For the Love of Lepidoptera

For months, Scotland Yard's sleuths followed a shimmering trail of 1,600 butterflies that led from Australia to England. They were stolen from three Australian museums, and much of the thief's bag of exotic loot was irreplaceable. Among the missing butterflies were specimens rare beyond price--an Adaluma urumelia, silky white tinged with blue; an Ogyris zozine splendida, the only one of its black and metallic-blue type ever known to have been netted; several Diana Moonbeams, whose dull purple shading excites collectors just as a light excites a moth.

The Yard called in entomology experts of the British Museum. Who might have engineered this stunning crime? The answer was as obvious as cherchez la femme: only a person with a consuming love of lepidoptera. Last week the mystery was cleared up. In a West Ham court, Colin William Wyatt, a handsome, 38-year-old, onetime Cambridge ski champion, confessed all. Why had he done it? While he was in Australia (with the Air Force), his marriage had gone on the rocks. To forget, he had plunged into a hobby he had pursued since he was a boy, and he had lifted the museums' rarities to add to his own collection of 40,000 butterflies. The judge let him off easy (a -L-100 fine); he understood "the distraction of your mind" that had led Wyatt to a crime of passion.

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