve ever prepared more intensely for an interview than, than the one with Edwin. I was very anxious because I was flying halfway across the, the globe to meet him in Germany. And I didn’t, I didn’t even have any assurance that he was gonna show up. I didn’t understand ultimately why he even agreed to the interview because there was not much upside. He didn’t need to talk. And a huge part of my, my mind leading up to it was just whether or not I was gonna, I had just been played and I had just shelled out several grand to fly to Germany at the drop of a dime or whatever. And, but then I spent a hundred plus hours preparing the sequence of questions So that if I got him to tell me this in the first hour, this point, if I got him to acknowledge that, then he couldn’t then deny it in the fourth hour when I got to this question.
Kirk (58m 18s):
Because we’ve already established that he knew this person or he met or he was there. And that, and even with all of that planning, he was a formidable, I mean, if we’re viewing it like a chess match, he was a, he was a formidable opponent.
Dave (58m 32s):
He was good, he was good at it.
Kirk (58m 34s):
He could see my lines of attack coming way in advance. And if I didn’t have a perfect poker face, if my brow furrowed just a little bit, he would read it and then adjust on the fly. And so, I mean, he’s a, an incredibly savvy, smart guy, but I also didn’t know if he was gonna leave after 10 minutes. So I, I had to really kind of balance, like, let’s just talk about happy stuff and childhood and all that before we get into it. Right.
Dave (59m 2s):
Well, and that, I wanna break there just for a sec. This is the thing that gets back to me and maybe we could follow up after you wrap this question up, but he a savvy and smart guy, but he did this heist, which when you look back on, it seems like he was bound to get caught, right? It seems like kind of cra like he wasn’t that savvy and smart actually when you look at it. But keep going and we will follow up on that one.
Kirk (59m 20s):
Yeah, I mean, in my mind he had done things that were pretty brazen and in hindsight, not very bright. I mean, he had, he had a personal website that where he was listing photos of what are obviously museum specimens with their Latin names. And so that’s pretty obvious, like how you could track that down. But he had this great advantage, which was that the victim of the heist, the museum was not very aggressively trying to find out where it went, where all of its stuff went because they were just so embarrassed by this. And so the only reason this all came crashing down was that there’s a, a classic salmon tire who happens to be in the police service of Northern Ireland, whose identity I like, I can’t reveal, but he’s the one that, he was at a, a fly tying show somewhere in Holland, and he saw a suspicious specimen that one of Edwin’s customers was showing off.
Kirk (1h 0m 20s):
That customer was basically bragging and just happened to be bragging to like one guy in law enforcement that, you know, his moral compass was functioning. And that, that quickly led to the tip that, that then once you had that, that data point, then everything snaps into focus and you can see Edwins everywhere and you can see his website and all of that. So then it was
Dave (1h 0m 40s):
The way back machine and all of that.
Kirk (1h 0m 42s):
Yeah. But in my mind, I’m like, he didn’t get caught that night. He didn’t get caught immediately thereafter. He was, he was very diligent in terms of who he sold to at, at first. He was able to buy what he wanted to buy with it. And so it’s, you know, and ultimately he never spent a night behind bars.
Dave (1h 0m 58s):
Right. That’s true. That’s true. So I guess that is, yeah, he did achieve that.
Kirk (1h 1m 2s):
Yeah.
Dave (1h 1m 3s):
Well, I wanted to touch base before we get outta here on the classic flight. Is it classic flight tying forum? Or Describe that again. What was the name of the, the forum that those, the website that kind of where everybody was? You talked about it quite a bit.
Kirk (1h 1m 14s):
Yeah, well, it’s now defunct, but I, I think it was classic fly tying.com. I think so. I mean, I’m, I’m staring at a filing cabinet that’s just, I’ve been meaning to put it into storage, but it’s just, it’s literally like thousands of pages of, of printouts from that forum that are, is completely kaput now.
Dave (1h 1m 31s):
So that just go kaput because of all this, or just because of it? Just,
Kirk (1h 1m 35s):
I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, it’s, I don’t think forums are, I think they’re, but I don’t think they’re very costly to keep up. But I just, but I think a lot of stuff has now just moved on to Facebook and, and elsewhere. Gotcha.
Dave (1h 1m 46s):
Okay. Well, anything else about, I mean, I, I guess, you know, I think I’ve answered a few questions. This has been good for me. Anything else you wanna highlight about the book or just the story or anything that, you know, we could do to maybe help find those missing skins?
Kirk (1h 1m 60s):
I guess what I would say is it’s like, you know, because I, I’m sure you’re gonna hear from people in your audience that are like, Kirk’s painting us with two broad a brush, and they’re, they’re gonna frankly whine about that. Yeah. I just wanna be really clear, I have no beef at all with people who are tying with legally obtained feathers. I think there’s a lot of self-deception and kind of living in a fairytale land where at this point, sorry, I can walk you through like offline. But there are so many crimes that have been committed now to feed this market. There’s a university in America where the, their ornithological collection has basically, it has gone into kind of, there’s a lack of oversight on it, and there was a corrupt grad student stealing birds from there and selling it to these guys.
