Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the Man,
Speaker 1: the myth Legend, our super producer, Max, the Surreal Williams,
Speaker 1: the Triple Hey Max. Noel and I had a question
Speaker 1: for you based on our earlier conversation in our two
Speaker 1: part series on potatoes. So potatoes are one of the
Speaker 1: seven things you can eat with a condition? What are
Speaker 1: the other six?
Speaker 2: Frozen? Chicken and uh exclusively, Well, I have to frost.
Speaker 2: I can't have any I can't have any meats that
Speaker 2: are aged like so Noel, when we were at that
Speaker 2: lovely steakhouse in the Bahamas, Marcus Sandilson's restaurant, Marcus, you
Speaker 2: got the aged one. I got the fresh one, because
Speaker 2: I can't have anything aged.
Speaker 1: Age.
Speaker 3: They don't age chicken. Though you can have fresh chicken,
Speaker 3: it doesn't have to be frozen. All right, Okay, give
Speaker 3: us the last sorry, I good question question.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, and let's see gluten gluten free bread, rice, pain.
Speaker 3: I can have pain, pain and sadness.
Speaker 1: Oh and those last two don't count, I think.
Speaker 3: And uh, blueberries.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I suspect our producer is freestylied a little bit,
Speaker 1: but we love it.
Speaker 3: Definitely.
Speaker 1: Can drink coffee that is nol bread.
Speaker 2: Coffee is is actually a questionable thing, but there is
Speaker 2: some standards. I cannot, I can, I cannot go without
Speaker 2: my caffeine. I was off of coffee for six months
Speaker 2: at one point, actually gross, horrible.
Speaker 1: Why so that is Noel Brown, none other They called
Speaker 1: me bed bullying for tax purposes. We are thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined with none other than Salvador Dolli. Uh did I, Noel?
Speaker 1: Did I tell you when I was I was in
Speaker 1: a situation that required me to be in Spain and
Speaker 1: I found a museum for Salvador Dolli and they were
Speaker 1: actually selling sketches that the man had made. They were
Speaker 1: quite expensive. I did suspect money laundering. Uh, and thank goodness.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend, well, we still fight about it. She talked
Speaker 1: me off the ledge. She said, how much money do
Speaker 1: podcasters make? Do you really want to buy and original DOLLI?
Speaker 3: Well, you know you got to park your money somewhere,
Speaker 3: and why not park it in a sketch, a tossed
Speaker 3: off sketch? Because as we know, our man Dolli was
Speaker 3: nothing if not a capitalist. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 3: know it's funny. I actually found myself in Spain as well.
Speaker 3: I went to a I didn't go to a Doli
Speaker 3: museum or exhibit, but I went to this really lovely
Speaker 3: restaurant called Baboo that was named after his pet Ocelot
Speaker 3: and was very Salvador Dali coded in its decor and
Speaker 3: was delightful. And we had a lovely waiter who gave
Speaker 3: us all kinds of tips and tricks on places to
Speaker 3: go see in Barcelona, and it was fantastic. And yeah, Baboo,
Speaker 3: the pet Oscelot. This is an interesting man, Salvador Dolli,
Speaker 3: Oh yes.
Speaker 1: Very interested in himself, as we will find. We are
Speaker 1: putting on our ridiculous crime hats to examine one of
Speaker 1: our favorite artists and one of our favorite stories about him.
Speaker 1: Thanks to our research associate Maria, we have learned that
Speaker 1: for a long time at Rikers Island, yes that Riker's Island,
Speaker 1: the jail, there was an original drawing a piece by
Speaker 1: Salvador Dali that hung around in one of the worst
Speaker 1: places in the world for decades. Like people didn't appreciate it.
Speaker 1: They were throwing coffee cups at it. They stuck it
Speaker 1: next to a vending machine. But get this, fellow ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1: This piece was stolen in two thousand and three from
Speaker 1: inside of the walls of one of the country's most
Speaker 1: notorious correctional facilities. So as we're as we're exploring this,
Speaker 1: our three big questions are how did it get there?
Speaker 1: To start with, who stole the painting, who has it now?
Speaker 1: And a little bit of light foreshadowing. We know two
Speaker 1: of those answers. So Noel, can you really put us
Speaker 1: in the moment? Maybe take us back to nineteen sixty five?
Speaker 3: Boy, could I ever February twenty sixth, to be precise,
Speaker 3: a Friday of a morning of a Friday, A morning
Speaker 3: of a Friday, on a Friday, which was the name
Speaker 3: I think? Yeah, radioheads used to be called on a Friday,
Speaker 3: So this could have been where they got their inspiration
Speaker 3: for that. Sure, probably not, who knows. Salvador Dali woke
Speaker 3: up and he was a little snuffily, a little fluish influence,
Speaker 3: was it? Yeah? He wasn't feeling, he wasn't feeling, he
Speaker 3: was feeling out of sorts. He was supposed to spend
Speaker 3: the afternoon hanging out with prisoners at Rikers Island, like
Speaker 3: you do if you're a famous artist. Department of Corrections
Speaker 3: Commissioner Anna Moscowitz Cross believe that part of rehabilitating prisoners
Speaker 3: should include art, which I fully support and I think
Speaker 3: that's great, and theater, which I also fully support. There's
Speaker 3: that incredible film Sing Sing that came out recently about
Speaker 3: programs in prisons to you know, you know, incorporate the
Speaker 3: arts into the day lives of inmates and really really
Speaker 3: an interesting history that goes far farther back than one
Speaker 3: might think of the arts having a place in the
Speaker 3: prison system. So Dolly found himself on her schedule to paint,
Speaker 3: to have a little painting sessh with the inmates, ultimately
Speaker 3: part of a publicity campaign for art the Art in
Speaker 3: Prison program. Dolly was super into it because it would
Speaker 3: be a day of himself. It would be Dolly Day
Speaker 3: at Rikers and he was all about that whenever he
Speaker 3: could get a chance to be the center of attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just I'm because I as you know, guys,
Speaker 1: I am I have the dubious order of being related
Speaker 1: to a sculptor and artist of newe regionally like the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who hangs out with US presidents. And
Speaker 1: he was exactly a Dolly. So this feels very familiar.
