Two Cops Walk Into a Museum: The Story of America’s Greatest Art Heist
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The world's most valuable stolen object isn't a giant diamond or a Lamborghini made of solid gold. It's not a winning lottery ticket, and it's not a safe full of old railroad bonds. It's a painting, one of 34 works by 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It's called "The Concert." It depicts a man and two women playing music in a small room with a checkered floor.

Behind our musicians are two paintings within a painting. On the right is the Procurus by Dirk van Babberen, which belonged to Vermeer's mother-in-law. On the left is an unnamed pastoral landscape. Today, the concert is valued at 250 million, making it one of the most expensive items in the world.

The only problem is that nobody knows where it is. It was stolen, along with 12 other timeless pieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, as drunken St. Patrick's Day revelers were stumbling home, two Boston police officers knocked on the side door of the Gardner Museum.

The cops said there was a disturbance and asked to come inside. At the time, 23-year-old Rick Abath didn't think anything of it. He was one of two security guards on duty that night. If two Boston cops wanted entry, he wouldn't stop them. Unfortunately, these men weren't with the Boston PD. They were thieves in authentic police uniforms.

They bound and gagged Abath and his fellow security guard and brought them into the basement. Then, for the next 81 minutes, they cut million-dollar paintings from their frames and bussed them back to their car. By 2:45 a.m., the robbers were gone, never to be seen again. To this day, nobody knows who they were or what happened to the stolen paintings. The FBI has been investigating the case for over 30 years.

They believe they've narrowed it down to two suspects. But both men are long dead. The Gardner Museum still holds hope. They're currently offering a $10 million reward for any information leading to the safe return of all 13 pieces. They've even left the empty frames on the walls as a sign that, one day, the paintings will find their way home.

How did two men pull off one of history's greatest heists? Were they after specific works? Or was this more of a grab-and-go? More importantly, was it an inside job? Our thieves seemingly knew everything about the museum and its flawed security systems. Did somebody tip them off? Or were they just lucky? Was it Whitey Bulger and the Whitehill Gang? Was it the IRA?

Was it a band of French mobsters from the island of Corsica? Or was it two low-level crooks that went down in history for pulling off the single largest art robbery of all time? Isabella Stewart's life changed forever when she was 17 years old. On a trip to Milan, Italy, she visited Museo Poldi Pezzoli, an art museum with an esteemed collection of Renaissance-era art.

She walked from room to room, each dedicated to different historical eras. She decided this was what she wanted to do with her life. If she ever inherited some money, she'd open something similar in America. That was in 1857. Her dream wouldn't come true for another 46 years. Isabella was born into a wealthy New York family in April of 1840.

She attended a Manhattan Academy for Girls between the ages of 5 and 15. There she studied music, dance, and art. When she was 16, her family moved to Paris, where Isabella attended a special school for American girls. There, she met her future sister-in-law, Julia Gardner. Thus, her name changed to Isabella Gardner.

Isabella returned to New York in 1858 with her dream of opening her own art gallery. Julia invited her to Boston, where Isabella met and married Julia's brother, John "Jack" Gardner. They lived at 152 Beacon Street in Boston, in a townhouse built by Isabella's father in 1860 as a wedding present to his daughter and son-in-law.

According to the Boston Business Journal, the Gardner apartment was on sale for $13.5 million as recently as 2022. Isabella and Jack's married life was marred by early tragedy. She gave birth to a son in 1863, but the child died of pneumonia in 1865. A year later, Isabella suffered a miscarriage, which rendered her unable to bear children.

It was a tough pill to swallow, knowing both their legacies would die when they did. To lighten their spirits, they decided to travel. They arrived in Europe in 1867. They visited Russia and Scandinavia, but spent most of their time in Paris. The trip proved crucial to Isabella's physical and mental health.

She felt rejuvenated, especially while visiting France's many art museums. The traveling never stopped. Cumulatively, Isabella and Jack spent 10 years bouncing between the Middle East, Paris, and Central Europe. They saw every end of America, they spent time in Asia, and they even stopped by the Pyramids of Giza. In 1891, Isabella and Jack found themselves at an art auction in Paris.

