WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.600 You know, when we talk about a crime scene, we 00:00:01.600 --> 00:00:04.200 usually picture something temporary. There's 00:00:04.200 --> 00:00:07.099 yellow tape, chalk outlines, maybe some flashing 00:00:07.099 --> 00:00:10.560 lights. Right. It's a moment in time. The chaos 00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:12.880 happens. The investigation begins. Yeah. And 00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:15.080 then pretty quickly, the physical space goes 00:00:15.080 --> 00:00:17.500 back to normal. Exactly. The mess gets cleaned 00:00:17.500 --> 00:00:20.160 up, bleached, paved over. The world just moves 00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:23.379 on. Yeah. But there is one crime scene right 00:00:23.379 --> 00:00:26.570 in Boston that has been. I mean, essentially 00:00:26.570 --> 00:00:29.309 preserved in amber for more than 30 years now. 00:00:29.530 --> 00:00:31.489 It's incredible. If you go to the Fenway area 00:00:31.489 --> 00:00:34.369 today and you walk into the Isabella Stewart 00:00:34.369 --> 00:00:37.630 Gardner Museum, you are literally walking into 00:00:37.630 --> 00:00:39.329 a crime scene that hasn't been cleared since 00:00:39.329 --> 00:00:42.409 1990. And it isn't subtle at all. It's not like 00:00:42.409 --> 00:00:44.170 there's a little plaque on the wall. Yeah. You 00:00:44.170 --> 00:00:46.149 walk into the Dutch room on the second floor, 00:00:46.289 --> 00:00:50.109 which is this incredibly opulent, dimly lit gallery 00:00:50.109 --> 00:00:53.270 just packed with masterpieces. And you see them. 00:00:53.679 --> 00:00:56.899 Right away. Empty frames. Four massive gilded 00:00:56.899 --> 00:00:59.740 frames. I mean, these are ornate, heavy, historic 00:00:59.740 --> 00:01:02.439 objects in their own right. And they're just 00:01:02.439 --> 00:01:05.280 empty. Yeah, just the blank kind of floral wallpaper 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:09.459 staring back at you. Precisely. That damask silk 00:01:09.459 --> 00:01:12.819 wall covering is all you see. It gives you this 00:01:12.819 --> 00:01:16.510 visceral reaction. You feel it in your gut. It 00:01:16.510 --> 00:01:18.709 just feels wrong. It gives me chills every time 00:01:18.709 --> 00:01:20.629 I even see a photo of it. It's like a gaping 00:01:20.629 --> 00:01:23.390 wound right in the middle of all this incredible 00:01:23.390 --> 00:01:25.650 beauty. That's a perfect way to put it. It's 00:01:25.650 --> 00:01:28.310 a wound. It's a vigil. I think that's the only 00:01:28.310 --> 00:01:30.390 way you can describe it. Those empty frames, 00:01:30.569 --> 00:01:33.569 they are the defining image of the single largest 00:01:33.569 --> 00:01:36.769 property theft in history. Right. And I think 00:01:36.769 --> 00:01:38.450 that's really where we need to start, the sheer 00:01:38.450 --> 00:01:40.790 scale of this thing. Yeah. Let's clarify what 00:01:40.790 --> 00:01:43.409 largest means here, because I think a lot of 00:01:43.409 --> 00:01:45.469 people hear art heist and they immediately think 00:01:45.469 --> 00:01:48.930 of, you know, a movie villain stealing a diamond 00:01:48.930 --> 00:01:51.150 in a briefcase. Right. Something small and contained. 00:01:51.310 --> 00:01:53.890 Exactly. We're not talking about a few million 00:01:53.890 --> 00:01:56.489 dollars. We are talking about conservatively 00:01:56.489 --> 00:01:59.310 half a billion dollars. At least. The low end 00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:01.909 estimate is 500 million. Some go as high as $600 00:02:01.909 --> 00:02:04.349 million. Yeah. But honestly, it's theoretical 00:02:04.349 --> 00:02:06.709 money at this point. How so? Well, how do you 00:02:06.709 --> 00:02:09.430 put a price tag on a Vermeer? There are only, 00:02:09.469 --> 00:02:12.590 what, 34, maybe 36 of them known to exist on 00:02:12.590 --> 00:02:16.629 the entire planet. Wow. Losing one is like losing 00:02:16.629 --> 00:02:19.650 a moon from our orbit. It is a cultural amputation. 00:02:19.650 --> 00:02:23.430 It's gone forever. 13 pieces in total just vanished. 00:02:23.789 --> 00:02:27.430 Into thin air. Here's our mission for this deep 00:02:27.430 --> 00:02:30.710 dive. We have pulled every FBI file we could 00:02:30.710 --> 00:02:33.050 get our hands on, every memoir from the original 00:02:33.050 --> 00:02:35.870 investigators, all the deep cut reporting on 00:02:35.870 --> 00:02:37.729 the Boston underworld, the security logs from 00:02:37.729 --> 00:02:40.430 that night, everything. We're going deep. We 00:02:40.430 --> 00:02:42.550 want to understand not just what was taken, but 00:02:42.550 --> 00:02:45.770 how a heist, this messy and spoiler alert, it 00:02:45.770 --> 00:02:48.650 was incredibly messy, has managed to completely 00:02:48.650 --> 00:02:51.569 stump the FBI for over three decades. And maybe 00:02:51.569 --> 00:02:53.870 the biggest question of all, why are those frames 00:02:53.870 --> 00:02:56.430 still empty? Because usually, you know, if art 00:02:56.430 --> 00:02:58.770 is stolen, a museum eventually moves on. They 00:02:58.770 --> 00:03:00.610 rehang the gallery. They don't just leave a scar 00:03:00.610 --> 00:03:03.430 on the wall for 30 years. Right. And to understand 00:03:03.430 --> 00:03:05.969 the theft and the scar, we have to go back to 00:03:05.969 --> 00:03:07.990 ground zero. We have to transport ourselves to 00:03:07.990 --> 00:03:12.490 Boston, March 18th, 1990. That date is absolutely 00:03:12.490 --> 00:03:16.009 crucial. The whole crime hinges on that specific 00:03:16.009 --> 00:03:18.710 date. It really does. Because anyone who spent 00:03:18.710 --> 00:03:21.490 any time in Boston. Or heck, anyone who's seen 00:03:21.490 --> 00:03:24.610 a movie about Boston knows that March 18th isn't 00:03:24.610 --> 00:03:26.689 just a Sunday. It is the morning after the night 00:03:26.689 --> 00:03:29.330 before. The big one, St. Patrick's Day in Boston 00:03:29.330 --> 00:03:32.870 is, well, it's a contact sport. That is a very 00:03:32.870 --> 00:03:36.610 polite way to put it. The entire city is effectively 00:03:36.610 --> 00:03:39.389 hungover. The police force has been dealing with 00:03:39.389 --> 00:03:43.069 parades, bar fights, public intoxication, just 00:03:43.069 --> 00:03:46.159 massive crowd control. for 24 hours straight. 00:03:46.280 --> 00:03:48.580 They're exhausted. Completely spent. The streets 00:03:48.580 --> 00:03:50.979 are littered with green plastic beads and confetti. 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:53.080 It's one in the morning. The city's finally quiet. 00:03:53.259 --> 00:03:55.500 The adrenaline has crashed and everyone's guard 00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:57.439 is down. And sitting right in the middle of this 00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:00.080 exhausted city is the museum, the Fenway Court, 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:02.719 as it was first called. And we have to talk about 00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:04.780 Isabella Stewart Gardner herself for a minute 00:04:04.780 --> 00:04:07.219 because she is the reason this heist plays out 00:04:07.219 --> 00:04:09.439 the way it does. And she's the reason those frames 00:04:09.439 --> 00:04:11.659 are still empty. Oh, she's an incredible character. 