Speaker 1: You know, there are so many many people in the
Speaker 1: world where you say, hey, do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about something, and they say, yeah, if it's me, we
Speaker 1: can hang out all day.
Speaker 3: So he as the son of a of a relatively
Speaker 3: well known opera singer, very very very diva hard same yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I just loved to hold court. As they say, well, so, yeah,
Speaker 3: Dolly was no exception. And in the in the world
Speaker 3: of somewhat megalomaniacal artists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we we can only imagine without having met Sally ourselves.
Speaker 1: We can only imagine that he probably said, look, I
Speaker 1: have a thing where I can talk about myself. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be cheered and celebrated, kind of like Johnny
Speaker 1: Cash play in Fulsome County or Fulsome Prison Blues in
Speaker 1: a jail. So he thinks he's gonna arrive at the
Speaker 1: island by boat with his wife and as you said,
Speaker 1: his pet asolot baboo, his sweet baboo, his sweet baboo.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, despite the great appeal to his ego, our
Speaker 1: buddy Salvador has to cancel because he has influenced and
Speaker 1: in place of the actual appearance, he sends along as
Speaker 1: an apology or as a door prize, a huge drawing.
Speaker 1: It is four feet by five feet and it is
Speaker 1: a drawing of Jesus Christ being crucified.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, Dali had a pretty cool period.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was throughout his career, but if you look
Speaker 3: up religious iconography Salvador Dali, he does some very interesting
Speaker 3: spins on some very famous religious imagery that some might
Speaker 3: argue border on the sacriligious. I mean you could even
Speaker 3: say that, like, for example, the Goudy Church in Barcelona,
Speaker 3: the Cigratta Familia is so weird looking and it's depiction
Speaker 3: of religious iconography that when you walk through it you
Speaker 3: almost like get are, like, Jesu Louise, what does the
Speaker 3: Pope think of this? It's like it's a lot. It's
Speaker 3: almost like like, you know, Jesus filtered through the lens
Speaker 3: of like the Fifth Element or something like that sci fi. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure the Pope nos they finally finished the cigarette Familia.
Speaker 3: I believe I was able to tour that place as well,
Speaker 3: and it really is like walking through some sort of
Speaker 3: hr Giger church. Very very unusual, but similar to the
Speaker 3: way Dolly approached religious iconography. So he did send this
Speaker 3: painting through after, I believe, just kind of dashing it
Speaker 3: off from his hotel room in New York City.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's India ink on paper. It's got a
Speaker 1: small it's got a small bit of other mediums on it.
Speaker 1: And people will call it untitled. Other people call it
Speaker 1: the a Fiction of Christ. Some will call it Christ
Speaker 1: on the Cross. But the important thing is that this
Speaker 1: is a distinct painting. It is far different from his
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one painting Christ of Saint John on the Cross,
Speaker 1: And technically it's a drawing, this one we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You can obviously see Christ of Saint John of the
Speaker 1: Cross anywhere anywhere you find yourself on the internet. Our
Speaker 1: buddy Dolly. He has a personal rap an agent, you
Speaker 1: could think of it that way, named Nico. And Nico
Speaker 1: takes this drawing, this mixed media work to the prison
Speaker 1: to Rikers Island and shares the following message from Salvador
Speaker 1: to the inmates. We'll read it in full. Your artist,
Speaker 1: don't think your life is finished for you with art,
Speaker 1: you have to always feel free. And he had signed
Speaker 1: it himself for the dining room of the prisoner's Rikers Island, SD.
Speaker 1: He misspelled dining.
Speaker 3: Oh dear, that's you know what. He's an artist. Maybe
Speaker 3: he just was reinventing the word.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was great for him, Noel, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was. For about twenty years. This painting hung, or
Speaker 1: this mixed media art piece, if we're being technical, hung
Speaker 1: in the cafeteria in the mess hoole in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned at the top, and inmate threw a
Speaker 1: coffee cup at it. It broke the stained glass. And
Speaker 1: now it's even more mixed media because now we have
Speaker 1: coffee stains on the drawing. They move it away from
Speaker 1: the cafeteria. Same year, Warden named Alexander Jenkins a new guy.
Speaker 1: New Warden. He arrives at Rikers and he says, I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is a real Salvador Dolly drawing
Speaker 1: or if it's a fake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's true, because there weren't any records on the painting,
Speaker 3: and for all I know, he said it could have
Speaker 3: been an inmates copy of a Dolly. And then it
Speaker 3: was subsequently sent out for authentication and appraisal. It came
Speaker 3: back with an appraisal of around one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: but the painting's last known appraisal in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 3: put its value a little closer to one hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty k.
Speaker 1: Pretty good money, right, pretty good money. And the next
Speaker 1: thing our buddy Alexander Jenkins, the new Warden does is
Speaker 1: approve the Dolly piece to be shipped off to a
Speaker 1: Virginia gallery. It's on temporary display in ort exhibit centered
Speaker 1: around prison art. It does return to rikers. It's boxed
Speaker 1: up in a storage crate and get this, They hide
Speaker 1: it in the basement and forget about it. It is
Speaker 1: not until years and years later that a prison guard
Speaker 1: sees this in a trash can one day and says, hey,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a cool drawing. I should take this
Speaker 1: out of the trash for sure.
Speaker 3: It's probably a good idea, Ben. I want to take
Speaker 3: a little moment to just talk about how you know,
Speaker 3: Dolly is an early example of the kind of insane
Speaker 3: over inflation and kind of influencer nature of the art market,
Speaker 3: This personality driven kind of pop art.
