Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Steve. Before this show starts, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to give everybody a little heads up. It
Speaker 1: turns out we found out after we had recorded this
Speaker 1: episode that we were having a bit of an issue
Speaker 1: with a piece of our equipment, so the audio and
Speaker 1: spots is a little off. Did the best we could
Speaker 1: to fix it, but it's not perfect, so at times
Speaker 1: might be a little rough. Bear with us through this.
Speaker 1: We figured out what it is, we fixed it for
Speaker 1: future episodes. But with that having been said, on with
Speaker 1: the show thinking sideways manoation, it's a mystery short stories
Speaker 1: of things we simply don't know the answers to. Hi there.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to do something a little bit different.
Speaker 1: As everybody knows normal, what a routine is is we'll
Speaker 1: jump into a big story and that will take up,
Speaker 1: you know, forty five minutes to an hour, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we come across smaller stories which are really interesting but
Speaker 1: they don't equate to a full show, and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: sometimes pack those into one episode several a minute time,
Speaker 1: like the Yes Yes. Unfortunately, sometimes there's episodes that just
Speaker 1: don't lend themselves to that, and we've all I know,
Speaker 1: the all three of us have come across stories where
Speaker 1: we wanted to do that, but we couldn't find a
Speaker 1: way to tighten other stuff. We'd like to have an
Speaker 1: overarching theme. Yeah, and we decided that, what the heck,
Speaker 1: We're not going to leave those stories behind. So occasionally
Speaker 1: we're gonna do a short, a bonus episode. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's what this is gonna be, is a little bonus episode.
Speaker 1: And this is gonna be They're gonna be random. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna try and do this on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: but occasionally when we come across these, put them out
Speaker 1: for you, and they'll be steeply discounted because there's so
Speaker 1: much shorter. So let's see them on your internet bill
Speaker 1: will cost very much at all. They will be ten
Speaker 1: percent for the normal free price of all episodes. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. So with that, let's go ahead and go
Speaker 1: into this short story. So this whole story, I'm going
Speaker 1: to start out and just preface this by saying it
Speaker 1: sounds like it should be out of a movie. It
Speaker 1: really does sound like a bad movie script right here.
Speaker 1: We did actually two weeks ago, didn't we We talked
Speaker 1: about a bad movie script. Yeah, and this cause it
Speaker 1: could have been a good movie. I've seen good movies
Speaker 1: that were based on this, this this kind of heist. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are some. But but here is what happens.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about briefly. Here the Isabella Art
Speaker 1: theft on the morning of March eighteenth, nine in Boston
Speaker 1: and my morning you mean we hours, correct, Yes, the
Speaker 1: wee hours of the morning, one twenty something in the
Speaker 1: morning is about when this whole thing starts. Two people,
Speaker 1: two men wearing police uniforms, walked up to the side
Speaker 1: entrance of the Isabella Art Museum and they pressed the
Speaker 1: buzzer to get in, and when the guard you know,
Speaker 1: hit the the intercom, they said, police a lot of sin,
Speaker 1: we heard about a disturbance in the courtyard. Okay, well
Speaker 1: he let them in right there side unseen, and I
Speaker 1: was I was asking about thinking about that. So they
Speaker 1: didn't have a security camera, he couldn't actually see. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well if they did. These guys were dressed up in
Speaker 1: police uniforms, so they looked like cops. And I don't
Speaker 1: imagine that they were high quality videos. This is the
Speaker 1: camera probably wasn't that great? Yeah about that? The garden
Speaker 1: so I could at least see that they appeared to,
Speaker 1: because now in the museum there were two security guards.
