Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The World's Largest Art Thief | Stephen Kurkjian

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

The World's Largest Art Thief | Stephen Kurkjian

said to them if anybody comes to the side door no matter who it is police fire no matter who it is you call the police and you summon the police to the door don't let anybody in and they said to him step away from the desk come out here from behind that desk and let's get a good look at you now rick uh has a has a decision to make because rick in front of him has the only alarm it's an emergency alarm that is inside the museum that he can press that can tell the outside world there's an emergency going on at the museum summon police now hey this is matt cox and i am i am with um stephen kirkjian and he is a retired reporter with the boston globe pretty sure that's right Austin Globe, correct?

Exactly. Yes, wrote a great book on the Gardner Museum Heist, and he's here to explain the whole thing to me. It's going to be great. So Matt is doing these podcasts, and as I understand, he has concentrated in the criminal world. This, too, is a case out of the criminal world. but it's something different. It's not money, it's not jewelry, it's art of the agents. And it stems from a theft that took place March 18th, 1990.

That is now 32 years ago. And it has remained a case that I've focused on. I began focusing on the mid-90s when I read. returned to the Globe from my prior assignment, which was in Washington. But I had been an investigative reporter all my life and had, in fact, had been a founding member of the Global Spotlight Team, which, if you haven't seen the movie Spotlight, you get a sense of what it does. And that team started in the early 70s and broke some of the biggest stories in Boston, including the criminal alliance that Whitey Bulger,

who is the most notorious criminal in Boston history, in the secret alliance he had with the FBI. That was a story that was broken by the Globe Spotlight Team in the late 80s. I wasn't a member of the team then, but when I came back from Washington, I joined the team up. I joined the team in 2002, and right after it had broken what I consider the greatest, most important journalism story, at least in Boston history, and that is the clergy abuse, was known as clergy abuse scandal, that the Boston Archdiocese was covering up, tolerating, probably encouraging abuse of children by priests within the archdiocese,

knowing about it, tolerating it, and covering up on it. That story, too, was broken by the Globe Spotlight Team in 2002. So I thought, you know, since the Globe Spotlight Team stands for something beyond breaking headlines, but something that's important about Boston, I would do a book on the Gardner Museum, because I consider it to have an important element to it about Boston. The museum was open in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner, and in it, she had a collection of artwork of the ages. At the time it opened in 1903,

it was considered the largest private collection of art in America. And she had collected that art with her husband, who was one of Boston's most well-to-do entrepreneurs from 1860 to 1880 when he passed away and she decided that she would put the art in the museum because what she had found in her travels with her husband, that art was defined as civilization. And while the United States, America was becoming a world power

in the late 1800s. It lacked what she saw was made these civilizations that lasted forever going back to the dynasties of China. And that was the art. And she wanted to

encourage an appreciation and inspire a experimentation in art here in America. So she built this museum, one of the nicest sections of Boston, close to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

And four stories of building. And the fourth floor was an administrative offices. But the other three floors were filled with galleries. And as I say, it was the richest collection of private collection of art. in America. And when it opened in 1903, she had two mandates. One is that was that people could go there for free. That had to change over the years. It's now a tidy sum, but it is still free of charge for students. And the second was that Boston school students, you know, the little ragamuffins, the eighth graders, should each class would be,

go through the museum and look at the museum and see the art and get up close to the art. And what she wanted to do was inspire Bostonians, if not Americans, to appreciate an experiment with art. And it worked. I know that personally, it worked because my father, he was a commercial artist, came to America as a refugee from a survivor of the Armenian genocide. And when he was, got into art school he would go over to the museum every day after school and study the masters of the

ages. Rembrandt Vermeer but when Mrs. Gardner died in early mid-20s her will had one provision in it that I think sowed the seeds for the theft that was to come

and that was that nothing could change in the galleries. The museum had to stay as it was at the time of her death. And so the museum became sort of a timepiece. And the trustees who took over running it didn't have really a purpose except to open the doors. They didn't have a purpose to raise money because they didn't have to raise money because the collection was complete.

But in not collecting and not going to the endowment and raising money from there, a well-to-do sponsors, the museum itself began to fray. It was paying their guards just about minimum wage, which was more than $4 to $3 or $4 an hour. And the museum began to fray. So by the mid-80s, the collection, there was no central air conditioning. and the security director whom they hired,

the first security director they hired in the early 80s told me that he would come in in the mornings and the paintings themselves, the canvases were filled with moisture. Now, that was hurting the paintings. So he went to the trustees and he said, you have to put in a central air conditioning. They did half a million dollars.