Speaker 1: You know, He's like kind of he jumped out of
Speaker 1: the second story window to land in the bushes to
Speaker 1: get attention.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, exactly. He was as much a media personality
Speaker 3: as he was a painter and artist, much like Andy
Speaker 3: Warhol and his factory, you know, art studio, you know,
Speaker 3: during the second half of the twentieth century. So the
Speaker 3: fact that there's all the speculation around what is ultimately
Speaker 3: kind of a dashed off piece of work is fascinating
Speaker 3: to me. And then of course we carry that on
Speaker 3: into the modern day with stuff like Banksy and you know,
Speaker 3: the wildly speculative nature of art as stores of wealth.
Speaker 1: Check out our Freeport episode. Check out our Money Laundry episodes,
Speaker 1: both available on stuff they don't want you to know,
Speaker 1: all right, So this guy, our anonymous hero of the story,
Speaker 1: this prison guard saves priceless drawing from the trash. They
Speaker 1: rehang it, they frame it, They place it under plexiglass,
Speaker 1: which is much more difficult to break with us frame
Speaker 1: coffee cup and this splash guard.
Speaker 3: It is so weird.
Speaker 1: They put it next to a vending machine in the
Speaker 1: lobby of the Eric M. Taylor Detention Center that is
Speaker 1: one of the jails in the overall Rikers complex, And
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you guys this Ma's hopping on this
Speaker 1: as well. UHL, Max. We would obviously all three of
Speaker 1: us love to have something named after us. You know,
Speaker 1: we'd love to have a library, a wing of an
Speaker 1: Ivy League institution. How would you feel about the Nole C.
Speaker 1: Brown Detention Center?
Speaker 3: Love it? My legacy solidified.
Speaker 2: So there's there's this place in South Carolina where you
Speaker 2: get off the highway.
Speaker 3: It's like one of these places where it's fishing. Get
Speaker 3: off and her weak cass and there.
Speaker 2: Is a bridge and it's just like you know, there's
Speaker 2: like three signs and there's like the first guys like
Speaker 2: named after the road. Second guy is a smaller sign
Speaker 2: is named after the bridge. And then there's a third
Speaker 2: guy with an even smaller sign. It's like like Noel C.
Speaker 3: Brown Sidewalk, Noel Sea Brown's scenic overlook. That's what I'm
Speaker 3: hoping for.
Speaker 1: I love the idea as well of UMAX having a
Speaker 1: sign that we could just hang up around interstates that
Speaker 1: says Max Williams presents exactly.
Speaker 3: You know, I take it back not seeing it overlook.
Speaker 3: I would like the Nole C. Brown rest area. There
Speaker 3: we go and bench there we go.
Speaker 1: Please note that at this point the picture of Dolly
Speaker 1: is accompanied by a plaque, and the plaque says, this
Speaker 1: is an original painting or an original work by the
Speaker 1: actual facts. Salvador Dolly, shout out more and vocal bomb.
Speaker 1: This is worth one million US dollars.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, when did that happen?
Speaker 1: That's just what they said. Man, it's art, it's money laundry,
Speaker 1: of course, whatever you believe, whatever you think is worth bait. Also,
Speaker 1: we have to mention that this drawing was originally intended
Speaker 1: as a gift to the unfortunate inmates of rikers, but
Speaker 1: because it is in the life of this detention center,
Speaker 1: the prisoners can no longer see it.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny too, not to harp on
Speaker 3: the whole like art market thing, but that's so interesting
Speaker 3: because it is ultimately, you know, the materials are of
Speaker 3: very little value. It is all about the name. And
Speaker 3: for something like this, it's not even a matter of like, well,
Speaker 3: it took this many hours to make. It's all about
Speaker 3: the name of the individual and how famous they were
Speaker 3: in the cachet surrounding their kind of cult of personality,
Speaker 3: and what someone's willing to pay for it because I've
Speaker 3: been kind of getting into like watches and stuff lately
Speaker 3: and just fascinated by that market, which can also be
Speaker 3: wildly speculative. But certain watches are made of precious materials
Speaker 3: that themselves hold value. Not the case for a painting
Speaker 3: like this or a drawing like this. More the case
Speaker 3: with maybe, like say, a sculpture made of gold or
Speaker 3: made of some sort of precious material. But this is
Speaker 3: literally just kind of like a very low fig you
Speaker 3: know what.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 3: Come the f all one afternoon at your hotel because
Speaker 3: you have the flu and you don't want to show
Speaker 3: up to your career day. That's what happened.
Speaker 1: There's a group of prison employees. For anybody who hasn't
Speaker 1: been in America's infamous incarceration system. There is a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of inmates. So if you are a good boy, if
Speaker 1: you're behaving, you will have the opportunity in theory to
Speaker 1: acquire more responsibilities, right, a little bit more agency. You
Speaker 1: can become an attendee, You can become a guy works
Speaker 1: in the kitchen, right, or a guy who helps out
Speaker 1: with the admin of the place. Shout out Shawshank rediction.
Speaker 1: These prison employees conspire to take this work by Dolly
Speaker 1: during an unscheduled fire drill. They conducted it inside that
Speaker 1: Eric M. Taylor Detention Center, and that's unscheduled. In quotes,
Speaker 1: by the way, yeah, thank you, Maria. Those are very
Speaker 1: snarky quotes, and they are earned. They did a heist
Speaker 1: inside of prison. It's one am, it's March first, it's
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. It's a BS Malarkey fire drill,
Speaker 1: and it is helpful because it clears out anybody who's
Speaker 1: not in on the heist. They have to leave the lobby.
Speaker 1: We've been in fire drills, like when the three of
Speaker 1: us went into the office every day to record or
Speaker 1: to do our jobs. We always knew there was something
Speaker 1: conspiratorial about the fire drill. Did you ever get that
Speaker 1: sneaky message a few minutes before what like.
Speaker 3: The inside scoop? Yeah, I don't know. I wasn't on that.