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:14.300 Not your typical wealthy Victorian widow. Yeah. 00:04:14.360 --> 00:04:17.439 Not even close. No, she was like the original 00:04:17.439 --> 00:04:20.480 disruptor of Boston society. She was a New Yorker 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:23.939 who married into old Boston money, which right 00:04:23.939 --> 00:04:26.600 away made her an outsider. And she leaned into 00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:29.319 it. She drank beer in public. She was a huge 00:04:29.319 --> 00:04:32.540 fan of boxing matches. She collected lions. I 00:04:32.540 --> 00:04:35.139 mean, actual lion cubs. She had lion cubs. Yes. 00:04:35.180 --> 00:04:38.339 And she built this museum to be her personal 00:04:38.339 --> 00:04:41.040 palace. It wasn't designed by some committee 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:43.870 or a board of directors. It was her. and her 00:04:43.870 --> 00:04:47.370 alone arranging every single object to fit her 00:04:47.370 --> 00:04:49.790 personal vision. And that personal touch isn't 00:04:49.790 --> 00:04:52.250 just a fun historical fact. It's actually legally 00:04:52.250 --> 00:04:54.509 binding, isn't it? This is the part I found fascinating 00:04:54.509 --> 00:04:56.910 in the museum's charter. It's the ultimate dead 00:04:56.910 --> 00:05:00.970 hand control. Gardner died in 1924, but her will 00:05:00.970 --> 00:05:03.610 was incredibly specific. It created what's known 00:05:03.610 --> 00:05:05.730 as a strict deviation clause. Okay, what does 00:05:05.730 --> 00:05:07.649 that mean? It basically said, my collection, 00:05:07.750 --> 00:05:10.129 as it is arranged, is a single complete work 00:05:10.129 --> 00:05:12.319 of art. The arrangement of the paintings is the 00:05:12.319 --> 00:05:14.779 art itself. If you move a single painting, if 00:05:14.779 --> 00:05:16.339 you sell a painting, or if you buy a new one 00:05:16.339 --> 00:05:18.279 to fill a gap... Then the whole thing is forfeit. 00:05:18.579 --> 00:05:21.040 Exactly. The entire collection goes to Harvard 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:23.970 University, and the museum is dissolved. Done. 00:05:24.009 --> 00:05:26.509 So the directors are completely paralyzed. If 00:05:26.509 --> 00:05:28.689 Rembrandt's storm on the Sea of Galilee gets 00:05:28.689 --> 00:05:31.670 stolen, they can't just, you know, move a nice 00:05:31.670 --> 00:05:33.829 Rubens over from the next room to fill the empty 00:05:33.829 --> 00:05:36.110 space. They can't. If they move the Rubens, they 00:05:36.110 --> 00:05:38.230 violate the will and they lose the whole museum. 00:05:38.470 --> 00:05:41.550 So the empty frame stays. It preserves the arrangement 00:05:41.550 --> 00:05:44.790 that Isabella left behind in 1924. It's a legal 00:05:44.790 --> 00:05:48.009 obligation just as much as it's a memorial. Which 00:05:48.009 --> 00:05:51.360 is... It's poetic, but it's also so tragic. It 00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:53.579 just highlights the loss every single day. It 00:05:53.579 --> 00:05:55.939 does. But OK, let's look at the museum itself 00:05:55.939 --> 00:05:58.740 back in 1990, because I think we all have this 00:05:58.740 --> 00:06:01.040 assumption that a place with Rembrandts and Vermeers 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:03.579 has to be a fortress. You know, we're picturing 00:06:03.579 --> 00:06:05.860 Mission Impossible, lasers, pressure plates, 00:06:06.040 --> 00:06:09.800 armed guards. And the reality was much more like 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:13.579 Paul Blart. Mall cop. It was that bad. It was 00:06:13.579 --> 00:06:16.319 dire. You have to remember. In the late 80s, 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:17.879 the Gardner was really struggling financially. 00:06:17.899 --> 00:06:19.860 They were asset rich, of course, owning these 00:06:19.860 --> 00:06:21.899 priceless paintings, but they were incredibly 00:06:21.899 --> 00:06:25.060 cash poor. The endowment wasn't doing well. And 00:06:25.060 --> 00:06:28.379 the building itself was suffering. The building 00:06:28.379 --> 00:06:30.740 didn't even have a proper climate control system. 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:33.279 I mean, can you imagine a Vermeer being subjected 00:06:33.279 --> 00:06:35.899 to Boston's humidity and wild temperature swings? 00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:38.839 That's just, it sounds like negligence. It was 00:06:38.839 --> 00:06:42.360 a lack of resources. But the security. Yeah. 00:06:42.399 --> 00:06:44.879 That was a real open secret. The sources we looked 00:06:44.879 --> 00:06:47.959 at all say the security flaws were common knowledge 00:06:47.959 --> 00:06:50.279 among the staff. I read that they didn't even 00:06:50.279 --> 00:06:52.620 have an insurance policy on the art. How is that 00:06:52.620 --> 00:06:54.680 even possible for a nonprofit that's holding 00:06:54.680 --> 00:06:57.100 public trust assets? It's actually more common 00:06:57.100 --> 00:06:59.639 than you'd think for major museums to self -insure. 00:07:00.439 --> 00:07:03.139 The premiums to insure a collection worth half 00:07:03.139 --> 00:07:06.639 a billion dollars, even in 1990 money, would 00:07:06.639 --> 00:07:09.589 be astronomical. Millions a year. Money they 00:07:09.589 --> 00:07:11.449 didn't have. Exactly. So they roll the dice. 00:07:11.529 --> 00:07:14.069 The logic is we'll invest in top tier security 00:07:14.069 --> 00:07:16.230 instead of insurance. But they didn't invest 00:07:16.230 --> 00:07:18.769 in the security. That's the catch 22 here. They 00:07:18.769 --> 00:07:21.430 did not. The board of trustees made a really 00:07:21.430 --> 00:07:23.689 fateful decision a few years before the heist. 00:07:23.990 --> 00:07:26.990 They installed CCTV cameras on the perimeter. 00:07:27.149 --> 00:07:30.670 So watching the doors, the exterior walls. But 00:07:30.670 --> 00:07:33.329 they decided it was too expensive to put cameras 00:07:33.329 --> 00:07:35.829 inside the galleries. Wait, let's pause on that. 00:07:35.889 --> 00:07:38.629 So once you're past the front door. You're invisible. 00:07:38.889 --> 00:07:41.889 You're a ghost. Yeah. There is no video record 00:07:41.889 --> 00:07:43.970 of what happens inside the Dutch room, the blue 00:07:43.970 --> 00:07:47.089 room, anywhere. They had motion detectors, which 00:07:47.089 --> 00:07:49.430 we'll get to, but absolutely no visual record. 00:07:49.550 --> 00:07:51.730 That is just wild. And the human element, the 00:07:51.730 --> 00:07:55.129 guards, they weren't much of a backup. No. On 00:07:55.129 --> 00:07:58.310 the night of March 18th, the entire safety of 00:07:58.310 --> 00:08:00.949 this cultural treasure chest rested on the shoulders 00:08:00.949 --> 00:08:04.290 of two, well, two kids. Rick Abath, age 23, and 00:08:04.290 --> 00:08:07.430 Randy Heston, 25. And for Hestand, this was literally 00:08:07.430 --> 00:08:09.310 his first time ever working the night shift. 