He went back to them the next year and said, you've got to put in a fire alarm system. They said, we don't have money. You know, we spent all our money last year on a central air. Well, he raised $50,000 to get a fire alarm system in. But they didn't get around to improving the quality or the professionalism of the guards. They continued to be retirees or kids who came in and were working at Baleo. over the minimum wage.

And that was certainly true with the two men who were on duty that night of March 18th, 1990. One of the two men had never worked a shift, maybe had worked a shift once before. He was called in that night because the regular fellow, the old timer who had worked to shift, had called in sick. So the second man who was on duty as ever, he was Rick, he too had never had much experience in protecting art and in security. He had a love of rock and roll. And he and a group of friends he roamed with in Brighton, Alston, Brighton area of Boston, they had started the band.

And they were doing okay. They were having a few ragers at their basement of their house, and they would invite in the college kids who lived in the neighborhood, and they had raised enough for the rent, or they would play at a couple of the CD bars in the neighborhood. And they were doing okay. And he loved the work at the museum, as he told me, because it allowed him to continue what he really wanted to do,

which was start a rock and roll band, and quit doing that work at midnight and rush over to the museum and take on his job of the night, which was his night's security job. The museum was closed. He said it was a perfect job for him. He often was stoned or drunk, he told me,

when he showed up at night. But it didn't matter because he was, nothing ever happened. no one ever came in no one never knocked at the door they you know they did the rounds they and there wasn't a little bit of security equipment at the museum but there was only

you know one alarm bell to the outside world if something was going on but he had never used it because nothing had ever happened well something happened on the night of March 18th 1990 you have to know look up in your calendar if you're not in Boston, you don't have to tell a Bostonian what March 17th is. It's St. Patrick's Day, and that is a holy holiday in Boston. The schools are closed.

There's a big parade in South Boston, and every cop, whether Boston police or state police, is on duty that day because they're making sure the kids are not getting too drunk, and they're paying attention to the parade that's marching up and down Broadway Street in South Boston. Well, I think the thieves who planned this theft had this night in, this was around 1 o'clock in the morning, there were two men dressed in police uniforms in what is thought to have been a smaller car, you know, with a rare, rear window that opened up and the car that was seen on that street at 1 a.m. 12.30, 1 a.m.

Who had seen it as a couple of kids who had left the party late and they were walking on palace roads, the side door, the side street, the museum sides on. And they saw these two guys dressed in a in police uniforms, including their hats. And they were sitting in a car about a hundred feet away from the side door of the museum. Well, the kids were drunk, so they didn't try to get any, to inquire about why two cops would be in a,

in a plain-closed car, not a, you know, not a Crown Vic as the detectives were in, and not a cruiser. So they walked away, and at 1 o'clock, 1, 10 in the morning, the car inched up closer to the side door

of the museum, and the two men get out, still dressed in their uniforms, and they rang the side doorbell of the museum. The bell at the side door of the museum. It was the employee's entrance. And again, Rick, the rock and roller,

who had worked there for about a year at the time, he had a closed circuit TV at the desk that he could see the two men in police uniforms and he asked hello what is it

what can I do for you and one of them said we're here to investigate a disturbance and they said and he said to them there's nothing going on everything is fine here and they said let us in

we're here to investigate a disturbance now Rick in his mind his mind is working fast now I interviewed him many times on this and he said all he could think of is that some kids had jumped over a back fence

that opened up into the museum's nursery where the shrubs and plants of the museum were stored, that some kids had jumped over that back fence and someone had seen them and called the police. He had no idea they weren't what they said they were, which were men in police uniforms. So he buzzed them in, he had to buzz him into through two doors and they came in to his security room which is right

out there in the open which is another a failing of the of the museum that they had an open security desk and they presented themselves to him and they said uh is there anybody else here and he said yes there's one other security guard he's doing the rounds called him down and he calls him down and then they look at him and they say to him and Rickett is telling me he wondered about them because they

kept on they had both had moustaches they kept on tressing their moustaches he now thinks that they were fake mustaches but he still did not believe that they were anything but what they were said which were police officers

and then they said to him he made two grievous servers this night one is to let them in because he was told his handbook said to them if anybody comes to the side door no matter who it is police fire no matter who it is you call the police and you summon the police to the door don't let anybody in