Speaker 3: I wasn't not on that email right now. I do
Speaker 3: remember though, when we used to work in Buckhead at
Speaker 3: the old House stuff Works office, we had a fire
Speaker 3: drill one three. We all went outside and everyone was
Speaker 3: like given ice cream. It felt very middle school coded.
Speaker 3: It was great. It was a field trip.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, so these guys do this heist, this field trip.
Speaker 1: Two thousand inmates get locked down and one of the
Speaker 1: co conspirators is a lookout. Another is monitoring the fire drill,
Speaker 1: so we really have two lookouts. And while they're looking
Speaker 1: out the.
Speaker 3: Main lookout and then the fire marshal yes, right right,
Speaker 3: trust safety monitor.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's our main takeaway. But old, this third person,
Speaker 1: this third individual, this is our hitter. This is our
Speaker 1: heavy mover, this is our operator. This third person removes
Speaker 1: the drawing and replaces it with the help of a
Speaker 1: fourth conspirator. They've taken the original drawing by Salvador Dolly
Speaker 1: and they have replaced it with a very temu coded replica.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to get a look at it. We
Speaker 3: haven't really described We did a little bit. We described
Speaker 3: the text on it. But boy, oh boy, when I
Speaker 3: said when we say dashed off, we mean dashed off,
Speaker 3: it is, you know, it is. It's like he's splattered
Speaker 3: India ink on it. It's kind of cool. Actually, now
Speaker 3: I'm sort of taking it back because there is a
Speaker 3: semblance of the shape of Christ in these sort of
Speaker 3: Ralph Stedman s ink splatters and then in the center
Speaker 3: there is a crown of thorns, and the gauche I believe,
Speaker 3: which is the other material that is used, sort of
Speaker 3: creates this smudge in the shape of Jesus's head, and
Speaker 3: the cross is more just sort of like negative space
Speaker 3: that's created by more aush framing the edges of the cross.
Speaker 1: And he's drawing clearly it's inked out like the sketch
Speaker 1: of a cross. It's like seeing a comic book penciler's
Speaker 1: work before polarists get in.
Speaker 3: So I could see how one might think it's one
Speaker 3: of those things where you hear people say, oh, my
Speaker 3: kid could have done that. And if you look at
Speaker 3: the other Christ depiction that we mentioned from Dolly Christ
Speaker 3: of Saint John on Lacrosse, it is much more in
Speaker 3: the style of a classical painting. The dude could paint,
Speaker 3: but he also was one of these fascinating sort of
Speaker 3: more like I guess proto pop artists that while he
Speaker 3: had the training, he also kind of got off on
Speaker 3: doing some more bombastic things that he could could get
Speaker 3: away with a lot and call it a piece of art.
Speaker 3: And this is one of those examples.
Speaker 1: So I imagine it reminds me of Picasso actually, because
Speaker 1: it is a hyper realistic artist in his earlier days
Speaker 1: and then like Colonel Kurtz in a pot, now he
Speaker 1: just went off the deep end.
Speaker 3: Funny you should say that, Ben. I was just in
Speaker 3: New York City a week or two ago, and I
Speaker 3: went to an exhibit at the moment of the work
Speaker 3: of Marcel Duchamp, who many of us probably know from
Speaker 3: like art class or like, you know, humanities in college.
Speaker 3: He was the guy that wrote he signed a toilet
Speaker 3: seat as our mutt, and then that was sort of
Speaker 3: like the first example of like found object, sort of
Speaker 3: super super out there, outrey kind of modern art. But
Speaker 3: this exhibit was super cool because it traced his whole
Speaker 3: trajectory from his earliest works into the more outlandish kind
Speaker 3: of like okay, now I'm just hanging snowshovels from the
Speaker 3: ceiling by a piece of rope. His early stuff was
Speaker 3: like mega expressionistic kind of landscapes and you know, much
Speaker 3: more classically trained looking pieces. So Dolly was much from
Speaker 3: that same tradition. So you could see how the inmates
Speaker 3: or the folks that we're pulling off this heist might
Speaker 3: have looked at this original work and said, ah, we
Speaker 3: could do that. I could do that, but they kind
Speaker 3: of couldn't because they tried to replace it with a replica,
Speaker 3: and even folks on the crew were like, this, this
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 1: This is not on. Yeah, it was. It was not
Speaker 1: the best replica or the best forgery. And again, these
Speaker 1: folks are working with limited materials. So just a few
Speaker 1: hours after they complete the heist, there's a guard who
Speaker 1: is off duty and is you know, pretty much on
Speaker 1: his way home. He's walking through the lobby of this
Speaker 1: tailored detention center. He looks at the Dolly as he
Speaker 1: does every shift because he likes art, and he notices, hey,
Speaker 1: this is different. Here's where they screwed up. So the
Speaker 1: replica is not the same size as the original. It's
Speaker 1: a lot smaller. It is made with oil paint. It
Speaker 1: is on canvas, It is not in a frame, and
Speaker 1: they had literally painted like an impression of a brown
Speaker 1: frame around this drawing, which seemed to this guy childlike.
Speaker 1: It was not mounted, it couldn't be hung correctly. So
Speaker 1: they stole this plexiglass framed mounted piece by Salvador Dolly
Speaker 1: and they literally get this, folks. They stapled up the
Speaker 1: replica click click click click. They just needed enough time
Speaker 1: to get away.
Speaker 3: Rose gil Hearn, the Commissioner of the Department of Investigation, said,
Speaker 3: of the theft, who knew? Who knew that it might
Speaker 3: have been safer left in the cafeteria.
Speaker 1: Right, because that's a more difficult area to heist, right,
Speaker 1: because because more it made square right right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a common ground. No one initially suspected that the
Speaker 1: inmates were involved, because again, the inmates cannot access the lobby.
