Short: Isabella Art Theft

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, this is Steve. Before this show starts, I
just wanted to give everybody a little heads up. It
turns out we found out after we had recorded this
episode that we were having a bit of an issue
with a piece of our equipment, so the audio and
spots is a little off. Did the best we could

(00:21):
to fix it, but it's not perfect, so at times
might be a little rough. Bear with us through this.
We figured out what it is, we fixed it for
future episodes. But with that having been said, on with
the show thinking sideways manoation, it's a mystery short stories

(00:49):
of things we simply don't know the answers to. Hi there.
So today we're going to do something a little bit different.
As everybody knows normal, what a routine is is we'll
jump into a big story and that will take up,
you know, forty five minutes to an hour, and sometimes
we come across smaller stories which are really interesting but

(01:11):
they don't equate to a full show, and we'll we'll
sometimes pack those into one episode several a minute time,
like the Yes Yes. Unfortunately, sometimes there's episodes that just
don't lend themselves to that, and we've all I know,
the all three of us have come across stories where

(01:32):
we wanted to do that, but we couldn't find a
way to tighten other stuff. We'd like to have an
overarching theme. Yeah, and we decided that, what the heck,
We're not going to leave those stories behind. So occasionally
we're gonna do a short, a bonus episode. Yeah, and
that's what this is gonna be, is a little bonus episode.

(01:52):
And this is gonna be They're gonna be random. We're
not gonna try and do this on a regular basis,
but occasionally when we come across these, put them out
for you, and they'll be steeply discounted because there's so
much shorter. So let's see them on your internet bill
will cost very much at all. They will be ten
percent for the normal free price of all episodes. Yes,
that's perfect. So with that, let's go ahead and go

(02:16):
into this short story. So this whole story, I'm going
to start out and just preface this by saying it
sounds like it should be out of a movie. It
really does sound like a bad movie script right here.
We did actually two weeks ago, didn't we We talked
about a bad movie script. Yeah, and this cause it
could have been a good movie. I've seen good movies
that were based on this, this this kind of heist. Yeah, yeah,

(02:38):
there there are some. But but here is what happens.
We're going to talk about briefly. Here the Isabella Art
theft on the morning of March eighteenth, nine in Boston
and my morning you mean we hours, correct, Yes, the
wee hours of the morning, one twenty something in the
morning is about when this whole thing starts. Two people,

(03:02):
two men wearing police uniforms, walked up to the side
entrance of the Isabella Art Museum and they pressed the
buzzer to get in, and when the guard you know,
hit the the intercom, they said, police a lot of sin,
we heard about a disturbance in the courtyard. Okay, well
he let them in right there side unseen, and I

(03:26):
was I was asking about thinking about that. So they
didn't have a security camera, he couldn't actually see. Oh yeah,
well if they did. These guys were dressed up in
police uniforms, so they looked like cops. And I don't
imagine that they were high quality videos. This is the
camera probably wasn't that great? Yeah about that? The garden

(03:46):
so I could at least see that they appeared to,
because now in the museum there were two security guards.
One of them was working at the main desk and
the other one was somewhere else in the museum, presumably
doing his rounds whatever his job was at the moment
when they these guys get in, they go to the

(04:09):
main security desk and one of him says to the
security guard on duty, you look familiar, and I think
we have a warrant for your arrest. And they somehow
convince this guy to step out from behind his desk
where he has access to the only police wired alarm,

(04:30):
at which point they put him against a wall and
they handcuff him. The other security guard a couple of
minutes later, shows up and they put him in cuffs,
and one of these guys, one of these guards, says, well,
why are you arresting me? And this is where the
ball drops. One of the two men says the guys

(04:53):
dressed up his cops says, you're not being arrested. This
is a robbery, you idiot. Yeah, don't give us any
trouble and we won't hurt you. Um. And at that
point what they do is they take these cards down
to the basement. They duct taped them to some pipes.
They duct taped their mouths shut. They put a duct
tape all over their heads and left breathing holes for

