Stolen Vermeer

Stolen Art Watch, Charles Vincent Sabba Sheds New Light on Gardner Art Heist

2012-01-18T13:23:00.004Z

Gardner Bullets IV: Simmons College Robbery

This is a small excerpt of a much longer Your Brush With The Law exclusive interview that will be posted here in March for the anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery. This interview with William Youngworth III is going to reveal never before discussed details of the robbery and shed light onto the case.

CVS: Please shed light on the Simmons College robbery that occurred right across the street from the Gardner Museum eight years prior (1982) to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery.

WY: Well, that night was our first trip into the Gardner Museum, our second was in like 1986 or 87. My god, its all such ancient history now. First I would like to address this criminal attachment to my name. In 1977 I was given a 13 year prison sentence for something I was cold blooded innocent of. I was identified as a get away driver in an armed robbery that I did not do...........

CVS: You weren't doing anything illegal back then?

WY: I wouldn’t go that far, but in my world back then it was then as legal as I could make it. I was working with a close friend making fake I.D.’s. My friend was a genius at photography. We were making licenses for Joe McDonald’s crew who used them in a horse racing fixing racket around the country. It all came tumbling down right about then.

We got $500 a piece for our I.D. kit which were so good that they could take a call from a cop if someone got pulled over. We had made our equipment portable. We were using the same equipment Massachusetts DMV’s were using. We would rent hotel rooms never in the same place twice, call Joe’s guys and tell them where to come. We would make ten I.D. kits per session, collect our $5,000 and be gone. We did it a few times per week and making good money for back then....

CVS: So how did you end up in the Gardner Museum?

WY: We first were walked through and shown the Gardner and we cased the museum a second time in 1986. Some guy that wasn’t in our crew got our ID cameras busted in a drug raid. He had been dealing coke right under our noses, which put our operation in jeapordy. He met this girl in a bar and brings her back to our safe house. One thing led to another, she saw too much, went to the cops and we lose all our equipment. During this same week we had a major ID order to fill. My other friend is this super connected guy in Boston and he put the world out we need Polariod 707 ID cameras and will pay $10,000 each for them. In less then two days we had a lead on some. They were in Simmons College in Boston.

CVS: The Simmons College robbery isn’t that widely known is it?

WY: I did let it out when I was pleading with the Gardner to act fast because I was losing my toe hold on my ability to assist them without it becoming drastically more complicated. They didn’t listen. But your right it was basically brushed aside. Funny, I’ve never had to prove how guilty I was before! Each time we looked at the Gardner Museum, we were cautioned that some of the frames were very possibly wired into the alarms. There were a lot of unknowns we were waiting for answers on. Before those answers came I had gotten picked up on an old charge.

CVS: For our readers that don’t know Boston, or haven’t been to the Gardner Museum, Simmons College and the Gardner are directly across a small street from one another.

WY: Anyway, my friend’s contact was the night time guard of the Simmons. Since the plan would give us the control over the entire college we cleaned out their Audio Visual lab and got our hands on equipment we had been wanting to lay our hands on for years.

CVS: This gets a little hard to ignore. Please tell us how Simmons was robbed.

WY: Sure. The exact same way the Gardner Museum was in 1990. It was knock, knock, "open up it’s the police". "Were here over a distress call we received". It took four of us, including the guard about four hours to clean the place out. We had a connection that ran a large commercial division of a rental truck company and had to get the truck back by 6:30AM before the day shift showed up at 7:00AM. This was our first tour of the Gardner. Our guard and their’s were both musicans and social buddies. Truthfully I never knew about the place and it was the Simmons guard who turned us on to the score. We got in there that night after we got done at Simmons. We put a look out up the street and he gave us the all clear for us to take the truck from around back of Simmon’s loading dock, a few hundred feet down Palace Road and around the block re-connecting to Huntintgon Ave.

CVS: What was the guard’s story who was involved? And you know I need to ask about your first trip into the Gardner.

WY: Certainly we’ll get back to that but his statement was that uniformed Boston Police Officers had handcuffed him, took him down into a basement stairwell and re-handcuffed him to a railing.

CVS: I have done some checking into this. Simmons has no comment about this, the Boston Police have such a brief report that’s it ridiculous and two paintings in the Dean’s office were cut from their frames.

WY: I actually believe that the original report was much more detailed. Actually I am certain of it. Our guard brought us a copy. We were actually using it as an information on the items we ended up selling and didn’t need. And your information about two paintings being cut from their frames is 100% correct. When our guard saw my friends ’passion’ for art he told us all about what was right next door.