She was up against noble families with deep pockets. But Isabella didn't come without coin. Her father had recently passed away, leaving her a 1.7 million inheritance. That would be like inheriting 58 million today. But money didn't matter when you were a woman in an art-collecting world dominated by men. Historians say this fact prevented her from participating in the auctions. Instead, she had Jack do the bidding for her.

One of the items up for bid that day was the concert by Johannes Vermeer. Soon, Isabella found herself in a bidding war with the Louvre Museum and the National Gallery of London. However, when the museum curators realized they were bidding against each other, they voluntarily bowed out of the auction. Isabella swooped in and bought the concert for 29,000 francs, or about $5,000 at the time.

By the late 1800s, Isabella and Jack had amassed an art collection so vast that it was overflowing from their Beacon Street home. They began talking about opening a museum in Boston. Following Jack's sudden death in 1898, the artful widow broke ground on what would soon become the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

She purchased a plot of land in Boston's marshy Fenway area. Today, it's a few blocks from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and about a mile from Fenway Park. She commissioned a building resembling the Renaissance palaces of Venice she loved so dearly. Upon its completion, she spent a year installing her art collection piece by piece. Everything about the Gardner Museum was based on her personal aesthetic.

It remains that way even today, long after Isabella's death. In her will, she mandated that the arrangement never be altered. No items could be sold and no new items could be added. She opened the doors on January 1st, 1903. Her pieces remained untouched until St. Patrick's Day, 1990, when two thieves disguised as cops entered and stole her life's work.

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When Isabella Gardner died in 1924, she left her museum with a $3.6 million endowment, which is about $65 million today. To her, it was enough money to keep the museum running smoothly. After all, they weren't allowed to add new pieces, and she already owned the land and building.

But by the 1980s, the Gardner Museum was drastically low on funds. It lacked any sort of insurance policy, wasn't climate-controlled, and was in overall poor condition. Local Boston criminals salivated over the expensive artwork and the lack of general security that went into protecting them. In fact, in 1982, the FBI foiled a plot to rob the museum before it got off the ground.

The attempted robbery was a wake-up call. The museum used the few dollars it had left to install 60 infrared motion sensors in the exhibits and a four-camera CCTV system outside the building. For reasons unknown, they decided not to place cameras inside the building. Perhaps they thought it would ruin the aesthetic that Isabella demanded they never touch. That said, they did hire additional 24/7 security guards.

Unfortunately, those "guards" were not trained to handle break-ins. They were mostly young kids in their 20s and early 30s who worked at the Gardner as a side gig. Furthermore, their only means of calling the police was via a panic button under the front desk. Other museums, for example, make hourly phone calls to the police department to ensure everything is okay.

In 1988, two years before the robbery, the security director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts suggested they overhaul their entire security system. But because Isabella forbade any major renovations in her will, the board of trustees ignored the suggestion. They also rejected a proposal to increase Nightwatch salaries to attract more qualified candidates.

By March of 1990, the Isabella Gardner Museum was an example waiting to be made. Someone set their sights on the prizes inside, and in 81 minutes, they executed one of the greatest heists in American history. Part 3: A Night at the Museum Richard Abath dreamed of being a musician. Unfortunately, the 23-year-old couldn't cut it at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

He dropped out, joined a band called Ukiah, and began working at the Isabella Gardner Museum. He was one of those underpaid and underqualified nighttime guards. Abath has always been at the center of the museum heist, right up until his death in February 2024. Many believe he was the robber's inside man, though he spent the second half of his life denying those claims.

It was March 18th, 1990. In the early morning hours after St. Patrick's Day, drunken revelers stumbled up and down the streets of Boston. The police department likely had their hands full. Meanwhile, two men dressed as Boston cops approached the side door of the Isabella Gardner Museum. Multiple witnesses saw them park their hatchback about 100 feet away on Palace Road.

but everyone around assumed they were Boston cops. Perhaps driving an undercover car, Abath was on duty that night with 25-year-old Randy Hestand. By then, Abath was among the museum's veteran night watchmen. Randy, on the other hand, was brand new. The night of the robbery was his first time working the night shift. Per museum policy, one guard was to patrol the galleries with a walkie-talkie and a flashlight,

The other was to wait by the front security desk. If something ever happened, the desk man would press the panic button, thus calling the police. As the story goes, the fire alarm tripped unexpectedly while Abath was on patrol. He chalked it up to a malfunctioning system since he couldn't find smoke or fire in the galleries. So, he entered the back security room and turned off the alarm.