00:08:09.490 --> 00:08:11.970 Talk about a bad first day at the office. Or 00:08:11.970 --> 00:08:14.709 a bad first night. It's unbelievable. But Rick 00:08:14.709 --> 00:08:17.689 Abath, he's the more central figure here. He 00:08:17.689 --> 00:08:20.230 was a regular on the night watch. He was a musician 00:08:20.230 --> 00:08:23.149 in a rock band, a Berklee College of Music dropout, 00:08:23.189 --> 00:08:27.129 sort of a counterculture guy. And the whole vibe 00:08:27.129 --> 00:08:30.920 among the guards at the Gardner was just... Loose 00:08:30.920 --> 00:08:33.480 is being generous. The guards were young, they 00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:35.960 were bored, and they were paid peanuts. There 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:38.659 was no rigorous military -style protocol. What 00:08:38.659 --> 00:08:41.039 do you mean by that? Well, in most major museums, 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:43.340 especially overnight, you have what's called 00:08:43.340 --> 00:08:46.039 a dead man switch protocol. You have to call 00:08:46.039 --> 00:08:47.779 a local police station or a central security 00:08:47.779 --> 00:08:51.159 hub every hour, on the hour, to say, code 4, 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:53.799 all is well. And if you miss a call? The cavalry 00:08:53.799 --> 00:08:55.840 comes automatically. They assume something is 00:08:55.840 --> 00:08:57.809 wrong. The Gardner had nothing like that. So 00:08:57.809 --> 00:08:59.570 what did they have? The only link to the police 00:08:59.570 --> 00:09:01.830 was a single panic button at the main security 00:09:01.830 --> 00:09:04.509 desk. You controlled that desk, you controlled 00:09:04.509 --> 00:09:07.029 the entire police response. There was no failsafe. 00:09:07.070 --> 00:09:09.610 And this wasn't a secret vulnerability. I mean, 00:09:09.629 --> 00:09:12.389 the sources talk about a plot from 1982. They 00:09:12.389 --> 00:09:15.529 do. The FBI had actually uncovered a plot by 00:09:15.529 --> 00:09:18.009 some Boston criminals to rob the museum eight 00:09:18.009 --> 00:09:20.730 years prior. That scare did lead to some upgrades. 00:09:21.509 --> 00:09:23.750 Specifically, the infrared motion detectors we 00:09:23.750 --> 00:09:26.509 mentioned. But clearly, the funding and the urgency 00:09:26.509 --> 00:09:29.769 just weren't there to make it truly secure. They 00:09:29.769 --> 00:09:31.970 plugged one hole but left the window wide open. 00:09:32.129 --> 00:09:35.370 That's a great way to put it. So we have this 00:09:35.370 --> 00:09:38.409 vulnerable building in a hungover city. And now 00:09:38.409 --> 00:09:40.429 we have to look at the behavior of Rick Abath 00:09:40.429 --> 00:09:43.009 that night. Because even before the thieves showed 00:09:43.009 --> 00:09:45.690 up, things were... Right. This is what fuels 00:09:45.690 --> 00:09:47.629 all the inside job theories we're going to get 00:09:47.629 --> 00:09:50.009 into. Absolutely. So earlier in the shift, the 00:09:50.009 --> 00:09:53.029 fire alarm panel starts going haywire. It's signaling 00:09:53.029 --> 00:09:55.889 smoke in different rooms. The bath goes and checks. 00:09:56.049 --> 00:09:58.289 He sees nothing. And he just assumes the system 00:09:58.289 --> 00:10:01.110 is on the fritz. So he shuts down parts of the 00:10:01.110 --> 00:10:03.929 system. He silences the board. He does. But then, 00:10:03.950 --> 00:10:06.110 and he does the thing with the door. The side 00:10:06.110 --> 00:10:09.409 entrance, the staff door. Yes. The security logs 00:10:09.409 --> 00:10:12.169 show that during his rounds, a bath opened the 00:10:12.169 --> 00:10:14.779 side door to the street. just for a moment, and 00:10:14.779 --> 00:10:16.720 then closed it again. And he didn't tell his 00:10:16.720 --> 00:10:19.519 partner, Randy Heston, that he was doing this. 00:10:19.720 --> 00:10:22.679 No. His explanation later was that he was just 00:10:22.679 --> 00:10:24.960 checking to make sure it was locked. But you 00:10:24.960 --> 00:10:28.120 don't check a lock by opening the door. You check 00:10:28.120 --> 00:10:30.580 it by pulling on the handle. Right. Opening it 00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:33.519 breaks the seal. It breaks the magnetic contact 00:10:33.519 --> 00:10:35.340 on the alarm. And it looks an awful lot like 00:10:35.340 --> 00:10:38.960 a signal. Like... The coast is clear. Or it was 00:10:38.960 --> 00:10:41.139 just a bored 23 -year -old wanting to get some 00:10:41.139 --> 00:10:43.659 fresh air, maybe smoke a cigarette. And that 00:10:43.659 --> 00:10:46.820 is the maddening thing about this case. Every 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:49.200 single clue could be part of a massive conspiracy, 00:10:49.419 --> 00:10:52.080 or it could just be total incompetence and boredom. 00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:56.379 So the stage is set. It is 1 .20 a .m. The city's 00:10:56.379 --> 00:10:58.960 asleep. The alarms are glitchy. The door has 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:02.159 been opened and closed. And then a hatchback 00:11:02.159 --> 00:11:04.580 pulls up to that side entrance. Little Dodge 00:11:04.580 --> 00:11:07.179 Daytona. Two men get out. And they're not wearing 00:11:07.179 --> 00:11:09.259 ski masks. They're not in black turtlenecks carrying 00:11:09.259 --> 00:11:11.240 grappling hooks. No, they're wearing uniforms. 00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:13.820 Boston police uniforms. They walk up to the buzzer. 00:11:13.860 --> 00:11:17.200 They press it. And Rick Abath at the security 00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:20.580 desk picks up the intercom. Police investigating 00:11:20.580 --> 00:11:23.049 a disturbance. Now, you have to put yourself 00:11:23.049 --> 00:11:25.149 in a bath's shoes for a second. You're sitting 00:11:25.149 --> 00:11:28.929 there, you look at this tiny, grainy CCTV monitor, 00:11:29.110 --> 00:11:31.169 the one monitor they actually had watching the 00:11:31.169 --> 00:11:33.750 door. You see two caps, two badges. And you know 00:11:33.750 --> 00:11:36.090 it's St. Patrick's Day. You know people get drunk, 00:11:36.250 --> 00:11:38.809 they jump fences, they cause trouble. It's the 00:11:38.809 --> 00:11:41.149 most plausible story in the world. He thinks 00:11:41.149 --> 00:11:43.110 a neighbor saw a prowler and called the cops. 00:11:43.269 --> 00:11:46.009 Exactly. He respects the uniform. There's the 00:11:46.009 --> 00:11:48.210 psychological principle called command presence. 00:11:48.970 --> 00:11:52.129 We are conditioned from birth. to obey authority 00:11:52.129 --> 00:11:54.909 figures. If a police officer tells you to open 00:11:54.909 --> 00:11:57.289 the door, your instinct is to open the door. 00:11:57.429 --> 00:11:59.889 Even though the museum's own policy was explicit, 00:12:00.169 --> 00:12:03.250 never open the door for anyone at night. No exceptions. 