Speaker 1: So Rikers who contacts the New York Police Department and
Speaker 1: they start investigating the theft. Originally they're looking at the CEOs,
Speaker 1: they're looking at the officials. They might even be staring
Speaker 1: and scance at the warden. They're asking themselves who has
Speaker 1: access to the key to the plexiglass box that protects
Speaker 1: this painting. They do have surveillance cameras, because again this
Speaker 1: is this is the modern day. The surveillance camera pointing
Speaker 1: directly at the work of art is connected to a
Speaker 1: recorder in the warden's office. Yet, mysteriously that video feed
Speaker 1: had cut, It had stopped working overnight.
Speaker 3: Shadows that classic mission impossible stuff cut The feed vari
Speaker 3: eleven like.
Speaker 1: We can cut the feed, you'll have two minutes to
Speaker 1: get past the lasers.
Speaker 3: Exactly lower down from the ceiling and all that. So
Speaker 3: we've got some suspects in our little game of clue here.
Speaker 3: Benny Nutso, who was the assistant deputy warden aged forty
Speaker 3: nine at the time, Mitchell Huckhauser, great name. All these
Speaker 3: are great names. Actually, assistant deputy warden aged forty Timothy
Speaker 3: Pina I believe or Pena officer aged forty four, and
Speaker 3: Gregory Sokol, officer aged thirty eight. So we started to
Speaker 3: see some interrogations going down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boom boom, boom boom.
Speaker 3: So we're talking careful, we're gonna get sued.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I made sure to do it off key.
Speaker 1: We're speaking with Officer Timothy Pena, right, he is a CEO.
Speaker 1: He's been employed at Rikers for sixteen years, so he's
Speaker 1: put his time in.
Speaker 3: At the night of the theft, he is working a
Speaker 3: graveyard shift, returns home and he is so panicked that
Speaker 3: he considers.
Speaker 1: Ending his own life. At least that's what he tells
Speaker 1: investigators later. He said, I felt so desperate I actually
Speaker 1: pointed my firearm to my head instead. I have decided
Speaker 1: for you in YPD that I will confess to this crime.
Speaker 1: I will name all my co conspirators, Benny, Mitchell, Gregory, everybody.
Speaker 1: And he says, look, four months before the theft, Benny
Speaker 1: and Mitchell came up to me and they had a
Speaker 1: plan to steal this drawing, and they said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: you know nobody's gonna notice of fake in its place, weeks, months,
Speaker 1: maybe even nev We're gonna get away with this, and
Speaker 1: Noel to your point, Benny Muzzo would joke often about
Speaker 1: this Salvador Dali painting and exactly the way you did earlier,
Speaker 1: say like it could draw up better than that.
Speaker 3: It looks easier than it actually is. You gotta have style,
Speaker 3: you gotta have flair, you gotta have that artistic panash.
Speaker 3: And your kid may or may not have that, but
Speaker 3: it would seem that these conspirators did not have that.
Speaker 3: So when these other employees approached Pina, he thought that
Speaker 3: they were just having a having a bit of a
Speaker 3: josh around. Yeah, laugh, he thought so until he began
Speaker 3: to notice that A. Nutso and Hawkhauser were spending a
Speaker 3: lot of time case in the joint over there in
Speaker 3: the Taylor Center's lobby where the Dolly was hanging, and
Speaker 3: also where Pina himself was stationed. He was the inside guy, right,
Speaker 3: He's the inside man at the front entrance's security desk.
Speaker 3: He was promised that his cut would be fifty grand
Speaker 3: and that Benny and Mitchell would split the rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which sounds like a you know, sounds like a deal,
Speaker 1: I guess, depending on where you are at a life.
Speaker 1: And so Noel, as we're saying, Pinia does make this
Speaker 1: statement to the and he says, yeah, I agreed to it,
Speaker 1: but you guys, I feel like I was being bullied.
Speaker 1: And there's some sand to that because Benny, one of
Speaker 1: the only bad bends I've encountered, was his manager.
Speaker 3: Oh bad Benny Nutsoty. He was exactly was. He was
Speaker 3: his superior officer and was known for bullying behavior and
Speaker 3: threats of violence and actual acts of violence in order
Speaker 3: to get what he wanted. So it was decided by
Speaker 3: the Trio they needed one more member of their crew
Speaker 3: to look out and watch the lobby and the small
Speaker 3: room that was connected to it. That's when we see
Speaker 3: Gregory Sokell, a riker's officer who worked with Peena for
Speaker 3: about a decade entering the heist team, the men both
Speaker 3: lived in Staten Island and they would often carpool to work.
Speaker 1: It's nice, okay, and it's also helpful, were investigators as
Speaker 1: they unravel the conspiracy of the heist Greg. So let's
Speaker 1: meet him. He is also long toothed in the game.
Speaker 1: He's been working at Rikers for fourteen years.
Speaker 3: He is in.
Speaker 1: Charge of the phone coms at the Taylor Center control room,
Speaker 1: and so he is you know, he's already very financially motivated,
Speaker 1: we could say, because he has another side gig where
Speaker 1: he sells real estate on Staten Island. And this is
Speaker 1: this is nuts because okay, our pattern of investigation escalates.
Speaker 1: Pina confesses to the authorities and then they say, okay, man,
Speaker 1: act like nothing is weird. We need you to go
Speaker 1: meet your buddy Greg at the Java Dead on that island. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we need you to wear a wire and we
Speaker 1: need you to talk him in to confessing.
Speaker 3: Scary stuff. No, I mean you know snitch, I mean
Speaker 3: have a cell phone already for sure snitches end up
Speaker 3: in stitches, uh to get him there. Pena had told
Speaker 3: Socol that he felt like the police were already closing
Speaker 3: in on them, and he felt like he was going
Speaker 3: out of his mind. Socle, it turned out, felt the
Speaker 3: exact same way. So here's how the meeting went down.
