Did Whitey Bulger Pull Off the Gardner Art Heist for the IRA?
Private
detectives on the trail of 13 masterpieces stolen from Boston 30 years
ago are looking at what’s left of the Irish group. Others are skeptical
of the fantastic theory.
It’s
been nearly 30 years since two conniving art thieves dressed up like
Boston cops and sweet-talked their way into the city’s Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum after closing hours. Once inside, they handily tied up
the museum’s two on duty security guards and carried out the biggest art
heist in modern history, stealing 13 masterpieces worth more than $500
million in a rather leisurely 80 minutes.
The heist, which
included works by Rembrandt and Vermeer, remains one of the biggest art
thefts on record and, three decades later, one of the most perplexing
mysteries art detectives have ever tried to unravel. The only real lead
the FBI has ever acknowledged receiving are some paint chips that were
sent by mail anonymously, consistent with the red lake in Vermeer’s “The
Concert,” which was cut with surgical precision from its frame the
night of the heist.
Some of the stolen works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the March 18, 1990, heist.
For
years, it was assumed that the artwork, if still intact, is in the
United States, likely part of an underground network being held for
eventual ransom or secret sale to rogue collectors of such hidden
treasures. But a $10 million reward offered by the museum has not smoked
out the culprits or current owners of the art, who are guaranteed by
authorities immunity and anonymity if they just turn over the
masterpieces.
Thousands
of tips have dissolved into false leads over the decades, but recently,
two of the biggest names in art recovery have hinted that the paintings
just might be in the hands of what’s left of the old Irish Republic
Army or IRA. No one agrees just how they got there, if indeed they are
there, which has complicated any chance of collaboration among those
searching to bring the art home to Boston.
FBI special agent Tim
Carpenter, who heads the bureau’s Art Crime Team, gave credence to the
theory that has for years been a hushed whisper when he told the Law & Crime website
the stolen artworks could “perhaps” be overseas. “I don’t think it is a
cold case because we do get a fair amount of information on that case,”
he said, though he would not elaborate on how close they may be to a
breakthrough.
Some of the stolen works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the March 18, 1990, heist.
His
veiled “maybe” echoed an announcement Dutch art detective Arthur Brand
made this spring, in which the acclaimed private detective said he had
spoken directly to members of the IRA who implied that with immunity and
the $10 million award offered by the Gardner museum, they would be
ready to give up the raided art. “The IRA is not a trustworthy
organization,” Brand told The Daily Beast recently. “But the
organization is dying and they need to liquidate now more than ever.”
Neither
Brand nor Carpenter will give much in the way of proof that the
paramilitary group–or what’s left of it–can guarantee they have the
goods. And Anthony Amore, the man in charge of the Isabella Gardner
Museum’s security, doesn’t buy for a minute that the art is in the hands
of the paramilitary group. “The IRA has been mentioned for 29 years,”
Amore told The Daily Beast. “But there is zero evidence that the IRA has
been involved. Everything points to the art being right here in the
United States.”
Bulger’s
attorneys have said he was ready to negotiate giving up some
information about the paintings in exchange for safer prison digs just
weeks before he was murdered.
Amore
says that informants, including lead figures of the IRA at the time of
the theft, coupled with historical information, leads him to believe the
theory is flat wrong. “They would take paintings like this to ransom
people or negotiate people out of jail,” Amore says. “They did not do
that when they could have.”
One theory about how the IRA could
have even possibly received the paintings is tied to James “Whitey”
Bulger, the former boss of an Irish-American mob called the Winter Hill
Gang that lorded over the South Boston area in the 1970s and ’80s.
Bulger, the story goes, may have given the paintings to the IRA as a
consolation prize after a shipment of arms to Ireland was intercepted by
American police.
Top:
James ‘Whitey’ Bulger Jr. poses for a mugshot on his arrival at the
Federal Penitentiary at Alcatraz on Nov. 16, 1959, in San Francisco.
Bottom: James ‘Whitey’ Bulger mugshot in 2011.
Bulger,
who was on the run for 16 years before being nabbed in Santa Monica in
2011, was killed in his prison cell last October while serving a pair of
life sentences for some 19 murders. His attorneys have said he was
ready to negotiate giving up some information about the paintings in
exchange for safer prison digs just weeks before he was murdered. He was
already an FBI informant on certain matters, but not on the Gardner
art, which calls into question whether he was really involved.
Some of the stolen works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the March 18, 1990, heist.
Charles
Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective who is now a private
investigator, believes that Whitey was an IRA sympathizer. He told the Guardian
that the gangster “loved to associate himself with the cause, and was
involved in arms deals and drugs shipments to the republic.”
Brand, one of the most successful private bounty hunters of lost art, has previously admitted
to The Daily Beast that he has a history of making deals with the
devil, forging ties with raiders and thieves, penetrating their networks
to negotiate the circumstances to bring the stolen treasures home
without incriminating the thieves. He recently returned a $28 million
Picasso stolen from a private luxury yacht 20 years ago by infiltrating
the network that was hiding it. He has had similar success recovering
two bronze horses stolen for Adolf Hitler by his Nazi goons to be placed
at the threshold of the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin, and a string
of other Nazi-era stolen art, all earning him the nickname “Indiana
Jones of the art world.”
FBI
posters displaying works by artists Johannes Vermeer and Edgar Degas
are seen during a press conference held to appeal to the public for help
in returning artwork stolen in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum in Boston.
He
does not believe that Bulger has anything to do with the theft or a
transfer of the art overseas. “At the time of the theft, the IRA was
running guns from Boston without Bulger’s knowledge,” Brand says. “Those
paintings were tucked into one of the vessels and they are still in
Ireland today.”
Amore disagrees, insisting that, whether Bulger
was involved or not, the art is still in the U.S. He says Americans are
“consumers of stolen art, not exporters of it.”
Brand’s
methods—successful as they may be—are not always agreeable to the
rightful owners of the art in question. Amore, who has dedicated his
career to the return of the Isabella Gardner art, says he doesn’t do
deals with thieves, even if it might mean the safe return of the
treasures. “Art hunters like Arthur Brand often negotiate with the
smugglers and thieves, but is that something you can condone?” he asks.
“Anybody that can help us get our art back and acts ethically to do so
is welcome, but the idea of paying thieves art is unethical.”
He
questions Brand’s proclamation that he has talked to anyone who still
has ties to the IRA. “Thieves, or anybody holding the stolen Gardner
art, can go through an attorney to get the reward,” he says. “I don’t
begrudge Arthur, he has the right to search for it. But there is no
reason to reach out to someone in the Netherlands that people holding
our art wouldn’t even know.”
Some of the stolen works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the March 18, 1990, heist.
Amore
believes that the time has come, now nearly 30 years later, for whoever
is holding the art to come clean. “Many old cases are solved when
someone has the confidence to come forward, isn’t afraid anymore,” he
told The Daily Beast. “What happens typically with masterpieces is that
they are recovered right away or a long time after, and we have now
reached the time when those involved in the actual theft are dead.”
Amore
believes that time is on his side and that the art will eventually be
recovered when whoever is holding it is ready to give it up. Thirty
years is a long time to keep such precious art, and he says he believes
the time will soon come when they want to get rid of it. He is not
convinced it will be discovered any other way after so long.
“When
you are looking for something that is missing for a long time, but an
inanimate object, you don’t have the same things on your side as you do
when you are looking for a person,” Amore says. “A person has to go out
of the house, a painting just sits until it is found.”