00:12:03.769 --> 00:12:05.809 Not for the fire department, not for the police, 00:12:05.870 --> 00:12:07.690 not for the pope. He broke the cardinal rule. 00:12:07.809 --> 00:12:09.690 He hit the buzzer. And that was it. The click 00:12:09.690 --> 00:12:11.830 of that lock opening, that was the sound of history 00:12:11.830 --> 00:12:14.289 changing right there. The two men walk into the 00:12:14.289 --> 00:12:17.360 airlock. Now, the layout here is important. The 00:12:17.360 --> 00:12:19.259 museum had the vestibule. You buzz them through 00:12:19.259 --> 00:12:21.519 the outer door. They enter a small room. And 00:12:21.519 --> 00:12:23.080 then you have to buzz them through a second door 00:12:23.080 --> 00:12:25.899 to get into the museum proper. So Abath still 00:12:25.899 --> 00:12:27.620 had another chance. He could have kept them in 00:12:27.620 --> 00:12:29.179 that airlock, talked to them through the glass. 00:12:29.399 --> 00:12:31.580 He could have. But he's already committed. He 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:33.519 buzzes the second door. They walk right up to 00:12:33.519 --> 00:12:35.740 his desk. And this is where the dynamic shifts 00:12:35.740 --> 00:12:38.480 from, you know, a routine check to an absolute 00:12:38.480 --> 00:12:41.259 nightmare. Because Abath notices something. The 00:12:41.259 --> 00:12:44.710 taller cop. His mustache looks weird. It looks 00:12:44.710 --> 00:12:47.450 fake. It's like a wax mustache, a prop from a 00:12:47.450 --> 00:12:49.629 high school play. And Abath is just staring at 00:12:49.629 --> 00:12:52.450 it. But before he can even process it, the shorter 00:12:52.450 --> 00:12:54.889 cop goes on the offensive. Brilliant move. He 00:12:54.889 --> 00:12:56.909 looks right at Abath and says, you look familiar. 00:12:57.110 --> 00:12:59.250 I think we have a warrant out for you. Which 00:12:59.250 --> 00:13:03.429 is just... It's genius. It's evil genius. Because 00:13:03.429 --> 00:13:05.210 it puts a bath on the defensive immediately. 00:13:05.649 --> 00:13:07.190 He's not thinking about the mustache anymore. 00:13:07.309 --> 00:13:08.929 He's thinking, oh my God, did I not pay a parking 00:13:08.929 --> 00:13:10.990 ticket? Is this about the fire alarm from earlier? 00:13:11.269 --> 00:13:14.690 It completely freezes him. The cop tells him 00:13:14.690 --> 00:13:17.149 to step out from behind the desk. Show me some 00:13:17.149 --> 00:13:19.820 ID. And the moment a bath steps out from behind 00:13:19.820 --> 00:13:22.179 that desk, he is stepping away from the only 00:13:22.179 --> 00:13:25.000 panic button in the entire building. He walked 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:27.840 right into the trap. They spit him around, hands 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:30.820 against the wall. They cuff him. And just then, 00:13:30.860 --> 00:13:33.639 Randy Hestand, the new guy, walks into the room 00:13:33.639 --> 00:13:35.919 totally confused about what's happening. They 00:13:35.919 --> 00:13:38.720 cuff him, too. And then comes the line. The shorter 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:41.580 man looks at them. He drops the cop voice. And 00:13:41.580 --> 00:13:46.350 he says, gentlemen, this is a robbery. Ugh. I 00:13:46.350 --> 00:13:48.370 get a pit in my stomach just thinking about that. 00:13:48.409 --> 00:13:50.409 It's so cold. But they didn't, like, physically 00:13:50.409 --> 00:13:52.370 hurt them, right? They didn't beat them up. No, 00:13:52.389 --> 00:13:54.470 they were very efficient. They wrapped duct tape 00:13:54.470 --> 00:13:56.450 around the guards' heads, covering their eyes. 00:13:56.570 --> 00:13:58.529 They marched them down to the basement. The grace, 00:13:58.529 --> 00:14:00.610 man. Handcuffed one to a steam pipe and the other 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:03.289 to a workbench. And they left them with this 00:14:03.289 --> 00:14:05.190 really chilling instruction. They said, tell 00:14:05.190 --> 00:14:07.250 us nothing and you'll get a reward in a year. 00:14:07.389 --> 00:14:10.210 A reward in a year? What does that even mean? 00:14:11.120 --> 00:14:14.019 It implies a long -term plan. It implies they 00:14:14.019 --> 00:14:16.559 expected to monetize this, get paid, and then 00:14:16.559 --> 00:14:20.519 pay off the loose ends. It's so transactional. 00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:22.759 It feels like organized crime. It's not personal. 00:14:22.759 --> 00:14:25.860 It's business. So by 1 .35 a .m., the guards 00:14:25.860 --> 00:14:27.799 are neutralized. The thieves have the run at 00:14:27.799 --> 00:14:31.460 the place. And this is where the slick Ocean's 00:14:31.460 --> 00:14:34.539 Eleven image completely falls apart. Oh, completely. 00:14:34.559 --> 00:14:38.980 Because they spent 81 minutes in there. 81 minutes. 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:41.899 Which is an eternity for a heist. Most bank robberies 00:14:41.899 --> 00:14:43.720 are under three minutes. You get in, you get 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:45.860 the cash, you get out before the police response 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:48.460 time kicks in. These guys treated the museum 00:14:48.460 --> 00:14:50.820 like a late night shopping spree. But they were 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:53.179 not careful shoppers. They were brutes. That's 00:14:53.179 --> 00:14:55.759 the word for it. The looting itself was brutal. 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:58.100 They didn't gently lift these paintings off the 00:14:58.100 --> 00:15:00.340 walls. No. It's horrifying for anyone who cares 00:15:00.340 --> 00:15:02.720 about art. They go up to the Dutch room on the 00:15:02.720 --> 00:15:05.529 second floor. When they get close to the paintings 00:15:05.529 --> 00:15:08.549 the proximity sensors, which ironically were 00:15:08.549 --> 00:15:11.730 working perfectly, start beeping. So what do 00:15:11.730 --> 00:15:13.870 they do? They just smash the censors off the 00:15:13.870 --> 00:15:16.710 wall. Then they take these huge, heavy framed 00:15:16.710 --> 00:15:19.889 masterpieces off the wall and just throw them 00:15:19.889 --> 00:15:23.129 onto the marble floor. The glass shatters everywhere. 00:15:23.450 --> 00:15:25.690 And then they took out knives. Yeah. They use 00:15:25.690 --> 00:15:28.330 box cutters or some kind of blade to literally 00:15:28.330 --> 00:15:30.610 slice the canvases right out of their stretchers. 00:15:31.149 --> 00:15:34.070 We are talking about Rembrandts from the 1630s. 00:15:34.269 --> 00:15:38.059 The violence of that act is... It's visceral. 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:40.320 And the damage that does. It's irreversible. 00:15:40.379 --> 00:15:42.659 You have to understand, old oil paintings, they 00:15:42.659 --> 00:15:45.000 get brittle. The layers of varnish harden over 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:47.080 centuries. So when you cut them out and roll 00:15:47.080 --> 00:15:49.779 them up, the paint just cracks and flakes off. 00:15:49.879 --> 00:15:52.259 It's immediate catastrophic damage. It's not 00:15:52.259 --> 00:15:54.840 just theft. It's mutilation of the art. It is. 00:15:54.919 --> 00:15:57.559 The sound of a knife cutting through a 300 -year 00:15:57.559 --> 00:15:59.980 -old canvas. Yeah. It's enough to make an art 00:15:59.980 --> 00:16:02.379 historian weep. They cut Rembrandt's The Storm 00:16:02.379 --> 00:16:04.940 on the Sea of Galilee out. They cut his A Lady 00:16:04.940 --> 00:16:07.419 and Gentleman in blackout. And then they went 00:16:07.419 --> 00:16:09.759 for the Vermeer. The concert. Okay, let's pause 00:16:09.759 --> 00:16:11.960 on this one. Why is this particular painting 00:16:11.960 --> 00:16:14.639 considered the holy grail of stolen art? Well, 00:16:14.759 --> 00:16:17.779 Johannes Vermeer is the absolute master of light. 