Speaker 3: The men agreed that they'd wish they'd never gotten involved
Speaker 3: in this scheme to begin with, and promised that they
Speaker 3: wouldn't rat on that each wouldn't rat on the other, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: of course they'll see how that quickly that last ones
Speaker 3: they're separated, and you know, the screws are put to them,
Speaker 3: as they say, and Maria are amazing research so shot
Speaker 3: on this. One pointed out that at some point she
Speaker 3: felt that they all said this exact same thing to
Speaker 3: each other. The only one to rat you out is
Speaker 3: you man. So they chatted it out for hours. Pina
Speaker 3: confided Socle that he felt like they were brothers. You know,
Speaker 3: I would never betray you. There's the Socle confession. Oh yes.
Speaker 1: Sucle gets into his vehicle just before ten pm and
Speaker 1: investigators are waiting to swoop in because they know they
Speaker 1: found the weakest link or the second weakest link. He
Speaker 1: immediately caves, just like Pina, and he says, look, I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you, and Greg says, I only learned of
Speaker 1: this big scheme to steal the work of art by
Speaker 1: Salvador Dolli a few weeks before stuff went down, and
Speaker 1: Pinya had given him a broad rundown of the plan,
Speaker 1: literally as they were carpulling to work from Staten Island.
Speaker 1: And the plan was, look, we stage a fire drill,
Speaker 1: we swapped the Dolli with a fake. Don't worry, Benny's
Speaker 1: kid can paint it. Essentially, they would get fifty thousand
Speaker 1: US dollars each, which was a even bigger deal than
Speaker 1: it is now. So soapl also starts crying bully. He says,
Speaker 1: I was afraid that Nuso and Holkhauser will retaliate against
Speaker 1: me if I don't go along with the plan. I'm
Speaker 1: afraid that they will retaliate against my family if I
Speaker 1: cooperate with investigators. But yeah, I'll hang out. I'll wear
Speaker 1: a wire. So they send a second guy in with
Speaker 1: a wire and he records again one of the only
Speaker 1: few bad bends in history. Benny Neuso discussing the crime.
Speaker 1: He has all four people talking about the theft on tape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, seems like a bit of an open and shutcase,
Speaker 3: which we're about to get to whether or not it's
Speaker 3: open and shut TBT. Three men were held at least
Speaker 3: partially responsible for the heighst the fourth considered the mastermind
Speaker 3: not at all. Hmm, okay, appreciate Pena was sentenced in
Speaker 3: Bronx Supreme Court to five years of probation and he
Speaker 3: resigned from his job at the Department of Corrections as
Speaker 3: part of a plea deal on the third degree grand
Speaker 3: larceny charges. Now we have Gregory.
Speaker 1: Sokel, and real quick before we get to greg this
Speaker 1: is something that has always been on my mind. I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what larceny is. Larceny is technically a
Speaker 1: crime involving theft or unlawful taking of personal property of
Speaker 1: another individual or a business. So what is grand larceny?
Speaker 3: That's probably over a certain amount, a grand theft, grand larceny,
Speaker 3: et cetera. I always it is a little vague thought.
Speaker 3: What the difference between It's a fun word that larsony is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is funny. Are you are you a if you're
Speaker 3: a person, are you a larcenist?
Speaker 1: Do we call it larsonist?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: So Socle is also Gregory Socle is also charged with larceny,
Speaker 1: second degree grand larceny. He testifies, He sings for a
Speaker 1: plea bargain, and he says, look, that guy Tim Peanut
Speaker 1: is the one who opened the locks on this plexiglass case.
Speaker 1: And he did it because Benny Nouzo told him to
Speaker 1: do so, and then Newso told Greg and Tim to
Speaker 1: remove the original art. But they were anxious, right, They
Speaker 1: had a small time window with this fire drill, so
Speaker 1: they they managed to get it free. They handed it
Speaker 1: to Benny Newso. He left the building, he ghosted, and
Speaker 1: then he returned with this replica. They also did, I
Speaker 1: mean credit where it's due. They also did try to
Speaker 1: replicate the signature and the tagline, so they they were
Speaker 1: smart enough cognizant enough to misspell dining. Otherwise they screwed up.
Speaker 1: They really just fumbled the bag. It's like a horrible replica.
Speaker 1: It's like that remember that lady who tried to fix
Speaker 1: that painting of the Mona.
Speaker 3: Lisa what but putting a mustache on it. That's also
Speaker 3: that's also a Marcel de Champ thing. There was no,
Speaker 3: it's not Mona Lisa. It's it was like one of
Speaker 3: those talking about it was one of those like religious
Speaker 3: fresco things like and she yeah, it was an.
Speaker 1: Older lady trying to repair it.
Speaker 3: She was trying to repair it, and she made it
Speaker 3: look really really goofy. So it's like that level. It
Speaker 3: is that level. Yeah, No, it's real, real bad. Having
Speaker 3: a hard time finding an image of the forgery, but
Speaker 3: I think the description, you know, we can use our imaginations,
Speaker 3: just pick sure something that looks bad, Yeah, based on
Speaker 3: something that already you know, arguably wasn't Dolly's best work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And they they do get the conspiracy exposed. Our
Speaker 1: two ringleaders are Benny Nuzo and Mitchell Hokhauser. And they
Speaker 1: said to the Assistant district Attorney at the time, Wanda
Speaker 1: Perez Maltinato, that they thought they could maybe get five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand US dollars for the painting. But the ADA
Speaker 1: believes they were trying to sell it for one million.
Speaker 1: So maybe they changed said right, Maybe they tried to
Speaker 1: change their story to lower the number in an attempt
Speaker 1: to get in less trouble. But Mitchell also gets convicted.
Speaker 1: He pleads guilty to one count of second degree attempted
Speaker 1: grand larceny. He is sentenced to three years in state prison.
Speaker 1: And just so you know again, folks, we hope you
Speaker 1: never get jammed up, but you must realize that for
Speaker 1: CEOs or former prison carcerle system employees, actually going to
Speaker 1: prison yourself is very dangerous.
