Civil guards chased him across Spain, earning him the nickname Usain Bolt because every attempt to corner him ended in a sprint to escape. Researchers studied the case for a year, chasing Europe’s most elusive library thief. The subject was a Hungarian national who used many aliases and was hailed as the speediest man in history, a Jamaican Olympic champion and world record holder in the 100 meters.
Yes, Bolt was arrested in Pamplona in 2009, accused of stealing at least 67 maps of high historical value from libraries scattered across the country. The loot stretched from Pamplona to the Monastery of El Escorial and touched Toledo, Soria, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Logroño.
After a stretch of time, when the moment to stand trial arrived, the thief did not appear and his current whereabouts remain unknown, though OPEN CASE reveals he spent periods in Spain. The last trace vanished in Torremolinos. He owned at least one home in Hungary and another in the Dominican Republic, the birthplace of his most recent girlfriend with whom he was arrested fourteen years prior. That was the last time they were seen.
One of the images used for their fake IDs bears the name Zsolt. In one of his Spain visits, this detail appeared in the records.
The couple was described as a Dominican beauty who proved to be a weakness. When security guards asked about the thief in Pamplona, the hotel receptionist struggled to recall his face, but remembered the woman who booked room 608 on behalf of her friend Evelyn. She stated that she and the man went to a pharmacy and, after collecting their luggage, waited for the agents to return to the hotel to intercept them.
Four countries, four names
In a little over a year the thief, sometimes called Huseyin Bolt, had stolen maps from roughly half of Spain. Investigators later confirmed that he had also carried out thefts in Portugal and Germany, among other places. He traveled using forged documents, rented cars, and library registrations under false identities while plundering.
Witnesses described a pattern of nationalities such as Slovak, Czech, Finnish, and Lithuanian. The aliases included Anton Ziska in the Navarra General Archive and in the National Library of Portugal, but also Gyula Stpocz, Gabor Jozsef Cservenka, and Romualdas Darginavicius.
Some of the passports and documents Zsolt Vamos carried out the thefts with are pictured here.
The method was almost flawless. The reports from the Civil Guard say the work involved tearing pages from volumes as a primary tactic. To bypass security checks, small sharp tools were used to extract the pages of interest. Two small knives were tucked away: one hidden in a glasses case, the other in a wallet holding his credit cards.
Within a year the thefts of historical maps exceeded 300,000 euros in value, with total losses around half a million. The Civil Guard traced him through Hungary and the Dominican Republic, where his partner was born.
For cutting pages from books, bolts of fabric and improvised tools were worn under collars or shirts that could double as knives. The stolen sheets were targeted maps, with preference for Ptolemy’s cartography.
The overall damage to Spain’s heritage, from the tampering with historical volumes, was estimated at 528,500 euros. The maps included works by cartography pioneers of the 16th century such as Ptolemy, Petrus Apianus, Abraham Ortelius, and Jerome Girava among others.
The thief also used tools to cut pages inside collared shirts. He kept track of his targets in a personal agenda, noting the date and titles of works. The pages were sometimes marked with red and black annotations indicating a planned reach or confirmation of a visit.
The agenda listed targets in locations like Logroño, the Complutense University in Madrid, Salamanca and Valladolid, with notes about upcoming visits to libraries in other provinces.
According to the Civil Guard records, additional libraries listed for potential visits included venues in 28 provinces. From Asturias to Catalonia, Loyola’s temple library, the Royal Academy, the Madrid Historical Archive, and libraries in the Balearic and Canary Islands appeared as future stops.
The statement from Huseyin Bolt did not come through after his detention. His partner, a young Dominican woman, did speak and described a life as a trader and a husband who bought and sold cars to make ends meet. The couple claimed to have married three years earlier and had traveled to Spain four times. She admitted that at least three old maps were framed in their Dominican Republic home, though she did not know their origins.
“Train Robbery”
Civil Guards recovered 67 maps and returned them to their rightful owners. Zsolt Vamos and his partner were released; he faced charges but did not attend trial for the robberies and eventually disappeared. There were later sightings in Torremolinos and other parts of Spain. In another incident, a thief described as an electrician is linked to the Codex Calixtinus theft from the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Hungary was initially suspected, yet police confirmed he was resting on a Malaga beach in 2011.
What happened to the other Bolt, Ziska Vamos, during those years remains a mystery. Researchers doubt that someone with such talent would retire. He lived almost entirely for thefts. The era he lived in there had a strong sense of a theater, with the thief once living in Toledo in 2009 and leaving a diary note listing several cinemas in the area and a favorite movie star lineup. It was described as a dramatic role. The scene was set by Denzel Washington and John Travolta. It earned the sobriquet Train Robbery.