- Tonight, the biggest art heist in history.
- Some of the pieces that were stolen
were priceless masterpieces.
- Some have been taken carefully and unscrewed out of frames.
Others have been cut out.
- The men are tied up with duct tape,
and they look like hell.
- Half a billion dollars in masterpieces gone
without a trace
and a three-decade search down many paths,
all leading nowhere.
- The thieves knew things that only an insider would know.
- This is not a guy who you would pick out of a lineup
and say, oh yeah, he's some kind of a criminal mastermind.
- Now, we'll uncover the top theories
behind this perfectly planned heist.
- If mobsters did steal it, who did they steal it for?
- Was he assassinated because
he knew something about the Gardner Museum?
- The fact that no one's come forward after 33 years,
that's what makes this case one
of the world's greatest mysteries.
- Who orchestrated the Gardner Heist and why?
(dramatic music)
- [Laurence] 8:15 AM on Sunday, March 18th, 1990,
guards arrive for their shift
at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
and are shocked to find the security desk empty.
They radio the overnight guards but get no reply,
so they call the Boston Police.
- The police find the guards in the basement,
bound and handcuffed to the pipes.
- The men are tied up with duct tape,
not only duct tape on their hands and feet,
but also duct tape around their face and their eyes,
and they look like hell.
- The first thing the police did
after freeing the guards and getting their statements,
was search the museum for evidence.
- What they discover is, place has been robbed.
- [Laurence] The police are shocked
at what they see in two galleries.
- Police find the galleries in disarray,
with broken glass, paint chips on the floor,
scraps of canvas hanging to frames
with the paintings themselves missing.
Some have been taken carefully and unscrewed out of frames.
Others have been cut out.
- [Laurence] One piece has also been taken
from a third gallery known as the Blue Room.
- It's the only piece taken
from the first floor of the Garden Museum.
- [Laurence] The theft is massive,
13 pieces of artwork valued today at about $500 million.
- The theft is the largest unsolved art theft in history,
as well as the largest theft of property in America.
- [Laurence] The Gardner Museum is a landmark in Boston,
modeled after a 15th century Venetian palace.
It holds the private collection of heiress and art patron,
Isabella Stewart Gardner.
- Wanting to share her collection with the public,
Gardner opened the museum in 1903.
- She spent about a decade making it to her perfection.
And it was a perfection.
It was, when it opened,
the largest privately owned collection of art in America.
- [Laurence] After the robbery,
investigators take inventory of the stolen items.
Many are one of a kind.
- The pieces that were stolen were priceless masterpieces.
One was a Rembrandt seascape, known as
"A Storm Over the Sea of Galilee."
It's the only seascape Rembrandt ever did.
Another piece was called "The Concert."
It was by Vermeer.
It's the only Vermeer that's missing in the world.
Those two pieces alone were valued at the time
of over $200 million.
Some of the other pieces
that they took were a few Degas sketches,
a Manet called "Chez Tortoni," which was a painting.
They took the fitting off of the first regimental flag
of Napoleon and also a Chinese beaker.
- [Laurence] Who could have pulled off
such a brazen heist and how did they do it?
- They really knew their way
around the sort of logistical structure of the institution.
They were really familiar
with the institution's security system.
And they navigated the galleries
in a way that was around the motion detectors.
- [Laurence] Not only did the thieves navigate
the museum with ease,
they appear to know the security systems.
- When police initially are investigating the crime scene,
they find that all of the security footage tapes
have been taken,
and they also find that printouts
of the motion detector data have been removed.
The thieves are, we can assume,
believing that they're leaving without any sort of trace
of where they've been or what they've done.
- The thieves knew things that only an insider would know.
- One of the first people that they looked at
as an insider was Richard Abath, who was a guard that night.
- He was a security guard,
so he knew the security system at the museum very well.
He was a 23-year-old, self-described hippie
who had admitted to coming to work inebriated several times.
- He had done things over that year
that should have gotten him fired,
and he just got away with things.
And I think he just got lackadaisical.
- [Laurence] Abath tells police that on the night of the heist,
he noticed a pair of unusual visitors outside of the museum
after closing time.