Speaker 3: Kind of a death sentence in many cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and part of his job during the heist, Mitchell's
Speaker 1: is to make certain that other guards who are not
Speaker 1: in on the conspiracy stay out of the way, making
Speaker 1: sure they are not in the lobby. Hokhauser Mitchell Hokhauser
Speaker 1: sings against Benny Nuzo and he says, look newso orchestrated
Speaker 1: this whole thing. He told me that he thought it
Speaker 1: would be a laugh, It would be funny, the guy said.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who came up with the idea to
Speaker 1: use the fire drill as a diversion and to swap
Speaker 1: out the scheduling for the lobby guards to make sure
Speaker 1: that Tim and Greg are on duty that night. He
Speaker 1: took a polaroid of the dolly drawing. That's how someone
Speaker 1: attempted to replicate it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they may as well have just been doing it
Speaker 3: for memory though, to be honest.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're still looking for a picture of the replica.
Speaker 1: And you know, what's funny that you're bringing that up, though,
Speaker 1: because at this point in history, I bet the replica
Speaker 1: itself is a collector's item.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, sort of like the shredded Banksy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just so, just so, the night of this theft,
Speaker 1: these four co conspirators they hide the original Dolly painting
Speaker 1: in an attic in Brooklyn. They take it to Benny's
Speaker 1: mom's house, which doesn't sound super well thought out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the next day he told his co conspirators
Speaker 3: that he'd destroyed the painting, he'd torn it to pieces.
Speaker 3: Whether that's true or not, no one knows, but it
Speaker 3: hasn't been seen since.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's super sketchy because obviously these four guys don't
Speaker 1: trust each other, and obviously this is a bad bet.
Speaker 1: I apologize to everyone. Hul Kauser says he thinks Benny
Speaker 1: was lying. He thinks Ben had the drawing and decided
Speaker 1: not to give it up because then he can cut
Speaker 1: his other thieves out of the grift. Is such a
Speaker 1: new it's classic Newso.
Speaker 3: Dude, Yeah, real, bully, he was the last person seen
Speaker 3: with the Dolly. This is true. Nuso's lawyer, Joseph Takapina,
Speaker 3: focused on minimizing two big things in his defense, Socl's
Speaker 3: secret recording in the locker room and the actual value
Speaker 3: of the drawing itself. An acoustics expert testified that the
Speaker 3: garbled nature of the recording and the unintelligibility of the
Speaker 3: voices from the locker room conversation locker room talk made
Speaker 3: it difficult to identify who was speaking exactly in some sections,
Speaker 3: placing doubt about Nuzzo's involvement or level of involvement. Interesting, Okay,
Speaker 3: so they're playing the tape because we we had these guys,
Speaker 3: we had greg ware and a wire.
Speaker 1: Right, So they're playing the tape of the four people talking,
Speaker 1: and it's difficult to discern who is saying what. They also,
Speaker 1: to your point, now, they also argue in this trial
Speaker 1: that the DOLLI may not be worth that much. So
Speaker 1: Tacopina calls the publisher and chairman emeritus of the Salvador
Speaker 1: Dali Research Center, which is very much a think. It's
Speaker 1: a guy named Alex Rosenberg. He goes to the stand
Speaker 1: and he says, all right, here's how much I think
Speaker 1: this is worth. Prosecutors are not claiming it's worth a
Speaker 1: million dollars. They're saying two hundred and fifty dollars. And
Speaker 1: it's an interesting threshold here because under the laws of
Speaker 1: New York State, anybody convicted of selling property between fifty
Speaker 1: thousand to a million dollars can go to prison for
Speaker 1: fifteen years, but less than fifty thousand means a maximum
Speaker 1: of seven years in prison. So if you divvy up
Speaker 1: the pie between these four people, right, you can say
Speaker 1: that at the top of the trial, each of these
Speaker 1: people is facing fifteen years in the whoscal None of
Speaker 1: them got that sentence because Rosenberg says again, this is
Speaker 1: the guy from the Salvador Dali Research Center. He says, look,
Speaker 1: this is not a painting, it's a drawing. It's in
Speaker 1: bad condition too. It's got water damage.
Speaker 3: Cottm stains, someone threw coffee at it. It's all scraped up.
Speaker 1: He says, Look, this is maybe I love the guy
Speaker 1: I work for the Dolly Research Center. This one is
Speaker 1: at best twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: At best, Rosenberg added, the Dolly would have had quite
Speaker 3: a laugh about it all. And I was gonna say, man,
Speaker 3: if he was still living at this time, he would
Speaker 3: all have a field day with it.
Speaker 1: He would have gotten involved in the front row.
Speaker 3: My gosh, this is exactly the fifteen minutes of fame
Speaker 3: kind of you know fiasco that that T Warhol was
Speaker 3: talking about. That Dolly would have appreciated it.
Speaker 1: The sideway I can see because you know, you and
Speaker 1: I are both related to people of this level of renown,
Speaker 1: and I can one hundred percent see my grandfather, your father,
Speaker 1: or Salvador Dolli at a trial like this, sitting front
Speaker 1: row and continually trying to get on the witness stand.
Speaker 3: Well, Bennett, I don't know if you know that the
Speaker 3: Salvador Dolli was in fact my father.
Speaker 1: It's making sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that. Now you can see why
Speaker 3: I wear my mustache this way. It just it just
Speaker 3: comes this way. That's genetic.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well, congratulations on slipping past the Adolph mustache.
Speaker 1: So here is a Shamalan plot. Twist, another one, another one,
Speaker 1: twist upon twist. On June fourth, two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: Benny Nowso gets away. He is acquitted by a bronx jury,
Speaker 1: and he looks just as stunned as everybody else when
Speaker 1: the verdict is handed down. It's like that, uh, that
Speaker 1: climactic moment in law and order copaganda episodes where the
Speaker 1: jury says not guilty and he looks around like lottery, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm so guilty. Yeah, he's like, oh wow, I
Speaker 1: definitely did it. Though. He offers theories to explain what happened,
Speaker 1: what happened, and how he got into the predicament, and
Speaker 1: he said, look, I've been used as a scapegoat. I'm
Speaker 1: as much of a victim as Salvador dot Lee.
