Master Thieves (23 page)

Isabella and John Gardner moved into the nearby Back Bay neighborhood soon after their marriage in 1860. It was there that they grew to be known as perhaps the city's most brilliant couple, entertaining the highest achievers in the arts and business. But their residence, and the two adjoining apartments they bought as well, proved to be too small to accommodate the artistic masterpieces the couple began purchasing on their frequent trips to Europe and the Orient.

Together they decided they would build a museum on a plot of land farther west of Copley Square, in the Fens neighborhood, and Mrs. Gardner moved quickly to realize that goal after her husband's sudden death from a stroke in 1898.

Hoping the museum would encourage a particularly American style of art as well as heighten the appreciation of the arts among all Bostonians, the building was the largest privately owned museum in the country when it opened to the public in 1903, until the Barnes Museum opened in Philadelphia in the 1920s and later the Getty in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

But the Gardner collection remains one of the nation's greatest treasures. Back in Copley Square, at the entrance of the Boston Public Library, two large statues welcome visitors to the library's original entrance. One is dedicated to scientific endeavor, the other to the arts.

On the pedestal that holds the elegant female form that majestically represents artistic achievement through the ages, eight names are inscribed: Phidias, Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, and . . . Rembrandt. The works of six of those masters are on public display at the Gardner Museum, and it is one of the few places in the world where so many of such masterpieces are so accessible. Yet today the Gardner is perhaps even better known for the thirteen pieces that are missing, including three Rembrants.

My hope is that this this book will hasten their return.

Acknowledgments

Ernest Hemingway's quote that working for a newspaper can help you be a better writer—“as long as you quit in time”—stuck in my mind over the past year as I researched and wrote
Master Thieves
. How was I going to make this book on the historic theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum more than the sum of my coverage for the
Boston Globe
if I had spent my entire career as a newspaperman?

If I have succeeded, recognition needs to be shared with the following people: Jack Driscoll, Matthew Storin, Martin Baron, and Brian McGrory, the
Globe
editors since the theft, who have afforded my interest in the case. Project editors Ben Bradlee Jr. and Mark Morrow have edited my longer pieces into the
Globe.
Colleagues with whom I have worked on individual articles since I began covering the story in 1997 include Ric Kahn, Judy Rakowsky, Sean Murphy, Joe Williams, Dan Golden, Larry Tye, Shelley Murphy, Patricia Nea­lon, Milton Valencia, and Scott Allen. Globe colleagues and friends with whom I have thought through how best to report and tell the story included Gerard M. O'Neill, Tom Farragher, Linda Matchan, Walter V. Robinson, Kevin Cullen, Jenna Russell, Matt Brelis, Charles Mansbach, Marcella Bombardieri, and Charles Kenney.

For me, none of it works unless the facts have been thoroughly researched and properly linked.
Globe
librarian Lisa Tuite and her able staff of deputies helped me connect the dots no matter how dim or
distant they seemed to be. Special thanks to Marc Shechtman for assembling the discouragingly long list of art thefts in Massachusetts in recent years. The book
Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business
by Jeff Howe, an assistant professor at Northeastern University's Journalism Department, provided valuable insight as to how digital media could make the public collectively more aware of the loss of these masterpieces and effect a recovery.

Lynn Johnston, my literary agent, proved extraordinary both in marketing the proposal as well as helping to assemble the chapters into a narrative. Jeff Slate served an invaluable role assisting in turning a compelling collection of facts into a continuous story line. Benjamin Adams, my editor at PublicAffairs, had the original idea that if the secret to the theft lay within the Boston mob then we'd have a terrific book. I can attest that beyond being a good amateur detective he's also a worthy editor. Thanks to
Globe
colleague Alex Beam for putting us together.

