Infamous America - BOSTON HEISTS Ep. 5 | Gardner Museum: “The Irish Connection”

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

In the first few years after the heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the FBI’s investigation follows two parallel tracks. The first to produce possible leads is the Irish Connection as the FBI examines notorious art thief Myles Connor, infamous gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, and local conman Brian McDevitt. A few tantalizing leads develop, but they end in frustration. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial.   On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage.   For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Sunday, March 18, 1990, two thieves spent 81 minutes in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum from 124 a.m. to 24 a.m. As cops and robbers will both say, 81 minutes is an eternity in a heist. The best publicly available data says that the average bank robbery lasts between three and five minutes. Even in an overnight burglary, when the thieves are confident they've disabled the alarm, 81 minutes would feel like an extraordinary length of time. The movements of the thieves at the Gardner Museum, tracked by motion sensors, correspond to the theft of 12 items, four paintings, five drawings, a small Rembrandt etching, a bronze finel, and an ancient Chinese drinking vessel called a coup.

But that isn't the complete list of stolen items. In a gallery called the Blue Room on the first floor, a small painting by a Edouard Mene, called Shea Tortoni, was stolen. Its gold frame was left on a chair in the security office. No other facet of the robbery has caused more confusion and speculation than the Shea Tortoni. The unanswered questions are almost too numerous to count. Of all the other paintings in the museum, why was the Chey Tortone taken? Why was its frame left in the security room, rather than discarded on the floor like the frames in the Dutch room? Did that act? Did that act? mean something? Was it a practical joke by the robbers, a kind of signal that the heist was an

inside job? Or did it mean nothing at all? But the Shaytor Tony quickly sparked two larger and more difficult questions than those, who removed that specific painting and how? And while those two questions might seem like they have obvious answers, they don't. If the most enduring mystery of the Gardner Heist is the identities of the two thieves, then second is the mystery of the Shay Tortoni. According to the motion sensors, the thieves captured the two security guards, Rick and Randy, stashed them in the basement and then went straight to the second floor. The thieves may have gone back down to the basement once or twice, but motion sensors did not record any activity on the first floor during the 81 minutes of the robbery. Shortly after the robbery,

security expert Steve Keller returned to the museum and conducted tests on the sensors. He had done a risk assessment for the museum the previous year, and both times, he concluded the sensors were state-of-the-art and they were working properly. And if the sensors were working properly, investigators had to believe it was impossible for the thieves to move from the second floor down to the blue room on the first floor without tripping a single alarm. So if the two thieves could not have taken the Shay Tortoni off the wall, who did? There were only two reasonable possibilities, the security guards, Rick and Randy.

The greater suspicion has always been on Rick because he was the one who opened the door for the thieves. But in order for Rick to be involved in the events of that night, investigators would have to believe an increasingly wild series of ifs. And while it was theoretically possible, a 23-year-old security guard who spent most of his time partying and playing in a band could have been involved in the biggest art heist of all time, investigators couldn't focus all of their attention on Rick Abbott. The FBI, which quickly took the lead on the investigation, had to examine the usual suspects for major crimes. In Boston, that meant the Irish and Italian

mobs. If there was an Irish connection, infamous gangster James Whitey Bulger or notorious art thief Miles Connor were the top two names on the list. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season, we're telling the stories of two of the most infamous heists in American history, both of which happened in Boston, the Great Brinks robbery of 1950, and the historic art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. This is episode 5, The Gardner Heist Part 3, the Irish Connection.

of the heist, Rick Abbath walked through the museum doing his regular rounds between midnight and 1 a.m. During that time, the other guard, Randy, sat at the security desk near a door to the museum, which opened onto Palace Road. While Rick was on his rounds, a sensor recorded him in a hallway on one side of the blue room at 1227 a.m. And a second sensor recorded him in a hallway on the other side of the blue room at 1228 a.m. According to the sensors, it took him one minute to walk through the gallery. Interestingly, he didn't set off any motion detectors in the blue room itself. So if the sensors were working properly, and if the thieves never went to the first floor, and if Rick Abbott did take the Shea Tortoni, he would have had to have grabbed the painting off the wall without