Before completing his rounds, Abath walked to the side entrance door and opened it. He peeked out, then went back in and closed it behind him. This action put Abath in the crosshairs of internet sleuths for 30 plus years. Abath returned to the security desk around 1 a.m., at which point Randy went on patrol. About 20 minutes later, our robbers arrived at the side entrance and pressed the intercom button.

It connected them to Abath at the desk, and they identified themselves as Boston Police. They were there to investigate a disturbance somebody had allegedly called about. Abath could see them on the CCTV cameras. They looked like cops, talked like cops, and were dressed like cops. He wasn't aware of any disturbance, but he had no reason not to trust them.

In his mind, some drunken St. Patrick's Day fool must have climbed over the back fence and hurt themselves. Abath buzzed the robbers into the museum at 1:24 AM. The officers met Abath at the desk and asked if anybody else was in the museum. He radioed Randy and told him to come back. According to Abath, he noticed something off about the taller cop's mustache. It looked fake, like it was part of a costume.

Tensions rose, at which point the shorter officer said a bath looked familiar. He demanded identification to ensure a bath didn't have any warrants out for his arrest. This forced a bath out from behind the security desk and, thus, the building's only panic button.

The officers pressed him against a wall and handcuffed him. Randy Hestand walked in moments later, and they quickly subdued him too. Now that both guards were handcuffed, the officers revealed their true intentions. They were there to rob the place. And as long as Abath and Hestand didn't try anything stupid, they wouldn't get hurt. The robbers then wrapped their heads with duct tape and led the guards into the museum basement.

What's strange about this fact is that the robbers allegedly didn't ask for directions. It's as if they knew where they were going in the dark museum. According to multiple books on the robbery, the thieves told Abath and Hestand that if they kept quiet and didn't talk to the police, they'd receive a handsome reward in one year's time. It's unclear if either man ever received such a reward. The thieves waited about 15 minutes to ensure the coast was clear.

Then, they robbed the place blind. The infrared camera system tracked their movements around the museum. Unfortunately, it could only detect their footsteps and couldn't see their faces. They entered an exhibit called the Dutch Room on the second floor. Here, Isabella arranged all her paintings and artworks attributed to famous Dutch artists.

They first removed two paintings by the Dutch Golden Age painter Rembrandt van Rijn, "The Storm of the Sea of Galilee" and "A Lady and Gentleman in Black." They threw both pictures on the marble floor, shattering the glass frames. Then, using a precise blade, they cut the canvases out and rolled them up. They also removed Rembrandt's self-portrait from the wall, but left the frame leaning against a cabinet with the painting intact.

Police believed the portrait was too heavy, as Rembrandt had painted it on wood instead of canvas. Next, they moved on to Govert Flinck's Landscape with Obelisk, and finally, their biggest score: The Concert by Johannes Vermeer.

The last item removed from the Dutch room was a Chinese Gu or a beaker dating back to the Shang Dynasty. While it was the oldest of the stolen objects, it wasn't very valuable compared to everything else. Isabella bought it in 1922 for $17,500 or about $325,000 today. Soon, both thieves were in a narrow hallway on the second floor called the Short Gallery.

It's here they began unscrewing a frame containing a Napoleonic flag.

However, they abandoned the endeavor and simply stole the exposed eagle ornament atop the flagpole. From this same room, they stole five sketches by French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas. The last item stolen was an oil-on-canvas painting called Chez Tortoni by French artist Edouard Manet. What's odd about this piece is where the frame was ultimately found.

Isabella had hung Che Tortoni in an exhibit called "The Blue Room" on the first floor. But, according to the cameras, Richard Abath was the only person to set foot inside the Blue Room that night. He entered during his earlier patrol, long before the thieves ever arrived.

The robbers never took any frames. Instead, they cut the canvases out and left the frames in their respective rooms. The Chez Tortoni frame, however, wasn't found in the blue room. Instead, police found it on a chair in the first floor security office. Nobody has ever explained how it got there or why Abath's footprints were the only ones detected in the blue room that night.