(05:14):
their noses and that was it. Tore out all their
hair on the way taking that stuff off down. I
don't even want to think about that. So the guards
are completely disabled at this point. So the thieves have
pretty much all the time in the world. They've got
the run of the joint. They're absolutely right. They go

(05:37):
upstairs to the Dutch Room, which is named such because
it's full of paintings by Dutch painters, and they they
immediately go up to a Rembrandt painting, at which point
and an alarm actually goes off. Now this alarm evidently
was only inside of the museum because all they had

(05:57):
to do was smash it and it went off and
nobody is alerted. Not the most system to know. At
this point, these guys basically have the run of this
whole museum. For the reports are eighty one minutes, an
hour and twenty minutes. They're in there doing whatever they
want to do. Well, they weren't exactly that's smart about

(06:19):
what they did because the first thing they did was
go up to a Rembrandt painting, uh, and this is
Rembrandt's self portrait from sixty nine, And they yanked the
painting off the wall and then they can't figure out
how to get it out of the frame because it's wood.
Because it's wood. Yeah, Rembrandt painted that on wood on canvas.

(06:39):
That's why you don't want to even try to go
out of the frame. You know, they should have they
should have thought about that about you know, just meane
something like that. You don't want to try to mess
with it in anyway at all because those things are
very delicate and old and I and I have a
serious issue with this whole thing that I'll talk about
later that goes along at basically, what these guys do

(07:01):
is from that point forward they throw that painting on
the floor because they relaze they can't get did. And
then they start going through the museum and they start,
I kid you not, cutting canvases out of their frames
so they can roll them. It's good for the painting,

(07:22):
which is terrible because whenever that gets reremounted, you have
now just lost so much of the painting. Well, it's
gonna crack and in the viewing area is gone. Because
if you think about it, if a painting is on
a frame, if the let's just say it's a one
by one that is the frame. Well, now you've got
an inch of it rolled across the side and an

(07:44):
inch across the back to staple it in place. Plus
whatever the actual frame may cover the the exterior frame.
You've just lost inches beautiful, beautiful piece of work. Yeah,
I've lost all that real estate tape those things up.
You don't attack in each corner. It's not it's not
a movie poster. Yeah, that's that's not how it works. So,

(08:08):
like I said, they were focusing on a lot of
canvas works at this point, and they started running through
the place. They stole a total of thirteen pieces of art.
These are things that are ranging from there's Rembrand, Mr
uh Man A and thega. There was sketches that were
done by him. Evidently there was five sketches by him

(08:31):
that they took. They are like really valuable. Well, you know,
the value on that kind of stuff is a little
weird because their sketches and he would I mean it's
literally he was sketching the painting ahead of time, so
you can see images of them and they you can
see the variances, and he was kind of figuring it out.
But there is a lot of value in watching someone

(08:52):
like that work. Uh. The other things they took is
there was an artifact that was from the Shang dynasty
and a fine old it belonged on a Napoleonic flag.
I mean, it's it's really it's just kind of haphazard
what they took. It would have been nice if they
because these guys are probably just criminals, you know, And

(09:15):
and it would have been nice that they've gotten somebody
who knew what he was doing. That's the thing that
they passed up some more valuable stuff, number one, a
lot of more valuable stuff. And if they've gotten a
little expert help or at least advice, they could have
maybe done less damage to the artwork themselves. And then
then I don't know how much they damaged it because
they've never been seen again obviously, of course, but it
would have been nice. Sooner or later, they're probably going

(09:37):
to show up. Unless these guys were complete morons and
they just left him rolled up in their basements somewhere
that eventually flooded. I don't even want to think about that.
That makes me so sad. Yeah, I mean, I don't
I don't want to think about that. The total theft,
the value of that total theft, and I believe this
is today's number or today's dollars, is five hundred million dollars.