Although I have maintained an arm's-length relationship with the FBI and federal prosecutors throughout, I have had high respect for the work by the agents in charge of the investigation over the years—Daniel J. Falzon, the late Neil Cronin, and since 2004, Geoff Kelly. The three have maintained their vigor and professionalism chasing after every lead brought to them, from going through diplomatic channels to view a print that hung on the wall of a businessman's house in Tokyo to touring warehouses in the South End with a psychic. That none of the stolen artwork has been recovered is no reflection on their professionalism and zeal. But they work for an agency that is foremost fiercely protective of its pride and privileges in the law enforcement community, and I maintain their performance, at least at the outset of the investigation, would have been enhanced by shared decision-making with state and local police departments. Special agent Joseph Butchka provided me with valuable perspective on Louis Royce's criminal exploits. Special agent David Nadolski provided valuable perspective on Carmello Merlino's criminal enterprise. Robert Wittman, former FBI special agent and member of its art theft squad, described how entwined the paths for recoveries can be.

I specialized in political and government corruption at the
Globe,
so I had much to learn about the background of the Boston organized crime scene, and for that I express my appreciation to former US attorneys Donald K. Stern and Michael J. Sullivan; former assistant US attorneys Brian Kelly, Brien T. O'Conner, and James J. McGovern; and members of the Massachusetts state police force, including Captain Joseph “Buddy” Saccardo, Lieutenant Thomas McLaughlin, Colonel Thomas J. Foley, and William “Beeper” McGreal. Boston police officers who spoke to me about their involvement in the original investigation or the city's crime scene included detectives Dan Rice, sergeant detective Robin DeMarco, Carl Washington, Martin Coleman, sergeant detective Joseph F. Fiandaca, and police commissioners Kathleen O'Toole and Edward Davis.

Other members of law enforcement that provided valuable expertise included Revere police captain William Gannon; Chelsea police chief Linda (Washburn) McCaul of the state Department of Correction fugitive squad and Diane Wiffin, press spokesperson; Weymouth police captain John Concannon; and Braintree detective David Jordan and now-retired chief Paul Frasier.

At the Gardner, Anne Hawley, its director since six months before the theft, has sought to rebuild the museum with a vision that Mrs. Gardner would have appreciated, turning it into a gleaming, modern-day cultural landmark with its masterpieces serving as a beacon for artistic endeavor, and not just the site of the world's largest art theft. I accept that her decision to decline my request for assistance in this book was motivated by her interest in concentrating on the museum's future, not its past, and not any differences with my past reporting. Museum communications specialist Catharine Burton Deely was a delight to work with.

Museum board members Arnold S. Hiatt (now emeritus trustee) and Francis W. Hatch Jr. (who passed away in 2010) as well as deputy director Linda Hewitt provided me with an understanding of the museum's decision-making process, including its frustrations in embarking on a major fund-raising campaign in the 1980s.

Other museum employees, especially those familiar with its security operations, have been generous with their time and recollections, including security directors Lyle Grindle and deputy director Lawrence P. O'Brien; Tom Johnson and Jon-Paul Kroger, who trained incoming guards and night watchmen; and Steven R. Keller, whose firm was hired to review the museum's security needs before the theft.

I was given valuable advice about art theft and recovery in general and specific cases from international police and private detectives, such as Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Registry; Christopher Marinello of Art Recovery International; Richard Ellis of the Art Management Group; Charles Hill, former detective for Scotland Yard; and the late Charles Moore. Boston attorney George Abrams, both a collector and a legal specialist in art theft cases, recalled in fascinating detail several cases from decades ago in Boston and Cambridge that drew attention.

My family and friends kept me upbeat and focused during the long process of putting pen to paper. Friends first—Edwin and Imelda Cosme, Arnold Cohen, Annie Crane, Rosellen Cappucci, Lynda Burchfield, Kate Sullivan, Marc Mamigonian, Arpie Davis, Joshua Resnick, and Colman Herman. And though the size of my extended family could make up a decent day-game crowd at Fenway Park, those around me in Section 30, Row 6, would be my sisters Karolyn Kurkjian-Jones and Elizabeth Kurkjian-Henry and her husband, John; daughter Erica and her husband, Sean Parrell; son Adam and his wife, Amy Ruggere-Kurkjian; and my three cherub grandchildren, Theodore, Jillian, and Emily Parrell.

