It was the fall of 1993. Smith hadn't planned to steal anything - until, he says, he noticed a case filled with pocket watches and Indian War medals was not locked.

So, Smith reached over the counter, opened the case and filled his pockets.

He walked out of the museum and cashed in his haul at an antiques dealer for a few hundred dollars.

Smith pilfered from the museum during several other visits, leaving the store as museum staff cheerfully bade him goodbye.

Earlier this year, the museum again fell prey to similar thefts, and some of the same rare volumes of LDS scripture that Smith had nabbed were stolen in an after-hours burglary.

The recurring thefts at the state-owned building have some people questioning the security.

"There's some artifacts that can't be replaced," said Eric Pollei, a descendent of early LDS Church leader George Q. Cannon, some of whose belongings are in the museum. "Security should be sharpened so this doesn't happen again."

"Preserving history": The Pioneer Memorial Museum, located at 300 N. Main St., displays hundreds of thousands of artifacts on a total of six floors in two buildings.

The items are donated by people who want their heritage protected, said Mary Johnson, president of The International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers.

"We are in the business of preserving history," she said. "It is a very important museum to the state because this is where you find Utah history."

Many of the artifacts are kept in glass cases, which are locked and sit back-to-back or against walls. Some of the cases have alarm sensors.

Other items are kept in enclosed display rooms, while larger artifacts, such as Brigham Young's sauna, sit behind metal fencing.

The museum has an alarm system, said Edith Menna, museum director and second vice president of the organization. She declined to say how the system worked.

Docents, usually on every floor, keep watch during the day, and the Utah Highway Patrol watches the area, too, as part of the UHP's Capitol security detail.

"We've had very little, really very little problems," Johnson said.

The security in 1993 was similar to today's. There was an alarm system, and all the cases were locked - including the case containing the watches and medals that Smith stole, Menna said.

It had good night security, Menna said. During the day, surveillance cameras recorded onto tapes, though they did not cover every corner, she said.

"We had very good security both day or night" for that period of time, Menna said.

"Piece of cake": None of that security, however, stopped Smith, who stole from the museum six or seven times during business hours. He took about $500,000 worth of items, according to reports. They included firearms and copies of rare Mormon scripture.

When the case was secured with small padlocks, Smith just twisted them off using a pair of pliers.

"They handle their history so loosely," Smith said, adding the thefts were "a piece of cake."

Nobody noticed the artifacts were missing until someone who had donated guns became upset the firearms were not on display, according to a report by the Utah State Bureau of Investigation, which investigated Smith's thefts.

All the display cases were checked, and fingerprints were lifted from the one containing the pocket watches and medals.

The prints came back with a match to Smith.

"It's really amazing how insecure that place is. It really is," said Smith, who served more than a year in prison for the thefts. "I sure wouldn't put anything in there."

Following Smith's thefts, the museum's alarm system and security procedures were upgraded, Menna said.

Ken Sanders said the security upgrades didn't go far enough.

The owner of Ken Sanders Rare Books in Salt Lake City said he saw problems with the security first-hand about three years ago when he was looking at the museum's collection of rare Mormon books.

"I was flabbergasted that there would be $1 million worth of books sitting in a glass case," he said. "I thought it was an accident waiting to happen."

About 11:30 p.m. on April 11, police say, Robert M. Lindsay broke the glass case with a hammer. Lindsay took 14 of the books - including some Smith had stolen more than a decade earlier.

Lindsay entered the room after cutting a chain link fence in front of a window to the manuscript room and breaking the window with a roofing hammer through a pillow, investigators and Johnson said.

No alarms were set off. The window he broke did not have an alarm sensor on it, said an SBI investigator.

Lindsay, who has been charged with felony theft and burglary, allegedly committed additional thefts during the museum's business hours.

In one instance, he allegedly stole some medals and other artifacts from a closed area where museum staff devising a new exhibit had put out several medals. They left the artifacts for a few minutes, and the items were gone.

Lindsay also allegedly broke a pair of locks on a case containing clocks and took two of them on separate days.

He was eventually tracked down and arrested, and all the stolen items were recovered.

But there were losses. In one instance, early LDS Church Apostle Heber C. Kimball's personal copy of an 1841 Liverpool, England, Book of Mormon was defaced - his name apparently scratched out of the front board.

"The real tragedy is the loss of history," said Sanders, who inspected the books. "Part of the historical record has been ripped out of those books and lost forever."

Upgrades on the way: Patricia Geisler, Heber C. Kimball's great-great-granddaughter and historian of his family association, said she is worried that some items her grandfather donated to the museum can be stolen.

"I would just want them to make it more secure," she said.

The organization is upgrading the museum's security. On the day of the break-in, security people were at the museum planning the new security system, Johnson said.

The organization had been planning the improvements for a long time and saving money for them, Johnson said.

"We have the resources now," she said.

About a couple of years ago, lines that led from a surveillance camera to monitors were disrupted when asbestos was removed from the ceiling.

"We knew that it needed to be upgraded again," Johnson said. "We wanted to be sure we had everything secure."

A meeting with the State Capitol architect and museum staff to work out details of the upgrade will be held in the next couple of weeks, said Capitol Preservation Board spokeswoman Allyson Gamble.

"It will be a whole new system," Menna said. It will be "as secure as money can do. . . . We've got the very best people working on it."

jhill@sltrib.com