- Rick looks up at the closed circuit TV monitor,
there shows two men ringing the doorbell in police uniform
and one of them says, "Open up.
We are here to investigate a disturbance."
- It was St. Patrick's Day morning.
In other words, people were partying in Boston.
There were revelers out on the street.
So for two police officers
to show up at that point was not that unusual.
- But Rick's handbook says,
if someone comes to the side door
and demands entrance and you cannot get rid of them,
you call the police, but he doesn't.
- Abath's response really wasn't the best.
He said that he allowed these two gentlemen
to come in dressed as police officers
because he believed that they were Boston cops.
- [Laurence] Abath doesn't follow
the museum's clear security protocols that night,
but what he does do is radio his colleague
to come to the security desk
because the two police seemingly want to arrest him.
- The two police officers say
to Rick in a sort of a offhand way,
but convincing to Rick, "Hey, you look familiar to us.
Do we have a warrant for your arrest?"
And as Rick explains it, he thought, "I better go along
with what they're asking me to do,"
which was to step around away from the back of the table
and come out in front of us
so we can get a good look at you.
- These two police officers lure Abath
and his co-night guard away from their security desk,
which would be the only place
that they'd easily be able to call for help
from the outside world.
- As soon as he's within proximity,
they immediately place handcuffs on him.
And when the second security guard comes in,
he too is cuffed.
So now these two are totally confused.
They're wondering why are these police officers arresting them,
and it's at that moment that one of the police officers says,
"This is a robbery."
They lead him to the basement of the museum,
which was very odd because,
how would they even know that the museum had a basement?
And then they strategically placed them about 50 feet apart.
They duct tape them in an odd manner,
allowing one of the security guards the ability
to kind of peek through the spaces in between the duct tape.
- The robbers say to both guards before leaving them,
"Keep your mouth shut
and you'll get your reward in a year's time."
- [Laurence] The thieves leave the basement around 1:35 AM.
After waiting an hour or so
to ensure the guards are still tied up,
they exit the museum.
But first, they take the security tape
and a printout of the museum's motion detectors.
They make one crucial mistake.
- The thieves knew to take the security tape
and to take the printout,
but they didn't realize
that the hard drive had stored the movements also
so it could be reproduced,
and that's how we know where they went that night.
- [Laurence] Investigators can now track all the movement
through the museum that night,
beginning in the gallery known as the Dutch Room.
- The thieves travel both to the Dutch Room
and the Short Gallery.
The Dutch Room is where they're taking
five important old master works,
including the concert
and Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee."
And the Short Gallery is where they're taking
most of the Degas works on paper,
as well as the Eagle Finial.
- [Laurence] In all,
the thieves were in the museum for 81 minutes,
leaving at 2:45 AM.
When the police look at the motion detector data,
they find something highly suspicious.
- The only information shown on the motion detector data
in the Blue Room comes from hours before,
when Abath admits
that that was most likely him doing his rounds.
- To me, it's the mystery within the mystery.
It's the theft within the theft.
Why didn't their footsteps show up in that room?
Rick was in that room before the bad guys showed up.
Could he have taken it off the wall?
- [Laurence] Investigators learn more
about Abath's actions that night that raise alarm bells.
- We know that Rick Abath opened
and closed the Palace Road door.
Why would he do that?
That was not part of his rounds.
That was not part of the usual protocol.
It looks awfully fishy.
Was he signaling the robbers it's a good time to come?
- [Laurence] Despite their suspicions,
investigators never amass enough evidence
to charge Abath with the crime.
- This is a man who has lived
under a cloud of suspicion for his entire life,
but this is not a guy who you would pick out of a lineup
and say, "Oh yeah, he's some kind of a criminal mastermind."
- [Laurence] Ultimately, he moves out of the state,
finishes his college degree,
and works as a teacher's aide.
Then in 2015, he's back in the spotlight
after the FBI released a security video from the museum,
taken a night before the theft.
- The FBI video shows Mr. Abath buzzing in a person
to talk to him at the security desk,
which was against the rules.
So it took many years,
almost 25 years for the FBI to release that video.
- The museum and the FBI say,
"We want to know who this person was."
