Nude Boys Cut From Library Books

William Cracraft, 35, of Nitro, W. Va., loves to go to the library. Whether it's the library at the University of Akron or the one at the University of Toledo or at Youngstown State University or Cleveland State University, he's been to them all. \n Maybe Cracraft's favorite is the library at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. At least, that's where they caught him. \n Over the last five years, Cracraft has clipped the pictures of nude boys out of about 350 books at Bowling Green and 20 other libraries in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. At Bowling Green alone, the damage is estimated to exceed $3,000. \n Cracraft was caught red-handed and has pleaded guilty to felony vandalism and pandering obscenity involving children and faces up to 18 months in prison. He is to be sentenced by the end of January. \n "When we arrested him, he had his little razor and pockets full of pictures, pictures in his shoes," campus police Lt. Steve Noftz told a reporter for the Toledo Blade. \n "The problem with finding him was that a lot of the books he hit were obscure and didn't get used very often. The library people usually found the damage by accident." \n Bowling Green library employees started noticing in 1994 that there were holes where pictures of nude boys were supposed to be. Three years later, when they tried to reconstruct some damaged pages with books borrowed from other libraries, a statewide pattern was seen. At that time, an all-points bulletin was put on library computers statewide for the nude boy picture cutter. \n For most of the libraries with vandalized books, there is little hope of collecting from Cracraft. There is too little evidence he committed the crimes there and too much time since the clipping occurred.