Resources

Chapter One

I interviewed Louis F. Royce dozens of time both in prison and out after our first meeting at a minimum security facility in 2007, and I was able to confirm almost all of what he told me through official records, including FBI files, court documents, and hospital records he provided, as well as newspaper articles and interviews with others. Two former criminal associates confirmed his association with the Rossetti gang in East Boston. The February 1981 robbery of the Newton home, in which he, Stephen Rossetti, and Ralph Rossetti stole numbered prints by Dalí and Chagall, is described in Middlesex County Superior Court documents, Newton police files, and the
Newton Tab
newspaper. Royce's description of the robbery of the Rockland Trust branch in Hanover was confirmed by bank officials,
Quincy Patriot Ledger
articles, and police interviews. Timesheets kept by the Massachusetts Department of Correction confirmed that Richard Devlin had been released on furlough from a nearby forestry camp in sufficient time to have participated in the actual bank robbery. Royce's account of spending nights as a runaway boy inside the museum could be confirmed only by his showing me the hideaways inside the museum where he says he slept. His account of using a lift to determine whether the museum's second-floor
window was unlocked was corroborated by a Devlin family member. The account that FBI special agent Edward Clark gave to Gardner officials of the scheme Royce and Rossetti had to rob the Gardner in 1981 was confirmed through museum officials and handwritten notes kept by the museum of its meeting with Clark.

Chapter Two

Interviews with Lyle Grindle, retired chief of security for the Gardner Museum, and William P. McAuliffe, former head of security at the Museum of Fine Arts, provided the information about their walk-through of the Gardner on the eve of the heist. McAuliffe, as well as several MFA security personnel who were working there at the time, helped me understand what had happened when two men dressed as Boston police officers sought entry into the MFA after midnight following the Martin Luther King celebration in January 1990. Those personnel also provided information on the February 1989 theft of a Yuan vase, valued at $1 million, from the MFA, as did coverage of the arrest of the thieves in the
New York Times
. Information on the Gardner's financial woes during the 1980s and board of trustees' inability to agree on an ambitious fund-raising plan to deal with growing problems with the museum's security and building environment issues were gained from interviews with some board members, the museum's annual reports submitted to the Suffolk County Probate Court, and a twenty-page report written in 1989 by director Roland “Bump” Hadley summarizing his frustrations in dealing with the trustees. The account of the robbers dressed as police officers waiting in a “hatchback” before the heist is drawn from interviews with three young people who saw them in the car after the three had left a party in a nearby apartment building and began goofing off for a few minutes on Palace Road. The description of the actual theft is drawn from several long interviews with Richard “Rick” Abath, the night watchman who made the fateful decision to allow the thieves into the museum; Boston police official reports on the break-in; and interviews with the officers who
responded to the robbery. The museum provided me access to its own files on the break-in including the transcript of the motion-detector equipment, which provided a second-by-second account of the robbers' eighty-eight minutes inside the museum.

Chapter Three

After competing with me for decades on the Gardner heist story, Tom Mashberg, lead reporter on the crime for the
Boston Herald,
agreed to be interviewed about his 1997 bombshell story that he had had a clandestine viewing of the stolen Rembrandt seascape,
Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
Our interview was conditioned on the pledge that Mashberg would be able to read and approve what I wrote of it in my book, and if we couldn't come to an agreement, we would let a mutual friend decide. We never had to seek our friend's intercession as Tom's edits were few and made solely for accuracy's sake. The confidential note that Youngworth wrote to Mashberg alluding to the backstory on how the viewing had taken place was provided by a source but was confirmed by Mashberg. Youngworth's ties to the Rossetti gang and the assassination of his best friend in his presence are described in a 1982 affidavit given by Massachusetts state police sergeant Thomas McLaughlin and filed in Suffolk County Superior Court. Prosecutors from the office of US attorney Donald Stern were interviewed on their dealings with Mashberg and Youngworth for background.

