Librarians began to notice evidence of the crime in the summer of 2000, when they discovered mutilated books that had been slashed with razor blades (some with almond-shaped eyes carved into their pages) stashed in a storage space underneath library shelves and stuffed behind seldom-used reference materials. Though the vandal had clearly relied on the library catalog to seek out books on gay issues, he evidently did not understand the search results: Among the books destroyed were works by author Gay Talese and those concerning the Enola Gay, the famous World War II warplane, as well as romance novels and books on women's health.