Former employee on most wanted list
By Sarah Krebs
Staff Reporter

The former Physical Plant employee convicted of stealing Peruvian, pre-Columbian artifacts from the Mary Couts Burnett Library in 2001, was recently placed on the Tarrant County Top Ten Most Wanted list for violating his probation, police say.

David E. Word, who was charged with stealing artifacts valued at $260,000 in 2001, never contacted with his probation officer, officer Eve Spears said.

Word, 54, was arrested April 5, 2001, by TCU Detective Kelly Ham in Houston, where Word had traveled by selling 10 of the artifacts as payment for transportation, police said.

Ham said police recovered the artifacts from tips. About 70 more artifacts were retrieved by a private investigator and the remaining items were hidden in the TCU library, Ham said.

All but three of the artifacts donated by the Moorehead Collection in 1996 and 1997 were recovered, but some were damaged, Ham said.

Word occasionally worked as a temporary painter for the TCU Physical Plant from 1998 to 2000 and stole the artifacts around Feb. 1, 2000, Ham said. The artifacts were reported missing Feb. 23, 2001, he said.

Blake George, the bailiff for District Criminal Court 3, said Word was indicted June 5, 2001, and remained in Tarrant County Jail until April 8, 2002, when he was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Since it was his first major offense, the stipulations of his release were that he check in with a probation officer once a month and pay TCU back for the damage to some of the artifacts, Ham said.

After his release, the police did not hear from him again, Spears said.

“Probation is easy to get, but hard to keep up,” Spears said.

If found, Word will go to court, and he will either go back on probation or serve the 10 years in prison.

Sarah Krebs
s.d.krebs@tcu.edu