CVS: You cut paintings from the frames?

WY: Heavens no! When I saw what he did I was very upset. These really weren’t that big a deal paintings. They weren’t worth much. Just two nice late 19th Century portraits of old faculty members. They were portraits of men and this is a women’s college. I recoiled when I saw what he had done. He didn’t really care and simply rolled them up. You know what, in re-telling that story I recall I never knew what happened to those paintings.

CVS: So let me get this straight. Right across the street from the Gardner, where eight years later a $500 million robbery occurs 100 feet away where the guard says he was summoned to the door by persons claiming to be police, the police over power the guard, hand cuff him in a basement, take control of the place and cut paintings out of frames...and that wasn’t a clue to investigators?

WY: That is correct.

For the rest of this exert please visit: http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm Roll Call

Rembrandt; oil on canvas; 2010; detail of larger canvas by Charles Sabba

Van Rijn; oil on canvas; 2010; detail of larger canvas by Charles Sabba

Storm on Sea of Galilee; Rembrandt Van Rijn; Stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Gardner Bullets V: A Sealed Case

Lets talk seriously now, and after over twenty years I think serious discussion is overdue since many of the principles have passed away, and if the few who are left go as well, they may take the secrets the possess with them, such as where the stolen art is (and we do believe the authorities know everything except WHERE the thirteen stolen items ended up). Seriously, the Gardner Museum security at the time of the robbery was a joke, so the museum administration and board members need to be held accountable and owe something to the American art loving people. They can rectify their negligence in the protection of our national treasures by taking drastic actions to recover the stolen art works. The head of security at the time of the robbery was incompetent and the guards were broken down valises who knew nothing about museum security. Why did these guards get off the hook so easy? Burnout musicians who opened the door to the museum even though the museum's policy clearly stated that they should never open the door for anyone. The Gardner guards allowed the robbers in and, after being duct taped up and secured to pipes in the basement, slept comfortably. Does a reasonable citizen relax enough to fall asleep into sweet dream land in this kind of situation while going through this kind of horrible ordeal? Then, after being discovered and liberated, these guards gave ridiculous descriptions to the police which culminated in those terrible composite sketches.

Two composite sketches of suspects: After Neville BPD; fingerprint ink on fingerprint card; Charles Sabba
Please recall (and refer to Gardner Bullets IV) that the Simmon's College guard was completely in on the 1982 robbery. Supposedly, the people who planned the Gardner heist never knew about the place until the Simmons guard turned them on to the score back in 1982, when he was covering for his pal at the Gardner Museum (the guard at the Gardner, a musician, was at a gig and the Simmon's guard was making his rounds).
It appears that the authorities are protecting these guards. The Gardner guard has never caught any public heat. These kids were no criminal masterminds, they could have never withstood the heat that they should have had to endure. I am positive they were pissing their pants in fear, being stuck between very dangerous underworld figures and the authorities/possible legal troubles. Please note the one little blurb in Tom Mashberg's & Anthony Amore's book about stolen Rembrandts that in Museum robberies it is usually an employee that is involved with thefts. There is usually an inside connection (and most museum security experts agree).
Where are they now? The Simmons guard died in the motor cycle accident. One of the Gardner guards supposedly died in France. One of the Gardner guards lived right around the corner from one of your William Youngworth's Allston antique stores at the time of the robbery. He allegedly was assaulted (reported recently in the Boston media) in front of the Allston antiques store. I personally would like to find and question all of the guards.

CVS: Why did Mashberg write about the guard living around the corner from the store on the twentieth anniversary of the heist?
WY: Who knows. Maybe its true. I didn’t know the guy. I vividly recall the argument I got into with Mashberg that started his attacking me the very next day. He probably printed the story to bait me into saying something about it. That was not so much a robbery as a gimme (staged robbery). I never saw two security guards on duty at anytime. That’s not to say there wasn’t but the security was a joke. In 1986 my friend had his own relationship going with a Gardner night security guard. The Gardner was just another score in the 80’s. In 86 we were just waiting for some security information. ...
CVS: During the negotiations with the Gardner Admin and the authorities, negotiations that eventually failed, did the authorities ask you to describe any of the circumstances of the theft? How about the condition of of the paintings? Did they ask to describe the backs, edges or under where the frame would hide?
WY: In the initial part of the negotiations they wanted me to describe things about the backs of the paintings I just did not know. They asked me about identification aspects that at the time I really never had a reason to note. They expected me to leave and go find those answers under intense surveillance. They obviously wanted me to access the package and lead them right to it. Now, many years later, as I understood it there was a Bernard Berenson tag on the piece and there were seals, or labels, that went between the stretcher bars and the canvas. The paintings were broken out of their frames and the seals were broken in the process.
These seals are designed to be like a seal indicating the actual artworks were original to the frames of that institution. Many museum collections do this. Its sort of a security/integrity feature ensuring the art work hadn’t been moneyed around with.