(10:00):
Uh So it is the largest private theft or largest
robbery of private property recorded. Now the gallery itself, what
they've done is to kind of pay homage to it
and waiting for those species to come back. They've got
some empty frames that are hanging, so they they're not

(10:20):
just ignoring that this happened. They're kind of saying, hey,
we know these were stolen and everybody else should know.
I think is what their their idea is behind that.
But yeah, it's just it's really really weird. The museum
itself put out a reward of five million dollars for
information leading to the recovery of these pieces of work,

(10:41):
which is still available today. It is, and at the time,
the FBI hunted down a number of leads, but they
didn't get any results and nothing ever came of that.
That was We're twenty four years later and the FBI
obstensible he still has squat. They say that they have suspects,

(11:05):
and they used the phrase significant suspects, but they will
say who they are. Um, there's there's talk according to
some of the theories that have seen that say that
the art was moved from Boston to Connecticut and Philadelphia
and this is from the FBI. This is what they

(11:27):
think happened. But then they don't know where it went
from there. Uh and and they don't know anything after that.
They say that they have some DNA and that DNA
is Remember I said they duct tape the guards. They
say they have DNA off the duct tape, but they
don't say anything else. In other words, they said, oh,
we have something, We're not going to tell you what

(11:47):
it is. I think about it is if they were
wearing gloves when they duct tape the guards. If they were,
but if they weren't wearing gloves, and wouldn't their fingerprints
be all over that duct tape? Well that depends, you know.
I mean, if I touch a piece of duct tape
and I pulled my finger away and then the duct
tape doesn't get stuck to something else, yes, I should

(12:07):
leave a fingerprint. But if I leave my fingerprint and
then that duct tape gets ruled around a guard's head
and mashed into the other side of another piece of
duct tape. Yeah, I imagine that it's going to be unusable. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's conceivable that they did that. I mean,
so if I'm holding just the end of it and
then I wrap it around his head and bring it
back over the top of the piece that I was
holding and slot it down, that's going to destroy my fingerprints. Well,

(12:30):
these guys bright enough to be there. I have no idea.
I think that there would have had cloves on it.
Well another I mean the other thing that we you know,
it's it's not like, oh, we have the fingerprints, therefore
we obviously like know who it was because there's not
actually like a record, like you know, if somebody if
I committed a crime and like they had my fingerprints,
they still wouldn't be able to find me because my

(12:50):
fingerprints don't exist in right, So you know, you have
to there's so many things. Their DNA would have to
be in a database somewhere, their fingerprints would have to
be in a database one. But these guys are the
suspects that they have in this crime. We're all well
known criminals who had been arrested in the past. Correct, Well,
and we're about to get there, and that's not exactly right.

(13:12):
And that's that's the hard part about this is there's
there's kind of two theories that I can find of
potential of where the art might have gone, but we're
not sure. There is one that it says that this was,
if not run by the mob, mob organized and so
mobsters were doing it. And yeah, that's right, it's the

(13:33):
freaking mob again. Yes, it's the mob again. There is
a guy whose name is Robert Garante. Would say that
he died in two thousand four, but he's been linked
as kind of the central figure in the investigation for this,
and he was known to be an organized crime and

(13:55):
he seems to be connected to just about every other
mob abster that gets linked to this story. But of
course he died, so they can't question him, they can't
do anything to him. But his widows says that she
remembers him giving at least one painting to somebody back
in two thousand and three, and in two thousand and

(14:16):
three there was some mention that maybe they had surfaced,
but she when she looked at all of the paintings,
the photos of him. She's like, no, that doesn't look
like anything that he gave this guy. So he could
have given somebody something that he bought an Ikea for
all she knows. Yeah. You know the other thing about
it is we're not on theories yet. Well, I mean

(14:36):
we kind of are, because that's one theory is that
you know, this guy is is the one who organized
the whole thing. Um, I mean, there's there's another theory,
another lead that you'll find out there that says that
the paintings were sent overseas and so they went from
here to Italy to France and this was all orchestrated

