Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Next Time and Mind over Murder.
As we continue are fascinating conversation. I'm a s writer,
one time reporter from the Boston Globe. I am now
author of the Brother of a Murder Victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: My name is Kristin Dilly. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
I'm Kristin Dilly, and I'm Bill Thomas as well. And
Astor was out with my partner Crime Master Thieves, the
Boston gangsters who pulled off the world's greatest art heist,
and we are talking about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
art heist. Steve, thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3: Pleasure to be.
Speaker 1: We were laughing because the two of you immediately started
getting into a fascinating conversation and I was like time out.
Speaker 2: We got hit the record.
Speaker 3: But because I do tend to carry on regarding this case.
Speaker 1: And Kristen is I think a new fan because I
read the book several years ago. When you and I
first met, Kristin had just bought it and read it
and loved it and said, we got to get this
guy on my nover Murder.
Speaker 3: I know he'll sit up like a little puppy I
do on this case.
Speaker 2: I love the fact that almost as soon as I
had said, oh, this is a fascinating book, Bill immediately
was like, I know that guy. We're going to get
him on the podcast, like immediately within seconds.
Speaker 3: Practically he coming from the North Shore and be coming
from Dochester, which is a neighborhood of Boston. We will
ate real well.
Speaker 2: Steve, start by telling us a little bit about your
career as a journalist in Boston. I guess I should
say your storied career as a journalist in Boston, because
this is a heck of a resume you've got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had been in a reporter for the Washington
Globe for forty years and late in my career, and
i'd been in Washington head of the Globes Political Bureau,
which is a terrific one. Still in Washington. Came back
to Boston around ninety two and got interested in this case,
which had broken two years before. But while I was
in Washington, And what it really was is just two
men had tricked their way into the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum,
which at the time was fraying. It had recently got
a new director, and she was committed, younger person, and
she was committed to improving it and getting it back
into the limelight of Boston's cultural scene. And she succeeded,
except she had this weight on her that happened about
six months after she took over as director. She was
improving so many other places, but hadn't attended to the security.
And the security at the time was they had put
in a few improved bence as far as equipment, but
they hadn't really looked at the quality of their of
their guards or night watchmen. And as I learned, anyone
who is in the museum business told me that the
most sensitive time, the most vulnerable time, is at night.
If someone is to pluck something off of the wall
during the day, sooner or later a museum, a visitor,
or a member of the security staff is going to
realize that and is going to everything's going to lock down.
But at night you're at the whim of As it
turned out, in nineteen ninety two men who had very
little interest in being professional security that by the fact
both were in music. And the one man who had
total responsibility was the man who was at the desk.
And at the time of around one o'clock in the
morning on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety, two men addressed as
police officers came to the side door employees entrance and
rang the bell. And the man behind the security desk,
his interest in life was to a rock and roll bed.
He had started two years before, and he loved the
job because it allowed him to be stoned or drunk
after his gig was over, to go over to the
museum and just take it easy. There's nothing going on.
Nothing ever happened except this night when two men dressed
in police uniforms are announcing themselves Boston Police and we're
here to investigate a disturbance and the night watchman. This
is in a few hours after our holy holiday of
Saint Patrick's Day, and on Saint Patrick's Day is a
big holiday, and every police officer who works at Boston
or State Police or even the colleges is in uniform
on duty, working overtime. And I think they chose that
time to hit the museum, because they knew that if
any police officer was working the detail that night, they
were going to be on over. They were going to
be on overtime, and they may not have been as
alert and on their toes as they would have been
another day, but be those may They say, we're here
to investigate a disturbance. Now, the night watchmen behind the desk.
He knew there was no disturbance going on at the museum.
He had done the first tour, which he had lasted
about forty five minutes. He had walked through the three
floors of galleries, he had tested all the windows and
got his key locks all processed, and nothing was going on.