well he had now let them in and here they were in front of him saying and they say to him Rick you look familiar do we have a warrant out for you and Rick knew he had never been in any scrapes in Boston. So there would be no warrants on him. But he was somewhat suspicious that they were looking at him suspiciously. And he says, no, no, I'm clean. I've got nothing against. No warrants on

me. And they said to him, step away from the desk. Come out here from behind that desk and let's get a good look at you. Now, Rick has a decision to make because Rick in front of him has the only alarm, it's an emergency alarm that is inside the museum, that he can press, that can tell the outside world, it's a private detective agency that the museum had at its ready, that he could if he had pressed that button, it were told that private detective company, there's an emergency going on at the museum, summon police now. But he didn't. Why? I said to him, Rick, why did you step away? Why did you do follow what they were saying? Why did you follow and tell them to go outside where they were on the outside of the security desk?

Why did you remove yourself from hitting that alarm? And he said, well, I'll tell you the truth. And he points to his parking. I had a ticket that night to the Grateful Dead concert in Hartford, Connecticut. This is Sunday night, March 18, 1990. You can look it up. There were reviews on the museum. Grateful Dead was playing March 18th and March 19th, and Rick had 1990, Sunday night and Monday night in Hartford.

And Rick had tickets to the Sunday night conference. And Rick knew enough about the law that he knew. He said, I knew if these guys didn't believe me, if they kept believing with their mistaken belief that I was wanted for something, they were to lock me up. and I would not have gotten out of jail until Monday morning and I would have missed the Sunday night concert I had a ticket to. So I said, okay, and they said, at this point I still believe that they were thieves. They were, excuse me, police. So I stepped away, and the minute he stepped away, the second guard came into the room,

about the minute he stepped away, they pushed him up against the wall, put handcuffs on him without frisking him. He said, The first time he knew they weren't cops is when they didn't frisk him. They put handcuffs on him. The second guard came into the room. They did the same thing to him, and they brought them downstairs. The museum has a basement, and they put them in two separate places inside the museum, a basement. And this is around 120, and they spend all about 81 minutes inside.

They have an hour. They spend another hour inside the museum. museum, doing whatever they want to do. Most art thefts are grab and run. Bad guys go in, grab whatever's on the closest that they want to take, and run out before the alarm stop. But these guys had a whole hour, and they could have done whatever, they could have stayed in there for five hours. The next shift was not going to change until 6.30 in the morning. But they only spent another hour inside the museum, but they reeked tap. They stole 13 pieces in all, including two large Rembrandts, a smaller Rembrandt, in one Vermeer, a Degas, and a Monet, excuse me, a Manet,

that was stolen from a room that was, that no one can figure out how they got into that room. But there are 13 pieces in all. And the total value, if you could buy these on the open market now, is more than a billion dollars in art was stolen that night. And the artwork, as I say, is of the ages. That it's not known of beyond Boston. It's not as is held, is not is you know is not thought of as a major crime outside of Boston is a sin

is because this is artwork of the ages Rembrandt and Vermeer the only time Rembrandt painted the sea the ocean that's in a painting that's called

Christ in a storm of the sea of Galilee it shows Christ in a, you know, you can look it up or you can, it's shown in my book here, you can look it up and it's a stunning painting. Rembrandt didn't need to paint the sea again because it's so gripping of a painting. So it's 32 years later, the art, you know, the beauty of the art is remarkable the mystery behind this theft is even more remarkable in 32 years not a person has been arrested either a planner a holder a robber no one has been arrested not a single piece has been recovered all 13 pieces the some of smaller pieces there were four or five day

sketches that were taken. There was a finial, which is the top of a flagpole, that was taken. There is a little, called a vase, a beaker that was taken. Some of the art that was taken, again, this museum contained artwork of the ages. It contained what is thought of as the most important piece of art in America on the third floor. They didn't even go to the third floor. The bad guy stayed within the first and second floors of the museum. And we even know where they were inside the museum. One piece of equipment, security equipment, that the museum had put in place a few months before the theft was a motion detector, a piece of equipment. And it monitored through monitors that are

placed in the entries of each gallery it monitored where the bad guys were inside the museum so you see in that transcript it was able

to be they tried to steal the transcript that was printed out at the security desk the bad guys as they left 81 minutes after the theft they ripped off the transcript as they ripped off a videotape of them going through the museum they ripped that off but the transcript that piece of

equipment had a computer chip in it so the FBI which took over the case was able to replay where they were and and it shows the bad guy spent most of it all of their time inside the museum in the two rooms and the second floor. The Dutch room was where they stole the larger, the more important pieces and what is called the short gallery, which is just a room away. And they stole the five-day got prints,

but they also spent a lot of time in that room trying to get a trying to get a a Napoleonic band which hung in a frame above the ground. They hoisted themselves on a little chest of drawers. And they tried to get the banner off, open the frame to get the banner. They couldn't when they came down.

