Built in 1901, the Gardner Museum houses over 15,000 pieces of art, collected by the late Isabella Stewart Gardner. And on March 18, 1990, the museum fell victim to a historic heist. Though only 13 pieces of art were stolen, the combined value is worth over $500 million. Ironically, at the time of the robbery, the museum was in the midst of updating their outdated security.
Gardner Museum Heist Setup
On the night of the heist, two inexperienced guardsmen were on duty. One security guard, named Richard E. Abath was a music school dropout and part of a rock band. He was a rock performer by day and a security guard at the museum by night. By his own admission, he would sometimes show up for work drunk or stoned after a performance, “I’d be just getting off of the stage somewhere and just wanted to slow down before I went over to the most boring job in the world.”
Though, Abath insists he was sober the night of the robbery. Around 12:54 a.m., a half hour before the thieves had successfully entered the building, a fire alarm went off on the third floor of the museum. When it was investigated, there was no fire. Whether this was part of the thieves scheme is unknown.
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At 1:24 a.m., two men dressed as policemen buzzed into the security desk where Abath was stationed. The men stated that they were responding to a disturbance call and demanded entry. There were st. Patrick’s Day parties happening in the neighborhood, so a disturbance call made sense to the security guard Abath. Also Abath added that he wanted to avoid getting arrested because he had tickets to a Grateful Dead concert later that day.
Abath buzzed the two policemen through the employee entrance, violating museum protocol. Then one of the men said to Abath, “you look familiar, I think we have a default warrant out of you. Come out here and show us some identification.” Abath was tricked to leave his control desk. It has the only button that would immediately alert the police. He was then instructed to face the wall and stand spread eagle. Abath recalls that as he was being handcuffed, he found it odd that he was not frisked beforehand and it dawned on him that this could be a robbery.
The two guards were gagged and tied up
At this time, the second guard arrived and was also arrested. The second guard asked why he was being arrested and the men replied, “you’re not being arrested, this is a robbery. Don’t give us any problems, and you won’t get hurt.” The guard responded, “don’t worry, they don’t pay me enough to get hurt.”
The heads, hands, and feet of the guards were tied with duct tape. Motion detectors in the museum showed that the robbers then went to the second floor and split up, removing various pieces of art from the walls. During the heist, an alarm went off, it was meant to alert guard that someone had gotten too close to the artwork. The robbers found the alarm and smashed it.
At 2:28 a.m., the robbers returned to the security counter. They made a second check on the guards in the basement. They then removed tapes that captured their movement outside the side door and in other places in the museum. After 13 minutes, they readied for their leave, taking the art to their vehicle in two separate trips. There were witnesses who recalled seeing the thieves near the museum, sitting in a red hatchback.
Of the 13 items taken, noteworthy pieces included three Rembrandt’s and bizarrely a gilded filial Eagle from a Napoleonic banner outside the tapestry room. They tried taking a fourth Rembrandt, but it was apparently too hard to remove. Skipping to about four hours later, sometime between 6:45 and 8:16 a.m., the to morning shift guards showed up to work, unable to enter the museum, prompting the deputy security director to call the police. At 8:30 a.m., the police showed up and discovered the two night security guards handcuffed in the basement.
Despite wearing gloves which prevented leaving fingerprints, the thieves didn’t cover their faces, which let the guards get a good look at them. However, the security guard Abath could not recall what the men look like when asked by the Boston Police. Abath recalls that the police sketch “was awful”, though in 2005, Abath mentioned “one of them looked like Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes, that’s all I can remember.”
The thieves ended up leaving behind valuable pieces
Some wonder why the thieves left behind pieces that were clearly worth more, like a Michelangelo and a Titian and why did they spend so much time trying to take such an obscure object as the Filial eagle.
One interesting development occurred in April of 1994 when the Gardner Museum received an anonymous letter, claiming to know the location of the art. The author seemed to have a great knowledge of the pieces stolen and the art world in general. The anonymous tipper stated that the pieces were safe in a controlled environment but the museum had to act quickly because a buyer in another country, who was unaware that the pieces were stolen, could purchase them and claim legal ownership.
The writer asked for 2.6 million dollars for facilitating the return of the artwork. The museum agreed. The museum then received a second letter, the author was pleased they were interested in negotiating but was discouraged by the local law state and federal authorities intervening. The writer openly wondered if they were trying to arrest the middle man on top of recovering the art. They wrote in all-caps, “you cannot have both end.” The tipper also added that even if they see no way of falling through with the negotiations, they would give some clues to the whereabouts of the art. They’ve never heard from the author since.
Theories for Gardner Heist Museum Suspects
A thief named Brian McDevitt was responsible for the crime.
McDevitt had committed a similar art robbery in the eighties where he hijacked a FedEx truck and dosed the driver with ether.
Wearing the uniform and carrying duct tape McDevitt planned to find museum employees at the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York and cut paintings from their frames. Hilariously, McDevitt and his accomplices got stuck in traffic and arrived after the museum closed, thus foiling their plans. McDevitt served a few months in jail for attempted robbery
McDevitt also lived about a 10-minute drive away from the Gardner Museum at the time of the heist. He was questioned by the FBI in 1992, and later in front of a grand jury. His lawyer told the globe that his client knew nothing about the crime.
The Gardner Museum heist was an inside job.
This would explain how the thieves knew where the only alarm button was located, and also their knowledge that the artwork did not have anti-theft d evices.
The FBI claimed that security guard Richard E. Abath has not been ruled out as a suspect. The suspicion goes beyond Abath being poor at his job, as mentioned before Abath notably could not recall the faces of the robbers shortly after the heist.
Also despite the thieves failure to destroy motion sensor equipment, the motion sensors oddly didn’t record the thieves on the first floor, where a piece was stolen. But, that same equipment picked up Abath’s around in that room before the thieves arrived. Abath also broke security protocol by granting the disguised policeman entry. Museum policy prohibits letting unauthorized personnel even police from entering the museum. Abath states he was unaware of this policy, yet this wasn’t the first time Abath had broken protocol. At one of the museum’s New Year’s Eve parties, Abath snuck in some friends, which to be fair, seems fairly innocuous, but that doesn’t apply to his third break of protocol.
A video released two years ago shows Abath letting in an unauthorized visitor the night before the heist. Law enforcement officials believe this person may have been scanning the area for a dry run. Abath says he does not remember this visitor despite being caught on tape. Nonetheless, in 2015 Abath stated in an interview that he’s still angry about that night.
The third theory comes from Dutch private investigator, Arthur Brand, an expert in international art crimes.
In his impressive endeavors to recover stolen art, Brand has posed as a Texas oil millionaire, a representative for sheiks and princes, as well as a general criminal. One time he negotiated with criminal gangs to recover $25 million of artwork.
In 1991, about a year after the heist, Arthur Brand acquired images of the stolen artwork in storage somewhere in Holland. In 2010, Brand heard that the pieces were in possession of a member of the Irish Republican Army. After working on the case with the FBI for roughly 12 years, Brand theorizes that the pieces were originally stolen by small-time thieves, who sold the pieces to US gang members, who then possibly in the mid-1990s, shipped the pieces off to Ireland to some top-ranking Irish Republican Army commanders.
Brand estimates that he can get the pieces back in a matter of months. He will not give details as to why, but believes that the investigation and leads are “making the haystack smaller”.
FBI spokeswoman Kristen Setera stated, “the FBI believes with high confidence that we have identified those responsible for the Gardner Museum art theft, even though we still don’t know where the art is currently located.”
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