Revisiting the Scene of the Crime - The Gardner Theft

[Christine L]

MASTER THIEVES (The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist) by Stephen Kurkjian.

In March of 1990 two men dressed as police officers knocked on the door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.  An inexperienced security guard allowed them through the door.  The two guards on duty were tied up in the basement and the thieves had free reign in the museum.  Forty-five minutes later they existed the museum with thirteen works of art valued at $500 million dollars.  This is the largest unsolved art theft in history.  Mr. Kurkjian’s book is the latest of many books (both fiction and non-fiction) written on the subject over the last 25 years.

In “Master Thieves” the reader is updated on the investigation and introduced to the gangs and organized groups in Boston long rumoured to have been involved in the theft.  Mr. Kurkjian uses many of the contacts made during his years as a reporter at the Boston Globe to obtain interviews, gather ideas and offer speculation about who might actually have “pulled the heist”.  Mr. Kurkjian does not pull any punches when it comes to his criticism of the FBI investigation.  He feels that they dropped the ball in more ways than one; turning down help from local law enforcement agencies who may have had better contacts and informants as well as not following up on substantial and very credible leads which they determined “not useful”.  Is he correct in his criticism?  He makes a strong case.

As Mr. Kurkjian points out in his afterward, he did not spend a lot of pages discussing the theft itself because most readers will be familiar with the details.  Although he always does draw the reader’s attention back to the Gardner robbery, this is definitely a time line of underworld activity in Boston and surrounding areas from the mid 20^th century to the present.  Interestingly, Mr. Kurkjian, at the end of the book, offers the reader not only a viable motive behind the crime but also does a little finger pointing in the direction of whom he thinks are the most likely suspects.

I have read about and been fascinated by not only the theft but by Isabella Gardner’s life and how the museum came into being so this book was right up my alley of interest.  “Master Thieves” is probably not the best book to pick up without at least a little background about the museum and the robbery.

This year marked the 25^th anniversary of the theft and no one has been arrested nor has anyone had a verifiable sighting of the valuable pieces of art in all that time.  It was on my bucket list to see the Gardner Museum and a few years ago I was able to do just that.  I found the museum itself rather overwhelming and it truly is a breath stopping moment to walk into the Dutch Room and see the empty frames hanging on the wall.  After all the reading, and especially after finishing this book, my personal opinion is that if the paintings have not been destroyed over the past 25 years, they will surface accidentally when all of the key players in the mystery have died and a relative comes across them hidden away in an attic somewhere.

If your interest is piqued a little about the Isabella Stewart Gardner robbery this an excellent website to check out http://www.gardnermuseum.org/resources/theft/.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from his website)

Stephen Kurkjian was born and raised in Boston, and a product of the Boston public schools, including The Boston Latin School. He graduated from Boston University with a degree in English Literature and Suffolk University Law School.

Stephen Kurkjian is one of the most acclaimed investigative reporters in the country. A forty-year veteran of the Boston Globe, he is the paper’s former Washington bureau chief and a founding member of its investigative Spotlight Team. Kurkjian has won more than twenty-five national and regional awards, including the Pulitzer Prize on three occasions. He is a graduate of Suffolk Law School and lives in Boston.

During his career, Kurkjian specialized in writing about political and government corruption, as well as, in his later years, art theft..

Kurkjian lives in Boston, and is the father of two children - Erica Kurkjian Parrell, a public school teacher, and Adam, a sports reporter for The Boston Herald - as well as grandfather to three, Theodore, Jillian and Emily Parrell.