Rick was asked, "Do you know who this was?"
Rick says, "I don't remember it."
- Abath is giving inconsistent statements to the officers
and they're not buying any of it,
but eventually he's given two polygraphs and he passes.
- [Laurence] So if the theft was done by an insider,
who is responsible?
- Whether or not Abath was the inside man,
we know that this was not one person acting alone.
This was a group of people planning
and executing this heist.
- [Laurence] After failing to find enough evidence
to charge a night security guard at the Gardner Museum,
investigators looking into the case are stumped.
The FBI releases sketches
of the thieves posing as Boston Police
in hopes of identifying the suspects.
- Who were these two men?
And how did they carry out the theft
in the very particular way in which they did?
- [Laurence] The sketches reveal the thieves' disguises
and present a new angle in the investigation.
- In any type of a crime,
the first thing investigators are gonna do is look
at the forensic evidence that's left behind at the scene,
interview individuals who are witnesses,
and then look at other situations
that occurred in that area
that are like that, other art thefts that were unsolved.
Those are gonna be your primary suspects
after the insiders.
- Investigators are really gonna look
for key characteristics
that may be similar to other crimes committed,
whether they involve art
or a similar M.O. by particular criminals.
- Investigators looked at other crimes in the area.
In one particular case,
a failed theft at a similar museum.
Like the Gardner Museum,
the Hyde Museum Collection in the collector's former home
and the art is very similar, high value.
- The Hyde Collection has old masters combined
with French impressionist works.
It's often been called the Mini Gardner
and is another Palazzo style museum in Upstate New York.
- [Laurence] On December 22nd, 1980,
10 years before the Gardner Heist,
two crooks are on their way to rob the Hyde Museum
when they run into trouble.
- Two men hijack a FedEx truck.
They subdue the driver
in the back using duct tape and ether.
They tell her that if she behaves and cooperates,
that she will be rewarded.
- Some of the tools they brought along
with them were handcuffs, duct tape,
and knives to cut the paintings out of their frames,
just like in the Gardner Heist.
- [Laurence] The operation is called off
when the thieves get caught in traffic
and realize they can't get to the Hyde Collection
before closing time.
Authorities eventually catch up to the hijackers.
- The FedEx driver is able to ID the two men
who subdued her in the back of the truck.
They are the con artist, Brian McDevitt,
and his co-conspirator, Michael Morey.
The two men are convicted of kidnapping
and attempted grand larceny
and both spend several months in prison.
- [Laurence] Both men are out of prison
at the time of the Gardner Heist,
but the methodology in both cases is similar.
- While investigators are looking into the Gardner Heist,
they're again drawn to McDevitt and Morey
due to the similarities
between their attempted robbery of the Hyde Collection
and the robbery of the Gardner Heist.
The use of duct tape to bind the FedEx driver
and the duct tape used to bind the night guards,
the tools to remove paintings from their frames,
as well as this promise of if you behave,
you will be rewarded.
- So Michael Morey, he had an alibi.
The other guy, Brian McDevitt, not so much.
He didn't have an alibi,
and he was in the Boston area that night.
- [Laurence] The FBI spends more than a year
investigating Brian McDevitt.
- Brian McDevitt was a real character.
He had a history of fraudulent activity.
At one point, he even said
he was a member of the Vanderbilt family.
Later, he moved to Los Angeles,
he joined the Writer's Guild of America and said,
"I'm a successful screenwriter."
- In an FBI interview,
Morey told agents that McDevitt used the exact same language
in the Hyde attempt that was used during the Gardner Heist.
We know where you live, but if you behave,
you will be rewarded.
- The FBI are able to draw a connection
between McDevitt and the Gardner Heist,
given that McDevitt himself has a strong Boston accent,
which is consistent with the description
that Abath provided of the two thieves,
and McDevitt himself also seems
to resemble one of the early police sketches.
- [Laurence] In 1992, Brian McDevitt agrees
to talk to the FBI.
- McDevitt sits down with the FBI several times,
each time insisting that he's had nothing
to do with the Gardner Heist
despite the fact that he's not able to produce an alibi.
- [Laurence] The FBI also interviews a woman
who Brian McDevitt was dating at the time of the heist.