outbreaking stride during the one minute he passed through the gallery, and he would have had to have removed it without setting off any motion sensors in the gallery. Motion sensors in the rest of the building tracked his movements after the blue room, and he was back at the desk by 1 a.m. at the latest. 24 minutes later, the thieves arrived and handcuffed Rick and Randy. If the sensors were working properly, Rick's only chance to remove the Shea Tortoni was during the one minute that he passed through the blue room. Whether he removed the painting or not, the unanswered questions started falling like dominoes, each one crashing into the next. How did Rick get the Shea Tortoni off the wall without setting off a motion detector? If Rick were working with the thieves,

why did they ask him to remove a painting, any painting? The thieves had the building to themselves for nearly an hour and a half. One of them could easily have run down to the blue room and grabbed the Shaytor Tony. If Rick was involved, why would the thieves ask him to do anything more than just open the door? And if Rick was involved,

why did the thieves allow him to live? Especially given the bloodshed among the possible suspects after the heist, it seems crazy that they would allow Rick to live. And if Rick wasn't involved, how did the thieves steal the Shay Tortoni without tripping a single motion sensor between the second floor and the first floor. Their movements on the second floor registered hundreds of times in the computer log.

How could one of them go from the second floor to the first floor, grab a painting off the wall, and remain completely invisible? And if Rick wasn't working with the thieves, but he did take the Shaytor Tony with the idea that he would steal it that night, then the what-ifs become a mind-melting exercise, which ultimately settles on one question. What are the odds that two separate robberies happened at the same time at the same art museum?

It would have been like winning the lottery and getting struck by lightning at the same time. Based on everything that was known about Rick Abbott, it certainly appeared as though he were the last guy who would be able to pull off the black market sale of a stolen piece of art. And he certainly seemed like he was the last person who would care about trying.

He was into beer, drugs, and music. Shortly after the robbery, he went down to Hartford, Connecticut to attend a pair of Grateful Dead concerts. He took mushrooms and acid and had a great time. That was Rick Abbott. As a consequence, like many things related to the Gardner Heist, the mysteries of the Shay Tor Tony and Rick Abbottes remain unsolved to this day. Though it is worth noting, the assistant U.S. attorney Robert Fisher, who worked on the

the Gardner case from 2010 to 2016 said, if they could have charged Rick with a crime, they would have. Regardless of Rick's possible involvement, he definitely wasn't one of the two thieves who dressed like cops in the early morning hours of March 18th. With no immediate leads on the identities of the thieves, the Boston police and the FBI started looking at some of the obvious suspects. The two leading contenders, for some sort of involvement, were Boston gangster Whitey Bulger and Boston art thief Miles Connor. My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another,

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Agents received lots of tips, but the tips led nowhere. Regardless, if there was a major crime in Boston, the two most obvious places to look for suspects were the Irish gangs and the Italian mob. On the Irish side, that meant James Whitey Bulger. Whitey Bulger was the preeminent Irish gangster in Boston for a decade, from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. His criminal career was much longer, but he ruled South Boston for that 10-year stretch. He did so in large part because he and his partner, Steve, Flemy were FBI informants who were protected by a corrupt agent named John Connolly. In the early 1980s, Connolly and the FBI were able to arrest multiple high-ranking members of the

Petrarcha family, the top family of the mafia in Boston. Connolly portrayed his informants, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmy, as vital parts of the investigation. But the reality appeared to be that they played minor roles in the takedown. Either way, the arrest of major Italian mafia figures, which was the FBI's number one priority at the time, was a big win for Connolly, Bolger, and Flemmy. That victory allowed Connolly to protect Bulger and Flemmy for the rest of the decade. But by the time of the Gardner heist in March of 1990, the winning streak was almost done for the agents and the two killers. A task force of the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Boston Police Department, and the Massachusetts State Police

assembled to go after Whitey Bulger. Bulger and Flemy were under heavy surveillance for all of 1989 and 1990, and that was how the authorities were pretty sure Whitey Bulger and his crew were not responsible for the Gardner heist. In December 1990, seven months into the Gardner investigation, Bulger's protector at the FBI, John Connolly, retired from the agency. Four years later, the game was over for Bulger and Flemy. In December 1994, Whitey Bulger fled Boston and began 16 years on the run to avoid arrest on a slew of charges.