Speaker 1: One of them was working at the main desk and
Speaker 1: the other one was somewhere else in the museum, presumably
Speaker 1: doing his rounds whatever his job was at the moment
Speaker 1: when they these guys get in, they go to the
Speaker 1: main security desk and one of him says to the
Speaker 1: security guard on duty, you look familiar, and I think
Speaker 1: we have a warrant for your arrest. And they somehow
Speaker 1: convince this guy to step out from behind his desk
Speaker 1: where he has access to the only police wired alarm,
Speaker 1: at which point they put him against a wall and
Speaker 1: they handcuff him. The other security guard a couple of
Speaker 1: minutes later, shows up and they put him in cuffs,
Speaker 1: and one of these guys, one of these guards, says, well,
Speaker 1: why are you arresting me? And this is where the
Speaker 1: ball drops. One of the two men says the guys
Speaker 1: dressed up his cops says, you're not being arrested. This
Speaker 1: is a robbery, you idiot. Yeah, don't give us any
Speaker 1: trouble and we won't hurt you. Um. And at that
Speaker 1: point what they do is they take these cards down
Speaker 1: to the basement. They duct taped them to some pipes.
Speaker 1: They duct taped their mouths shut. They put a duct
Speaker 1: tape all over their heads and left breathing holes for
Speaker 1: their noses and that was it. Tore out all their
Speaker 1: hair on the way taking that stuff off down. I
Speaker 1: don't even want to think about that. So the guards
Speaker 1: are completely disabled at this point. So the thieves have
Speaker 1: pretty much all the time in the world. They've got
Speaker 1: the run of the joint. They're absolutely right. They go
Speaker 1: upstairs to the Dutch Room, which is named such because
Speaker 1: it's full of paintings by Dutch painters, and they they
Speaker 1: immediately go up to a Rembrandt painting, at which point
Speaker 1: and an alarm actually goes off. Now this alarm evidently
Speaker 1: was only inside of the museum because all they had
Speaker 1: to do was smash it and it went off and
Speaker 1: nobody is alerted. Not the most system to know. At
Speaker 1: this point, these guys basically have the run of this
Speaker 1: whole museum. For the reports are eighty one minutes, an
Speaker 1: hour and twenty minutes. They're in there doing whatever they
Speaker 1: want to do. Well, they weren't exactly that's smart about
Speaker 1: what they did because the first thing they did was
Speaker 1: go up to a Rembrandt painting, uh, and this is
Speaker 1: Rembrandt's self portrait from sixty nine, And they yanked the
Speaker 1: painting off the wall and then they can't figure out
Speaker 1: how to get it out of the frame because it's wood.
Speaker 1: Because it's wood. Yeah, Rembrandt painted that on wood on canvas.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't want to even try to go
Speaker 1: out of the frame. You know, they should have they
Speaker 1: should have thought about that about you know, just meane
Speaker 1: something like that. You don't want to try to mess
Speaker 1: with it in anyway at all because those things are
Speaker 1: very delicate and old and I and I have a
Speaker 1: serious issue with this whole thing that I'll talk about
Speaker 1: later that goes along at basically, what these guys do
Speaker 1: is from that point forward they throw that painting on
Speaker 1: the floor because they relaze they can't get did. And
Speaker 1: then they start going through the museum and they start,
Speaker 1: I kid you not, cutting canvases out of their frames
Speaker 1: so they can roll them. It's good for the painting,
Speaker 1: which is terrible because whenever that gets reremounted, you have
Speaker 1: now just lost so much of the painting. Well, it's
Speaker 1: gonna crack and in the viewing area is gone. Because
Speaker 1: if you think about it, if a painting is on
Speaker 1: a frame, if the let's just say it's a one
Speaker 1: by one that is the frame. Well, now you've got
Speaker 1: an inch of it rolled across the side and an
Speaker 1: inch across the back to staple it in place. Plus
Speaker 1: whatever the actual frame may cover the the exterior frame.
Speaker 1: You've just lost inches beautiful, beautiful piece of work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've lost all that real estate tape those things up.
Speaker 1: You don't attack in each corner. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: a movie poster. Yeah, that's that's not how it works. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, they were focusing on a lot of
Speaker 1: canvas works at this point, and they started running through
Speaker 1: the place. They stole a total of thirteen pieces of art.