- McDevitt had this girlfriend who was over the moon with him.
I mean, she thought he was like an artistic genius.
He seemed very well-connected.
He had told his girlfriend he was going down
to New York the weekend of the heist
to attend this big soiree put on by the Writer's Guild.
- Upon his return,
he told her that the FBI may question her
and that if they did,
she was to tell them that they had spent
St. Patrick's Day weekend together,
which she ultimately refuses to do.
And McDevitt became very irate
at the fact that she refused to lie for him.
She learns that there was no Writer's Guild event
over the weekend of St. Patrick's Day.
She learns that he may not even be a screenwriter.
McDevitt tells her that he was actually involved
and had been paid to commit the Gardner Heist
and that he has to flee the country.
- She goes back and writes in her diary
that she can't believe what he just told her,
and she doesn't know how to process it.
And she can't even handle it.
And it's so huge she can't even write it down.
All that's in her diary is that Brian did a terrible thing.
He admitted it and I don't know how to process it.
- Feeling uncomfortable
and overwhelmed by the amount of information
that's been given to her by McDevitt,
she tells the FBI.
- When the FBI tries to find Brian McDevitt again,
he's gone.
- He fled to Medellin, Colombia.
The FBI were able to trace him there,
but he died before they were able to interview him again.
- McDevitt's death brought investigators
to another standstill with many questions remaining.
Was McDevitt himself actually involved in the theft
or was he just pretending to have been involved
to impress anyone who would listen?
- [Laurence] But McDevitt isn't the only
compelling suspect in this complicated case.
- [Laurence] In 1997, seven years after the Gardner Heist,
a reporter from the Boston Herald gets a strange call
from a man who claims to have information on the case.
His name is William Youngworth, Jr.
- He's an antique dealer with a criminal past,
very unscrupulous.
Youngworth contacts a reporter at the Boston Herald.
He makes it clear that he didn't steal the paintings,
but he says, "I know where the paintings
from the Gardner Heist are
and I can help you facilitate their return."
- Youngworth told him that he had not stolen the paintings,
but he could supply them to be recovered.
- He tells reporters that
he would be willing to return these pieces
to law enforcement if the conditions are right,
those conditions being receipt of the $5 million reward,
complete immunity for anything surrounding the Gardner Heist,
and leniency for himself on a separate unrelated case.
- And the FBI is saying to Youngworth,
"You've got to cooperate with us."
Youngworth says, "I will cooperate
if you give into my list of demands."
- [Laurence] In a surprising twist,
one of Youngworth's demands is the release
of his good friend Myles Connor from prison.
At the time,
Connor is serving 10 years for transporting stolen art.
- And Myles is a very cunning guy.
He's very well-known to the police around Boston,
both for art and antiques thefts.
- Youngworth and Connor have history.
They've been involved in criminality together,
and it's quite possible that all of this information
that Youngworth is offering is nothing more than a scam
to come up with money.
Myles Connor is a name that came up very early
in the investigation.
He was and probably still is one
of the most notorious art thieves in America.
- In the 1970s,
he was caught by an undercover FBI agent in an attempt
to sell stolen Andrew Wyeth artworks.
Now, at the same time,
around 1975 while he's out on bail,
Connor and some associates walk
into the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston
and they steal a Rembrandt.
- Myles calls his lawyer a year later and says,
"Tell the FBI,
if they want to get their Rembrandt back from the MFA,
I'll give it back to them,
but they gotta do a deal with me, I want a deal."
He gets the painting to be brought back.
He goes into court.
He allows him to serve the terms together
as one eight-year sentence.
So Myles thinks he's got some leeway.
- [Laurence] Investigators wonder,
could Connor be connected to the infamous Gardner Heist?
If so, Youngworth isn't talking.
- Youngworth doesn't give much information
because he has a list of demands.
Before he fully cooperates,
he tells the FBI, "If you fulfill these demands,
I will get you back the paintings
that you're looking for."
- [Laurence] Both the FBI and the Boston Herald reporter
are skeptical and demand proof
that William Youngworth really does have the paintings.
- Subsequently, the two men set up a clandestine meeting.