So when the two men announcing themselves at the side
doors say they're here investigated disturbance, he thought maybe some
kids had jumped over the back gate. And he opens
up and so he makes two very stupid mistakes, and
this is one of them his handbooks, and he's been
told you never let anybody in. To his defense, I
had talked I talked to him for about ten years
after I got on the story, and he told me
sometimes trustees would come in or the director would come
in after midnight and he would let her in. These
are police officers, but his handbook says no one, not
even police officers, are to be allowed in. If they're
ringing the doorbell, you call the police station and you
tell them there's police at the door, and they'll let
them send a car, but do not let anybody in.
But he makes this fatal arra, unfortunate error, and he
rings them in and they come in and the first
thing they say to him is who else is here?
And he says, only one another night watchman. He's going
to tour of the galleries. And they said call him down,
and he does. He has a two way radio. Calls
him down. But before he comes down, they say he's
sitting behind a desk. They say to him, you look
familiar to us. Are you wanted for anything yourself? Do
we have a Have you not shown up but failed
to show up to court for something? And he says no,
I've got no one's looking for me, and they say,
stand away, come around that counter and come in front
of us so we can get a good look at you.
Rick says to them the second and he acknowledged me
when I talked to him. Because if he steps away
from that behind that desk. There's only one way he
can summon the outside world to the if these guys
are the robbers, and that's an alarm button right in
front of him, right where his stomach is, inside the
security desk. But he says, I knew what I was doing,
and I walked away and I went out front. And
as he walks out front to show them who he is,
in fact, he gives him his license. There's his driver's license.
The second guard comes into the room. After the second
guard comes into the room, they push Herrick up against
the wall, frisk him and don't frisk him, put handcuffs
on him. And at that moment, Rick says, I knew
even before they said to him this is a robbery.
Rick said, I knew that they were. And I said,
why did you step away from the war one button?
The museum had one emergency button to the outside. Why
and you knew you were doing that? Why would you
do that? And he tapped his breast pocket and he says,
because I had a ticket for that night's performance in Hertford,
Connecticut of The Grateful Dead. And Rick was a sort
of a very straightforward, but I think smarter than you
smarter than everybody else, had an attitude of a wise guy,
not a criminal, but just smarter than everybody else. And
Rick wanted to see Grateful Dead was his favorite group.
He had a ticket and he was going to drive
an hour and a half to Hartford that night or
later that night the next night. And he did, even
though in the interim they had pulled off the largest
theft in world history. We're talking thirteen pieces. Some of
the pieces are less than memorable. Of them, four of
them two masterpieces by the by Rembrant, including his only
seascape and a vermire. They're only thirty five vermires. He's
said to be the most prolific great master Vermire, and
in all that one vermire, called the Concert, is said
to be worth more than three to four hundred million
million dollars. The Rembrandt is stunning because it's the only
seascape Rembrandt ever and if you look, you see it.
It can be easily googled to be seen. It's donning,
it is it's Christ. It's a New Testament image Christ
and the Storms of the Sea Galilee, and it shows
Christ in the in its skiff with all of his
disciples around him, I say the music. Rembrandt loved how
it came out so well. He painted himself the So
it's a stunning painting. But then there are some pieces
that no one They stole another piece I believed at
the time people felt it was a Rembrandt too. It
was done by a disciple of Ussia, an understudy of Rembrandts.
But they stole a top of a flagpole. They could
not get a They went to another room and they
tried to get a banner out of its glass encasement,
and it was held on a Napoleonic banner Napoleon. This
banner was carried by Napoleon's forces into Russia, so truly
a historic piece. They couldn't get it out of its
they couldn't get it out of its encasement. So they
took the top of that banner, and that's called a finial,
and it's a golden gilded eagle. And the museum has
first had a million, then five million, now a ten
million dollar offered in the ensuing years, now thirty four
years later. And understand, the men spent about anyone minutes
more than an hour, hour and twenty minutes inside the museum.