Speaker 3: He wrangled his way out of another one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, little Weasley guy, little slippery fella. His narrative is
Speaker 1: that the top brass at rikers forced the other three
Speaker 1: co conspirators to make him look guilty. He also says
Speaker 1: I don't know where the dolly is. He says someone
Speaker 1: else probably stole the original way before we did our
Speaker 1: heist in two thousand and three. Maybe it's in storage,
Speaker 1: maybe the one that they thought they stole, because he's
Speaker 1: not saying we thought we stole. Maybe the one they
Speaker 1: thought they stole had been a forgery the entire time,
Speaker 1: So maybe we're replacing forgeries with forgeries. And maybe here
Speaker 1: we take a second to talk about the art loss register.
Speaker 3: Wow, Ben read my mind. I didn't know about this.
Speaker 3: It's so cool. Go to artloss dot com. It is
Speaker 3: a database, the leading database due diligence provider, as they
Speaker 3: call it for the art market, maintaining the world's largest
Speaker 3: private database of stolen art, antiques and collectibles, currently boasting
Speaker 3: around seven hundred thousand plus items. Pretty cool. I didn't
Speaker 3: know it's existed. I want to do a little bit
Speaker 3: of rabbit holing on the site.
Speaker 1: We should do an episode on it because it is
Speaker 1: tremendously important to human civilization, especially considering.
Speaker 3: That things that get looted and the horrible.
Speaker 1: Priceless works of art have been so I'm thinking in
Speaker 1: particular of the Holocaust. But we know that there are
Speaker 1: private collectors out there right now who have stolen priceless
Speaker 1: works of art and they just keep it on their estates.
Speaker 1: We also know that the officials in New York, the
Speaker 1: authorities still have not recovered this original drawing. Our research
Speaker 1: associate does want to take a long shot from the
Speaker 1: hip out in the dark for any one with information.
Speaker 1: If you know where this drawing is, you can contact
Speaker 1: the Department of Correction Inspector General at two one two
Speaker 1: two six six one nine.
Speaker 3: For sure, and to wrap it up a little bit
Speaker 3: of Where Are They Now? Timothy Penia became a children's
Speaker 3: book author. You love to see that. I'm glad he
Speaker 3: was able to get his life back on track, and
Speaker 3: he wrote a fictional book about a young Benjamin Franklin's
Speaker 3: encounter with bullies. He must have been inspired by his
Speaker 3: relationship with Little Nutso Gregory Sokel maintains a real estate license,
Speaker 3: and Mitchell Hawkhauser was released from prison in two thousand
Speaker 3: and five and seems to work in property management. Now
Speaker 3: what happened with old Denny Knuts?
Speaker 1: Though, oh my gosh, well Benny classic Newso he has
Speaker 1: not spoken with his former friends Penia, Socle or Hokhauser
Speaker 1: since they were arrested. This is the story. This is
Speaker 1: active case. So please, if you have come into possession
Speaker 1: like I almost did, of a sketchy Salvador Dolly sketch,
Speaker 1: let us know the numbers two one two, two sixty
Speaker 1: six one nine zero zero.
Speaker 3: And if you're looking for a movie to watch this weekend,
Speaker 3: uh check out The Mastermind Kelly reichart film about a
Speaker 3: I think it's in the sixties, A like the draggled
Speaker 3: kind of what's the word woodworker who had aspirations to
Speaker 3: be an artist. He went to art school but kind
Speaker 3: of failed as an artist, and he gets a gang
Speaker 3: of sort of like Massachusetts old old buddies from the
Speaker 3: old neighborhood together to pull off an incredibly bumbling art heists.
Speaker 3: And it's a little bit of a slow burn, but
Speaker 3: I really loved it. It seemed like it was a
Speaker 3: little divisive. Some people found it boring, but I really
Speaker 3: think it's great and quite a special movie.
Speaker 1: So do check it out, and if you would like
Speaker 1: to learn more about the work of the legendary surrealist painter,
Speaker 1: solve it do wor while you're on the internet, folks,
Speaker 1: check out Destino. It's an animated short film that was
Speaker 1: released finally in some version in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: but it started in nineteen forty five, a collaboration between
Speaker 1: Walt Disney and Dolly himself. It's a heck of a ride,
Speaker 1: just like this story. We cannot thank you enough for
Speaker 1: tuning in, but here it goes. Thank you big thanks
Speaker 1: to our research associate Maria Big, Thanks to our super
Speaker 1: producer mister Max Williams, and also our composer. This slap
Speaker 1: and bop you're hearing is courtesy of Alex Williams, who
Speaker 1: I bet is a Dolly guy. I bet Alex loves Dolly.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, I mean, what's not to love. Also,
Speaker 3: it's funny if you've ever been to the moment like
Speaker 3: I was talking about. In New York, they have the
Speaker 3: most famous iconic Dolly painting, which is the Melting Clocks,
Speaker 3: which is actually like the size of a mouse pad.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly tiny, but it's a really cool thing
Speaker 3: to see person. So if you ever make it out there,
Speaker 3: do check it out. Yeah, huge thanks to Alex Williams
Speaker 3: again who composed this theme. Max Williams are long suffering
Speaker 3: producer and research associated. Of course, Maria our research associate
Speaker 3: on this episode.
Speaker 1: Big big thanks of course to the rude dudes are
Speaker 1: ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them. Aj Bahamas, Jacobs,
Speaker 1: doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance the world's foremost authority on
Speaker 1: underwater explosions. And of course big thanks to all the
Speaker 1: Bens who are better than Benny News.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
Speaker 3: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 3: you listen to your favorite shows.