Chapter Four

The museum provided me with the letters Anne Hawley received from an anonymous source, and their wording and response to them was confirmed by FBI officials.
Globe
editors described their decision-making on why the paper agreed to insert a numeral in the exchange rate table that ran in the
Globe
on May 1, 1994. The efforts in 1999 to get Pope John Paul to issue an appeal on behalf of the stolen paintings was revealed in a report prepared by Investigative Group International, the Washington, DC-based investigative firm the museum
retained to help in the probe. I was introduced to Jurek Rokoszynski when the museum hired him in 2005 and followed his tracking of the one tip he was assigned to investigate to its futile end, and interviewed the ex-convict who had provided it and the former Boston art collector whom it wrongly focused on more than a year later. In interviews former Massachusetts governor Michael S. Dukakis, former Boston mayor Raymond Flynn, and retired state police head Thomas Foley spoke of their frustrations with the FBI having assumed total control of the investigation rather than drawing on the assistance of the Boston and Massachusetts state police. The office of US Senator John F. Kerry shared with me its communications with FBI director Robert S. Mueller on seeking more resources for the investigation. The FBI spokesman at DC headquarters declined comment. Robert K. Wittman, undercover agent for the FBI's art theft squad, wrote of his experiences on the Gardner case in his book
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures.

Chapter Five

For more coverage of the recovery of the Cezanne stolen from the home of Herbert Bakwin, see “What a Steal” in the December 17, 2000, edition of the
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine
. For the recovery of the other paintings stolen from Bakwin's home, see “1978 Art Heist Solved” in the
Boston Globe,
February 1, 2006.

Chapter Six

I interviewed Robert Gentile for more than five hours over three days in January 2014, only a few days after his release from federal prison for selling prescription drugs to an undercover federal informant. Gentile also gave me permission to view the legal files maintained on his case by his criminal defense lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan of Hartford. Gentile also provided me with access to the shed in his backyard that federal agents scoured through, believing he had kept the stolen Gardner paintings inside a large plastic
container in the ditch beneath the shed's false floor. Edmund Mahony's coverage of Gentile's prosecution in the
Hartford Courant
was fair and complete, and his May 19, 2013, profile of Gentile provided valuable background. The cocaine ring Robert F. Guarente and Robert Luisi Jr. operated in the late 1990s is described in detail in a thirty-one-page affidavit filed by DEA agent Steven C. Story in the federal cocaine distributing case brought against Guarente in US District Court in Boston. For coverage of the brutal shooting death of Luisi's father, half-brother, and cousin while having lunch in a Charlestown restaurant on November 6, 1995, see coverage in the
Boston Globe
and the
Boston Herald
.

Chapter Seven

Florian “Al” Monday told me in an interview how he had approached Gentile to connect with Robert Guarente in Maine in hopes that Guarente would be able to secure photographs of the stolen Gardner paintings. In that interview, Monday acknowledged it was he who had made out the list, tucked inside the
Boston Herald'
s front-page coverage of the theft and recovered by FBI agents in Gentile's basement, that estimated what the thirteen stolen pieces might bring on the black market. Elene Guarente spoke to me several times by phone about her belief that her late husband, Robert, had possession of some of the Gardner paintings and had turned over one or more of them to his longtime friend Robert Gentile in the parking lot of a Portland restaurant in the early 2000s. Earle E. Berghman spoke to me about his belief that Guarente, his longtime friend, did have possession of the stolen paintings and his efforts to consummate a recovery effort, through Boston attorney Bernard Grossberg, with Guarente's daughter. A Maine state police document, dated May 3, 1991, said Berghman, Guarente, Francis Strazzula, and William J. Norton were under investigation for possible links to armored car robberies, drug trafficking, and the death of an associate, James Marks.