But they took, the banner was held by a flagpole, and they took the top of that flagpole, which is called the finial, let's say a golden eagle. You see them on some flagpoles, but they took that. When they got off of that chest of drawers, they came face-to-face with a Degas with a frame that had five Degas prints. They busted the frame, and they took the prints. Why did they do that? It's not the most important thing about those Degar prints is that they were taken. Nothing else.

There are finished products of those prints. but they showed horse racing scenes and I'm thinking that's it appealed to them. So the FBI took over the case in Boston and they have worked the case diligently and for the last 10, 15 years, the FBI has put out this advisory that whoever, if you have access to the paintings,

bring them in if you have access to any of the outward bring them in no questions asked you won't be asked you won't be asked to how you got them you won't be asked any questions and will drive you over to the museum and there's a $10 million reward waiting 10 million dollar award and no questions asked yet still the FBI says they still haven't had except for a piece of information that I and a couple of other people provided to them about a year ago that they felt was interesting. The FBI says they haven't had what they would call a proof of life sighting of any of the 13 pieces that were stolen. So I've thought about this.

I've thought about two things that I've spent time as an investigative reporter. But first, who would do it? Who would break into a museum using such wiles, yet in stealing it, cause such havoc? Which that's, I don't underuse that word, havoc. The, the, the, the, the, every frame was broken. The glass that was on the front of the frames, That was broken.

The two Rembrandts, the two large, six-foot-high Rembrandts, including the storm of the Sea of Galilee, they were cut out of their stretchers. Cut. You could see the shreds left on the sides of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, the, of the, excuse me, of the frames. If this, this, there comes to mind, we'll. who would order this? You know, there's always a thought of a Mr. Big. You know, if you've seen the Thomas Crown Affair, too,

Pierce Brosden, stales, a painting that he cannot live without. Well, was there some Mr. Big art thief who could not live without these paintings? That's a possibility. Is there a criminal who has money and through the drug world or the gun, you know, Gun, you know, weapons industry cannot live without this rembrandt and would have ordered up a crime like this, a theft like this. It's possible. But you would not have allowed them to treat the artwork the way they did, which such, like I said, happened. So as I did my reporting, I came upon as, and I, you know, talked to some people who had been.

involved with art thefts before here in Boston. And I came upon one guy named Miles Connor. A local, he too was a rocker roller. And he too knew about the garden museum. In fact, he said before he was locked up in the late 80s, he had cased the museum with another guy. And he and this other guy had planned other museum thefts.

And this other guy, as it turned out, was a member of the Boston Underworld. He was a pretty high up in one of the two gangs in the late 80s that were fighting for control of the Boston underworld. And this is how the Gardner theft story melds into the Boston crime story. because as he told me, Connor told me,

the only, unless you're going to, unless you have a, offense who can fence the art that you've stolen available to you,

the only reason to steal art like this is to get someone out of jail. Because the FBI, the landed gentry, civilized society will be so shocked by a theft of this nature of this size dimension, that the FBI will try to do a deal with you,

will reach out to you and engage you and do a deal with you and say, what do you want, we want to, what do we have to do to get your artwork back? And lo and behold, there was a guy who had been locked up in Boston by the FBI, by the feds, in late in late 89th named Vincent Ferrara. And Vincent Ferrar was a member of an organized crime gang looking to take care, take control of Boston's crime world in the late 80s. And his driver and one of his closer friends was a guy named Bobby Donati, Donati, Darnati, D-O-N-A-T-I. And Bobby Donati was this fellow who hung around with Miles Connor

and had gotten interested in art theft. And Miles sold him on the belief that if you are able to get your hands on treasured art, the FBI will do business with you. And that's what I came to learn. I talked to someone who was very close to Ferrar who was locked up in jail in the late 89. And Ferrar, this person who gave me

a long interview, week-long interview, and he said to me that Denati had gone to Ferraro on several occasions when Ferrar was in jail and said to him that he was going to pull off this theft and get this artwork and try to engage the FBI to let Ferrarra out of jail. Ferraris, the intermediary, on behalf of Ferraro, whom I interviewed, said, Farahas said, don't get, be involved. I don't want to have anything to do with you in getting involved with this theft. But it's the belief, in fact, the person who knows this case better than anyone, even better than the FBI, is the head of security for the museum, Anthony Amori.

