Fbi Agent Dispels Conspiracy Theories Behind America’s Most Notorious Art Heist – And Reveals Who He Thinks Really Did It

The notorious 1990 creation heist astatine nan Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum successful Boston has generated countless theories complete nan past 3 decades.

Now, a erstwhile FBI supplier has addressed those theories — ranging from nan Corsican mob to nan Irish Republican Army — successful a caller book, arsenic good arsenic revealing what he believes really happened.

The saga began connected March 18, 1990, erstwhile 2 men posing arsenic constabulary officers showed up astatine nan Boston depository and claimed they received reports of a disturbance, according to nan FBI.

Once they were fto inside, nan men tied up nan museum’s information guards successful nan basement. They past stole 13 artworks, worthy much than $500 cardinal astatine nan time, successful nan “largest spot crime successful U.S. history,” nan agency said.

The database includes useful by Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet and Rembrandt van Rijn, on pinch a coating by Johannes Vermeer, which is 1 of only 34 surviving useful by nan Dutch Master. The depository now displays quiet frames wherever nan useful erstwhile were.

“It's an intentional prime designed to nonstop a connection to nan public—a reminder of what was mislaid and dream that what was erstwhile location will someday return,” nan agency said.

The Boston depository is offering up to $10 cardinal to anyone who “returns nan creation successful bully condition,” according to nan FBI.

Geoffrey Kelly, a retired FBI supplier who investigated nan theft for much than 2 decades, elaborate nan lawsuit successful his caller book, Thirteen Perfect Fugitives, and described really investigators tried to find who was down nan brazen heist.

According to a New York Times review of Kelly’s book, he dismissed respective theories, 1 of which progressive nan Corsican mob. Kelly reportedly wrote that this mentation was a dormant end, aft an investigation revealed nan group did person entree to stolen works, but nary were related to nan case.

Another mentation progressive nan Irish Republican Army and James Bulger, a precocious Boston pack leader who erstwhile had ties to nan group. Kelly threw acold h2o connected nan thought that Bulger aliases nan IRA were responsible, nan paper reports.

Kelly besides addressed a slew of different questions, including whether nan artworks could’ve been hidden successful nan depository each along, a anticipation which he besides debunked.

Investigators’ existent mentation centers connected a group of Boston mobsters associated pinch Carmello Merlino, who denied having nan creation but erstwhile told nan FBI he mightiness cognize who did. Merlino died successful 2005.

Investigators person antecedently said they judge 2 of Merlino’s associates, Leonard DiMuzio and George Reissfelder, apt carried retired nan heist. Both men died soon aft nan useful were stolen.

The 2 men resembled nan constabulary sketch of nan thieves, and Reissfelder’s relative has said he saw 1 of nan stolen useful astatine his brother’s apartment, Kelly reportedly wrote.

The FBI has besides looked into Robert Gentile, a well-known mobster who died successful 2021. Another mobster’s widow erstwhile told investigators that her hubby gave Gentile 2 of nan stolen works, according to nan Associated Press.

Gentile many times denied immoderate allegations that he was linked to nan stolen artworks.

“I had thing to do pinch nan paintings. It’s a large joke,” he told nan AP successful 2019.