Over the weekend, disaster struck Brigham Young University’s beloved Harold B. Lee Library: in a daring feat of craftiness and zeal, world renowned actor Nick Cage managed to steal the university’s first edition print of the Book of Mormon. The flooding on the building’s lower levels originally seemed innocuous enough, but employees quickly found there was more than water damage to address.

“During the cleanup efforts is when we noticed,” said Brynn Tompkins, a student employee at the HBLL, “the Book of Mormon, like that dusty old one, was gone! It wasn’t even on display; we had no idea what had happened.”

Further investigation revealed that the glass casing containing the artifact had clean cuts, presumably the method of extraction. The rest of the crime scene was clean, seemingly untouched. However, inside sources with the Provo CSI team shared that the culprit left fingerprints behind, which were used to identify Nicholas Cage as the perpetrator.

Prior to the release of this information, the only trace of evidence BYU had was from student janitorial worker Josh Duncan: “A few days before the flooding, I was making my morning rounds when I heard a dude muttering about the Declaration of Independence. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. I can’t believe I didn’t put the pieces together sooner.”

Nonetheless, Cage was still able to make his getaway without any suspicion that he’d been there in the first place. Police believe that the young man arrested for attempted food theft on BYU campus earlier this month was actually a scout sent by the actor to scope security.

Cage has been known to resort to method acting in preparation for upcoming roles. Locals and university board members alike are taking solace in the possibility of the event indicating an upcoming release from their long-dormant on-screen hero.

The whereabouts of the first edition Book of Mormon print remain unknown.