And Amori wrote a letter to another prisoner whom I was in contact with about three or four years ago. And Amori says in the letter that without a doubt, he believes that Bobby Donati was responsible for the theft. And Bobby Donati had possession of the artwork after the theft. Did Bobby Donati reach out to the FBI? I don't know that. What happened to Bobby Donati is I think Bobby Donati tried to, when he wasn't able to, because Ferrar didn't want it to be bartered for his release, I think what happened was

Donati went to the underworld to try to fence the material and that's not a good that's not a good that was not a good choice for him he was killed brutally killed in mid-91 about a year and a half

about a year after the year and a half after the theft and whom did he reach out to during that 18 months? I don't know I do know one person he did. And that was a fellow whom I interviewed last year. He was a jeweler who worked in Boston and he knew Donati. And he gave me a long interview. And I presented him with a couple of other guys. I presented him to the FBI and Anthony Amory, the head of security of the museum. And I said to

And this guy sat down with Donati, Donati came and talked to him, and he brought in one of the pieces that had been stolen out of the museum. It was the finial. It was the top of the flagpole. And why did not, Donati bring it in to this guy, this jeweler, and to see if he could fence it. And the jewelist on the record said to me, and you can look up the globe's story. story in the clips back in 2012, November of 2021, just look up

Gardner Museum, Robert Donati, and Finil, F-I-N-I-A-L, and you'll see the name of the jeweler and what he told the FBI. We also gave them a property in a suburb of Boston that Donati's sister and ex-wife had been living in around the time before his death. And it was my sense that maybe Donati had dropped off material at that house.

And the FBI appreciated that information. They searched their house diligently, but they didn't find anything. But that's where the mystery remains. You know, I think from the family of Bobby Donati, they run hot and cold as to whether or not he could have been responsible for this theft. It did take some

artifice. It did take some wiles. And Bobby was they didn't think Bobby had the smarts to do it. But others who know Bobby, particularly Miles Connor said he did

and could have pulled this off. What's the secret? I think the secret goes through who killed Bobby Donati? I think the family of Donati's family, his sisters, his son have been asked many times to help. They want to know who killed their brother. And I think if they were taken into confidence by the FBI, that that information might hold the key to them. to get them to cooperate. And I've also thought about a social media campaign about this case,

which, you know, continue to work on it low these many years. Why? Well, you know, aren't as important to us. It's important to Boston. Boston considers itself a world-class city. We're no longer ruled by the law of the street. We're no longer ruled by Omerta. Matthew, Matt, you can tell your audience what Omerter is.

But it's no longer. They know. They know. It's no longer the operating code of principle here in Boston. You know, we survived the marathon bombing in 2013. Four, five people would kill a security guard and police officers. and just people who were at the marathon were killed. But so many lives were saved after that

because of the valiant effort of the first responders and the people in the emergency rooms. And Boston feels, Boston has grown so much as a city than what was the operating principle of Omerta in 1990. And I think what the museum should do and what the FBI should do is put up and the museum allows

the empty frames on the second floor where those paintings majestic paintings had once hung are the empty frames and I would put in front of those empty frames not the FBI and not

even the museum directors they have you know they've suffered valiantly the lost tragically. But I would put in front of those frames people who have street cred. Not bad guys. Not that. But, you know, let's take the Cardinal. Cardinal O'Malley has tremendous credibility in both the have world and the have not world here in Boston. And I would have him stand in front of those empty frames, and I would tell them, have him tell the story of why Mrs. Gardner hung those

paintings inside these galleries. It was for us. It was to make us more conscious, more aware, to elevate our artistic sense. She did it for us, and it's no reason that these paintings remain hidden. And they were stolen to get someone out of jail in that, that, that, that, that never happened. And that effort failed and they were stashed away. Does someone know where they, exactly where they are? I don't think so. I think if they did those, they wouldn't take advantage of the FBI offer of bring it forward,

get in with a good lawyer. You get your, bring in whatever the painting, look like now, they may be afraid, they may be, have a sign of the ages, warned from the ages that have passed by, but there still could be, recovery can be done. Artistic work can be done on them. And with that, we could get, those paintings would return onto the gallery walls. And we would fulfill the pledge that she gave to Boston, to make Boston.

