TWO YEARS AGO, the famed Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was murdered by prison inmates after his arrival to serve a life sentence. And with him died, probably, the answer to the largest art theft in the world—19 artworks taken from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, a heist worth $500 million.
Few if any art thefts of similar magnitude have taken place since the spring 1990 event. This year, the 30th anniversary, spawned some new fascination, and yet another futile review of the convoluted “facts” and “leads” in the case.
There’s much color to be found in every hint, but the story of Bulger—still the prime suspect, according to speculation—is particularly colorful.
At the time of the heist, Bulger and his Irish-American mafia were supreme among the rackets in South Boston. One night, two men posing as Boston policemen entered the museum and stole a cache that included a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, a Manet, and five drawings by Degas.
Art theft takes time to solve, but this case became an exceptionally dense maze. Many theories, leads, and dead ends arose, from interviews with more than 20 underworld figures and suspicions that one museum guard worked with petty thieves. At least a few letters arrived claiming knowledge of the paintings, but there was no way to distinguish between hoaxes and reality. One sting to recover a painting failed. Then in 2013, the FBI claimed to know the identities of the thieves, but said they were dead, and gave no names.
The Gardner Museum still runs occasional publicity campaigns in hopes that someone in the public may have more information. And, of course, not a few novels have been written using the mob and Irish Republican Army (IRA) theories of the theft.
The IRA theory arose when obvious leads dried up. Already in 1974, the IRA pulled off a major art theft near Dublin and used the paintings in an attempt to bargain for the release of four members in prison. In Boston, the IRA theory pointed to Bulger, who was central to the army’s transactions in New England. Just about that time also, as federal agents prepared to arrest Bulger on murder charges, he disappeared.
After his apprehension in 2011, the FBI was obviously not going to say what it was finding out from him, if anything. In that void, theories about Bulger’s ability to help solve the Gardner Museum theft took a few directions. One said he was behind the theft, though extortion, not art theft, was his forte. Alternatively, at least Bulger might know the culprits: There was little he did not know about in Boston’s crime life.
With Bulger’s demise, and the IRA theory on the rocks, the mystery remains. Not that the FBI has tried, according to Robert K. Wittman, the FBI agent who founded the agency’s Art Crime Team. In his 2010 book, Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures,” he recounts that the lost Rembrandts were nearly recovered in a sting operation targeting French-Corsican mobsters in Florida.
Says Wittman: “Hundreds of FBI agents and police officers investigated the Gardner theft, and as the years passed, the mystique and mystery of the heist only grew. Investigators navigated a growing thicket of speculation, one fueled by a cast of characters featuring con men, private detectives, investigative journalists, and wiseguys.”
The Gardner theft was an object lesson for museums as well. On the day it happened in 1990, the Gardner Museum was a somewhat casual affair. A security review was still underway and the few security guards on after-hours duty were quickly overcome. In hindsight it almost reminds us of the story, in 1911, when a Belgian crook walked into the Louvre in Paris and walked out with the Mona Lisa under his coat.
Given Boston’s tortuous local history—for example, Bulger was also an FBI informant to take down the Italian Cosa Nostra, and some cops were on mob payrolls—it may stay a Boston affair for years to come. In the end, we may never know.