Detour: London Calling
Were the Alters connected to a 1990 art theft in England?
Jerry Alter’s collection of short stories includes a tale about a couple who purloins a gemstone from a museum and another about a man who hides in a museum restroom overnight and steals several French Post-Impressionist paintings. Those stories haunt me.
Wayne and I were in London recently, so I explored a potential UK connection to Jerry and Rita Alter’s art thievery. A theft there seemed to fit their M.O.
On May 8, 1990, a man entered the Richard Green Gallery in London’s posh Mayfair district. He snatched two paintings, one by the 19th-century French artist Eugene Boudin. Forty years later, a woman from the English countryside tried to sell that painting after her father died. He had bought it, she said, from a flea market some years back. The dealer realized it was special. His research linked it to the 1990 theft. As far as I can tell, the perpetrator of that crime has never been identified.
Last month, in Silver City, NM, I photographed the Alters’ travel journals. Since then, I’ve been trying to match their trips to art thefts that fit their methods. Unfortunately, the diary has blank pages for early May 1990, when the Boudin was stolen. Interestingly, the Alters stopped briefly in London later that month on their way to Africa. But there’s just no way for me to connect them to the Boudin theft.
I’ve identified over a dozen crimes in which a couple entered a museum or gallery, distracted someone, and made off with valuable artwork. They include a Chagall stolen from a gallery in Tel Aviv and several 1989 thefts in Albuquerque and El Paso.
However, none of those locations and dates correspond with trips recorded in the Alters’ travel diaries. We already knew that the diary pages for the dates of the Tucson and Taos thefts were blank. And an empty page isn’t really proof of anything. I’ve come to believe the couple kept their thievery and holidays separate, so the travel diaries are less helpful than I once hoped. I’ve also learned that the distract-and-grab art theft technique was not unique to the Alters.
I’ve found eight jewel thefts from museums, including one where the perpetrator hid in the building overnight and walked off with the world’s largest opal collection. I am exploring whether the Alters are connected to any of these crimes. The couple continues to haunt me in a pleasantly intriguing way.
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