00:16:17.899 --> 00:16:20.799 He was a perfectionist who produced very, very 00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:22.960 few works in his lifetime. We only know of about 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:26.139 34 that are definitively attributed to him. So 00:16:26.139 --> 00:16:29.700 they're incredibly rare. Incredibly. And the 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:33.370 concert depicts... Three figures making music 00:16:33.370 --> 00:16:36.049 in this beautifully lit room. It's intimate. 00:16:36.250 --> 00:16:39.009 It's luminous. It is, without a doubt, the most 00:16:39.009 --> 00:16:41.950 valuable single stolen object in the world. That 00:16:41.950 --> 00:16:44.389 one painting accounts for probably half the heist's 00:16:44.389 --> 00:16:47.509 total value. We're talking $250 million for one 00:16:47.509 --> 00:16:50.720 piece. And they just took it. But then... Then 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:52.440 their decisions get really baffling. They have 00:16:52.440 --> 00:16:54.220 these world -class masterpieces, but then they 00:16:54.220 --> 00:16:56.639 start grabbing, for lack of a better word, junk. 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:58.539 This is where we can really start to profile 00:16:58.539 --> 00:17:01.299 the thieves. They try to steal a Napoleonic flag 00:17:01.299 --> 00:17:03.960 from its display case, but they can't get the 00:17:03.960 --> 00:17:06.400 screws loose on the frame. So what do they do? 00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:09.140 They just unscrew the little brass eagle finial 00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.220 from the top of the flagpole. The eagle finial. 00:17:11.359 --> 00:17:14.240 That one decision just screams amateur. That 00:17:14.240 --> 00:17:16.839 finial is worth maybe a few thousand dollars 00:17:16.839 --> 00:17:19.339 as an antique. The thieves almost certainly thought 00:17:19.339 --> 00:17:21.420 it was solid gold. So they weren't art historians. 00:17:21.539 --> 00:17:24.859 They were just looking for shiny things. Exactly. 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.019 They also took a Chinese beaker, an ancient bronze. 00:17:30.169 --> 00:17:32.750 Yeah, from the Qing Dynasty. It's incredibly 00:17:32.750 --> 00:17:35.309 old, from the 12th century BC. But in terms of 00:17:35.309 --> 00:17:37.569 black market value, it's worth thousands, not 00:17:37.569 --> 00:17:39.890 millions. And they grabbed that while walking 00:17:39.890 --> 00:17:42.829 right past drawings by Raphael, Botticelli, and 00:17:42.829 --> 00:17:45.049 Michelangelo. That's the part that gets me every 00:17:45.049 --> 00:17:47.589 time. They left the Titian. The Rape of Europa. 00:17:48.269 --> 00:17:50.789 It was on the third floor. Experts agree it was 00:17:50.789 --> 00:17:52.829 the single most valuable painting in the entire 00:17:52.829 --> 00:17:55.650 city of Boston, maybe on the East Coast. And 00:17:55.650 --> 00:17:57.539 they didn't even go look for it. So that tells 00:17:57.539 --> 00:17:59.819 you they didn't have a specific shopping list 00:17:59.819 --> 00:18:03.000 from a collector. It strongly suggests they didn't. 00:18:03.220 --> 00:18:06.819 A sophisticated collector, a Dr. No type, would 00:18:06.819 --> 00:18:09.240 have ordered the Titian first. These guys were 00:18:09.240 --> 00:18:11.460 grabbing what they could reach, what looked fancy, 00:18:11.539 --> 00:18:13.680 and what they could carry. It was opportunistic, 00:18:13.680 --> 00:18:15.539 even with all the planning that went into the 00:18:15.539 --> 00:18:17.779 entry. There's also that weird detail about the 00:18:17.779 --> 00:18:21.279 blue room. The Manet painting, Ces Tortoni, was 00:18:21.279 --> 00:18:23.440 taken from the first floor. But the motion detectors 00:18:23.440 --> 00:18:25.789 didn't pick up the thieves in that room. That 00:18:25.789 --> 00:18:27.529 is one of the biggest anomalies of the case. 00:18:27.809 --> 00:18:30.369 The detectors track their movements everywhere 00:18:30.369 --> 00:18:33.269 else in the museum. We have the printouts. We 00:18:33.269 --> 00:18:35.230 know exactly where they walked in the Dutch room, 00:18:35.349 --> 00:18:37.210 how long they stood in front of each painting. 00:18:37.490 --> 00:18:40.269 But the blue room? Nothing. So what does that 00:18:40.269 --> 00:18:43.289 mean? It means either the thieves somehow floated, 00:18:43.329 --> 00:18:45.349 or the equipment just happened to fail in that 00:18:45.349 --> 00:18:47.970 one room, or... Or someone moved the painting 00:18:47.970 --> 00:18:50.950 before the thieves even arrived. Which loops 00:18:50.950 --> 00:18:53.430 us right back to the inside job theory. Did a 00:18:53.430 --> 00:18:55.490 bath take it down earlier and hand it out a window? 00:18:56.069 --> 00:18:58.490 Or did the thieves just manage to stay out of 00:18:58.490 --> 00:19:00.589 the sensor's range? We just don't know. So 2 00:19:00.589 --> 00:19:03.210 .45 a .m. rolls around. They load everything 00:19:03.210 --> 00:19:05.869 into their hatchback. They steal the surveillance 00:19:05.869 --> 00:19:09.430 tapes from the VCR. But in a move that proves 00:19:09.430 --> 00:19:12.029 they were not tech geniuses, they leave behind 00:19:12.029 --> 00:19:14.369 the hard drive that recorded all the motion sensor 00:19:14.369 --> 00:19:17.650 data. A huge mistake. They took the visuals but 00:19:17.650 --> 00:19:20.049 left the digital footprints. They got in their 00:19:20.049 --> 00:19:22.480 car and just drove off into the night. The whole 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:25.900 robbery lasted 81 minutes. And the next morning, 00:19:25.960 --> 00:19:27.640 the day shift arrives, they can't get in, the 00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:30.180 police are called, and they find Abath and Heston 00:19:30.180 --> 00:19:32.380 still tied up in the basement. And the walls 00:19:32.380 --> 00:19:34.980 were bare. So the investigation begins. I mean, 00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:37.759 a heist this big, the heat is instantaneous, 00:19:38.099 --> 00:19:40.799 the FBI takes over immediately, and obviously 00:19:40.799 --> 00:19:42.740 the very first person they look at is the guy 00:19:42.740 --> 00:19:46.289 who buzzed them in. Rick Abath. It's standard 00:19:46.289 --> 00:19:49.130 procedure. You always, always look at the person 00:19:49.130 --> 00:19:51.150 who opened the door. And his story had holes. 