You know, she brought art to Boston. And she did it for us. She did it for the upper class, and she did it for the have-noughts. And so get them back to Boston. This is important artwork. Yes, Netflix did a terrific job last year. four hours' worth of the mystery,

but they didn't come to a conclusion. And the conclusion, though, rests within Boston, within some of the neighborhoods of Boston. Even if you don't know, you have some pieces of information that could be valuable to the FBI, the museum, or if you don't, go to a lawyer. A lawyer will represent you well,

and he will represent you well, represent you and bring that information to the authorities. You'll be better off, the museum will be better off, all of Boston will be better off. So that's my, that's the story that I've worked on for several years now. And I still consider it Boston's last best secret. We remain to, you know, like I say,

You know, there's only two things that keep Boston from being a world-class city. One of them is getting Boston another World Series championship, but also is getting our paintings back into the Gardner Museum. And it's a challenge that it'll stay in front of us until they're paying. paintings are returned. You know, the summer that I was working on writing my book, Massathies,

was the summer of 2014, and it was the summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge. If you're too young, you might look it up. What your older brothers and sisters, if not your parents

did, was they dumped buckets of ice over their heads and then challenged put it and did so on Facebook and then challenged two or three of their friends to do likewise as well as contribute to the to the to the to the research for to fight ALS the Lou Gehrig's disease for for medical research to find a cure for ALS. that summer in July and August. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size.

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So social media can be a big catalyst in drawing people's attention. And I think something like that could be done here to get, arouse Boston, people who know something, to arouse them with a, you know, a presentation by the Cardinal or people of that stature, and have them challenge Boston, that we await to become a world class. city. And we can solve this by us, the citizenry of Boston. Forget the FBI. Forget the museum. Forget the Hebs. This is our city. The city of the Hebs and the Heavnots. We showed that in the response to the to the ice bucket challenge to the to the to the to the to the to the marathon bombing. that it's our responsibility calling on the conscience of Boston to return these paintings and

so the mystery needs to be solved if the story doesn't get told so be it I think the story I've told the story as well as I can in the Boston Globe in my book Master Thieves

but if the full story as to where they've been hidden all these years so be it. get, take availability, take avail yourself of the, of the $10 million award that the museum has put out there and the pledge that the FBI has made that no one gets prosecuted

if you tell them what you know and you, if not, show them with the paintings ahead. So that's my presentation, Matt. Thank you very much for me on. what about Bobby I interviewed him the mobster guy

kind of the ex-mobster guy Bobby Louise Louisie thank you what about the guy that spoke with him that said he knew they were buried under under a slab

in Florida or something I mean so Bobby Louisi had been a mobster had been a construction guy gotten involved in a cocaine ring here in Boston

in the late 90s had two men working for him one, a guy named Bobby Guarantee and Bobby Guarantee had, you know, been a low-level mobster here in Boston got prosecuted, went to jail for 20 years for multiple bank robberies,

got out in the early 90s and went out to near-do-well works and other criminal activity and one of the activities he bonded with Bobby Louise, whom you interviewed. And they had a drug trafficking operation

outside of Boston. And when they were at this house that they were pulled up at in the late 90s or 98, a story about the Gardner Museum another is there a big

break to happen came on TV and Bobby Guarantee said to to Louisiana hey do you know where I could fence stolen artwork and Louise he said no I don't know anything

about artwork that's not my gig why and he said well I may have some artwork hidden underneath a concrete slab underneath a house in Florida. So he told that to Louisiana in 98. So many,

Louise gets prosecuted for other crimes. He gets locked up in the early O's. And he tells the feds in the early O's what he's been told. and they go checking one door, check another, they find out Guarante is dead. And so they don't really follow up right then, but they go back to Guaranti, they go back to Louisiana, and Louise he says,

that's all he told me. Well, around the same time, Guarante's widow, about 2010, calls the FBI and says I think my husband may have had access to those paintings

separately 2010 so you know I'm still doing my reporting for the globe on it this never makes the light a day then oh really

what did he do with them he gave him to his best friend Bobby Gentile. Who's Bobby Gentile? He's a mobster. Low-level mobster lives in Hartford, outside of Hartford. Well, they go knock on Bobby Gentile's door, 2010. Bobby Gentile, I'll weave in Louise's story into this.

They knock on Gentile's story in 2010, and Gentile says to them, Oh, yeah, I'm interested in that case. And, yeah, but Gorenti never gave me any of those paintings. He and I were very interested in that case because of the $10 million, then $5 million reward. We said, you know, we knew some of these guys, bad guys. We thought maybe we could find the paintings. We could get $5 million award from you guys. And the Fed said, we don't believe you.