They could have spent the entire night there. They tied
the two night watchmen up, put them down in the basement,
left them there, and then ransacked, totally ransacked the museum.
They left that The room where they stole they did
the most of their master's pieces from, was the Dutch
Room on the second floor of the museum, and they
stole I think five or six, seven seven pieces out
of that room. But it's donning. They left the room
in shambles, and that gave me an inkling as to
who did this. I could not believe, and we were
still looking for collectors who would try to sell this
to the highest bidder. No way, no. When I looked
at the photographs of the Dutch room where the big
pieces were stolen, every frame is broken, Every class in
that fronts the frames is smash and the two large
Rembrandts were cut with box cutters out of their stretches.
You don't do that if you're planning to resell there.
So I quickly gave up this belief that there was
a art collector who could not live without a rembrand
or Overmere and commissioned these goons to pull off this stuff.
I just I never bought that, and so as a result,
I started my reporting and I got on the story
from in ninety seven, and in two thousand and four
I was able to convince the museum to allow me
to see what they had come up with. The FBI
took over the case immediately and worked diligently and although
not very creatively on it, and they chased every lead,
every phone call. There's a ten million dollar reward. In
the last decade, the US Attorneys session of US attorneys
who head the Boston office for the Justice Department to
US Attorney's office here in Boston, a succession of them,
and said, we won't prosecute you. If you bring in
the masterpieces. We won't prosecute you. We'll drive you to
the museum and there's a ten million dollars reward waiting
for you. By the time I was really into my reporting,
I retired from The Globe in two thousand and eight
and started my work on master thieves. I was convinced
that to find who did this, it was so long
later after the theft, and the FBI was not getting
good tips on the whereabouts of the material. So I said,
there's another way of trying to solve this, and that's
calling on Boston, in its generosity, in its sense of
a new Boston, to try to reach out to those
people who may know something, to say, help the FBI,
help the museum get this material back. We survived the
Marathon bombing in twenty thirteen, killed five p that event,
and I think more than a dozen amputees. Yet we
came back from that, and that sense of resurgence, that
sense making our shelves hole, should be applied to this case,
because no world class city allows these masterpieces to be
missing for so long without outreaching to the public saying
these paintings belonged to the museum, They belonged to the public.
Missus Gardner put them on the walls for us and
our grandchildren get them back. You don't know if your
grand daughter could be the next Michelangelo bring them back
and had let her, like all of us, enjoy these masterpieces.
So I made it into a little bit, a little
bit of a tale of good and evil in hopes
of doing the right thing and getting the artwork back
to Boston.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was most striking to me, Steve,
when you and I met several years ago, was you
were kind enough to take me on a private tour
of the gardener I'd read about and seen photographs of
the missing paintings and artwork, the paintings, drawings, the finial,
but I was so shocked to actually walk into those
rooms with you and the empty frames are still sitting
there on the wall. Is this part of missus Gardner's
will that we have to leave the legacy?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Her will. Her will required she passed in the
mid twenties, and her will required that the museum stay
as it were, that the galleries couldn't change, that it
had to stay as it were at the time of
her death. As a result, the museum doesn't change the
same notepads and it depends that are on her desk.
They are still there in the same place. It was determined.
The will is probated every year they trustees activities are
viewed and regarded or considered in light of what her
will said. So it was determined that even though the
paintings weren't there, that nothing could be on those center places,
those places of centerpiece in the Dutch room, which is
on the second floor, and I a kin it when
you walk into the room from its main entrance, as
you walk up the steps from the first floor. You
walk right into the room and you see the two
empty frames. One was the Storm of the Sea Galilee,
and within twenty feet is the empty frame of the Vermeire.
No indication that it was the Vermire. Maybe there's a
little sign of little notepad there. And there are the masterpieces,
the master works in emptiness. I akin it to walking
into her awake, being the first person to walk into
a wake. When you watch something important to you and
important to the community, it's just it's stunning, how heavy
the feeling here. You are in a place of great magistry,
of great accomplishment. And she did it for us. That's
why she and her husband wanted to build a museum.