Before leaving, the thieves broke into the security director's office, where they removed the videocassettes with evidence of their entrance into the museum. Then, between 2:40 and 2:45 AM, they bust the stolen art to their getaway car, parked 100 feet away. The last time they're seen on camera is when they're leaving the museum at 2:45.

In total, the robbery lasted 81 minutes. They stole 13 pieces valued at $200 million at the time. That estimate increased to 500 million in 2000 and has only gone up from there. The bulk of their haul was the concert and the storm on the Sea of Galilee, valued at 250 million and 140 million respectively. What's perhaps more interesting is the artwork they chose not to steal.

The most valuable item in Isabella's collection was "The Rape of Europa" by the 16th century Venetian artist Tizian. It's a massive painting measuring 70 by 80 inches. When Isabella bought the piece in 1896, it was hailed as the most expensive painting in the United States. She paid about $100,000 for it, which is equal to 3.7 million in 2024.

It's unclear what the painting is worth today, as art is subjective. However, the Rape of Europa is considered to be one of Boston's most valuable artifacts. The fact that our thieves left it behind told police that they weren't experts commissioned to steal particular works. It was more of a grab-and-go. They just got extremely lucky with the pieces they stole.

The robbery wasn't discovered until later that day when the morning guards found a bath and a hestand tied up in the basement. By then, the robbers and artwork were long gone, never to be seen again.

Part 4. The Mystery.

According to the FBI, 89% of museum heists are inside jobs. But from the day of the robbery to the day he died, Richard Abath maintained his innocence. To him, the Gardner gig was just a job. By his admission, Richard would sometimes come to work drunk and high. He'd even sneak his friends in after hours for a party.

Richard insists that he was sober the night of the robbery, even though everyone else in Boston was still drunk after the St. Patrick's Day festivities. The most damning piece of evidence against Richard Abath is the CCTV footage of him opening the side door moments before the robbers arrived.

Some believe it was a signal. They think it was Abath telling the robbers, "Hey, the other guy's on patrol. Let's go." Richard claimed that opening the side door was part of his nightly routine. He always did so to ensure it was locked. One of his colleagues would later tell reporters that, if that were true, museum officials would have told him to stop doing that. Others question why Abath's footsteps were the only ones detected in the Blue Room that night.

Based on the data, nobody entered that area during the robbery. So who grabbed Shaytortoni? And how did the frame end up back at the security desk? According to an outside security consultant, the motion sensors were in tip-top shape before, during, and after the robbery. It wasn't some kind of glitch or malfunction.

Things calmed down for Richard Abath in the decades following the robbery. He moved to Vermont in 1999, started a family, and worked as a teacher's aide in a public school. He stayed out of the spotlight for the most part, but new developments and anniversaries would always raise new questions about his role. The most significant development came in 2015, when the FBI released never-before-seen footage from the night of the robbery.

It's not the best footage and nowhere near today's quality, but it was enough to raise alarms. In it, a car pulls up alongside the museum before the robbery. A man gets out, wearing an upturned collar, and approaches the front door. Richard Abath lets him in. The man hangs around briefly and speaks with Richard at the security desk. Then he leaves, never to be seen again.

The FBI initially asked about this man, but Richard couldn't recall the encounter and said he didn't recognize him. It was later revealed that this mystery man was the museum's deputy director of security. If that's true, don't you think Abath would have known who he was? That same year, the FBI came out and said the two men they believed to be the masterminds behind the museum heist were long dead.

This came two years after the FBI claimed to know who did it, but refused to release the names. Even after their alleged death, the FBI has remained quiet on who these men are. As of 2024, their main priority is recovering the stolen artwork. According to Smithsonian Magazine, one of those alleged suspects may have died within a year of the heist.

His name was Jimmy Marks, a career criminal from the Boston suburb of Lynn. In February 1991, a gunman unscrewed the light bulb outside Jimmy Marks' apartment to get his attention. When Jimmy answered the door, the assassin shot him dead and fled into the night. According to a tip received by Anthony Amore, chief of security for the Gardner Museum, Marks was bragging about having two of the stolen paintings a few days before he died.

the FBI has never confirmed nor denied Jimmy Marks' involvement. The most famous person associated with the heist was Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang. Bulger, who died in 2018, always denied his involvement. In fact, he was just as invested in solving the crime as it took place in his territory. Thus, the robbers owed him tribute. Tribute on half a billion dollars worth of stolen art would have been a pretty payday for Whitey.