Speaker 1: These are things that are ranging from there's Rembrand, Mr
Speaker 1: uh Man A and thega. There was sketches that were
Speaker 1: done by him. Evidently there was five sketches by him
Speaker 1: that they took. They are like really valuable. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: the value on that kind of stuff is a little
Speaker 1: weird because their sketches and he would I mean it's
Speaker 1: literally he was sketching the painting ahead of time, so
Speaker 1: you can see images of them and they you can
Speaker 1: see the variances, and he was kind of figuring it out.
Speaker 1: But there is a lot of value in watching someone
Speaker 1: like that work. Uh. The other things they took is
Speaker 1: there was an artifact that was from the Shang dynasty
Speaker 1: and a fine old it belonged on a Napoleonic flag.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's really it's just kind of haphazard
Speaker 1: what they took. It would have been nice if they
Speaker 1: because these guys are probably just criminals, you know, And
Speaker 1: and it would have been nice that they've gotten somebody
Speaker 1: who knew what he was doing. That's the thing that
Speaker 1: they passed up some more valuable stuff, number one, a
Speaker 1: lot of more valuable stuff. And if they've gotten a
Speaker 1: little expert help or at least advice, they could have
Speaker 1: maybe done less damage to the artwork themselves. And then
Speaker 1: then I don't know how much they damaged it because
Speaker 1: they've never been seen again obviously, of course, but it
Speaker 1: would have been nice. Sooner or later, they're probably going
Speaker 1: to show up. Unless these guys were complete morons and
Speaker 1: they just left him rolled up in their basements somewhere
Speaker 1: that eventually flooded. I don't even want to think about that.
Speaker 1: That makes me so sad. Yeah, I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to think about that. The total theft,
Speaker 1: the value of that total theft, and I believe this
Speaker 1: is today's number or today's dollars, is five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: Uh So it is the largest private theft or largest
Speaker 1: robbery of private property recorded. Now the gallery itself, what
Speaker 1: they've done is to kind of pay homage to it
Speaker 1: and waiting for those species to come back. They've got
Speaker 1: some empty frames that are hanging, so they they're not
Speaker 1: just ignoring that this happened. They're kind of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we know these were stolen and everybody else should know.
Speaker 1: I think is what their their idea is behind that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just it's really really weird. The museum
Speaker 1: itself put out a reward of five million dollars for
Speaker 1: information leading to the recovery of these pieces of work,
Speaker 1: which is still available today. It is, and at the time,
Speaker 1: the FBI hunted down a number of leads, but they
Speaker 1: didn't get any results and nothing ever came of that.
Speaker 1: That was We're twenty four years later and the FBI
Speaker 1: obstensible he still has squat. They say that they have suspects,
Speaker 1: and they used the phrase significant suspects, but they will
Speaker 1: say who they are. Um, there's there's talk according to
Speaker 1: some of the theories that have seen that say that
Speaker 1: the art was moved from Boston to Connecticut and Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and this is from the FBI. This is what they
Speaker 1: think happened. But then they don't know where it went
Speaker 1: from there. Uh and and they don't know anything after that.
Speaker 1: They say that they have some DNA and that DNA
Speaker 1: is Remember I said they duct tape the guards. They
Speaker 1: say they have DNA off the duct tape, but they
Speaker 1: don't say anything else. In other words, they said, oh,
Speaker 1: we have something, We're not going to tell you what
Speaker 1: it is. I think about it is if they were
Speaker 1: wearing gloves when they duct tape the guards. If they were,
Speaker 1: but if they weren't wearing gloves, and wouldn't their fingerprints
Speaker 1: be all over that duct tape? Well that depends, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I touch a piece of duct tape
Speaker 1: and I pulled my finger away and then the duct
Speaker 1: tape doesn't get stuck to something else, yes, I should
Speaker 1: leave a fingerprint. But if I leave my fingerprint and
Speaker 1: then that duct tape gets ruled around a guard's head
Speaker 1: and mashed into the other side of another piece of
Speaker 1: duct tape. Yeah, I imagine that it's going to be unusable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's conceivable that they did that. I mean,
Speaker 1: so if I'm holding just the end of it and
Speaker 1: then I wrap it around his head and bring it
Speaker 1: back over the top of the piece that I was
Speaker 1: holding and slot it down, that's going to destroy my fingerprints. Well,
Speaker 1: these guys bright enough to be there. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I think that there would have had cloves on it.