00:19:51.210 --> 00:19:53.250 The weird thing with the side door, the motion 00:19:53.250 --> 00:19:55.349 detector mystery in the blue room, it all looked 00:19:55.349 --> 00:19:58.829 bad for him. And then, years later, in 2015, 00:19:59.230 --> 00:20:02.269 the FBI released this video from the night before 00:20:02.269 --> 00:20:06.029 the robbery. And it showed a bath letting an 00:20:06.029 --> 00:20:09.599 unidentified man into the museum. at night after 00:20:09.599 --> 00:20:12.279 hours. Another major breach of protocol. A huge 00:20:12.279 --> 00:20:14.980 one. Abath claimed he didn't remember it. Some 00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:16.960 other guards later said the stranger was actually 00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:19.259 the museum's deputy security chief, but the damage 00:20:19.259 --> 00:20:21.799 was done. It just cast this huge shadow over 00:20:21.799 --> 00:20:25.059 Abath. Was it a dry run? Was he showing the thieves 00:20:25.059 --> 00:20:27.539 the layout? But what did the FBI ultimately conclude 00:20:27.539 --> 00:20:30.519 about him? Well, Abath maintained his innocence 00:20:30.519 --> 00:20:33.140 until the day he died, which was just in 2024. 00:20:34.129 --> 00:20:36.849 And the lead FBI agent on the case eventually 00:20:36.849 --> 00:20:39.309 concluded that the guards were, and I'm quoting 00:20:39.309 --> 00:20:41.970 the source here, too incompetent and foolish 00:20:41.970 --> 00:20:45.450 to be criminal masterminds. Ouch. Cleared by 00:20:45.450 --> 00:20:47.710 reason of incompetence? That's a rough epitaph. 00:20:47.869 --> 00:20:50.029 It is, but it meant the investigation had to 00:20:50.029 --> 00:20:52.190 shift gears pretty quickly toward the Boston 00:20:52.190 --> 00:20:54.390 underworld. You just can't talk about a major 00:20:54.390 --> 00:20:57.170 crime in 1990 Boston without talking about the 00:20:57.170 --> 00:20:59.470 Irish mob and the Italian mafia. And the biggest, 00:20:59.569 --> 00:21:02.089 baddest name on the block, Whitey Bulger. James 00:21:02.089 --> 00:21:04.289 Whitey Bulger. the head of the Winter Hill Gang. 00:21:04.490 --> 00:21:06.410 Of course, he was a suspect. He basically ran 00:21:06.410 --> 00:21:09.390 the city. But the consensus among the FBI and 00:21:09.390 --> 00:21:11.349 investigative reporters is that Whitey didn't 00:21:11.349 --> 00:21:13.250 do it. Why not? Wouldn't he want that kind of 00:21:13.250 --> 00:21:15.829 payday? You'd think so. But the sources we found 00:21:15.829 --> 00:21:17.970 suggest he was actually furious about it. He 00:21:17.970 --> 00:21:19.950 was reportedly angry that someone committed a 00:21:19.950 --> 00:21:22.430 robbery of this magnitude on his turf without 00:21:22.430 --> 00:21:24.390 getting his permission or paying him a tribute. 00:21:24.589 --> 00:21:27.410 He wanted a cut. He wanted his cut. He actually 00:21:27.410 --> 00:21:29.670 had his own people looking for the real thieves 00:21:29.670 --> 00:21:32.329 because he wanted to tax them. He saw it as a 00:21:32.329 --> 00:21:34.549 sign of disrespect. What about the IRA theory? 00:21:34.710 --> 00:21:37.029 I read that one agent thought the fire alarm 00:21:37.029 --> 00:21:39.849 glitch was a calling card. Yeah, that was Agent 00:21:39.849 --> 00:21:42.529 McShane. He thought the tripping of the fire 00:21:42.529 --> 00:21:44.670 alarms might have been a tactic the IRA used 00:21:44.670 --> 00:21:47.470 in Northern Ireland to test police response times. 00:21:47.829 --> 00:21:50.529 And the IRA had used art theft for funding before. 00:21:50.750 --> 00:21:54.349 But ultimately, no solid evidence ever linked 00:21:54.349 --> 00:21:57.470 the paintings to Ireland. So the trail led away 00:21:57.470 --> 00:22:00.480 from the Irish mob. And... Right toward the Italian 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:04.019 mafia. Yeah. Specifically a crew based in Dorchester. 00:22:04.180 --> 00:22:06.619 The Merlino gang. This is the theory the FBI 00:22:06.619 --> 00:22:08.759 said they have high confidence in. That's right. 00:22:08.839 --> 00:22:11.240 And to understand why this specific gang would 00:22:11.240 --> 00:22:13.480 do it, we have to understand the idea of art 00:22:13.480 --> 00:22:16.420 as leverage. This is such a key insight because 00:22:16.420 --> 00:22:19.339 the biggest question is. Why steal art you can't 00:22:19.339 --> 00:22:21.859 possibly sell? You can't put a Vermeer on eBay. 00:22:22.119 --> 00:22:24.400 You can't sell it to a legitimate collector without 00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:26.700 getting caught. Exactly. It's what's known as 00:22:26.700 --> 00:22:29.319 the hot potato. It's too famous. It's radioactive. 00:22:29.839 --> 00:22:32.400 But in the underworld, a masterpiece like this 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:34.720 isn't for selling. It's a get -out -of -jail 00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:36.799 -free card. Explain how that works, practically. 00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:39.339 It's actually pretty simple. Let's say your boss 00:22:39.339 --> 00:22:41.920 gets arrested for racketeering or you're facing 00:22:41.920 --> 00:22:45.400 20 years for armed robbery. You have your lawyer 00:22:45.400 --> 00:22:48.000 make a quiet phone call to the district attorney. 00:22:48.259 --> 00:22:51.220 And say what? My client. He might know where 00:22:51.220 --> 00:22:54.160 the Gardner art is. If you were to, say, reduce 00:22:54.160 --> 00:22:56.880 his sentence, maybe the art finds its way home. 00:22:57.200 --> 00:22:59.619 So the painting becomes a hostage. It is the 00:22:59.619 --> 00:23:01.920 ultimate hostage. It's a bargaining chip. And 00:23:01.920 --> 00:23:04.039 at that time, the Merlino gang was in a lot of 00:23:04.039 --> 00:23:06.259 trouble. Their boss, Frank Salome, was under 00:23:06.259 --> 00:23:08.859 indictment. They needed chips. So who were the 00:23:08.859 --> 00:23:12.380 key players in this crew? Well, you have Carmelo 00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:14.799 Merlino, who ran an auto repair shop in Dorchester, 00:23:14.920 --> 00:23:17.680 a classic mob front. And then you have his associates, 00:23:17.859 --> 00:23:20.319 David Turner and George Reisfelder. These are 00:23:20.319 --> 00:23:23.019 rough guys, career criminals. And Reisfelder's 00:23:23.019 --> 00:23:26.339 particularly interesting, right? Very. He closely 00:23:26.339 --> 00:23:28.619 matched the police sketch of one of the thieves, 00:23:28.779 --> 00:23:30.619 the one with the fake mustache, potentially. 00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:34.460 And he died of a drug overdose just a year after 00:23:34.460 --> 00:23:37.519 the robbery in 1991. And there's that detail 00:23:37.519 --> 00:23:39.480 about a painting in his bedroom that just gives 00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:42.359 me goosebumps every time. It's incredible. Associates 00:23:42.359 --> 00:23:45.950 told the FBI that after the heist. Ricefelder 00:23:45.950 --> 00:23:48.569 had a painting hanging in his bedroom that looked 00:23:48.569 --> 00:23:51.109 an awful lot like the stolen Manet, Chez Tortoni. 