We'll give you a lie. I said, I'll take a lie detector test. Every time they gave him a lie detector test, he flunked it. So what they did is they send in an undercover agent to Bobby's house, Gentile's house, in Hartford. And the guy says to him, can you give me, do you have any stolen? Do you have any guns? I like to get some guns.

Gentile says to him, no, no, no. I don't deal in any guns, nothing, nothing. And then he sees some percassets on the counter there in Gentile's house. Can I take these? He says, yeah, I use them for my back. Well, they prosecuted Gentile for giving the Percocets. So they take Bobby, they get Bobby out of the house and they get a search warrant for the house. And they search the house, Gentile's house, and they go through it.

It's like a two-day search. And they don't find anything except down in the basement they find a piece of paper, like a piece of paper. like a piece of paper like this. Right. And on it is a list of all the stolen pieces, the 13 stolen pieces, and what they would have gotten out of the black market. So now they know a little bit more about Gentile,

and they say to him, where did you get this? He says, I didn't write that. It's written in French. How would I read? Somebody that we had Guarante and I went to said, and who knew art theft, he wrote that for us. Well, they stayed interested in Gentile. He got out of jail in 2014, and I went and visited him in his house.

He let me come and visited him. I interviewed him for five hours. He denied, denied, denied, ever having access to any of the paintings. You know, but at the end of it, he said to me, you know I've given you a lot of material here and it is in my book and he says what do I get out of this so I'm thinking to myself this in January February 2014 why is Bobby Gentile looking he knows the lawyer had his lawyer had let me come talk to him he knows I can't give him any money we can't

reporters can't pay for interviews right so I said to him, Bobby, I can't give you any money, but how about you and I do this? You have sworn on a stack of eyeballs and on a lie detector test that you didn't have access. You never saw any of the paintings. Let's say you're lying. Let's say you could tell me another story. How about this? I'll use you as a source. I'm a lawyer and I am a I'm a reporter. I'll source to what you tell me. But I need to know, no more bullshit.

I need to know, where did you get the paintings from? What paintings did you get? Where did you store them? What happened to them? Why are you saying that, you know, even on your deathbed, this is 2014, on his deathbed in 2012, in jail, he said, I don't know. there are no paintings. I've never had any painting. I said, why don't you tell me the truth?

And I will split whatever this book that I write with you, I'll split the proceeds with you. I'm thinking to myself, what am I, you know, giving him this line. This is a line of BS. Reporters don't work this way. Reporters don't set out a scheme like this. Tell me what you know, and I'll put it into the book. But instead of saying, no, no, no, I don't know anything. I've denied it.

And that's the truth. He puts his head down. And for 10 seconds, he keeps his head down. And I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, he's going to tell me the secret of the ages. And he puts, instead he puts his head up and he looks to me right with those dark eyes, those black eyes. Nope, I told you the truth. I know nothing, nothing. I don't know.

I never had it. Never had anything. So I said, I give him a hug, thank you for all the information you've given to me, and it's all in my book. And I go out to my car and I call his lawyer, the first thing, Ryan McGuigan, terrific lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut. I said, Ryan, terrific interview. Last three days I've been talked to him for five hours. But I think he's lying through his eye teeth, everything he's telling me. All these denials are lies.

and Ryan says, what are you talking about lying? What lies? What does he say? I say, well, you know, I've got it all on tape. But at the last point, he told me, shut off the tape recorder, and he offers me this deal.

What does he get out of this? And when I say we could write a book together, he won't do it. But he says, so you thought that if you split the proceeds of the law, book that he might go for it and tell you a different story. And I said, yeah, that's what he was, why, what else was he thinking about? This option I gave. He said, no, this is what he was thinking about, Steve. He was thinking about, I'm going to con this stupid reporter. And I'm going to say to

him, give me $10,000, come back next week, and we'll start working on the book. But he knows a reporter, you don't have $10,000, so he didn't give you that option. But he's a con artist, Steve. He doesn't have any access to the paintings. So there was one more secret that he, that I asked him about. And that was in the shed than in his backyard. I had been told that there was a shed, and there was a shed in the backyard of Bobby's house. And he gave me the keys to the shed. I opened up the lock, opened up the shed door. Like every shed we have,

except there's a false floor. It's not the shed's floor. It's another flooring. Why is there more other flooring? Because it was a false shed, a floor. Right. Bobby had taken the real sheds flooring out in Doug Ditchie.

there were absolute ditches underneath the floors and in those ditches he would put rubber bins and the FBI believes that Bobby had the paintings in those bins beneath the false floor but what had happened there had been a flood in the fall in the shed inside the shed in Bobby's backyard. And the, the, the, the, the flood flooding had got under the flooring into the, into the, into the, into the, into the rubber made bins and whatever were there had been ruined. So I said this to Bobby. I said, that's what happened. They were ruined in the bins.