The Boston Herald reporter is picked up by Youngworth
in the middle of the night
and driven to a warehouse in Brooklyn.
In this warehouse, Youngworth unfurls a painting
that the two men then examine by flashlight.
The Herald Reporter believes
he has seen Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee."
He then returns to Boston
where he publishes an article called "We've Seen It!"
where they demand further evidence,
but argue that they have seen and know the location
of at least one of the Gardner Heist paintings.
- [Laurence] The Herald's reporter stays on the story
and demands even more proof.
- Youngworth produces paint chips
from what he claims to be the Rembrandt.
And paint chips are very distinct
from different time periods.
Tracing something like lead can actually tell you
what era a paint was made.
- [Laurence] The Herald then turns over the paint flakes
to the FBI for more detailed analysis.
- In doing this scientific testing,
we're able to determine
that the paint chips themselves are about 350 years old
and the materials being used in those paint chips
are consistent with the place and time
in which both Rembrandt and Vermeer are painting.
- But in an interesting turn of events,
they do not match the Rembrandt painting.
- [Laurence] Despite being dated to the same era,
the paint chips Youngworth turned over were found
to contain oils and pigments not found
in the museum's stolen Rembrandt.
- The Gardner Museum felt the investigators didn't do
a thorough investigation,
that they didn't compare those chips
to every item that had been stolen.
There was never a comparison done
to see if, possibly,
they could have come from the Vermeer
who was a contemporary of Rembrandt.
- At the end of the day,
we don't know where Youngworth procured these paint chips.
All we know is that they don't match
Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee."
- The officials from the Gardner Museum were left wondering
whether or not investigators could have done more
in terms of the comparison of the chips that were found
and have to ask, was this possible
that Youngworth did in fact have the Rembrandt?
- [Laurence] Neither Youngworth nor Connor are charged
in the Gardner case,
but Connor claims he has info to share.
- He said he thought about robbing the Gardner Museum.
He also said he never did it it,
but he did say he thinks he knows who did.
- The Gardner Museum Heist is a high stakes crime,
but not a violent one.
The thieves get in and out
without shedding a single drop of blood.
But as the FBI goes hunting
for suspects in Boston's underworld,
they start to realize that a fortune
that big may be worth killing over.
- Boston in the '90s is one
where organized crime continues to be rampant.
And with organized crime also come
law enforcement informants working with law enforcement
to help them solve crimes and gain leniency on the crimes
that they themselves are committing.
- [Laurence] Notorious art thief Myles Connor is no stranger
to making deals with the FBI.
And he points them to a dizzying new array of suspects.
- Now, in around 1991,
he hears that connections
that he has within the mob are going around,
bragging about having committed the Gardner Heist
without him.
- While in prison, Myles Connor states today
that he was visited by an old friend
who introduced him to Robert Donati.
Now, Robert Donati was a soldier,
a worker with the patriarchal mafia family
out of New England.
- Back in 1974, Connor says
that he cased out the Gardner Museum
with Robert Donati.
Didn't actually follow through with the break in.
Later in jail,
he finds out that Donati actually went ahead
and robbed the museum anyway without him.
- [Laurence] And Donati hasn't been especially discreet.
- Bobby Donati is going around town,
bragging about having committed the Gardner Heist
and having buried the paintings.
The speculation is that Donati is planning
to ransom the paintings back to law enforcement
to help free a fellow mobster.
- He wasn't doing it for money.
He was doing it for a friend.
Donati, I guess, believed that if he stole these paintings,
maybe he could make a deal
to try to get this friend's sentence reduced.
- With Donati, there's another red flag.
He was caught with police paraphernalia.
That's another connection to the Gardner case.
- [Laurence] In 1991, about a year
after the Gardner Heist,
Robert Donati disappears.
- Robert Donati was found in the trunk of his car.
His throat was slashed so deeply,
he was almost decapitated.
- There was a gang war going on.
Was he assassinated because of the gang war
or was he assassinated because he knew something
about the Gardner Museum
and he had the art in his possession?
- It's silly to think that beyond a robbery,
that this could now also be tied to a murder.
