It's the early morning hours on the day after St. Patrick's Day, but celebrations are still going
strong in the city of Boston. Two police officers are standing outside of the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, the former home of a wealthy art collector for whom the art museum is named.
The police explain that they're here because of a disturbance call, a result of the ongoing holiday
hooliganism outside, and that they need to check the museum out. The two security guards on duty,
Rick Abath and Randy Hestand, who are both in their early twenties and somewhat inexperienced,
allow the officers to come inside. The museum security guards have no idea,
but the greatest art heist in modern history has just been set in motion.
Once inside, one of the officers says that Abath looks familiar and there may be a warrant
out for his arrest. He asks the young guard to come out from behind the security desk,
which is where the only panic button is located. Abath cooperates, and
he's soon shoved against a wall and handcuffed. The other guard, Hestand, who was on foot patrol,
now returns to the front desk, only to be immediately forced against a wall by the
other police officer, who promptly handcuffs him as well. With both Hestand and Abath subdued,
one of the police officers announces, “Gentlemen, this is a robbery.”
The guards are told that if they don’t give them any trouble, they’ll be fine,
after which the thieves then proceed to move them to the basement. Once down there, the thieves wrap
duct tape around the head and eyes of the guards and take their wallets, telling them that they
now know where the guards live and warning them to say nothing to the actual police. If
they hold their tongues, then in about a year, they'll get a reward for their cooperation.
There’s nobody else in the building, and the thieves know that no other guards would be coming
until the shift change later in the morning, but they still lay low for a few minutes just in
case the real police had somehow been alerted. Once they’re confident that nobody was coming,
they move into action - they now have the run of the entire building.
First, the thieves move to the second floor and pull Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee
and A Lady and Gentleman in Black off the wall. They smash the priceless paintings on the floor,
shattering the glass of their frames, and cut the paintings out with a knife.
They also pull a Rembrandt self-portrait off the wall, but this piece of work is on wood
and likely ends up being too cumbersome and heavy to transport for the thieves. Instead,
they take a self-portrait by Rembrandt as a young man that is the size of a postage stamp
that hangs right underneath the larger painting. Next, the thieves cut out Landscape with Obelisk
by Rembrandt’s pupil Govert Flinck as well as Vermeer’s The Concert from their frames.
They also steal a Chinese gu - a ritual bronze vessel dating back to the Shang
and Zhou dynasties for good measure. One of the thieves continues to secure the stolen artwork,
moving the items to a side door in preparation of loading their spoils into a hatchback the duo has
parked on the side of the museum. Meanwhile, the second moves to a nearby hallway and begins to
work on the screws holding an original Napoleonic flag in place in its display. However, the housing
proves to be too hard to open, so instead of stealing the entire flag, they settle for yanking
off the Eagle finial sitting atop the flagpole. The thieves then turn their attention back to
works of art and cut five sketches by French artist Edgar Degas out of their frames. Finally,
the thieves move to a room on the first floor where they snag Chez Tortoni by French artist
Edouard Manet. Before they leave the building, though, the two thieves move to the security
office and begin to pull out all the video cassettes onto which the museum's cameras are
recording. In 1990 very few establishments had off-site recording capabilities, and
digital recording was still several years away. The thieves also take print-outs from the motion
detectors, which have tracked every movement made by the thieves while they were inside the
building. However, the two are unaware that the motion detection system also records directly
onto a computer hard drive and leave behind one of the few clues police will have to work with.
Right before leaving, the two go back down to the basement and check in on the guards, adjusting
their restraints so that they're more comfortable. It’s 2:45 when the two leave the building,
driving away in a car worth approximately .01% of the value of the items it is now carrying.
In the morning, the next shift of guards buzzes to be let in. When there is no answer,
they assume the guards inside have fallen asleep and contact their supervisor, who arrives on-scene
with a key to the museum. Once inside, the two guards and their supervisor are shocked
to discover the security desk abandoned. Even more shocking though, is the discovery of the missing
artwork. The police are immediately contacted, and in a sweep of the building they finally find
Abath and Hestand tied up in the basement. As investigators begin to work the case,
it's immediately apparent that this is one of the greatest art heists in history. The initial value
is estimated at around $200 million, though by the year 2000, the value of the artwork had increased
to half a billion dollars - and possibly even more. Not bad for what ended up being less than
an hour and a half of work for the thieves. Thirteen pieces of art were stolen in all,
two of which are physical artifacts - the ancient Chinese gu and the French Imperial Eagle finial,
which once adorned one of Napoleon's flags. Of the paintings, Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea
of Galilee is valued at about $100 million, but the most valuable of all is The Concert,
by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, which is valued today at approximately $250 million.