Read the full exerts at http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm
Coming soon Gardner Bullets Six and Seven
http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm
http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Stolen Art Watch,Gardner Extention , "It's a Kind of Vast Municipal Fire Station A Monstrous Carbuncle on the Face of a Much-Loved and Elegant Friend"

2012-01-12T13:55:00.014Z

Museum renaissance

Gardner to unveil grand new wing at reopening

In her will Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) stipulated that her museum, which she founded in 1903 and where she idiosyncratically installed her collection of fine and decorative art, remain largely unaltered. A copper-clad, four-storey-high building where a coach house formerly stood was never part of her vision, but this 70,000 sq. ft extension has been added to the museum that bears her name. Due to open on 19 January, the wing has been designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano and has cost $118m.

Anne Hawley, the museum’s director, says that her trustees decided to expand six years ago mainly because attendance had reached 200,000 visitors a year. The pressure on the building and the collection was too great, Hawley says, and limited space curtailed events and activities. When Gardner was alive, only 2,000 people enjoyed her recreation of a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, filled with paintings, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts and textiles, complemented by concerts in its music room.

Piano’s solution is a modern building that is not as tall and stands 50ft from the original museum. He compares the relationship between the buildings to that of “the great nephew to the great grand aunt”, says Hawley. Old and new buildings are linked by a glazed passage. The extension houses a 300-seat auditorium, a 2,000 sq. ft exhibition space, a café, conservation labs and staff offices. It also provides a new, larger entrance.

Building the extension has been controversial, not least because Gardner designed the carriage house, which was demolished in July 2009. The Boston Globe revealed in May 2009 that concerned members of staff felt Hawley was suppressing debate over the building’s historical significance. The newspaper cited an essay by former curatorial fellow Robert Colby, in which he describes how the carriage house held symbolic value for Gardner. Hawley responded to objectors by saying the carriage house was “never part of the visitor experience” and was not protected by Gardner’s will.

The carriage house had been used to accommodate visiting artists, a function catered for in Piano’s extension, which includes two artists’ apartments. The museum’s board of trustees unanimously voted for the demolition and the city and the state’s preservation agencies, including the Boston Landmarks Commission and the Massachusetts Historic Commission, did not object. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled the demolition “in the public interest” because the museum’s plans for an extension would “extend the life of the [original] building” and fulfil Gardner’s will to establish a museum “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever”.

“For the first time we will have a real exhibition space to focus on certain objects in our collection,” says Oliver Tostmann, the museum’s research fellow, who is due to become the collection’s curator in April. He plans to select one or two objects from the collection each year and show them alongside objects from other institutions in the new space. The opening exhibitions will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the museum’s artist-in-residence programme.

Gardner was able to build a museum for her growing art collection when she inherited $2.1m from her father in 1891. He made his wealth in the Irish linen trade and later in mining investments. Gardner’s peers—and rivals for work by Titian, Botticelli and Michelangelo—included the likes of JP Morgan, Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon, or the “squillionaires”, as she called them. “I’ve got the picture habit. It’s as bad as the whisky habit,” she confessed in 1896.

This isn’t your grandma’s Gardner.

Boston’s beloved Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum reopens next week with a design update and double the size, thanks to a new 70,000-square-foot wing, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

“You can keep the life and beauty there, but you can tell a new story,” said Piano, who sat for an -interview in the new wing’s Living Room.

The sleek addition, connected by what Piano calls an “umbilical cord,” is four stories of glass and copper, and even the fire escapes are aesthetically pleasing. The museum opens to the public Jan. 19, with three community days of free admission.

Restoration of the Palace
Since 1990, the Gardner Museum has completed significant restoration work on the historic palace building to stabilize its structure and help accommodate increased programming and attendance. Projects have included replacing the skylight over the courtyard with thermal pane glass and installing a climate-control system. Construction of the extension complements preservation work that is ongoing within the historic building, including a decade-long lighting project to protect sensitive artwork and improve the visitor experience.

