FBI makes new push to solve biggest art theft in US history!!
(November 15, 2010)FBI makes new push to solve biggest art theft in US history
Twenty years after two thieves walked into a Boston museum and pulled off the biggest art theft in history, investigators are making a renewed effort to recover a haul valued at up to $500 million (£330 million).
The fate of the 13 paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet has remained a mystery and a topic of feverish speculation in the art world since they were stolen in the early hours of March 18, 1990, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Exploiting the museum’s light security, the thieves – dressed as police officers – bound and gagged the two inexperienced guards.
They then spent 81 minutes moving through the galleries at a leisurely pace, selectively removing paintings, none of which was attached to alarms.
They took five works by Degas and three by Rembrandt, cutting some of the largest pieces from their frames.
The most valuable picture stolen was Vermeer’s The Concert, one of only 36 known works by the Dutch master and valued at more than $250?million.
Speculation about the thieves’ identity has ranged from opportunistic local crooks to a notorious Boston crime lord and even IRA gun runners. The FBI has now resubmitted DNA samples for updated testing.
Encouraged by prosecutors’ insistence that their priority is to recover the paintings rather than catch the thieves, the museum is publicising a $5? million no-questions-asked reward, while the US attorney’s office is offering “negotiable” immunity from prosecution. The reward is being advertised on giant billboards flanking main routes into Boston.
A popular suspect in the crime is James “Whitey” Bulger, a Boston gang leader who has been a fugitive since 1994. Two Bulger associates who were jailed in 1987 for attempting to smuggle arms to the IRA reportedly claimed in the mid-1990s that they had access to the paintings. But one is now dead and the other has denied involvement in the theft.
Charles Hill, a British art theft investigator and former Scotland Yard detective, has claimed that the paintings are being held in the west of Ireland by a violent criminal gang with links to the IRA.
Mr Hill suspects the thief smuggled the paintings out of the US but the Irish gang did not know what to do with them.
However, Brian Kelly, a federal prosecutor who is leading the hunt for the paintings, said investigators have found no links with Bulger.
Another theory, that the paintings were stolen for a reclusive billionaire art collector, has also been downplayed.
"We haven't ruled anything out and the case is still very active " said an FBI spokesman on Tuesday. "Evidence at the crime scene has been resubmitted in light of the fact that DNA analysis has come a long way in 10 years."
Bizarrely, the intruders passed up some of the most valuable works, including a Rembrandt self-portrait which they removed from the wall but then ignored, leading detectives to suspect they might not have realised the value of what they were stealing.
"I picture the thieves waking up the next morning and looking in the papers and saying, 'We just pulled off the largest art theft in history,'" said Anthony Amore, the museum's security director.
Mr Amore said he was struck by the thieves' choices, including bothering to steal a Manet painting of man in a top hat.
"If we ever speak to the thieves, which is secondary, I would like to say, 'Why did you take that? Why did you pass by the Raphael?'" he said.
