THE Spine Collector, authorities called him. For six years he was a man who successfully racked up one crime after the other, taunting some of his victims along the way.
This chilling description may conjure up images of a hardened criminal leaving a trail of human bodies in his wake. But the truth is very much stranger than fiction in this case.
The man in question is actually a bespectacled nerdy type – and the spines he collected belong to books.
Filippo Bernardini (30), a junior employee at publishing giant Simon & Schuster UK, was arrested in New York early last year for stealing manuscripts of famous authors. The Federal District Court in Manhattan recently found him
