And their disguises left their faces uncovered, giving the guards a good look at them. Patrick's Day party in a nearby apartment building to break up before making their move. The Globe located several passersby who remember seeing them sitting quietly in a red hatchback near the museum's side entrance, perhaps waiting for a St. They posed as Boston police officers, and even though they flashed badges and wore insignias, their long coats were not part of any official uniform. They took no great pains to avoid being seen, nor were they careful to avoid damaging the masterpieces they were stealing. They are baffled especially because the thieves, though bold and clever, were hardly meticulous professionals. Patrick's Day festivities in the city wound down. But like the investigators, the museum's leaders are baffled by how little progress has been made since thieves entered the museum in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, as St. Museum officials say they take heart in the fact that some masterworks stolen from other museums have surfaced after many years. The Gardner has offered a $5 million reward for the paintings' return. The paintings, whose total value today is more than $300 million, have never surfaced, not even as a strong rumor, in the international art underworld. And the US attorney in Boston now says he will not prosecute anyone who has the paintings and offers to return them.īut while investigators have experienced some brief flurries of hope, mostly they have had to deal with frustration, fool's errands, and silence. But time has changed the Gardner case in one way that could increase the chances of the paintings' being recovered: The statute of limitations has passed for prosecution of the theft itself. Time is often the enemy of crime investigators the trail quickly gets cold. The Globe also came across a possible clue that not even the FBI was aware of - one of the paintings stolen, a small Rembrandt etching, had been taken once before. The Gardner plans a public appeal today to the anonymous writer who made the offer, and then fell silent for 11 years. More details also have emerged about the many leads investigators have pursued, including a sighting of the thieves just before they entered the museum, and a 1994 offer to return the paintings that was never publicized but is considered the most promising tip received so far. It is also one of the many secrets about the case that investigators have kept to themselves these many years, as they waited in vain for a reliable tip on the whereabouts of the 13 paintings and other artworks stolen that night.Ī Globe reexamination of the case, including the first interview with the guard who let the thieves in, uncovers several of those secrets and allows the clearest account yet of what happened on the night of the theft - an account that underscores how defenseless the Gardner was, with its easily foiled security system and two inexperienced guards on duty, one of whom admits he was sometimes stoned while on the job. Jack Gardner built at the turn of the century to house her private art collection and share it with the public they could have stayed all night.
They would spend 81 minutes moving through the darkened galleries of the Italianate mansion Mrs. The warning beeper proved to be the only part of the museum's security system that deterred the men at all. They smashed it silent and went back to work on what remains, 15 years after that misty March night in 1990, the biggest art heist in history. Intended to alert guards when museum visitors ventured too close to the art, the alarm was quickly hunted down by the men. As they struggled to remove a heavy-framed Rembrandt from the silk-draped wall of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the two thieves abruptly stopped as a high-pitched alarm beeped from the baseboard.īut not for long.
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