Stevie Flemmy was arrested a month later in January 1995. Whitey Bulger spent a good portion of his time as a fugitive living with his girlfriend in a simple apartment building in Santa Monica, California. He was arrested at his apartment in 2011, and he died at a federal prison in West Virginia in 2018. At no point during the investigation of Whitey Bulger did the FBI learn anything substantial about the Gardner heist. That box had been checked, and unfortunately it led nowhere. But at the same time Whitey Bulger's reign in South Boston was ending, the scrutiny of another suspect was beginning. Brian McDevitt was a thief and a con man who lived just three miles from the Gardner Museum,

and he conveniently, or suspiciously, moved away just a con. couple months after the robbery. Brian McDevitt grew up in the Boston area, and in the fall of 1979, he stole $100,000 from safe deposit boxes. With the money, he disappeared. He materialized in upstate New York and reinvented himself as a member of one of America's oldest and wealthiest dynasties, the Vanderbilt's. He was only 20 years old, and he was now calling himself Paul Sterling Vanderbilt. He was arrogant and obnoxious. and that part wasn't an act. His intent in the small city of Glens Falls, New York,

was to steal artwork from the Hyde Museum. He recruited an accomplice, and their goal was to steal $30 to $50 million worth of art and sell it to black market dealers in South Florida. They hoped they could make $10 to $15 million on the sale and be set for life. Apparently their plan was to arrive at the museum in a FedEx delivery van

right before the museum closed on Christmas Eve 1980. The two thieves hijacked a FedEx van, tied up and blindfolded the female driver, and then drove to the museum. But in downtown Glens Falls, they got stuck in some sort of traffic jam. By the time they arrived at the museum, the building was closed,

the doors were locked, and the alarms were set. The plan had relied on the museum being opened, and now the thieves had missed their window. They abandoned the plan, and they were caught in short order. Brian McDevitt willingly provided a very thorough confession, almost as if he enjoyed talking about his plan and wanted to impress the investigators. He and his accomplice planned to wear disguises, tie up the museum guards, and steal paintings by Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Those details would come back to haunt McDevitt ten years later when they bore a striking resemblance to the Gardner heist. After the failed robbery in New York, Brian McDevitt served two years in prison and then returned to Boston. By the summer of 1989, at the latest, he was living in Beacon Hill, a Boston neighborhood just three miles from the Gardner Museum. According to FBI agent Tom McShane, who was one of the first agents on the Gardner case, Brian McDevitt was an early suspect. Given McDevitt's history and his proximity to the museum in 1990, the suspicion made sense. McShane has said the FBI interviewed McDevitt within a couple months of the robbery,

and McDevitt had no alibi for the night of the heist. Shortly after the interview, McDevett disappeared from Boston again. He resurfaced on the other side of the country in Los Angeles. His new identity was as a successful Hollywood screenwriter who ran his own production company. It took about two years for the charade to fall apart. In September of 1992, the Gardner Heist was still big news. There were no arrests, no updates from law enforcement, and no clues about the location of the stolen artwork. But the media kept searching. In June 1992, the New York Times was the first to print a story which featured Brian McDevitt as a suspect. The LA Times followed with its version, and then the Boston Globe picked up the thread.

Next came 60 Minutes. McDevitt taped an interview with more. morely safer for an episode which aired in November 1992. Sometime shortly after the taping, Brian McDevitt vanished again. Two years later, he called a friend in Los Angeles and claimed he was in Brazil. He had believed he was about to be indicted for the Gardner heist and he had fled to South America. After the strange phone call, McDevitt went dark again for eight years, until he started sending emails to his friend in L.A. in 2002. They maintained contact until 2004, when the friend heard from McDevitt's sister that Brian

McDevitt had died in May 2004 in Medellín, Colombia. There are those who believe Brian McDevitt, a lifelong con artist, faked his death. If he did, he chose to vanish for good. No one has heard from him since May of 2004. In terms of being a suspect for the Gardner Heist, there are those like the current director of security at the museum, Anthony Amore, who believe emphatically that McDevitt did not rob the museum. Amore thinks McDevitt simply isn't capable of it. McDevitt failed at nearly every caper he attempted, so it's hard to believe that his only real success was the biggest art heist of all time,

including an escape and concealment of the artwork for decades. But because this is the story of the Gardner Heist, no thread would be complete without a complication. When Museum's security guard Randy gave one of his few public interviews to the last scene podcast in 2018, he said that when he was shown photos of all the different suspects, the only one who looked familiar was Brian McDevitt. Randy said he was 90 to 95% sure that McDevitt was one of the thieves. For all intents and purposes, Brian McDevitt exited the Gardner picture in the summer of 1992. According to one of Miles Conner's versions of the story, that was when he entered the picture.