Chapter eight

The profile of David Turner was drawn from multiple sources including files maintained by Braintree and Tewksbury police, Massachusetts state police, and court records. Turner was mentioned frequently in reports conducted by state police investigating cocaine trafficking out of the TRC auto radiator garage in Dorchester in the early 1990s as he was in the federal prosecution of a scheme to rob the Loomis-Fargo armored car headquarters in Easton, Massachusetts. Chris Ruggiero, his boyhood friend, spoke to me about his belief that Turner was about to pen a tell-all book about his life in crime and possible involvement in the Gardner heist. However, Turner repeatedly denied those intentions in an email exchange with me in June 2013 from Otisville Federal Penitentiary in New York. He has since been transferred closer to his Massachusetts home and is now incarcerated in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. George Pappas's decision to flip on Turner is detailed in the investigative files of state police trooper Edward Whelan. Pappas's assassination a few days before he was to testify against Turner is detailed in Braintree police records and interviews with Braintree police chief Paul Frasier. I interviewed several members of the late George Reissfelder's family and his longtime friend Robert Beauchamp, now in custody in Bay State Correctional Center in Massachusetts, about Reissfelder's possible involvement in the Gardner theft and his ties to the criminal gang centered at Carmello Merlino's Dorchester garage. The fourteen-month period between 1998 and 1999 in which Merlino sought to orchestrate the return of the Gardner artwork while he schemed to rob the Loomis Fargo headquarters is detailed in the federal indictment against Merlino, Turner, Stephen Rossetti, and Merlino's nephew William for the robbery attempt. Also, I drew on a 225-page unpublished diary written by Anthony Romano, the FBI's undercover informant inside Merlino's operation, to detail the twin schemes taking place inside Merlino's garage.

Chapter Nine

Former US attorney Donald Stern was interviewed in 2013, William P. Youngworth in 2003, Louis Royce between 2007 and 2014, and retired FBI agents Robert Wittman and David Nadolski in 2014. I covered for the
Globe
several of the criminal court sessions against Robert Gentile at US District Court in Hartford, including his pleading guilty to selling prescription drugs to an undercover informant and his sentencing.

Chapter Ten

The
Boston Globe
and
Boston Herald
provided extensive coverage of the war between the two rival gangs, one headed by Frank Salemme and the other by Vincent Ferrara, Robert Carrozza, and J. R. Russo, to assume control of the Boston underworld following the indictment of Gennaro Angiulo and his brothers in 1985.
The New England Mafia: Illustrated
by Kevin Johnston also provided background. Valuable information on the war between the gangs was also contained in the US criminal indictment in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1997 against fifteen members of the Boston underworld.

Chapter Eleven

The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family
by Dick Lehr and Gerard M. O'Neill provided the best background of the Angiulo family's control of the Boston underworld. Alerted by Boston attorney Francis J. DiMento that Vincent Ferrara was trying to unravel the Gardner case, I spoke on more than a dozen occasions with an intermediary on Ferrara's behalf about Ferrara's discussions with his late driver, Robert Donati, about the crime. I also interviewed two Donati family members about Donati's possible involvement. Donati's FBI files, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, also provided useful background on his life in crime. A search of the book by legendary art thief Myles Connor,
The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Thief,
also provided background on
Donati and his alleged involvement in a prior art theft. The account of Donati at The Shack was provided by a Donati friend from Revere who was visiting the hangout at the time. Ferrara's background in the mob is described in the 1990 federal indictment to which he decided to plead guilty two years later, and US justice Mark Wolf's decision to free Ferrara because the prosecution had withheld exculpatory evidence from his lawyers was the final document in the criminal case file.

Afterword

Longtime Boston gang leader Howard Winter provided me with the details of his efforts to recover the paintings in two brief telephone interviews. Mrs. Gardner's life deserves a fuller treatment than I provided here but I learned enough about her commitment to the arts and her zeal to share that love with Bostonians and Americans everywhere from
Mrs. Jack: A Biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner
by Louise Hall Tharp;
The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner
by Douglass Shand-Tucci;
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: A Companion Guide and History
by Hilliard T. Goldfarb; and
Boston Globe
historical files.