Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Theft: Dead-ends to the Gardner 13

Summary: The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser has four suspects from many dead-ends in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft March 18, 1990, in Massachusetts.

sketch of two suspects, disguised as police officers, who gained entry into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for purposes of art theft, March 18, 1990: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Public Domain, via FBI Art Crime Team

Ulrich Boser assembles the known information sources and the leading suspect lists, as of 2009, for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft March 18, 1990, in one book, The Gardner Heist.

The author of The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft benefits from knowing one of the world's best independent fine arts claims adjusters. The book's 13 chapters correlate the 13 missing artworks with leads and observations from art sleuth Harold Smith's (Feb. 7, 1926-Feb. 19, 2005) surviving case files. They describe two suspected perpetrators but do not designate the present possessors or whereabouts of one beaker, one etching, one finial, five drawings and five paintings. The $500 million-estimated, zero-insured art theft in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, exasperates all investigators with its abundant, dead-end leads and its non-existent physical evidence.

super art sleuth Harold Smith as depicted in The Gardner Gossips by artist and police supervisor Charles Vincent Sabba: Charles Vincent Sabba via Gardner Heist Gossips blog post Feb. 14, 2014

The author finds comfortable fits for two composite sketches by Boston Police Department artist Neville of one heavier, mustached, younger suspect and one leaner, mustached older. Boser gives George Albert Reissfelder Jr. (Feb. 22, 1940-April 11, 1991) as likeliest suspect for the 5-foot-7- to 5-foot-10-inch- (1.70- to 1.78-meter-) tall, gold rim-bespectacled perpetrator. He has David Allen Turner as likeliest for the other almond-eyed, policeman-disguised, 6-foot- to 6-foot-1-inch- (1.83- to 1.85-meter-) tall, 180- to 200-pound (81.65- to 90.72-kilogram) perpetrator.

The sketches, whose Turner likeness a passerby indicated, incorporated observations by third-shift security guards Ray Abell, with inconclusive polygraph tests, and Ralph Helman, with non-incriminating results. The sketch and a Turner photograph joggled Jerry Stratberg's memories of two policemen in a gray hatchback just before the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 1990 art theft's two suspects disguised as police officers: Stilled Lives, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikispaces

No investigator definitively knows the perpetrators' identities since crime-scene inventories keep 12 unmatched fingerprints as the only physical evidence from the basement, entry and second-floor levels. Motion detector records on hard drives and sequenced fallen frames link theft times in the Dutch Room, Short Gallery and security director Lyle W. Grindle's office. Absent fingerprints, altered appearances, non-existent deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), stolen footage and stressed eyewitnesses mandate recovery of the missing Gardner 13 through confessions, searches, tails and tips.

Boser, reporter turned senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., notes damages to artworks and dangers to controllers, informants, investigators and suspects.

Conservator Gianfranco Pocobene observed that cutting, dropping, handling the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft paintings obtained irreversible harm from which "you'll always see that damage."

13 artworks removed from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during March 18, 1990 art theft: Public Domain, via FBI Art Crime Team

Boser, Open Case founding editor, presents among dead suspected informants Robert Donati (June 4, 1940-Sept. 21, 1991?) and Charles O. Pappas (Oct. 26, 1968-Nov. 22, 1995). Robert Guarente (Dec. 29, 1939-Jan. 25, 2004) and Carmello Merlino (June 21, 1934-Dec. 4, 2005) qualify as dead suspected controllers of Connecticut-, Maine-, Massachusetts-, Pennsylvania-circulated artworks. Boser, U.S. News & World Report former contributing editor, reveals, "no one had ever come forward about the lost masterpieces - they had all been murdered." Only Myles Connor Jr., Robert Gentile, David Turner and William Youngworth III survive as possible information sources since the author scuttled Irish and Whitey Bulger involvements.

Like Harold Smith, London insurance adjuster Mark Dalrymple tends toward amnesty and reward as recovery incentives since "these things are nicked for money. They're long-term players."

The Gardner Heist's author Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), headquartered in Washington DC; Jan. 19, 2011: Center for American Progress, CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

sketch of two suspects, disguised as police officers, who gained entry into Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for purposes of art theft, March 18, 1990: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Public Domain, via FBI Art Crime Team @ https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/5-million-reward-offered-for-return-of-stolen-gardner-museum-artwork

super art sleuth Harold Smith as depicted in The Gardner Gossips by artist and police supervisor Charles Vincent Sabba: Charles Vincent Sabba via Gardner Heist Gossips blog post Feb. 14, 2014, @ http://gardnerheistgossips.blogspot.com/

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 1990 art theft's two suspects disguised as police officers: Stilled Lives, CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikispaces @ http://stilledlives.wikispaces.com/suspects

13 artworks removed from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during March 18, 1990 art theft: Public Domain, via FBI Art Crime Team @ https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/5-million-reward-offered-for-return-of-stolen-gardner-museum-artwork

The Gardner Heist's author Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), headquartered in Washington DC; Jan. 19, 2011: Center for American Progress, CC BY ND 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/americanprogress/5370951490/

For further information:

Boser, Ulrich. 2009. The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft. New York NY: HarperCollins.

"The Gardner Heist." Ulrich Boser.com > Books.
Available @ http://ulrichboser.com/books/gardner-heist/

Sabba, Charles. 14 February 2014. "Art Crimes Portraits: Gardners Gossips Lecture 2013. Gardner Heist Gossips Blogspot.
Available @ http://gardnerheistgossips.blogspot.com/

Wendy Siefken @WendyandCharles. "ReadersGazette: RT zedign: #Book: The Gardner Heist: The True Story Of The World’S Largest Unsolved Art Theft." Twitter. April 5, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/WendyandCharles/status/717489284274630657