And he said, no, no, no, I know that's what the FBI says. but it's not it was motors i had some stolen motors who knows but the secret ends with bobby and bobby died last year this time 2021 and i had interviewed him about april of last year of 2021 and i said to him i said bobby the reason why you don't want to tell the truth is because you did have the paintings and they did get ruined in the bins but you just don't want to be remembered you know he's an old an older man now. You don't want to be remembered this way as the man, as the man who blew the artwork of the ages. And he said, you know, it's a good theory, but it's not true. I never had the artwork. But, you know, that's where the FBI believes, and that's where the museum

believes that the artwork ended up, as in Bobby Louise, or Bobby Gentiles, false The shed, not underneath the shed. Both Louise, both Gentile and Guarantee were working. So I was doing a podcast with WBUR and The Globe, and a podcast called Last Scene, 10 episodes, about this case. And the last episode, the 10th episode, has about a dig that we did on a property that that guarantee had access to in Florida outside of Orlando and we did it in 2019, summer 2019

and we thought we had found it was an empty lot now. We had some, you know, we had gotten some what do they call the kind of surveying work done on the lot and the surveyer said there is something beneath this ground that is an anomaly, and we gave the report to the FBI, and the FBI thought it was significant enough that they commissioned a search, the Derek to go in and to dig it up, but nothing, nothing was found. So, you know, like I said,

We've tried every option of investigative, that investigative reporting and investigative work can bring. So there has to be another approach to unlock this secret. And that's why I call on Boston to use the conscience of Boston to get this artwork back. And there is a transcendent reason. And that's because we get a recovery of the greatest art theft in world history. And we get paintings back that Mrs. Gardner wanted on the walls, on her museum's walls for all of us to appreciate. Okay.

Well, thank you very much, Matt. Yeah, I appreciate that, you know, you got. you know, that you know it so well and you can, you know, articulate the entire story so concisely. I mean, it's, it's great to just sit here and listen to you. Well, it has a lot of dead ends and it has a lot of, you know, missed off. It's horrible. But when you think of the, all you have to do is Google Gardner Museum, Art Theft. and the museum itself has a page to the theft on its web page that will go through all the detail

and you'll see images of what was stolen and you'll see why this is the artwork of the ages And why at least, you know, this, this material does belong back on the walls of what of the Isabella's work out of this year. Well, you know, like it really all has to be together. Had they been broken apart and sold, which is possible. No, right. You know, like you, you know, whenever I talk to people, they're like, oh, they were probably sold. well it would have to be someone some filthy rich japanese person or an oligarchy or someone who's willing to put them all up and and all of them weren't valuable right there were some of things only four or five of them of a stratophic uh uh stratophoric in in value um but the if you look at the you know, if you look at the, like I said, the museum's web page on the works,

to Rembrandt's, you wouldn't have broken them out of their frames and cut them out of the frames as we did. No, that's damage. They did terrible damage to them. But they can be, and the museum is willing to pay $10 million to get them back, they can be restored. and for any lessening of value to the paintings themselves comes back the recovery and the recovery was occasioned,

was caused by Boston's, Boston's, conscience and generosity. And that remains to be seen. I challenge you, Boston. Do it for your grandkids. Do it for my grandkids. I appreciate you watching. I bet you've never seen me that quiet on an episode or on a on a on a for an

interview I've you know I don't know I don't know if I mentioned this before but like I've watched a couple of documentaries I've I remember studying this in in college I've watched two documentaries one of them is a is a multi-part series on Netflix about the Gardner Museum I read a book that was written by the FBI agent that that investigated the Gardner Heist, really, honestly, it's, it's something that comes up over and over again, and you probably even watch, if you've ever watched, like, Sneaky Pete, that series, they, at one of the episodes, or a couple, I think it's one or two of the episodes is, is based on the recovering of, um, of one of the paintings that was stolen in the Gardner

Museum. super interesting you should check out the Netflix the Netflix documentary series and I appreciate you guys watching do me a favor share the video subscribe hit the bell leave me a comment and I appreciate it

and I will see you around