A centerpiece of the Museum preservation project is the Tapestry Room, which has been restored to its original glory after being used for 85 years as a temporary concert hall. As the Museum’s world-class concerts will now take place in the new wing’s Calderwood Hall, the Tapestry Room has been returned to its former configuration to be experienced as a grand tapestry hall. Conservation treatment of the space included the cleaning of its Mercer-tiled floors, restoration of the French medieval stone fireplace, reinstallation of select art and furniture objects, replacement of historic textiles with reproductions, and new lighting.

Art Hostage Comments:

Restoration of the Palace started in 1990, h.mmm, same time as the Gardner Art Heist ???

Of course we have been told from the get go the stolen artworks were not insured, h,mmmm ????

Then of course twenty years after the Gardner Art Heist $180 million is raised for this new extension, h,mmmm.

Again, of course we have been told the stolen Gardner artworks were not insured, h.mmmm ??????

The cost of the new extension is reputed to be around $118 million, h,mmmm, $62 million left in the pot, h,mmm.

Could the existing reward offer of $5 million for the recovery of ALL the stolen Gardner art "in good condition" be diverted from the left over $62 million to an escrow account and that news made public to tempt those who may hold the stolen Gardner art to come forward to collect the $5 million ?????

In light of the fact the $5 million reward offer was made all the way back in 1997 and the value of the stolen Gardner artworks have increased two three fold, increase the reward offer to $10 million and put it in an escrow account to show a sign of good faith and the willingness of the Gardner Museum to appear sincere ??????????? Would still leave $52 million in the pot.

In support of the doubling of the reward to $10 million and putting that into an escrow account, Could the FBI and Assistant DA Brian Kelly issue a complete immunity for those who recover the stolen Gardner Art and just focus on recovering the iconic Vermeer The Concert, Rembrandt's Storm On The Sea etc ???????

This would lead to the certain recovery of the Stolen Gardner Art and confirm the art is all that matters, as the public has been told numerous times by both Law Enforcement and the Gardner Museum.

Upon another note the Tapestry Room looks wonderful and bears testament to the legacy of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

However, the New Wing looks like "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend" to quote Prince Charles.

Stolen Art Watch, Dr No Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Collection Returns Stolen Art, Sadly Not Gardner Art

2012-01-11T11:48:00.007Z

Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Stolen & Looted Art Collection

http://universe.byu.edu/index.php/2012/01/10/police-beat-9/

Jan. 5 – Somewhere between 1970-1985, a piece of art valued at $218,000 was stolen from BYU campus. After being stolen the “Silver Chalice” was sold between a number of different art dealers before finally landing in Switzerland with Count Thyssen-Bornemisz’s collection. BYU negotiated with Thyssen-Bornemisz’s estate and the piece of art was returned to BYU.

Art Hostage Comments:

Alex Boyle, in an exclusive Art Hostage interview last summer, makes the connection between the Gardner Art Heist and the end destination for some of the elusive Gardner art being the Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Stolen & Looted Art Collection:

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2011/07/stolen-art-watch-gardner-art-heist-alex.html

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art, The Man Who Can, Patrick Nee

2012-01-01T20:37:00.003Z

The Man Who Can Recover Some Gardner Art

Art Hostage Comments:

Give this man, Patrick Nee, blanket immunity from prosecution and a cast iron guarantee he will not have to testify against or reveal any sources, then the Gardner Art will surely be on its way home.

The small matter of the reward offer can be resolved by placing the $5 million in an Escrow account to show good faith and once the Gardner art is recovered then the payout is made.

Patrick Nee was not involved in the actual Gardner Art Heist or subsequent handling of the Gardner art, an honest broker who commands respect right across both the criminal and Law Enforcement Underworld.

Stolen Art Watch, FBI Agent Geoff Kelly Reveals, Gardner Case, Not An Inch, No Deals, No Reward,

2011-12-27T15:19:00.007Z

Kelly's Heroes

DUXBURY —

The Duxbury Free Library begins the New Year with an old unsolved crime. At 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, the Sunday Salon Series will present FBI Special Agent Geoff Kelly, who will discuss the infamous art heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In March of 1990, 13 priceless works, including art by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas, were stolen from the museum. Twenty-two years later the art has not surfaced. Agent Kelly will share information about the heist and appeal to the public for information.

“The theft captured the public’s imagination because it was daring,” Kelly said. “But in the end, it’s still a theft, and the criminals need to be held accountable.”

To reserve your ticket, call the library now, at 781-934-2721, ext. 108.

