Old Man in Library May or May Not Be Famously Reclusive Author J.D. Salinger

According to reports by numerous students, an old man was spotted in Baker Library late Sunday afternoon who may or may not have been J.D. Salinger. One of the students discreetly snapped a picture using her iPhone, confirming the presence of an old man reading a newspaper in the Periodicals room.
“I’ve been a huge fan of Salinger’s books ever since I read Catcher in the Rye in 9th grade,” said Martha Cross ’11, a self-described “Salinger-aholic”.
This is the third time that she has seen a man who fit the description of J.D. Salinger—namely, white and very old—in the Periodicals room.

“I heard from my Trip Leader that Salinger sometimes reads in the library, and I’ve always wanted to see him. I even looked it up on Wikipedia, and it’s there!”
The first two times that Cross saw really old white men in the library, she was “too timid” to approach either one of them.
“I mean, he doesn’t want kids to come up and talk to him and he doesn’t like attention, so I respected his wishes.”
Both times, Cross sent a mass e-mail to her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, asking for confirmation. The second time that she did this, a senior in Kappa gave her “90% odds” that the really old white man was, in fact, J.D. Salinger.
“She told me that she’d heard that J.D. Salinger is, like, really old and that he sometimes wears red jackets. This guy was wearing a red jacket, and he was definitely really old. He also had this look on his face like he didn’t want to be bothered, which fits the description.”
This time, said Cross, she was “really close to asking him,” but lost the courage at the last minute.
One student, Adam Roseman ’12, used Wikipedia to find a picture of Salinger from 1950 that “definitely” fit the profile. While he did not approach Salinger personally, he felt confident giving “95% odds that that dude was Salinger.”
Upon hearing about the lead, this reporter went personally to the Periodicals room to try to ascertain the identity of Salinger. Upon arriving, there was no sign of any really old white man. So this reporter went around the library, eventually finding a really old white guy in a red jacket walking out of the side door of Baker Library to his car, which was an old Saab. That seems like the type of car that Salinger might drive, so this reporter gives the probability of a match at least 80%.