She wanted Boston in America, which was becoming a world
power in the late eight nineteenth century. She wanted us
to be able to be inspired by art, and she
had been. She came from a both her she and
her husband were Brahmins. They were well born people. They
knew art, and she during her life with Jack Gardner,
who was one of our wealthier entrepreneurs here in Massachusetts,
they traveled the world over to collect this art, and
after he died twenty thirty years before she did. She
hired Bernard Berenson, who was a famous collector or art historian,
and he traveled the world over for her as she
put together plans and then built the museum, which opened
in nineteen oh three.
Speaker 2: She's a very cool lady.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, I like to see hers. Mydonna and Julia
Child was a Brahman who held usself that way.
Speaker 2: In a new biography just came out on her. Because
I had just read your book, I was like, I
want to learn more about this lady.
Speaker 3: So I'm glad you do. Yeah, read that book. Read
that there's shovel biographies on her, but I think I
was told that this latest one is a terrific work.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
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Speaker 2: But I'm really curious about this idea that she wanted
the museum to remain. On the one hand, why you
would want your museum to stay the exact same way
as it was when you designed it, because I get that.
But at the same time, she had to have thought
at some point or another that the museum's going to
need upgrades over time, especially if you're going to have
lots of visitors to come in and see it. Things
are going to change. Why didn't she make provisions for
that in her will that I don't want the art
to change, but you can upgrade the restrooms or the
fire suppression system or oh, I don't know, the security system.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I think that was presumed. Now
now I'm going to speculate on this. I don't know this.
The museum had begun to let me call it Frey,
And the reason why was that the trustees who took
after her death. The trustees who took over the steering,
the operation, the guidance of the museum, they didn't really
have the need to raise money. There wasn't a sense
that we have to buy the latest in order to
keep the museum modern. She did not want a modern museum.
She had already purchased and was already displaying classics of
all ages. And there's a and there. To give you
an example, there is a large statue in front of
the Boston Public Library, and it has the names of
eight artists of the ages Donatello Rembrandt. Six of those
eight artists have their works on display at the Isabella
Store Gardens. She and her husband paid for this work
to be on display to Boston because she wanted us
to experience it. She wanted she as she traveled the
world over in the late nineteenth century, she got a
transcendent belief that art indoors everything else passes art indoors,
and she wanted us to be inspired by art. I
like to say that the one person who I know
was proof of that is my father. My father came
to the came to Boston in the early nineteen twenties.
He was a refugee from the Armenian genocide. He was
raised and went to high school in the twenties, and
they started he could draw, and they sent him off
to art school, and he became a very successful portrait
artist and was and raised his family on that and
was pretty well loomed as a portrait artist. And after
he told me, after I started my work on this case,
he said to me, Stephen, I would leave school. He
went to art school for two years, and I would
walk over to the museum. It was free, that's what
she mandated, free of charge, even for the earliest days.
But by the time he was there, the students were
still free of charge. He said, I could go in
and look at the paint I could. It was my
own little workshop. You look so close at who the painting,
who the painter was, study his work, and see their
artwork so close. He said. It was just a terrificy.
And that's what it was. But the trustees didn't have
to raise money. When they didn't have to raise money,
the museum began to fray, and the security director told
me who was in charge the night of the theft.
He later said to me, they just were not doing
enough to modernize the museumant. Not many were. Not many
museums were, but the Garden Museum got caught in that omission.
And after the theft at the Gardener, every museum in
the country put in reforms for their security system. Unfortunately
as too later for the museum.
Speaker 1: As I see it, it was a wake up call
for museums around the country and even private collectors who
owned beautiful pieces of art that they needed to do
a lot more to protect themselves from this kind of theft.