00:23:51.210 --> 00:23:53.349 Just hanging on his wall. That is unbelievably 00:23:53.349 --> 00:23:55.950 bold. Incredibly reckless. Yeah. But it kind 00:23:55.950 --> 00:23:57.769 of fits the profile of these guys. They weren't 00:23:57.769 --> 00:23:59.990 art appreciators. They were trophy hunters. But 00:23:59.990 --> 00:24:02.650 Ricefelder died. Merlino died in prison, so the 00:24:02.650 --> 00:24:05.630 trail goes cold with them. It does. But the FBI 00:24:05.630 --> 00:24:07.890 believes they traced the movement of the art 00:24:07.890 --> 00:24:10.670 from Boston to Connecticut to a man named Robert 00:24:10.670 --> 00:24:13.819 Gentile. Robert Gentile. This guy is a character 00:24:13.819 --> 00:24:16.779 straight out of a Scorsese movie. A used car 00:24:16.779 --> 00:24:19.339 salesman and mobster from Manchester, Connecticut. 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:23.079 Gentile, who passed away in 2021, was a longtime 00:24:23.079 --> 00:24:26.619 associate of the Merlino crew. The FBI's leading 00:24:26.619 --> 00:24:29.140 theory is that as the heat got too intense in 00:24:29.140 --> 00:24:31.839 Boston, the paintings were handed off to Gentile 00:24:31.839 --> 00:24:34.980 for safekeeping. He was the fence or the vault. 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:38.019 And this leads to the famous backyard dig. This 00:24:38.019 --> 00:24:41.000 was huge news just a few years ago. It was. The 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:43.180 FBI got a warrant. They stormed Gentile's house. 00:24:43.380 --> 00:24:45.960 They brought in ground -penetrating radar. They 00:24:45.960 --> 00:24:47.940 were absolutely convinced the art was buried 00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:49.700 on his property. He found something. They did. 00:24:49.859 --> 00:24:52.480 They found a false floor in his backyard shed. 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:56.220 And beneath it was a ditch, a concrete -lined 00:24:56.220 --> 00:24:59.339 pit. But the ditch was empty. It was empty. Gentile's 00:24:59.339 --> 00:25:01.420 son later claimed it had flooded years before 00:25:01.420 --> 00:25:03.519 and probably ruined whatever had been in there. 00:25:03.559 --> 00:25:07.779 Oh, no. Inside Gentile's basement, the feds found 00:25:07.779 --> 00:25:09.420 something that convinced them they were on the 00:25:09.420 --> 00:25:11.819 right track. They found a handwritten list of 00:25:11.819 --> 00:25:14.059 all the stolen paintings with their estimated 00:25:14.059 --> 00:25:16.460 black market prices next to each one. That's 00:25:16.460 --> 00:25:18.960 just like a smoking gun. Why would a used car 00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:21.319 salesman in Connecticut have a price list for 00:25:21.319 --> 00:25:23.059 the Gardner art unless he was trying to sell 00:25:23.059 --> 00:25:26.500 it? Exactly. But Gentile was as old school as 00:25:26.500 --> 00:25:28.960 they come. He went to prison on unrelated charges. 00:25:29.420 --> 00:25:32.480 He was old. He was sick. He could have traded 00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:34.920 the art for his freedom, for better health care, 00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:37.039 for a comfortable end to his life. But he never 00:25:37.039 --> 00:25:40.099 talked. He stayed silent. He denied it until 00:25:40.099 --> 00:25:42.059 the very end. He always claimed he was being 00:25:42.059 --> 00:25:44.039 framed. So the art might have been in a shed 00:25:44.039 --> 00:25:46.619 in Connecticut and just rotted away. That is 00:25:46.619 --> 00:25:49.559 the absolute nightmare scenario. It is one of 00:25:49.559 --> 00:25:51.839 the leading theories, the damage theory. But 00:25:51.839 --> 00:25:53.839 there is another story, one that gives a little 00:25:53.839 --> 00:25:57.130 glimmer of hope. The story of the sighting. Right. 00:25:57.210 --> 00:26:00.410 The reporter Tom Mashberg. This whole episode 00:26:00.410 --> 00:26:03.269 feels like something out of a noir film. It really 00:26:03.269 --> 00:26:06.970 does. So in 1997, Mashberg, who was a reporter 00:26:06.970 --> 00:26:09.549 for the Boston Herald, was in contact with a 00:26:09.549 --> 00:26:12.509 criminal named William Youngworth. Youngworth 00:26:12.509 --> 00:26:14.750 was an antiques dealer with ties to the Myrtle 00:26:14.750 --> 00:26:17.250 Eno crew, and he claimed he could deliver the 00:26:17.250 --> 00:26:19.640 art. Or at least prove it still existed. So he 00:26:19.640 --> 00:26:21.779 takes the reporter for a ride. A classic late 00:26:21.779 --> 00:26:23.920 night ride. They drive to a warehouse in Red 00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:26.900 Hook, Brooklyn. It's dark. It smells like gasoline 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:29.539 and damp cardboard. Just flashlights and a storage 00:26:29.539 --> 00:26:32.660 unit. That's the scene. Young Roof leads into 00:26:32.660 --> 00:26:35.200 a storage unit, pulls out this long cardboard 00:26:35.200 --> 00:26:38.880 tube, and he unrolls a canvas. Under the beam 00:26:38.880 --> 00:26:42.279 of a flashlight, Mashberg sees a seascape. He 00:26:42.279 --> 00:26:45.660 sees the storm, the boat, the waves. He sees 00:26:45.660 --> 00:26:48.519 the signature on the rudder of the ship, Rembrandt. 00:26:48.559 --> 00:26:51.440 And Mashberg was convinced. He wrote about it. 00:26:51.460 --> 00:26:53.740 He said he felt the soul of the painting. He 00:26:53.740 --> 00:26:55.799 was absolutely convinced. He noted the cracking 00:26:55.799 --> 00:26:58.000 on the canvas, which was consistent with the 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:00.480 kind of damage we talked about. He saw the jagged 00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:02.519 edges where it had been cut from the frame. But 00:27:02.519 --> 00:27:05.200 experts are skeptical. Why? If he saw it, he 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:07.420 saw it. Well, first there's the unfurling issue. 00:27:07.559 --> 00:27:10.519 As we discussed, the storm on the Sea of Galilee 00:27:10.519 --> 00:27:13.529 was covered in this. thick, heavy varnish. If 00:27:13.529 --> 00:27:15.470 you tried to roll it up tightly enough to fit 00:27:15.470 --> 00:27:17.970 in a tube, the paint would likely shatter into 00:27:17.970 --> 00:27:20.470 a million pieces. It shouldn't unfurl easily 00:27:20.470 --> 00:27:23.250 like a poster. It should be stiff as a board. 00:27:23.430 --> 00:27:25.490 So it might have been a good forgery. It's possible. 00:27:25.549 --> 00:27:28.289 Or maybe it was done from stolen painting. But 00:27:28.289 --> 00:27:31.009 Youngworth also provided paint chips to the reporter 00:27:31.009 --> 00:27:34.170 as proof. Scrape them right off the canvas. And 00:27:34.170 --> 00:27:36.230 what did the lab results say? This is where it 00:27:36.230 --> 00:27:39.130 gets really murky. The chips were from the right 00:27:39.130 --> 00:27:42.200 time period. 17th century. They contained the 00:27:42.200 --> 00:27:44.740 right pigments, but the chemical analysis couldn't 00:27:44.740 --> 00:27:47.700 definitively match them to the specific oils 00:27:47.700 --> 00:27:52.039 used in that Rembrandt. However, some of the 00:27:52.039 --> 00:27:54.440 tests suggested the chips could be a match for 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:57.400 the Vermeer. For the concert. Yes. But the whole 00:27:57.400 --> 00:27:59.779 thing fell apart. Youngworth wasn't doing this 00:27:59.779 --> 00:28:02.240 for his health. He wanted full immunity, all 00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:04.759 $10 million of the reward, and the release of 00:28:04.759 --> 00:28:07.279 his friend, a legendary art thief named Miles 00:28:07.279 --> 00:28:10.200 Connor from jail. And the Fed said no. The Feds 00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:12.160 don't negotiate with criminals like that. They 00:28:12.160 --> 00:28:14.599 said no and the lead went cold, just vanished. 