Greg Priore possessed all the right credentials to run the rare book room at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh — bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from Duquesne University plus an archives management certificate from the University of Pittsburgh.
Mr. Priore told a local society columnist in 2015 that he loved baseball and is a neat freak. He said that the movie star who would play him in a film about his life would be Tom Selleck “because we have outstanding mustaches.”
For 25 years, Mr. Priore, 61, of Oakland, oversaw the library’s most valuable treasures. With a team of professionals, including retired Pitt professor Sally Buchanan and her students, he reorganized the 25,000 rare volumes, plate books and maps. A 1991 report by two rare book specialists, who spent five months with the collection, appraised its value at $1.96 million. Mr. Priore began managing the Oliver Room a year later, in 1992.
Mr. Priore’s job was to preserve the archives and books, identify valuable volumes from other departments that belonged in the rare book room and show materials to researchers.
The Oliver Room’s collection includes a Bible published in 1477, Bach’s first manuscript, centuries-old, hand-drawn world maps and a set of 40 folios created by photographer Edward Curtis, who documented the lives of Native Americans.
On Friday, he was charged, along with Oakland bookstore owner John Schulman, with stealing more than $8 million worth of those rare publications.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh periodically sells outdated books it no longer needs or can store, as all public and academic libraries do. While manager, Mr. Priore often dealt with Mr. Schulman, owner of Caliban Books, a Craig Street business located around the corner from the library’s main branch on Forbes Avenue.
An affidavit unsealed June 28 alleges that Mr. Priore stole rare books and removed individual pages from others, then gave them to Mr. Schulman to sell. The theft was discovered in April 2017 when Pall Mall Art Advisors began appraising the Carnegie Library’s collection. The appraisers found that 320 items were missing from the Oliver Room and another 16 had been vandalized, with pages removed.
The appraisers’ audit reported that the retail cost of replacing all of the items would be $8.1 million. Retail replacement value, defined by the Appraisers Association of America, is “the highest amount in terms of U.S. dollars that would be required to replace a property with another of similar age, quality, appearance, provenance and condition.”
Pall Mall Art Advisors also discovered that 13 missing books were sold or advertised for sale by Caliban Books, the affidavit says.
Also in April 2017, detectives searched Mr. Priore’s eighth-floor apartment in the Cathedral Mansions, an Oakland building. Detectives seized Mr. Priore’s financial records for Duquesne University, where three of his four children have studied, personal financial records and documents about his Carnegie Library employment.
Between 2008 and 2017, Carnegie Library authorized the sale of outdated or duplicate books and periodicals to Mr. Schulman, for which he paid $19,897 during those nine years, according to the affidavit. In June 2017, Carnegie Library director Mary Frances Cooper told detectives that nothing from the rare book room was ever approved for “deaccession,” the formal term for selling library materials.
Mr. Priore was placed on leave in April 2017 and fired on June 28, 2017, according to the detectives’ affidavit.
Mr. Priore grew up in Edgewood, where he graduated from the former Edgewood High School in 1974. His father, Robert M. Priore, was an obstetrician and gynecologist; his mother, Annetta Anselmo Priore, was a travel coordinator.
His parents divorced between the time he entered Duquesne University in 1974 and 1978, the year he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history. In 1980, he earned a master’s degree in history from Duquesne. He also studied archival management with Richard J. Cox, a retired Pitt professor and former president of the Society of American Archivists.
When Mr. Priore was 36, he married Deborah Jayne Matthews, then a 35-year-old librarian from Philadelphia. Mrs. Priore is a children’s librarian at Carnegie Library’s main Oakland branch.
The Priores have two sons and two daughters. Both daughters graduated from The Ellis School, a private Shadyside academy where tuition ranges from $10,000 for the first year of pre-kindergarten to $29,500 for the last year of high school.
The Priores had credit card debts, court records show. Lawyers for American Express Centurion Citibank sued Mrs. Priore in 2010 to collect $10,493. The case was dismissed. In 2013, Deborah and Greg Priore were sued by Portfolio Recovery Associates for failing to pay a $2,060 bill to J.C. Penney. The debt was paid in March 2018, the docket shows.
Mr. Priore’s emails, obtained by Allegheny County detectives, show he was struggling to pay for his children’s education. “I am trying to juggle tuition payments for 4 kids,” he wrote to The Ellis School on Oct. 28, 2015. He asked the school to extend the due dates for payment.
On Dec. 7, 2015, Mr. Priore emailed Duquesne University to say he had made a $2,800 payment on the account of his daughter, Claire, and asked that she be allowed to register for courses. On Jan. 4, 2016, Mr. Priore advised Duquesne he had paid $3,665 on behalf of his son, Anthony, and asked the university to lift a hold on the account so his son could enroll in classes.
In February 2016, Mr. Priore asked that his rent check to Empire Associates be held until March 11 because his wife had been unable to work due to a recent heart attack. Mrs. Priore did not take leave from her job as children’s librarian at the time her husband said she suffered a heart attack, according to an affidavit signed by Detective Lyle M. Graber.
A Colorado man raised suspicions about an atlas missing from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Oliver Room three years before the theft was discovered. In the fall of 2013, Robert Smith of Denver called the library after he purchased it from Caliban Books online. The atlas, created in 1804, contained more than 60 maps and had been cataloged by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in 2013, according to the affidavit. It was the work of renowned map makers Aaron Arrowsmith and Samuel Lewis.
After noticing the atlas bore Carnegie Library marks, Mr. Smith contacted the library because he had a hunch it had been stolen. After learning it had been stolen, Mr. Smith mailed it back to Mr. Schulman. Mr. Schulman returned it to Mr. Priore, according to the affidavit. Detectives verified the return by reviewing emails.
Mr. Smith also suggested that the library check its copy of a rare atlas based on the travels of Victor Collot, a French general who surveyed the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri river valleys in 1796. Mr. Smith recalled seeing original Collot maps selling on eBay a few years earlier.
“Priore allegedly checked” the library’s copy “and confirmed to the administration that the book was intact,” the affidavit said. That same book was later discovered to have been “gutted” of the Collot maps, according to the affidavit.
Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter: @mpitzg.
First Published: July 20, 2018, 1:12 p.m.
Updated: July 20, 2018, 1:12 p.m.
