August 8th, 2017: Enter the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist — Report #1
I dabbled in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s stolen art mystery about a month ago. What caught my attention was the news that the bounty for the recovery of the artworks doubled. From $5 million to $10 million! But that $10 million offer expires at the end of 2017. (Yes, the stroke of midnight.) I have no intention of summarizing the story so far. This is more of an investigative account and knowledge from my perspective. And stream of consciousness in writing.
Similar to many followers of this case, several questions stood out to me:
- Why were the thieves comfortable enough to spend over 80 minutes robbing a museum?
- Why the specific artworks, and time of the robbery? (Time as in why March 1990, and not March 1989.)
- Why was the Chez Tortoni’s frame on the security director’s chair?
- How did the thieves know to take the printouts from the floor motion sensors and tape from the security director’s office?
- How did the person who contacted Boston Globe in 1994 knew when law enforcement got involved?
- Who was the security guard that was out sick that night?
- Wouldn’t cutting the paintings from its canvases greatly devalued the artworks?
Another strange incident was that Rembrandt’s miniscule Self-Portrait was stolen once before, and recovered. Even weirder was how it was recovered. According to the museum, not too long after the thief made off with it in broad daylight, the tiny portrait was returned by a subway rider who coincidentally found it on the subway. (I was not able to relocate the specific source for this story.)
To Be Continued….
Citations
Ehlers, Christopher. “The Mystery of Chez Tortoni.” DigBoston. 22 April 2016.
“Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft.” Wikipedia. 21 July 2017.
