I was recently interviewed for the Pierce Brosnan series History’s Greatest Heists (episode 8 which covers the Gardner Museum Robbery in which $500 million worth of art was stolen) and the podcast Warfare of Art and Law where the interviewer Stephanie Drawdy and I discuss the Brosnan episode about the art heist in depth. We also talk about the bad purchasing practices of Italian art with questionable provenance by American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner and U.S. museums. The effort to protect the Italian cultural patrimony is also a part of the discussion.
The series that Brosnan hosts was filmed for the History Channel. The first episodes were very intriguing and covered high profile crimes such as the Antwerp Diamond Heist, the Lufthansa Heist that was made famous in the mob film Goodfellas, and the Museum of Natural History heist. I was filmed in Stamford, Connecticut. Connecticut was the home of the FBI’s most recent main suspect, Bobby “The Cook” Gentile (Gentile’s lawyer Ryan McGuigan was also interviewed).
On March 18, 1990, two robbers entered the Gardner Museum in Boston, bound up the guards, then proceeded to steal over $500 million worth of art which included three Rembrandts and the Concert by Johannes Vermeer. To date, none of the 13 artworks that were stolen that night have been recovered. Over the years there have been multiple leads and theories, all that have been pursued to no avail, including involvement by the Boston Irish Mob and the notorious South Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, the Irish Republican Army, Corsican criminals, to name only a few.
In 2010, Richard Deslauriers, the FBI special agent in charge in Boston, held a press conference and stated that the Bureau knew who committed the museum robbery. The widely believed theory they now hold is that the robbery was pulled off by Italian organized crime and that at least two of the paintings made their way from Boston to Connecticut and eventually ended up in the Philadelphia area.
The FBI are convinced that Bobby “The Cook” Gentile, a Connecticut based Philadelphia mob “made man,” came into possession of the two large Rembrandt paintings.
After Guarente died, his widow, Elena Guarente, told an FBI agent that her husband handed them off to Gentile in the parking lot of a restaurant in Maine. The FBI then placed an informant into Gentile’s circle of friends who would gather for Italian dinners at his Manchester, Connecticut home, and Bobby Gentile was recorded discussing the stolen art. This led to an FBI raid on Gentile’s home in Manchester, Connecticut, but none of the stolen art was found. The Feds did find illegally owned handguns and a list of the stolen Gardner artworks along with their assumed values if sold on the street.
In 1997, an antiques dealer named William Youngworth was in negotiations with museum administration and the FBI to facilitate the return of the stolen art. Youngworth wanted the $5 million reward that was being offered, his friend Myles Connor released from prison (a notorious art thief who already was known to have stolen a Rembrandt) and he wanted a blanket immunity in which he could not be convicted of any crimes connected to the museum robbery, nor could he be forced to testify in front of a grand jury. The authorities demanded proof that he could get the art returned.
That is when a vial of paint chips was sent to a reporter named Tom Mashberg at the Boston Herald. These chips were first tested by the Chicago based expert Walter McCrone who believed they were from a Rembrandt. In Dec of 1998, they were tested by two more experts, one of whom was Herman Kühn who had examined Vermeer’s Concert, including pigment samples, back in 1968. They both said they were convinced the paint sample was from the Vermeer. In 2003, the renowned expert, Dr. Hubert von Sonnenburg, chairman of restoration at the Met Museum in N.Y., tested the sample and declared that it was a fingerprint match to the Vermeer.
Negotiations fell apart largely due to the authorities’ apprehension of granting a full blanket immunity, but also due to a lack of trust and cooperation on both sides. This pile of paint chips was the only proof of life of the Gardner artworks to surface in its soon to be 33-year history. March 18, 2023 will mark the 33rd year anniversary of this cold case and still nothing has been recovered.
The podcast Warfare of Art and Law by Stephanie Drawdy will air on March 5 and can be listened to here:
History’s Greatest Heists with Pierce Brosnan can be seen on the History Channel. A new episode airs every Tuesday at 10:00 PM. The episode that covers the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery is episode 8 and airs on March 28.