Kirk (1h 2m 52s):
Oh, wow. So there’s a point where I’m sort of like, who are you gonna believe me or your lion eyes? So that that’s one, and that sounds combative, I guess it is. But there are also, you know, I’ve gotten tips from guys who have read this book. You know, there was a guy, I won’t go into details, but who was working in a fly shop and some estate agent came in and said, Hey, one of my, I’m handling an estate of a guy that passed away and he was an obsessive fly tire. Can you come help me, you know, put a value on these bird skins? And that guy was like, these are probably, and that guy had been told that the deceased guy was bragging that these were from the Trin heist. And so if you’re in this world, like you’re probably getting hints of this.
Kirk (1h 3m 36s):
And I guess it’s just the challenge of like what you do when you’re, when that radar comes up, that this is all stuff that is part of a felony heist that where the, the stuff is still circulating out there. I don’t care about birds that have been legally purchased. Fine, go with God, show your license for it. Great. But don’t, don’t attack the messenger here. I mean, you can, I don’t care. My, like, I’m, my last book was about the clan. My wife was worried about like, am I gonna get taken out by a fly tire? I don’t, I don’t think so, but like, so I’m just, if people are mad with me, that’s fine. But like, none of the reporting of the book has changed because none of it has been factually everything in there.
Kirk (1h 4m 17s):
The last a hundred pages of that book are the end notes that show you exactly the date and time and the location of who told me what, where on the record. And my guess is the people that listen to this podcast actually know how to, you know, chuck a fly out. Yeah. And So that like, they’re, they’re not gonna, they’re gonna, they’re gonna understand.
Dave (1h 4m 37s):
Yeah. But they probably know some, I’ll bet you some of those people know somebody who knows somebody who has a Yeah, I mean, it’s flight time, the classic fly time forum, the, the fly time show Rimsky show back there. Right. That’s a major, I mean, that’s connected. He owns the whole flight fishing shows. Yep. Right. I mean, that whole flight tying, I mean, that’s all connected and those fly, are those flight tires still there? Are they these classic flight tires at that show? That’s an annual show, right?
Kirk (1h 5m 1s):
Yes. Although Spencer was told me that he was disinvited from that show. I don’t know if that’s Oh, no kidding. That he wa and that he was told that there’s no room for sustainable salmon fly tires. So I don’t, you know that, I don’t know if that’s still the, the case or if that was, was a formal policy. Maybe it was just a beef between Spencer and them. I don’t know.
Dave (1h 5m 21s):
Wow. Yeah, I think it’s such a, again, like we talked the conservation thing, I mean, there’s nothing more important than that, I think, right? I mean, the challenge is, like you said, if you’re a a a person, for example, I always go back to the person who is struggling defeat his family. You know, like you, you start there before you have to, you’re recycling, you know, so there’s certain things that happen in your life, but for most people, if you’re kind of just an average person, you know, I think that especially a fly angler, conservation is big. You wanna do everything you can. We know what’s going on with climate change. I’ve heard, I’ve done stories all over the country with conservation groups And we know water temperatures are warming And we, you know, we’ve gotta do some stuff. So I think it’s interesting to hear this connection now because in, you know, exotic birds is not that much different, right?
Dave (1h 6m 3s):
If you kill off all these birds and the history of ’em we’re losing, we’re losing out on this. Is that kind of, do you feel like now when you look at the book, that is kind of your, your message or maybe one message?
Kirk (1h 6m 15s):
Yeah, no, I, it’s certainly one of them. I don’t think these, I do know fly tires that are, that have poachers that they’re, they’re hiring for to go and kill these from the wild. But for the most part, their supply is stealing from museums. But no, this is like an ultimate question of like, how do you wanna exist in, in the planet that’s changing what kind of person do, and and that is ultimately like a, you are constantly gonna be confronted with decisions and I’m no saint. Yep.
Dave (1h 6m 42s):
You’re still flying, right? You still fly around the world.
Kirk (1h 6m 45s):
Of course. Yeah. I still, I still chuck stuff that I probably could recycle and I convinced myself like, oh, well LA doesn’t right? Sort it well enough or whatever. But, so it’s, I’m not, I have no holier than thou position in all of this. It’s just like, there is a virtue in the struggle of just wrestling with what it means to be a human in the 21st century and what our relationship is to the natural world. If you decide that you don’t give a shit about it, okay, fine. But if you do, then that creates certain obligations and it’s something that you gotta teach your kids and instill those values in them and hope that they stick and, and all of that. But I, I don’t really have any, you know, I try to live in a reality-based world and in a truth-based world.