Speaker 3: The other grand theme that I came up with is
I was dealing with a man in the mid nineteen eighties.
There was a theft of Pressionists from a smaller museum
in Paris. They solved it about eight years later, and
I was in touch with the head of their artsquad
and I said to him, his name is in the book.
I said the detective, what are we missing here? How
come you? And the theft was about ten years old
that I said, you solved yours in eight years. We're
at ten years unsolved. Now, how are you able to
solve this and we're not able to solve ours? And
he's said, there's one big difference your people. Art here
in France is considered the public's position. You don't have that,
you don't have people feeling that they took it from me.
And he said, that's how we got ours. We got
tips from the public all the time. It never stopped.
But I don't think we the bad guys who know
something see that as their responsibility or their obligation to
help in this stuff. It's the old world, and it's
difficult to me to convey this, but I'll say the
words Boston in nineteen ninety when this stuff took place,
it still had major influence of organized crime. The snitches
get stitches. That was the code of silence, that was
an operating credo in many neighborhoods of Boston. That's gone.
That's no longer Boston. That is no Boston is playing
by the rules. There's no big organized crime hold controlling
of bedding or whatever. That's all gone. But I still
think there are people who know things about where this
artwork was taken, if it wasn't destroyed. And let's I
don't know that somebody people still know of who knew what,
and they're still refusing to pick up the phone and
give a tip, to give the information to the museum.
Or the FBI because they feel that they will be
breaking the code the old World cup, give me a break.
The code that prevails is that this is being denied
our citizens, our people, our grand children. In that sense,
that imperative needs to be stated and restated. I've even
reached out to the card O'Malley, who was a grand
great man. We've recovered from the clergy abuse scandal of
the twenty years ago that The Boston Glow wrote about
and Spotlight Team wrote about because of Cardinal O'Malley was
put in place. But he could get in front of
these empty frames which are so evocative, and say we
have to bring these paintings back to Boston. Each of
us has an obligation to do what we can to
get them back.
Speaker 1: So are any of the people that would be in
a position to know, all these years later, and we
are talking about a lot of years of lapsing since
nineteen ninety, are any of them still alive and in
a position to steer law enforcement to where these paintings
might be found, either some of them or all of them.
Speaker 3: Let me see if I can answer that I believe
they are. I believe, but it's not I know where
I know where they hit them, where they hit some.
I think what they know is that my uncle, my
late brother in law, or the guy who I used
to run bets for he knew something about this. It's
those people who don't want to get involved. They still
say it's Omerica. Don't say anything old world. And who
are you helping? You're helping the haves. We're have notts.
The criminal element is the have nots. Who are you helping?
And I would sit in the few organized crime people
who whom I would sit with and talk with get
blue in the face. They don't go by the information
that we do the haves do. How do we make
up our mind on big decisions? We weigh, we talk
to experts, we read the paper, We find a lawyer
who may know something and in this field, and we
consult with them. It's not how the bad guys did
their work. They were all on rumor, on suspicion, on
word of the wink in the art. That's how they
did their business. And you know that, you know that
with the theme of your podcast, you know how criminal
information among criminals is considered so valuable. Like when I
came up with this idea that had to be done
for another reason than to fence the artwork. There had
to be another reason. And I went just went to
the few sources I had, and I said, what's why
would you do this if you're going to treat the
artwork so bad? And I said, it wasn't done to fence.
It was done to get somebody out of jail. And
that's where this idea, this coda of get out of
jail free.
Speaker 1: Cot, this was going to be used as a bargaining
chip the return of Summer, all the artwork in exchange
for getting a key mobster out of jail.
Speaker 3: And it's there was one guy here in Boston who
had been arrested for doing a theft up in Maine.
He had stolen Wyath paintings, allegedly with Robert Donatti, the
main character in this case. And when he got caught,
not Donati, but this pretty well known art thief. When
he got caught, he came up with the idea that
the only way they'll give me a break is if
I steal something else, and he at a gang with guns.
