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A collection of media stories detailing Register Iannella's recovery of historical documents stolen from the Registry: 

From: Associated Press, Boston

October 29, 1998

Baseball players' wills are stolen 

By Tom Kirchofer 

Someone is stealing the wills of baseball Hall of Famers. The wills of old-timers George Wright, Tommy McCarthy and Hugh Duffy are missing from a courthouse vault, along with the will of a fourth, unidentified baseball figure. Now, the Suffolk County register of probate plans an inventory to see if any other dead celebrities' papers have vanished. 

"We've once again tightened security. It's a sad day for the commonwealth to think that people can't come in to freely look at these files, which are public records," Register of Probate Richard Iannella said. On Friday, Iannella said a source contacted him after reading an Associated Press account of the thefts that appeared on the Internet and told him that McCarthy's stolen will and possibly others were advertised for sale in a collectors' magazine. "We have the name of a dealer now who has been selling this stuff across the country," Iannella said. He would not identify the source. 

Earlier this week, Iannella learned that Leland's Auctions, a New York sports memoribilia dealer, had in its catalog a document signed by Wright upon the death of his wife, Abbie, in 1913. Iannella then learned that the couple's wills were missing, along with the wills of McCarthy and Duffy. In fact, McCarthy's entire file appeared to have been stolen. And the will of a fourth person Iannella said was connected to baseball is also missing. Iannella would not identify that person. "My hunch is that more has been stolen," said Iannella, who plans to turn the matter over to the police after he does an inventory. 

Wright, McCarthy and Duffy were among the earliest stars of organized baseball. Wright, an infielder, was considered one of the best ballplayers in the country in the 1860s and 70s.... Wright died in 1937 at the age of 90. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame two years later. Duffy and McCarthy were known as the "Heavenly Twins" in the 1890s.... Duffy was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1943, and McCarthy made it in 1946. Leland paid about $2000 for the Wright document at a sports memoribilia show, but it was unclear who sold it, said Irwin Kishner, the firm's lawyer. Kishner said that upon learning it was stolen, Leland immediately returned the form and is out the $2000. 

Legal documents are about the only way of obtaining the autographs of the very early ballplayers.

From: APB News

February 11, 1999

THIEVES TARGET PAPERS OF BASEBALL GREATS: Deed for Babe Ruth's Home Is Latest Missing

By Michelle Gotthelf

After hearing that legal documents concerning 19th century baseball Hall of Famers were being swiped from court storage vaults in the Boston area, Michael Ring, Middlesex County's first assistant register of deeds, checked his archives just to make sure his were safe.

What he found was astonishing: closing papers that Babe Ruth signed when he bought his Sudbury home in 1923 were gone, and some were even defaced to remove his signature, Ring said.

Ring believes they were probably stolen and vandalized by the same collectors who are selling the documents on an emerging black market for baseball memorabilia.

The house that Ruth bought

"We don't know how many other people have applied for registered land in this area so there may have been countless other documents stolen," Ring said. "We have well over a million documents here, so it would be impossible to check them all."

The documents stolen were drafted when Ruth bought his home and 180-acre plot on Dutton Road in Sudbury. There he lived with his first wife, Helen, and adopted daughter, Dorothy. Most of the paperwork, all of which contained Ruth's signature, was stolen. On others the signatures were clipped and removed.

Ring's findings follow Tuesday's arrest of 56-year-old Joseph Schnabel, a Suffolk County probation officer from Pembroke who was charged with stealing the wills of two 19th century baseball players. He is also suspected of two similar thefts from an Illinois courthouse.

Authorities said Schnabel took wills concerning George Wright and Thomas McCarthy. He also allegedly traveled to Illinois and stole other documents by requesting to see them and then somehow leaving with the originals.

Suffolk County Registrar of Probate Richard Iannella, who began the investigation after hearing some of the documents were offered up at a New York auction house, said the suspect apparently stole them because they contained the original signatures of the baseball legends.

Leland's, a sports memorabilia house in New York City, was auctioning some of Wright's original legal documents for $15,000. They returned the documents after being contacted by Iannella.

The FBI and the Boston Police Department are investigating the thefts.