When it comes to Miles Conner's possible involvement in the Gardner heist, the best way to handle it is to embrace the simplicity of ignorance with a funny expression. Nobody knows nothing. With one exception, the only thing that is known for certain is that Miles Conner was not one of the two thieves who committed the robbery. Miles Conner was in jail in Illinois when the robbery happened. Beyond that, nobody agrees on nothing. Every person, including and especially Miles Conner, who has talked publicly about the Miles Conner thread of the Gardner story, has told a different version of the events. It's impossible to know exactly who did what and when. There are

similarities in the versions, that's for sure. It's not like the versions of Conner's possible involvement are wildly different, but there are enough inconsistencies to leave the matter open for debate to this day. So, with all that said, is it possible that Conner's friends committed the robbery, at least in part to try to get him out of jail? Sure. How likely is it? Nobody knows. In March of 1989, Miles Conner was arrested in Illinois for trying to sell cocaine and stolen items to undercover FBI agents. The stolen items were pieces which had been taken from the estate of a wealthy widow in Monmouth, Maine in 1974. That was one of the robberies which Connor said

he committed with his friend Bobby Donati. Connor also said that another of his friends, David Houghton, was part of the five-man crew that night. So, Conner was still in jail in Illinois in March of 1990 at the time of the Gardner heist. Connor received a 10-year prison sentence, most of which he spent at a federal prison in Lompoc, California. Connor has claimed that his friends Bobby Donati and David Houghton were deeply involved in the Gardner

Heist in some capacity. At least once, he has said that they were the two thieves that night. Apparently they planned to use at least some of the artwork to help him negotiate a reduced prison sentence, just as he had done for himself in 1975 when he stole a Rembrandt from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. David Houghton was a small-time crook and a part-time auto mechanic who had allegedly participated in multiple crimes with Miles Conner over the years. But the problem with the theory of David Houghton as one of the thieves is David Houghton himself. The descriptions of the thieves provided by the museum security guards, Rick and Randy, were that one of the robbers was about five feet ten inches tall and probably weighed about 160 pounds. The other was a little taller, maybe six feet or six one, and a little heavier, maybe 190 pounds. David Houghton weighed more than 300 pounds.

Even if the descriptions aren't overly reliable, it's hard to believe that Rick and Randy would have been off by that much when it came to guessing the weight of one of the robbers. Regardless of Connor's certainty that his friends committed the robbery, it appears as though his outreach to authorities began in 1992, about the same time Brian McDevitt fled the country because he thought he might be charged with the heist. For reasons which still aren't clear, Connor used his cellmate in California as a go-between to start negotiating the return of the artwork. In addition to the strategy, the timing was interesting. By the end of March 1992, Bobby Donati and David Houghton were dead.

Bobby had been killed in an act of gangland violence in 1991, and David had died of a heart attack in March of 92. It was pretty easy for Connor and his cellmate to claim that they were the sole keepers of the information since the two men whom Connor named as the thieves were dead. The FBI was hesitant to engage in dialogue with the inmates and the process dragged on for five years until another Connor confidant came forward in 1997. But before that happened, the Gardner Museum received another offer to negotiate the return of the stolen items. In 1994, two years after Miles Connor started making noise about having a connection to the artwork, the museum received a letter from an anonymous source. The letter was postmarked from New York City, and the unknown author said he or she did not know the identities of the two thieves,

but was working with someone else to return the artwork. The author wanted the typical guarantees of a cash payment and immunity from prosecution, and then provided instructions for responding through the Boston Globe newspaper. The museum and the FBI worked with the Globe to send a response which signaled they were willing to talk. The author quickly wrote a second letter which claimed the FBI had been too aggressive in pursuing the author rather than allowing the negotiation to play out. It's hard to know what the author meant, but that was the end of the communication.

The mysterious author was never heard from again, and another lead fizzled out. Three years later, in March of 1997, the Gardner Museum raised the reward for the return of the items from $1 million to $5 million. In August 1997, Billy Youngworth, the second Miles Conner confidant, claimed he was able to return 11 of the 13 stolen items.

all the artwork, but not the Chinese coup or the Napoleonic finile. The FBI had essentially ignored Miles Conner and his cellmate in California, but it wouldn't ignore Billy Youngworth. Billy Youngworth was a career criminal alongside Miles Conner. Connor had a huge storage trailer full of stolen items, and his friend David Houghton had protected the trailer from the time Connor was arrested in 1989 until Houghton died in March of 1992.