- [Laurence] After the hit on Donati,
the FBI scours any properties attached to him,
but never finds any of the Gardner works.
- He could have put those paintings anywhere.
I mean, these guys had safe houses all over the place
and perhaps the knowledge
of where he put them died with him.
- Donati may very well have stashed some of those paintings.
And if what he said was true,
then the location of those paintings died with him.
Now, there've been rumors of a painting showing up here
and a painting showing up there,
but every time law enforcement tries
to follow up on those leads, they come up with nothing.
- [Laurence] But Donati's death doesn't stop the FBI
from investigating more Boston crime family members.
The trail leads next to a friend
of Donati named Bobby Gentile.
- Bobby Gentile was friends
with a lot of different Boston area mobsters.
He knew Bobby Donati.
He knew a lot of these characters.
And it's believed that at some point,
he took possession of at least two of these paintings.
So a federal judge authorizes a search warrant
for Bobby Gentile's home.
And inside Gentile's house is a list of all the items
that have been stolen from the Gardner Museum
with little price points on them.
And next to the price points is the Boston Herald article
from the day after the theft.
So after Gentile's house is raided,
he of course, remains a suspect.
- The investigation on Gentile remained open
for three years.
He ultimately sold a gun to an undercover FBI agent.
He received a five-year sentence
for a felony possession of a firearm.
The FBI tried to flip him,
tried to get him to come in and talk about the paintings
that he supposedly had,
but he never would speak about it.
Robert Gentile never admitted anything
to do with the Gardner Heist.
He did his time, got out of jail in 2019
and died in 2021 at the age of 85.
- [Laurence] In 2013, while Gentile is still alive,
tips from the FBI informants point investigators
to other members of organized crime,
a pair of low level gangsters named George Reissfelder
and Leonard Dimuzio.
- Both Reissfelder and Dimuzio appear similar
to the early sketches of the two police officers,
and they also have long rap sheets of theft
and other sorts of violent crime in the Boston area.
- The FBI did background investigations.
And they were successful in getting some of the relatives
of Reissfelder to talk to them.
- During the background investigation
of George Reissfelder,
they sit down with his brother Richard.
They show him a picture book,
and he immediately pointed to the "Chez Tortoni"
and he said, "Hey, I've seen that.
It was in my brother's apartment."
- So in addition to Reissfelder being mobbed up,
as they say, he was also linked to the robbery
or the possession of one of the paintings.
- [Laurence] But soon, the investigation
hits a familiar snag.
- Reissfelder meets an untimely death.
He dies of a cocaine overdose.
Investigators go to his home, they look for the painting.
They find nothing.
- Shortly after George Reissfelder died,
his longtime criminal partner,
Leonard Dimuzio, he disappeared.
And then a few months later,
he was found dead as well.
- [Laurence] Four possible suspects all turning up dead,
just as investigators close in.
To some, it seems like more than a coincidence.
- There were many mafia members who were associated,
involved around the Gardner Heist,
and it would be in their best interest
to not speak on that criminality.
Bad things could happen
if they shared information that they know.
- The silence wasn't necessarily surprising.
That's a part of mob culture.
But if we speculate about where the paintings could be,
they could be anywhere.
They could be buried in the ground,
they could be in a storage unit.
They could be in somebody's house
or on a boat somewhere.
We never know.
- [Laurence] Much of the Gardner Heist investigation has
focused on the thieves who stole the artwork
from the building.
But where did the paintings go next?
And who would have the power and the money to buy them?
- There's a few things that really bother investigators
and myself about this case.
The paintings that were taken
and all of the artwork that were taken are so famous
that they could never be sold.
- You can't just walk into an auction house hopefully
and put up one of these works for auction.
- It's hotter than hot, it's white hot.
It's so famous, it's so valuable,
and it's so reported on.
I mean, this was a story
that made headlines across the globe.
- Generally, artwork is recovered
when there's a death and someone contacts authorities
to say that they found something,
or it's recovered in the midst of another investigation.
- [Laurence] In 2017,
the Gardner Museum doubles its reward,
but no new leads emerge.
- Despite the fact that it's a $10 million reward,
no one has come forth with any information
that has led to the recovery of any of the works.