Speaker 1: Well another I mean the other thing that we you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not like, oh, we have the fingerprints, therefore
Speaker 1: we obviously like know who it was because there's not
Speaker 1: actually like a record, like you know, if somebody if
Speaker 1: I committed a crime and like they had my fingerprints,
Speaker 1: they still wouldn't be able to find me because my
Speaker 1: fingerprints don't exist in right, So you know, you have
Speaker 1: to there's so many things. Their DNA would have to
Speaker 1: be in a database somewhere, their fingerprints would have to
Speaker 1: be in a database one. But these guys are the
Speaker 1: suspects that they have in this crime. We're all well
Speaker 1: known criminals who had been arrested in the past. Correct, Well,
Speaker 1: and we're about to get there, and that's not exactly right.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the hard part about this is there's
Speaker 1: there's kind of two theories that I can find of
Speaker 1: potential of where the art might have gone, but we're
Speaker 1: not sure. There is one that it says that this was,
Speaker 1: if not run by the mob, mob organized and so
Speaker 1: mobsters were doing it. And yeah, that's right, it's the
Speaker 1: freaking mob again. Yes, it's the mob again. There is
Speaker 1: a guy whose name is Robert Garante. Would say that
Speaker 1: he died in two thousand four, but he's been linked
Speaker 1: as kind of the central figure in the investigation for this,
Speaker 1: and he was known to be an organized crime and
Speaker 1: he seems to be connected to just about every other
Speaker 1: mob abster that gets linked to this story. But of
Speaker 1: course he died, so they can't question him, they can't
Speaker 1: do anything to him. But his widows says that she
Speaker 1: remembers him giving at least one painting to somebody back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, and in two thousand and
Speaker 1: three there was some mention that maybe they had surfaced,
Speaker 1: but she when she looked at all of the paintings,
Speaker 1: the photos of him. She's like, no, that doesn't look
Speaker 1: like anything that he gave this guy. So he could
Speaker 1: have given somebody something that he bought an Ikea for
Speaker 1: all she knows. Yeah. You know the other thing about
Speaker 1: it is we're not on theories yet. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: we kind of are, because that's one theory is that
Speaker 1: you know, this guy is is the one who organized
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Um, I mean, there's there's another theory,
Speaker 1: another lead that you'll find out there that says that
Speaker 1: the paintings were sent overseas and so they went from
Speaker 1: here to Italy to France and this was all orchestrated
Speaker 1: by kind of a shady art dealer in New York
Speaker 1: for some figure of like twenty five million dollars. But
Speaker 1: none of that has ever been substantiated because of course
Speaker 1: we haven't found any of them. So they're gone. And
Speaker 1: that's I mean that that really is. This is not
Speaker 1: a normal story. That is. The theories is that this
Speaker 1: guy did it, and he gave it to the mob,
Speaker 1: and the mob sold them underground somewhere, or somebody shipped
Speaker 1: them overseas, and they're they're in both cases, they're in
Speaker 1: somebody's private collection hanging in their living room or their office.
Speaker 1: It could have been like a actually commissioned by some
Speaker 1: mobster back from the Old Country who's had a huge
Speaker 1: villa on the Mediterranean. It's like, and I want some art,
Speaker 1: and so he commissioned these guys to go nab some
Speaker 1: of these particular worst of art. But it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like they knew what they were after. Again, it was
Speaker 1: haphazard what they grabbed, random stuff. But I mean that's
Speaker 1: where the story ends. And personally, this is one of
Speaker 1: those stories that really really makes me mad, not because
Speaker 1: I don't have good theories for it, but because it
Speaker 1: makes me mad when people steal old art, because old
Speaker 1: art is fantastic, even if you're not into art. I'm
Speaker 1: into art. I think it's really great, but some people are.