They went and they stole a remprant out of the
MFA in the early seventies, and he hid it underneath
the bed of one of his pals.
Speaker 2: It's insane.
Speaker 1: Two years sitting this valuable, incredibly valuable painting is sitting
under the bed.
Speaker 3: Under the bed, left leisure there for two years. Then
calls his lawyer and the remarkable thing is. The more
remarkable thing is, as he's being arraigned for the stealing
of the Wyeth paintings, some steak caught yellswim as he's
being walked up the steps of the courthouse. His name
is Miles Connor. First name, Miles. You're going to need
a Rembrant to get you out of this. Miles stole
guns his gang, They break into the MFA, they steal
a large Rembrandt off of the wall, and they hide
it for two years. And then Miles calls his a
lawyer and says, to the lawyer, tell the FEDS, if
they give me a deal, I'll give them their Rembrandt back,
but I need to get a deal on that other
case involving the stolen Wyath paintings. And his lawyer says,
I don't think the FBI deals that way, but I'll
tell them, And the FBI says, listen, he can tell it.
Give us stuff Rembrandt back, he can tell it to
the judge, and he tells it to that he does,
he gives him the Rembrant pack. No one knew what
the hell is Back in the seventies, no one knew
what the hell happened. But all of a sudden, the
mfa's got the Rembrandt pack and Miles goes into court.
He tells the judge what he had done, and the
judge says, that's all well and good Miles, but I'm
giving you eight years for the main theft, in another
eight years for the for the for the MFA, for
the museum fine arce theft of the Rembrandt. But he
allows him to serve the one eight year sentence co
terminously current and out of that case, Miles has to
serve eight years. Every bad guy in Boston that I
went to and says, hey, to get out of jail free, cut,
I said, he didn't get out of jail free yet
to serve eight year. Don't you read the papers? Now
you're steal something this big it to get out of
jail free. But I followed the bouncing ball on that
motto get out of jail free card, and the next
thing I know. I'm being called by a lawyer who
says his client wants to talk to me. Because when
the client was in jail on a fifteen year sentence,
his underling had come to him and said, we're going
to steal something so valuable that the Feds will have
to leave you a get you out of jail. And
when the guy said to him, don't involve me, he
knew this Donati was not the smartest, not the brightest
ball in the house. He said to him, Bob, do
not involve me in any of your crazy schemes. Donati
had already done the theft, but he had these paintings
in his house and he didn't know what to do
with them. Not knowing what to do with them, the
other bad guys hear about him having this artwork, and
they start to follow him around and they start to
threaten him, and when he doesn't give up the paintings,
he suffers a very brutal death. He was almost beheaded. Rude,
and these guys did tough guys, and they played for keeps.
And when Donadi, who was a member of the ball,
when he wouldn't give up these paintings, he suffered a terrible, tragic, terrible.
His sister said to me, they could have killed him
with just a bullet. I knew he was in a
criminal world. Why would they have to be so brutal
to him? That's why I think that this artwork, these
masterpieces that he stole, were in his house for a
period of time, and they became almost targets on him.
A year and half after the theft, he was brutally assassinated.
Speaker 1: Join us next time on Mind Over Murder as we
continue our fascinating conversation with Steve Kirchen, longtime reporter for
The Boston Globe and author of Master Thieves.
Speaker 2: The book is Master Thieves, the Boston Gangsters who pulled
off the world's greatest art heist, and the documentary is
This is a Robbery, available on Netflix. Stephen, thank you
some thanuch for joining us today. This was a real pleasure.
Speaker 3: Bill Kristin, thank you very much for having me, great
to chat.
Speaker 2: That is going to do it for this episode of
Mind Ever Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time.
Speaker 4: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 4: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
Speaker 4: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
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Speaker 4: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.
Speaker 4: Thank you for listening to mind Over murderou