At that time, Billy Youngworth became the custodian of the trailer, and that was how Youngworth became involved in the Gardner case. According to Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg, who would have a personal role in the events to come, the FBI contacted Youngworth in June 1997 as a part of the investigation. A couple weeks later, the FBI raided Youngworth's house and found illegal weapons and other things. Charges for those offenses, plus a charge for a search for a search for a house,

stolen car from 1996, prompted Youngworth to try to make a deal. By the summer of 1997, Miles Connor had less than three years left on his 10-year sentence, and he had been transferred to a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Youngworth persuaded the FBI to allow him to meet Connor at the prison to discuss the return of the Gardner items. After the meeting, Youngworth laid out his terms for facilitating the return of 11 of the stolen items. He wanted a reduced sentence on his current charges. He wanted full immunity from prosecution for the Gardner items. He wanted the $5 million reward, and he wanted Miles Conner released from prison. Naturally, the FBI and federal prosecutors needed proof that Youngworth had access to the stolen items. A couple weeks later,

on August 18, 1997, someone picked up Boston Herald reporter. Tom Mashberg in the middle of the night and drove him to a warehouse to see proof of the paintings. Like everything in the Gardner story, the nighttime errand has multiple versions. In Mashburg's 1998 article for Vanity Fair magazine, he wrote that a representative of Youngworth drove him, Mashburg, to a warehouse, an hour outside Boston. 23 years later, in the Netflix documentary This is a robbery about the Gardner heist, In the East, Mashburg said Youngworth himself drove Mashburg all the way to the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. However it happened, Mashberg said he went into a dark and dingy warehouse

and briefly viewed a painting which he believed was Rembrandt's Christ in the storm on the Sea of Galilee. But the quick look in a dark warehouse by a reporter who wasn't an art expert wasn't enough. Next, Youngworth provided photo negatives of some of the items and paint chips from one of the paintings. The photo negatives turned out to be blurry and useless. An expert in Chicago examined the paint chips and said they were authentic chips from a painting that could have been produced by a Dutch painter in the 1600s. But the color of the paint chips was not consistent with the colors in Christ in the storm on the Sea of Galilee. So, investigators could say that there was some bold.

out about the paint chips, even though Youngworth never specified which painting the paint chips came from. As it turned out, the color was consistent with the other Dutch masterpiece which was stolen, Jan Vermeer's The Concert. Youngworth's efforts were good enough for the leaders of the museum to keep talking, but not for the FBI or federal prosecutors. The two sides were working towards separate but connected goals. The museum wanted the artwork back, no matter what it took. The feds wanted to solve a criminal case and win a legal case. It would be extremely embarrassing for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office if the only way to close the case was to accept the return of the artwork, but allow the criminals to walk free and cash a $5 million

check. Prosecutors offered limited immunity for Youngworth and Connor, but not full immunity. Lawyers for Youngworth and Connor said it was full immunity or nothing, and it turned out to be nothing. The official deal was dead, but the decision makers at the museum started private negotiations with Billy Youngworth. From September 1997 to January 1998, they tried and failed to reach a deal for reasons which remain obscure. Billy Youngworth went to prison. Miles Connor was released from prison, and the artwork was never returned. A new millennium began. The 1900s, as the kids painfully call them today, were done, and the 2000s had arrived. By the turn of the millennium, the list of suspects who were still alive had plummeted. The Irish connection,

from Whitey Bulger to Brian McDevitt to Billy Youngworth and Miles Connor, had produced some tantalizing angles, but led nowhere. On the other side of the investigation, was the Mafia connection. Reading between the lines of the FBI's one and only official statement about the Gardner Heist, the FBI believed members of the Italian mob in Boston were at the heart of the crime. They may have included Miles Conner's friend Bobby Donati, but the problem was the suspect started dying hard and fast exactly one year after the robbery. Next time on Infamous America, the FBI follows two parallel tracks in its investigation.

While some agents looked into the Irish connection, others focused on a crew of the Italian mafia known as the Merlino gang. In the late 1990s, leads related to men who were connected to the Merlino crew raced to life. Alleged sightings of some of the paintings pop up from Boston to Philadelphia to Maine. The FBI eventually claims a partial victory, but leaves huge questions unanswered and mysteries unsolved. That's next week on Infamous America. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week for new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes.

Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This episode was researched and written by me, Chris Wimmer. It was produced by Joe Gera, original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.