It's pretty puzzling to think about
why the works that were stolen were actually taken
and more expensive works were left behind.
- The thieves, we know, spent about
81 minutes moving systematically
through both the Dutch room and the Short Room,
removing what some have described as a laundry list
or shopping list of artworks.
- Although some of the paintings
that were taken were masterpieces,
unique pieces that can't be reproduced
or should be recovered,
there were some pieces that were not that valuable.
The Degas sketches were not that valuable.
The Finial off of the flag,
the Napoleonic regimental flag, was valuable,
but not to the point of these paintings.
- So there wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason
for some of the thefts.
The most expensive painting there was Titian.
But the Titian, "The Rape of Europa" is massive.
So you couldn't really walk that out of the museum.
- They avoided Titian's "Rape of Europa,"
but they took Vermeer's "The Concert,"
and some of these smaller works on paper,
suggesting that there was a plan as to what would be taken.
- [Laurence] Investigators begin to shape a new theory.
- The art market itself is full of collectors
whose sole purpose is to acquire works
that they then keep in their own private collections,
which are essentially the private storage
for wealthy collectors.
And we don't have any way to track
what's traded and sold there.
- That person would have to be very wealthy,
tied to the black market,
very well-versed in how the art market functions,
very well-versed in how the museum market functions.
Taken together,
the works really present as a hodgepodge.
But if you consider that the thieves may have been working
from a private collector's shopping list
who had holes in his or her collection to fill,
and you consider the market value of the works together too,
it makes that shopping list theory much more plausible.
- Not only would this require
spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
on ordering, smuggling, transportation, and storage,
you also have the idea of, why aren't they just spending
that much money on the legitimate market?
- At the time, Anne Hawley, director of the Garden Museum,
believed that someone had come up with a personal list
of things that they wanted to steal
that really they never had any intention of selling.
This was a list of things
that this person really just wanted to possess
and enjoy for themselves.
- So if someone is collecting
and prizing these works for their own personal viewing,
that requires a lot of storage space
and a lot of secrecy.
- [Laurence] There are some suspects that fit the profile.
- So in 2013,
Pablo Picasso's stepdaughters reported a couple
of pieces missing from their collection.
Turns out, they were sold by a Swiss dealer
to a Russian oligarch.
- Ultimately, a dealer was charged
with handling the stolen goods
and selling them on to the Russian collector
who eventually returned the works to the Picasso family.
- This is one of the most frustrating theories of them all
because it forces us to just wait
to see if someone slips up on the black market
or on the open market.
- Anybody looking to purchase these items has got
to understand that they can't really show them off.
You start talking at your Christmas party
about your Vermeer, the word will get out.
So if anybody wanted to purchase them after the fact,
it had to be somebody who just wanted
to look at them for himself or herself.
And that's why they probably have had
difficulty getting rid of the items.
- [Laurence] The Gardner Museum Heist has always had
an air of sophistication about it,
but there may be even more layers to this crime
than investigators first thought.
- The Gardner Museum investigation
is still an open case,
and even though the statute of limitations has run
on the theft,
the statute of limitations has not run on the possession
of the artwork itself.
Authorities are still trying
to find the stolen items for sure.
They're still interviewing people.
They're still following leads.
They're still using traditional law enforcement techniques.
So it's an ongoing investigation.
- If the paintings are safe, who has them?
Where are they and why?
- [Laurence] The answer may be hiding across the Atlantic.
- There were a lot of Boston Irish individuals
who were sympathetic to the IRA, Irish Republican Army,
which at the time was in deep conflict
with the British Army in Northern Ireland
and was looking for independence.
- The Irish Republican Army, the IRA,
was in fact a violent group fighting
for what they viewed as Irish Freedom and uniting Ireland.
And for many years, they used any tactics necessary,
whether it was bombings or kidnappings or murders.
- And a lot of the criminals
in Boston were funneling money, arms,
anything they could to try to help the cause.
So some individuals thought that it was possible
that the IRA may have been involved
in the theft of the paintings.
- The 13 artworks themselves would be used
to barter in order to gain money and weapons for the IRA efforts.