Upon examining what was stolen and how, the police have their first tip: this duo, whoever they are,
clearly knew little about art. The thieves doubtlessly inflicted considerable damage on the
artworks they stole by smashing their frames on the ground and then cutting them out before likely
rolling them up for easy transport. However, even more perplexing is the theft of the Degas
sketches, which are altogether only worth about $100,000, a lot of money, but very little when
compared to the other pieces that were stolen. What makes it most clear the duo are not
professional art thieves is that they either completely ignored or were unaware of the value
of other of the museum's pieces. The thieves ignored original works by Raphael, Botticelli,
and Michelangelo. The pair also seemed unaware that Tiziano Vecelli's The Rape of Europa, located
on the third floor of the museum, was considered the most valuable painting in the entire city.
Whoever these two were, they were likely not hired by professional art collectors and
certainly had little knowledge of art themselves. Within days a reward of $1 million was offered
for any information leading to the recovery of the stolen artwork. But despite an outpouring of tips,
the police had little to go on. The FBI quickly took control of the case, seeing
as precious artwork like this would inevitably be crossing state lines, making it a federal crime.
Some fingerprints were found at the scene, but investigators could not differentiate
between museum employees and the thieves. One of the first suspects in the case was
security guard Rick Abath himself, who came under intense scrutiny due to his unusual behavior on
the night of the theft. While on patrol inside the museum, Abath had opened and then shut a
side door. He claimed that he did this to test that the door was locking properly and that he
often did this. However, suppose he had been doing this regularly. In that case, the motion detectors
should have made a record of it, and according to one of Abath's co-workers, a supervisor
would have put a stop to it immediately. Investigators believed that Abath's opening
and closing of the door might have been his way of signaling to the duo that the coast was clear.
Also casting suspicion on Abath is that the motion detector equipment did not record any movement
inside the room that housed Chez Tortoni, one of the stolen paintings. The only activity recorded
in that room was Abath's own before the heist, leading some to believe that Abath may have
removed the painting earlier in the night while his partner sat at the security desk, unaware.
Despite these suspicions, the FBI ultimately concluded that the two security guards were
too incompetent to have pulled the heist off. Next on the list of suspects was Whitey Bulger,
the infamous Boston crime boss. A police informant at the time, Bulger was incensed when he learned
about the heist, though not because he was a lover of great works of art. The robbery had happened
on his turf, which meant he felt he was due a cut of the profits. Bulger even attempted to discover
the identity of the thieves himself, so he could collect what he felt was due to him. Who can say
if he would have then informed on the thieves, getting a cut of the official reward as well?
Investigators believed, though, that even if Bulger was unaware of who perpetrated the heist,
elements of his criminal network were not. The Irish Republican Army was suspected
of being involved due to their history of pulling off art heists and then holding the
artwork ransom. Furthermore, before the theft, fire alarms went off in several museum rooms,
despite there being no sign of fire or smoke. This was a calling card of the IRA in previous heists
and strongly hinted that whoever the thieves were, they may have been working for either the IRA or
the rival Ulster Volunteer Force - both of which had agents in Boston that police were aware of.
Nine years before the robbery, conman Brian McDevitt had attempted to rob a Rembrandt from
The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York. McDevitt appeared to fit the description of one
of the thieves, and as a known art thief, he quickly became a suspect in the case.
McDevitt denied any involvement and refused to take a polygraph test - though when police
compared his fingerprints to those found at the scene, they were unable to make a match.
Though no suspect was ever publically identified as either of the two culprits,
information would eventually come to light that gangster Robert Guarente had at one point been in
possession of at least some of the paintings. In 2010, his widow told the FBI that Guarente
had owned some of the paintings, but he had given them to another gangster, Robert Gentile,
after Guarente was diagnosed with cancer. Gentile was indicted on drug charges in 2012 as the
FBI attempted to pressure him on the Gardner theft, and a polygraph test indicated that he
was lying when he claimed not to know anything about the robbery or the location of the art.
Shortly after his arrest, the FBI raided Gentile’s home and discovered a copy of a newspaper from
March 1990 reporting on the theft, along with a shopping list of sorts indicating what each stolen
artwork might sell for on the black market. Agents also discovered a small ditch hidden under a false
floor in his backyard shed, though it was empty. Gentile's son told the FBI that a few years ago,
the ditch had accidentally flooded, and his father had been furious about the damage done to whatever
he was storing there. Questioned about the ditch, Gentile said he couldn't remember what had been in
there but that it was probably some small motors. Gentile went to jail for 30 months and was
offered a reduced, or possibly discarded sentence if he gave up the stolen artwork,
but he never took the FBI up on the deal. Today the FBI is pretty confident of the
identity of the two thieves, and even though both are now probably deceased, the agency has refused
to identify them likely to protect ongoing sources inside the criminal underworld. It is thought that
the paintings may have been moved to Connecticut after they were stolen and that an attempt at
selling them was made in 2002 in Philadelphia. After this, the trail goes cold. To this day,
none of the stolen artwork has been recovered, and the FBI is still seeking tips from the public
on where they might be. Empty frames still hang in the museum where the great works once were,
and The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum continues to offer a ten million dollar
reward for anyone who can provide information that leads to the recovery of the lost art.
Now go watch The Most Insane Diamond Heist, or click this other video instead!