00:28:14.839 --> 00:28:16.900 Which brings us to where we are today. It's been 00:28:16.900 --> 00:28:19.599 over 30 years. The case is still open. And the 00:28:19.599 --> 00:28:21.700 legal landscape has changed in a really important 00:28:21.700 --> 00:28:24.519 way. The statute of limitations for the theft 00:28:24.519 --> 00:28:28.359 itself. It expired back in 1995. Okay, explain 00:28:28.359 --> 00:28:29.960 what that means for our listeners. If I'm the 00:28:29.960 --> 00:28:31.779 guy who stole it, I can't be arrested for stealing 00:28:31.779 --> 00:28:34.619 it anymore. Correct. You cannot be prosecuted 00:28:34.619 --> 00:28:36.859 for the specific crime of robbery that happened 00:28:36.859 --> 00:28:40.579 on March 18, 1990. That ship has sailed. However. 00:28:40.819 --> 00:28:44.740 There's always a however. You can still be prosecuted 00:28:44.740 --> 00:28:47.259 for possession of stolen property, which is a 00:28:47.259 --> 00:28:49.740 continuing crime. As long as you have the art, 00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:52.220 you are actively committing a felony. So whoever 00:28:52.220 --> 00:28:55.339 has it is still trapped. They are. But the U 00:28:55.339 --> 00:28:57.160 .S. Attorney's Office has offered this incredible 00:28:57.160 --> 00:29:00.319 deal. They have stated very clearly and publicly, 00:29:00.539 --> 00:29:03.599 if the art is returned, there will be no prosecution, 00:29:03.920 --> 00:29:07.119 total immunity. They just want the culture back. 00:29:07.339 --> 00:29:10.000 And there's the money. The reward is now at $10 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:12.680 million. It is the largest private bounty ever 00:29:12.680 --> 00:29:15.359 offered for stolen property. $10 million. You 00:29:15.359 --> 00:29:17.200 could buy an island with that. You could disappear 00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:21.609 forever. And yet. Still silence. Why? There are 00:29:21.609 --> 00:29:23.650 really three main theories on why they haven't 00:29:23.650 --> 00:29:25.569 been recovered. The first is the hot potato theory 00:29:25.569 --> 00:29:28.069 we talk about. The art is just too radioactive. 00:29:28.309 --> 00:29:29.769 Everyone in the world knows what it looks like. 00:29:29.829 --> 00:29:31.869 To show it is to get caught. So it just stays 00:29:31.869 --> 00:29:33.910 hidden in a basement, terrified of the light. 00:29:34.089 --> 00:29:36.309 Okay, what's theory two? The code of silence, 00:29:36.490 --> 00:29:40.369 or omerta. The people who know where it is are 00:29:40.369 --> 00:29:42.849 gangsters who would rather die in prison than 00:29:42.849 --> 00:29:45.990 be labeled a rat. We saw that with Robert Gentile. 00:29:46.069 --> 00:29:49.019 And the third theory. The one I really hate to 00:29:49.019 --> 00:29:52.579 think about. The tragedy theory. That the art 00:29:52.579 --> 00:29:56.240 is just destroyed. That these amateur thieves 00:29:56.240 --> 00:29:58.839 stored these delicate centuries -old masterpieces 00:29:58.839 --> 00:30:01.920 in a damp basement or a sweltering attic. That 00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:03.940 the temperature fluctuations caused the paint 00:30:03.940 --> 00:30:06.400 to flake off and separate from the canvas. That 00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:09.029 they've basically turned to dust and mold. That 00:30:09.029 --> 00:30:11.809 the empty ditch in Gentile's shed really was 00:30:11.809 --> 00:30:14.109 the final resting place. It's a possibility we 00:30:14.109 --> 00:30:16.549 have to consider. I just refuse to accept that. 00:30:16.630 --> 00:30:19.089 Most people in the art world do too. Art is surprisingly 00:30:19.089 --> 00:30:22.289 resilient. And leverage is only useful if the 00:30:22.289 --> 00:30:24.990 asset still exists. If it's a pile of dust, it's 00:30:24.990 --> 00:30:26.910 worth nothing. If it's a painting, it's worth 00:30:26.910 --> 00:30:29.470 your freedom. So as we wrap up this deep dive, 00:30:29.630 --> 00:30:31.970 it all comes back to those empty frames on the 00:30:31.970 --> 00:30:34.069 wall. They're such a powerful symbol. They really 00:30:34.069 --> 00:30:36.490 represent hope. The museum hasn't filled them 00:30:36.490 --> 00:30:38.710 because they truly expect the art to return someday. 00:30:39.269 --> 00:30:41.630 They are in a way keeping the lights on for the 00:30:41.630 --> 00:30:44.089 concert in the storm. They're waiting. It's just 00:30:44.089 --> 00:30:47.210 a perfect storm of lax security, opportunistic 00:30:47.210 --> 00:30:50.589 gangsters, and this tragic, tragic loss of our 00:30:50.589 --> 00:30:53.769 shared cultural heritage. But the story isn't 00:30:53.769 --> 00:30:56.730 over. No, it's not. And here's a provocative 00:30:56.730 --> 00:30:59.930 thought to leave you with. We often imagine these 00:30:59.930 --> 00:31:02.289 paintings are in the castle of some drug lord 00:31:02.289 --> 00:31:04.869 in Colombia. or in a secret vault in Switzerland. 00:31:05.210 --> 00:31:07.789 We think of a Bond villain. Right. But given 00:31:07.789 --> 00:31:10.569 the intensely localized nature of all the main 00:31:10.569 --> 00:31:14.450 suspects, Dorchester, Revere, Connecticut, it 00:31:14.450 --> 00:31:16.910 is highly probable that these masterpieces are 00:31:16.910 --> 00:31:18.950 still within a short drive of where we're sitting 00:31:18.950 --> 00:31:21.150 right now. They're not in Saudi Arabia. They're 00:31:21.150 --> 00:31:23.150 still somewhere in New England. Very likely. 00:31:23.569 --> 00:31:25.569 They could be in someone's attic. They could 00:31:25.569 --> 00:31:28.549 be behind a false wall in a suburban home. It's 00:31:28.549 --> 00:31:30.730 even possible the person who has them now doesn't 00:31:30.730 --> 00:31:33.109 even know what they are. You mean like granddad 00:31:33.109 --> 00:31:35.529 passed away, he left this weird dusty roll of 00:31:35.529 --> 00:31:37.690 canvas in the garage, and nobody's thought to 00:31:37.690 --> 00:31:39.650 look at it for 20 years? It's entirely possible. 00:31:39.910 --> 00:31:41.990 Or maybe someone is sitting on them right now, 00:31:42.089 --> 00:31:45.049 just terrified, not realizing that the $10 million 00:31:45.049 --> 00:31:48.650 is real and the promise of amnesty is real. They're 00:31:48.650 --> 00:31:50.910 just paralyzed by the weight of the secret. So 00:31:50.910 --> 00:31:52.630 if you're out there listening and you're cleaning 00:31:52.630 --> 00:31:55.230 out your attic this weekend, maybe take a second 00:31:55.230 --> 00:31:57.349 look at that old painting. And remember the reward. 00:31:58.700 --> 00:32:02.660 $10 million. No questions asked. The empty frames 00:32:02.660 --> 00:32:04.940 are waiting. Thanks for diving deep with us. 00:32:05.039 --> 00:32:05.799 Until next time.