Book thief who looks like Roy Orbison is arrested

December 9, 2011 7:00 am by Tracey Taylor - Berkeleyside

Knute Young, who was implicated in a series of book thefts in Berkeley and Oakland, has been arrested by the Berkeley Police Department.

Virtually every bookstore in Berkeley and Oakland had come to know Young, according to the BPD. He is described as resembling Roy Orbison and booksellers said that they knew him as Ed Young.

The case is reminiscent of the the 2009 narrative “The Man Who Loved Books Too Much” by San Francisco writer Alison Hoover Bartlett. The book brings to life the case of unrepentant book thief John Charles Gilkey who stole a fortune’s worth of rare books from bookstores and book fairs around the country. Gilkey stole for love, not money. Young’s motivation is as yet unknown.