Speaker 1: But if you go to a museum and you look
Speaker 1: at those giant paintings and you can see what somebody did,
Speaker 1: there's a reason that museums are quiet spaces because usually
Speaker 1: people are staring at it in awe. So I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, they've they've not just stolen it from the museum,
Speaker 1: they've stolen it from everybody. Absolutely. They're they're like looters,
Speaker 1: you know, people who loot archaeological sites. They're stealing our heritage,
Speaker 1: so that's a good reason to be so I I
Speaker 1: really I classify these guys as a one jerks, and
Speaker 1: I really hope the mob's not listening. Is I don't
Speaker 1: want to get in trouble for saying that, But the
Speaker 1: moms a one jerks. No, I mean I think that
Speaker 1: that's fair. It's you know, it's part of human history,
Speaker 1: it's part of our progression, and it's I'm right there
Speaker 1: with you. I just get so. I think that's so.
Speaker 1: Is that our lady to you? This was committed by
Speaker 1: a couple of I don't know. That's the thing is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what the f I released. But
Speaker 1: you know, they could they could be hedging their bets,
Speaker 1: or they could just be this is a cold case.
Speaker 1: And let's just say it was a mob. And what
Speaker 1: is the Lincoln, this dude that we haven't seen from
Speaker 1: forever because he's been dead for ten years and I
Speaker 1: don't know, no idea. Apparently every year they have a
Speaker 1: press conference on the anniversary of it, and they they
Speaker 1: reiterate that there's a five million dollar reward, and every
Speaker 1: year they do this and so far, you think somebody
Speaker 1: would have come forward, somebody's cleaning lady or somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what leads me to think that they
Speaker 1: actually succeeded. I mean, some people think they were stashed
Speaker 1: away somewhere. Um, I think they might actually have succeeded
Speaker 1: in getting them overseas into the hands of some private
Speaker 1: collector who has him hanging and as his mansion. Now,
Speaker 1: so this guy is not incentivized by five million bucks,
Speaker 1: you know more than that. Yeah, if they were squirreled
Speaker 1: away somewhere in a storage unit or somebody's basement, and
Speaker 1: obviously you know, they probably would have surfaced. And that
Speaker 1: because the statute of limitations on the crime has expired.
Speaker 1: It has so if you come forward with those patents,
Speaker 1: they can't prosecute you for it. You just hand them
Speaker 1: over and get five million bucks walk away scot free. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And so that's why I suspect that they're not in
Speaker 1: the US anymore, or if they're in the US, they're
Speaker 1: in the hands of a private collector. Quite likely, that's
Speaker 1: what I would guess. Well, I wanna, I wanna before
Speaker 1: I forget send out a big, a big thank you
Speaker 1: to Mike who sent this story to us. I really,
Speaker 1: I really got into it and it obviously I liked
Speaker 1: it enough that it's our first mini episode. UH. If
Speaker 1: you want to hear more from us, you can always
Speaker 1: find episodes on our website. That website is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Of course, links for the story will
Speaker 1: also be on the website, so the things that we
Speaker 1: use for our research. Most folks are using iTunes to
Speaker 1: download the shows and subscribe, so if you're there, please
Speaker 1: take the time to subscribe and leave us a comment
Speaker 1: and a rating. We really like that. We are of
Speaker 1: course on other places such as Stitcher and tune in,
Speaker 1: and you can always find us on Facebook. We've got
Speaker 1: the Facebook page and the Facebook group, and we are
Speaker 1: on Twitter Thinking Sideways take the g off of it.
Speaker 1: We changed that up so it's a little awesome it um.
Speaker 1: And of course, if you've got thoughts on this story,
Speaker 1: any stories, you just want to chat and share some
Speaker 1: ideas with us, feel free to send us an email.
Speaker 1: The email address is Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Um.
Speaker 1: And also, if you have the paintings or you know
Speaker 1: where they're at, I'll give you a million bucks. Okay,
Speaker 1: million bucks, that sounds good to me, and with that,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna shut this one down. So thanks
Speaker 1: a lot, ladies and gentlemen. We'll talk to you soon. Hi, guys,