Displaying items by tag: Gardner Museum Heist

Law enforcement officials descended today on a Manchester, Conn., house, digging in the yard of Robert Gentile, an alleged mobster who officials suspect may have information about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft.

Frances Drive was choked with unmarked police vehicles and television news crews and their vehicles, a resident said in a telephone interview this morning.

“It’s kind of hard to get in and out,’’ the neighbor said. “It’s kind of annoying.’’ She added, “It’s a quiet neighborhood. I’ve never seen anything like this.’’
Gentile’s attorney, A. Ryan McGuigan, said today that the FBI is leading the search.

“They have brought with them a ground-penetrating radar device, as well as two beagles and a ferret, to look for what they say are weapons. But we all know what they are actually looking for -- and they are looking for the paintings,” McGuigan said.

Tom Carson, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office in Connecticut, declined comment on the search in an e-mail.

“The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum does not have any comments about the Robert Gentile case,” the museum said in a statement. “The Museum continues to offer a $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the artworks in good condition. Anyone with information about the theft, the location of the stolen artworks, and/or the investigation, should contact the Gardner Museum.”

Authorities have said that at least two men dressed as police officers talked their way into the Gardner on March 18, 1990, tied up the security guards, and left with 13 masterworks, including three by Rembrandt and five by Degas. Some of the stolen pieces could sell for $50 million on the open market, art experts say.

Despite an intensive search by law enforcement, no one has ever been charged in the case and none of the paintings have ever been recovered.

Gentile has been jailed on federal drug charges in what McGuigan has characterized as an effort to pressure the 75-year-old man into admitting he has information about the Gardner robbery when he does not.

“This case comes down to the fact that this guy sold his own painkillers to some kid who was working for the FBI, so they could search his house,’’ McGuigan said. “It’s a ruse.”

The neighbor said she knew Gentile and his wife, both of whom have been in the home for many years. She said she was concerned for the well-being of Gentile’s wife, who has continued to live in the home since her husband was taken into federal custody earlier this year.

“They are very nice people, very quiet people,’’ the neighbor said.

In 1990, two men dressed as police officers broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole a Vermeer, five Degas and three Rembrandts.

The masterpieces and four other paintings stolen that day are estimated to be worth more than $500 million.

Two decades later, the case remains stubbornly unsolved. It has been called “the holy grail of art crime.”

But with the arrest in Santa Monica Wednesday of notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, many in the art world are now asking: Could it provide a break in the greatest art heist in American history?

Rumors have long swirled that Bulger, the head of the city’s powerful Irish American mob at the time, may have played a role -- or must have known who did.

Some have speculated that he stashed the stolen masterpieces away to use as a “get out of jail free card” if he was ever caught. Others think he sent the paintings to allies in the Irish Republican Army to use as a bargaining chip.

The Gardner Museum had no comment on the arrest on Thursday other than a tweet saying, “Until a recovery is made, our work continues.”

Many who have studied the case are similarly skeptical about Bulger’s direct involvement. Last year, investigators in the Gardner case said that there is no evidence in the mountains of wiretaps and other records to link Bulger to the crime.

“He was quite a powerful figure at the time of the heist,” said Ulrich Boser, author of "The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft." “But his M.O. was to collect criminal taxes, not to organize fresh crimes.”

As Boser writes in his book, after Bulger became an informant for the Boston FBI, he helped them take out his Italian competitors, the Cosa Nostra, leaving him the uncontested king of the underworld in Boston. By 1990, his focus was on collecting protection money from lesser underworld figures like bookies and drug dealers.

“To organize something like the Gardner heist doesn’t make sense,” Boser says.

Still, Boser and others familiar with the case believe that Bulger may still have important information to contribute. Little happened in Boston in those days without Bulger knowing about it.