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The show focuses on the moment in August 2018 when the museum’s boss, Dr John Cambridge, arrived at work and did a double take when he realised his room, that ought to have been full of critters, was suddenly empty. Glass tanks were upended, shelves bare, displays cleared out. Thousands of live bugs, worth an estimated $50,000 (£38,000), had been stolen. It was the biggest insect heist in history.
It was set up by this ex-cop called Steve Kanya. Back in 1975, he had a pest-control company called Bug Off. As a publicity stunt, he’d put his ‘Catch of the Day’ in the store window – a huge cockroach, a termite colony or whatever. He noticed that cars kept pulling over to look at it and thought: ‘Huh, there’s something here.’ That developed into the first insectarium in the country.”
In the process of investigating this one-of-a-kind robbery, the Philadelphia police lifted the rock to find a seedy subculture of bug poachers, obsessive collectors and illicit smugglers. They soon surmised that, like half of workplace robberies, this was probably an inside job. But which of the museum’s eccentric staff was responsible? And where were the 7,000 bugs?