From: Gainesville Sun

Gainesville, Florida

January 30, 2000

Coveted signatures

By Lise Fisher

Crinkled court records fill courthouse files around the country, but for autograph thieves, those slips of yellowing documents can be golden.

Certain autographs, whether they belong to a historical figure, a sports great or a movie star, can fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars. And it's not unheard of, say autograph dealers, for people to use public record laws as their excuse to ransack court files for the signed pages.

It's a problem that grabbed headlines in Boston two years ago and prompted some extra scrutiny at Alachua County's courthouse, whose files house some famous signatures.

"If there is any way people can scam, they will. People want to make a fast buck," said Donnell Noble, a Texas autograph dealer registered with the Professional Autograph Dealers Association.

In October 1998, employees at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston discovered that a thief had purloined the wills of several turn-of-the-century baseball Hall of Famers.

The volume of public record requests meant courthouse staff didn't even know when the theft occurred. Police arrested a probation officer in early 1999 for the crime and said he admitted stealing the documents, as well as wills from other courthouses around the country. The signatures are extremely valuable because, unlike today's baseball players, these athletes rarely autographed any memorabilia. Today, their signatures can only be found on legal documents.

After hearing about the theft, Gainesville courthouse employees launched their own search. They did an inventory, checking files for any missing documents and compiling a list of names they thought thieves might target. People looking at these files today will find that the wills have been replaced with certified copies; the originals are stored in a secure location.

Court staff won't list all the names they found. But a records check shows courthouse files include probate records for baseball great Roger Maris. Records for actor River Phoenix, who died from a drug overdose, also are kept in Gainesville, but those documents are sealed under court order. The will of William Manning Rountree, a U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Sudan, South Africa and Brazil from 1959 until 1973, is kept in Gainesville.

Maris and Phoenix memorabilia with autographs range in price from a couple of dollars to hundreds on auction Web sites.

Clerk of the Court James Jett said the Clay County Courthouse in Green Cove Springs also has some famous names. The courthouse keeps wills from two Lynyrd Skynyrd band members, Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, who died in a 1977 plane crash. Both are sealed.

Suffolk County Register of Probate Richard Iannella, who had to deal with the missing wills in Boston, said the theft forced staff to comb courthouse files and make their own list of collector-desirable documents. They also beefed up security, requiring anyone who wants to look at a file provide a picture ID. Staff members keep the identification while the file is out and maintain a list of who checks out the file.

It's a tough job, Iannella said, because an average of 2,500 cases are pulled a week. Also, Iannella said, he manages what is the oldest probate office in the country, dating to 1650.

"We do the best we can to list who we know," Iannella said about identifying targeted files. That list includes Civil War generals and former U.S. presidents.

When dealing with the thefts, Iannella said he learned that stealing files for autographs is a common problem. FBI agents told him it's especially frequent in Europe where court records go back for centuries.

From: Reuters, Boston

July 26, 2000

Salem Witch Trial Document Auctioned on Internet

A missing 1697 document signed by two judges who presided over the Salem witch trials may have been stolen and sold to the highest bidder on the Internet, the Boston Herald reported on Wednesday.

An original will, signed by chief justice William Stoughton and judge Isaac Addington, was auctioned off by an Indiana company three years ago, the Herald quoted Suffolk County Register of Probate Richard Iannella as saying.

Iannella said he discovered just last week the document was missing while he was researching Addington, who along with Stoughton, served on the Salem witch trial grand jury. As a result of the trials, 19 people were hanged and one man was crushed to death.

After finding a description of the will's auction on the Internet, Iannella checked the files at the Massachusetts state archives and found it missing, he told the Herald.

Another probate document with both men's signatures was sold at the same time, Iannella said. "It's the first time we went into these very early records," he told the Herald. "My worst fear is this is just the tip of the iceberg."

Dealer Jim Smith, the owner of Remember When in Wells, Maine, said government documents are sometimes tossed out or stolen by employees and work their way legitimately into private hands.

The will, sold by History Makers auction house in Indianapolis, belonged to Samuel Shrimpton, a Massachusetts landowner and merchant, who died in Boston in 1703, the Herald reported.

Steve Nowlin, owner of History Makers, told the Herald he bought the will and other documents from New York's Swann Galleries Auctioneers and Appraisers in 1992. He declined to say how much he was paid for the documents, the Herald reported.