(14:59):
by kind of a shady art dealer in New York
for some figure of like twenty five million dollars. But
none of that has ever been substantiated because of course
we haven't found any of them. So they're gone. And
that's I mean that that really is. This is not
a normal story. That is. The theories is that this

(15:19):
guy did it, and he gave it to the mob,
and the mob sold them underground somewhere, or somebody shipped
them overseas, and they're they're in both cases, they're in
somebody's private collection hanging in their living room or their office.
It could have been like a actually commissioned by some
mobster back from the Old Country who's had a huge

(15:40):
villa on the Mediterranean. It's like, and I want some art,
and so he commissioned these guys to go nab some
of these particular worst of art. But it doesn't sound
like they knew what they were after. Again, it was
haphazard what they grabbed, random stuff. But I mean that's
where the story ends. And personally, this is one of
those stories that really really makes me mad, not because

(16:00):
I don't have good theories for it, but because it
makes me mad when people steal old art, because old
art is fantastic, even if you're not into art. I'm
into art. I think it's really great, but some people are.
But if you go to a museum and you look
at those giant paintings and you can see what somebody did,
there's a reason that museums are quiet spaces because usually

(16:23):
people are staring at it in awe. So I feel like,
you know, they've they've not just stolen it from the museum,
they've stolen it from everybody. Absolutely. They're they're like looters,
you know, people who loot archaeological sites. They're stealing our heritage,
so that's a good reason to be so I I
really I classify these guys as a one jerks, and
I really hope the mob's not listening. Is I don't

(16:44):
want to get in trouble for saying that, But the
moms a one jerks. No, I mean I think that
that's fair. It's you know, it's part of human history,
it's part of our progression, and it's I'm right there
with you. I just get so. I think that's so.
Is that our lady to you? This was committed by
a couple of I don't know. That's the thing is that,
I mean, this is what the f I released. But

(17:06):
you know, they could they could be hedging their bets,
or they could just be this is a cold case.
And let's just say it was a mob. And what
is the Lincoln, this dude that we haven't seen from
forever because he's been dead for ten years and I
don't know, no idea. Apparently every year they have a
press conference on the anniversary of it, and they they
reiterate that there's a five million dollar reward, and every

(17:27):
year they do this and so far, you think somebody
would have come forward, somebody's cleaning lady or somebody, you know,
that's what that's what leads me to think that they
actually succeeded. I mean, some people think they were stashed
away somewhere. Um, I think they might actually have succeeded
in getting them overseas into the hands of some private
collector who has him hanging and as his mansion. Now,

(17:47):
so this guy is not incentivized by five million bucks,
you know more than that. Yeah, if they were squirreled
away somewhere in a storage unit or somebody's basement, and
obviously you know, they probably would have surfaced. And that
because the statute of limitations on the crime has expired.
It has so if you come forward with those patents,
they can't prosecute you for it. You just hand them

(18:09):
over and get five million bucks walk away scot free. Absolutely,
And so that's why I suspect that they're not in
the US anymore, or if they're in the US, they're
in the hands of a private collector. Quite likely, that's
what I would guess. Well, I wanna, I wanna before
I forget send out a big, a big thank you
to Mike who sent this story to us. I really,
I really got into it and it obviously I liked

(18:31):
it enough that it's our first mini episode. UH. If
you want to hear more from us, you can always
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podcast dot com. Of course, links for the story will
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(18:52):
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(19:13):
on Twitter Thinking Sideways take the g off of it.
We changed that up so it's a little awesome it um.
And of course, if you've got thoughts on this story,
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ideas with us, feel free to send us an email.
The email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Um.
And also, if you have the paintings or you know

(19:35):
where they're at, I'll give you a million bucks. Okay,
million bucks, that sounds good to me, and with that,
we're gonna we're gonna shut this one down. So thanks
a lot, ladies and gentlemen. We'll talk to you soon. Hi, guys,