Kirk (1h 7m 32s):
And so the truth is, there’s no number of rationalizations that could ever convince me that tying 19th century recipes with critically endangered species or stolen specimens is somehow justifiable or defensible when the salmon that you might conceivably hook with it aren’t even, it’s, you’re not even aping an insect. They’re just literally striking that out of aggression. And so there’s just, there’s all of it is just this river of fancy that they’ve, they’ve all convinced themselves means something when it doesn’t mean anything. And so if it doesn’t mean anything, then you can change it and you can change it to use totally ethically harvested feathers.
Kirk (1h 8m 19s):
And like, I have no, I’ve been to Tom Whiting’s operation. Yeah,
Dave (1h 8m 23s):
Yeah. It’s amazing.
Kirk (1h 8m 24s):
Whiting’s a pal of mine. Like I’ve, I’ve seen him, I’ve walked through his, these huge hangers where he is, he’s literally killing hundreds of chickens and baby chicks in front of me because he is culling the ones that aren’t up to genetic match. And I gotta tell you, like little discomforting, but I’m like, yeah, it’s fine. I’m okay with it. You know, like that’s what is, it’s, he is not taking him from the wild. It’s like, you know, I eat, I eat meat. I’m like, I’m a grown up with this stuff, but I’ve like, anyway, so I’m, I don’t know if I’m making any sense.
Dave (1h 8m 54s):
Yeah, no, you are. Well, and I was gonna say, I think, yeah, that, that is, that makes total sense. I think it, it’s kind of the whole thing’s a little bizarre, but that’s, and I think for me, the biggest thing that I didn’t really know about was the, that these tires are not even fly anglers for the most part. No, that’s the other, I think very bizarre part of this is that somebody that’s tying these salmon flies does not even fish. And that would change the whole thing. ’cause if they did, you know, it’d be a different thing. But one quick one before we get outta here, Edwin, I’m just curious. You pro, I’m not even sure if you know anything, but last time you heard of him, any idea what he’s doing? Because I remember, I saw, and I think I saw a video of him playing the flute, like Metallica song or something. Oh yeah. Any idea what, what he’s up to these days?
Kirk (1h 9m 32s):
Not really, no. I mean, I think he’s still, I think he’s living in Europe and I think he’s like a professional musician, but, but yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m not in touch. Yeah,
Dave (1h 9m 40s):
You’re not, you’re not in touch. Yeah. Okay, Kirk, well I think we can leave this one here today. We’ll send everybody out to kirk w johnson.com if they want to connect your book’s obviously out there everywhere. The Feather Thief, you know, like we said today, amazing book. I think of anybody who hasn’t read it yet, we’ve kind of given away some of the, you know, the take home message on it. But it’s really awesome and I appreciate all your time today. Oh,
Kirk (1h 10m 3s):
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave (1h 10m 5s):
Alright, here it is. Please check in with Kirk if you get a chance, get his book Kirk w Johnson. If you go to kirk w johnson.com right now, check in there. Go to Amazon, search for Feather Thief. Any place you get your books, you’ll find this book. If you haven’t read this thing yet, you definitely are gonna wanna check this out to hear a lot of the stories we didn’t talk about today and hear how all the twists and turns. And if you get a chance to say hi to Kirk while you’re out there, please subscribe to this podcast if you wanna get the next episode delivered to your inbox. And the next one’s a good one. We’re back with the Great Lakes dude podcast. Jeff Liske is back to bring his a game. Stay tuned on that and, and also wanna give one shout out to our Missouri River trip. Go to web fly swing.com/missouri and we’re heading out there this fall.
Dave (1h 10m 48s):
If you want, get involved with this, enter your name, your email, and I’ll follow up with you on details to let you know on availability the Big Mo this year. If you are in the Missouri River area, anywhere out there, Montana, around the country, you wanna check it out. We’ve got a spot in the trip for you right now. Alright. Hope you have a great afternoon. Hope you’re having a great evening. If it’s morning, maybe it’s early in the morning, you’re getting up for fishing, getting ready to get going, and you’re just listening to this. First off, I just wanna say Thanks for listening to the very end, and also appreciate you for supporting the podcast. We’ll see you on that next one.
Outro (1h 11m 20s):
Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly, swing Fly Fishing show. For notes and links from this episode, visit wet fly swing.com.
Conclusion with Kirk Johnson on The Feather Thief
This episode is a deep look at how far obsession can go—and what it can cost. Kirk gives us an inside view of a true story that touches on conservation, science, and the strange corners of fly tying culture. Whether you’ve read The Feather Thief or are hearing about it for the first time, this one will stick with you. Check out the links in the show notes for Kirk’s book and more about the story.
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