- [Laurence] The chief proponent of this theory is Arthur Brand,
a Dutch private investigator known
as the Indiana Jones of the art world.
- Renowned art detective Arthur Brand is known
for recovering artworks for governments,
as well as recovering things like a $25 million Picasso
from a yacht.
He believes that the paintings themselves are located
in Ireland, having been taken there
after being smuggled out of the United States
in an effort to raise money for the cause of the IRA.
- [Laurence] The IRA has been linked to art theft before.
- They broke into Sir Alfred Bates home
where they stole 19 works, including a Vermeer.
That Vermeer today is valued by some at around $100 million.
These works they attempted to use to barter
for the freedom of some of their IRA compatriots.
- We're gonna try to ransom them back
to the insurance company or whoever would pay them.
- [Laurence] Authorities foiled the plot
and the paintings were retrieved within weeks.
But there has never been an overt IRA demand
over the Gardner paintings
and that makes investigators doubt Brand's theory.
- There's no indication the IRA ever had these paintings.
They've never come forward to try to get a ransom.
Remember, there's a $10 million reward.
If they were trying to fund something,
they would've gotten the reward.
- Where is the IRA going to be exchanging these works
to get money in arms?
It's most likely not going to be in Ireland,
which means then they're going to have
to smuggle the 13 most well-known works in the world
at the time off an island
onto someplace like mainland Europe
without getting caught a second time.
- [Laurence] Some think the key link was one
of the biggest mob figures in the northeast at the time.
- James Whitey Bulger is the leader
of the Irish gang in Boston in the '80s
and the early '90s.
And he became one of the most powerful,
if not the most powerful criminal in Boston.
They made their money through extortion, drug dealing,
gambling, murder, whatever it took.
- In addition to being a criminal,
Bulger's a long time FBI informant.
So you think if he did know something,
he'd say something.
In Boston, if anybody stole as much as a candy bar,
Bulger's gonna know about it.
So he's a prime candidate
to have information about the Gardner Heist.
- [Laurence] But there was never any evidence connecting Bulger
to the crime itself.
- In 1995, 5 years after the Gardner Heist,
he's charged with the whole slew of crimes
related to racketeering, murder,
extortion, drug dealing,
all sorts of very serious offenses.
And Bulger goes on the run.
And ultimately, he gets caught in the summer of 2011,
16 years after he fled Boston, in Santa Monica, California.
- Whitey Bulger was convicted of several crimes
which included 11 murders.
He was given ultimately two life sentences
and charged with racketeering.
- Not only was he a very savvy criminal,
but he was getting tipped off by corrupt members
of the FBI.
So when he went into prison,
that of course, made him a target.
- During his time in prison,
Bulger began to fear for his life.
- [Laurence] If Bulger was willing to exchange
information about the Gardner Heist
to ensure his safety, he never had the chance.
In 2018, without a deal in place,
Bulger is murdered in prison.
- Some believe that they know
what Bulger may have revealed to the FBI.
Given that it's known
he shipped arms and drugs to the IRA.
- Now that Bulger has been beaten to death in prison,
there's no way to confirm anything from him.
But up until the day he died,
he never gave any indication
that he knew where Gardner Museum's artwork was.
- [Laurence] Investigators like Arthur Brand
are still scouring Europe for any sign of the paintings,
but so far, nothing's turned up.
- This artwork belongs in Boston.
Hopefully someday, they'll be back
hanging in the Gardner Museum for all of us to see.
- There's always gonna be a reminder of this heist,
even after 33 years,
because of the will Isabella Stewart Gardner
left when she died.
It states that nothing can be changed,
nothing can be moved in the museum.
So if you go today,
you're gonna see empty frames where the paintings were.
- We won't become a world class city
until we get our artwork back.
You can see those empty frames, they're heartbreaking.
You walk into the Dutch Room now,
it's like walking the first person at a wake,
sadness, loss.
And that's a loss for Boston.
- More than three decades have passed
since 13 works of art were stolen
from the Gardner Museum in Boston.
So far, not a single one has surfaced,
denying the art world some of its greatest treasures.
But with that $10 million reward still out there,
hope remains that these masterpieces
will come home soon.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."