Some believe Bulger used his Boston PD and Irish Republican army ties to execute the robbery. According to Charlie Hill, a retired art and antiquities investigator for Scotland Yard, Bulger orchestrated the robbery and gave the stolen pieces to the IRA. They're currently hidden somewhere in Ireland.

He believes the robbers themselves were two men from Ireland. As proof, he points to a lesser-known fact about the case: that one of the robbers used the word "mate" when tying up the security guards. "That's not a word Americans say," Hill told a Bloomberg reporter. According to Randy Hestand, one of the thieves did use the word "mate." However, he swears they spoke with American or Canadian accents.

"I never had any reason to think they were from outside North America," he told the same Bloomberg reporter in an email. If that's true, let's look at a few more North American mafiosos who may have been involved. Two of the FBI's favorite suspects are Robert Guarente and Robert Gentile. They were known members of the Merlino Gang, an organized crime group out of Dorchester, and loyal to Boston mob boss Frank Salimi.

The Merlino gang, operating out of an auto repair shop run by criminal Carmelo Merlino, had wanted to rob the Stuart Gardner Museum since 1981. A year later, when the FBI was investigating Merlino gangster, Louis Royce, they learned about his prior plans to rob the museum. Louis was in jail during the robbery, but that didn't stop him from sharing his plan with other Merlino associates like Guarente and Gentile.

Guarente was a known gangster from Manchester, Connecticut, who died of cancer in 2004. His widow said he used to own some of the stolen artwork but gave it to Gentile for safekeeping when he got sick. Gentile ultimately got pinched for drugs in 2010. A few days after his arrest, FBI agents stormed his house and found a false door in the backyard shed. The secret room, however, was empty.

Jenteel's son said it flooded during a storm and that his father was upset when its contents were destroyed. Jenteel, who was believed to be the last person with any knowledge about the heist, died in 2021 at the age of 85. If he was involved, it contradicts statements made by the FBI in 2015 when they said both robbers were long dead.

Perhaps that was a ploy to get Robert Gentile to open up in his old age. He was a known talker who bragged about having access to two paintings during a 2013 FBI sting operation. Gentile allegedly told undercover agents that he could sell both paintings for $500,000 each. The FBI would later release a statement saying they believed the art was taken from Connecticut to Philadelphia, where it was sold to the highest black market bidder.

They believed Gentile was involved in the transportation and sale. A lesser known theory is that of the Corsican mobsters. Corsica is a small French island in the Mediterranean Sea. A 2005 investigation led the FBI to two Frenchmen with ties to the Corsican mob. They were allegedly trying to sell two paintings, a Vermeer and a Rembrandt.

The FBI determined that both pieces were stolen from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, France. But the Corsican mob theory didn't die there. One of the more puzzling items stolen during the Stuart Gardner heist was the bronze eagle finial that sat atop the Napoleonic flag. Fun fact: Napoleon Bonaparte spent the first 10 years of his life in Corsica. There's even a National Napoleon Museum inside his former family home.

It's plausible that prideful Corsican gangsters tried to steal back their flag during the heist. When they couldn't get it down, they settled for the bronze eagle instead. As of 2024, the Gardner Museum heist remains unsolved. The stolen works have never been recovered, and those involved are either dead or not talking.

The museum itself is currently offering a $10 million reward for the safe return of its stolen works or for any information leading to their recovery. The robbery has undoubtedly helped spark interest in the museum, as plenty of people come to see the empty frames that still hang where the pictures once did. It's ironic, isn't it? Isabella Gardner spent her life collecting these paintings. She wanted average people from every corner of the world to appreciate her collection.

Now, people flock to her museum to stare at blank spaces on the wall. The FBI believes those involved are long dead. They don't know what happened to the stolen works or if they're still intact. Somewhere in the world, someone could be sitting on half a billion dollars worth of stolen artwork. They may not even know what they have. A little old lady in Ireland could be staring at the concert right now thinking, "How nice, three people playing music together."

She has no idea she's looking at a $250 million one-of-a-kind piece of stolen artwork from half a world away. Or these artworks could be sitting in some rich oligarch's mansion in Russia. We may never know.