Read more: Sunday Salon Series - Duxbury, MA - Wicked Local Duxbury http://www.wickedlocal.com/duxbury/fun/entertainment/arts/x1282423687/Sunday-Salon-Series#ixzz1hkTsOzP5

Art Hostage Comments:
Finally, Geoff Kelly reveals how the FBI want those who have information about the Gardner heist and subsequent handling of the art "held accountable"

Meaning, anyone who can provide information about the whereabouts of the Gardner art must be forthcoming and provide everything they know abut those who handle the Gardner art and also, vitally, must be prepared to testify to that extent to a Grand Jury and Trial jury.

Furthermore they will loose their fifth amendment rights and have the FBI comb all over their life so to check if there is any criminality lurking in the background that could be used against them at a further date.

Turning to the alleged reward offer of $5 million for the recovery of ALL the Gardner art IN GOOD CONDITION.

The offer speaks for itself, "all the Gardner art in good condition" subjective at best, dishonest at worse. We all know the Gardner art was ripped from their frames therefore some damage occurred at the time of the theft, let alone the intervening years being stored within the depths of the Underworld. A get-out clause for the Gardner Museum.

Notice anytime the reward offer is made in public the words "all of the Gardner art in good condition" are stated very clearly !!

Another consideration for anyone with information about the Gardner art whereabouts, there is no way on earth the Gardner Museum would pay one single dime without express approval of the FBI and the FBI will never approve any payment for the Gardner art without bodies, arrests and convictions.

Truth is the same as back in 1990, the Gardner art is stolen property and anyone with information is required to reveal all or face charges of withholding information and obstructing justice.

Any reward is subject to the discretion of the Gardner Museum and is non-negotiable.

Upon another note, it is alleged Whitey Bulger and Mark Rossetti have been offering their own insight into the Gardner case and this had led to the raiding of Anthony "Chucky" Carlo, plus ongoing inquiry's.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Flip The Investigation To Recover The Art

2011-12-22T17:49:00.009Z

"Frank and Jamie", installation/sculpture, 2002, by Maurizio Cattelan.

A new icon of subversion.
This sculpture is both an inverted image of power and a statement about the seduction of authority.

Over 20 years later, still pained by void where work of art should hang

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2011/12/21/over-years-later-still-pained-void-where-work-art-should-hang/oxAmnZScTq5S3O795z90YP/story.html

TO THOSE who have the painting:

March 18, 1990, more than 20 years ago, my heart cried out: “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee’’ had been stolen along with a number of other valuable pieces of art. Twenty years later, my heart still cries out.

I had been fortunate. I had gazed upon the painting and pondered its meaning. Rembrandt urges us to consider taking a stormy sail with the apostles and Christ upon the sea of life. Rembrandt himself, who is believed to have depicted his image gazing out to us from the ship, invites us on board. The artist represents us, humanity with Christ.

After the heist, when I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, I saw the blank spot and cried. My son and daughter, having never seen the painting, will never be blessed with the experience that only the original can provide. Countless others are being deprived of Rembrandt’s wish to inspire us.

Twenty years. It has been long enough. To those who have the painting, I say: Be good and return the piece; the world needs it. You will be forgiven; it is Christmastime. No questions asked. You have had this artwork long enough. Just send it.

P. Nelson

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

The Honorable Charles Vincent Sabba Reflects On The Gardner Art Heist Recovery Process

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Gardner Bullets I: An Introduction

"Killer Bee"; 2006; 45 Cal target round, acrylic paint and fabric wings; by Charles Sabba.

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Gardner Bullets II: Concealing and Receiving

It is a ten-year felony to conceal or receive any of the stolen Gardner Museum artworks:

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum door that the thieves entered on Palace Road on 18 March 1990.

United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen M. Ortiz.

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm
Gardner Bullets III: Is an offer of immunity on the table?
http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Portrait of a stool Pigeon; oil on canvas; by Charles Sabba.

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Check out "The Wire" over on "Your Brush With The Law" for the Charles Vincent Sabba Art Crime lectures, news, interviews and video's relating to art crime and the Gardner Art Heist:
http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/intro.htm

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Stranded In FBI/Underworld Struggle

2011-12-06T13:45:00.004Z

From the mouths of criminals

http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/06/from-mouths-criminals/XXLZxi5mBwnS3G41LK4UCO/story.html

The FBI’s cynical embrace of Mark Rossetti, a reputed killer and Mafia leader used as an informant, is reminiscent of the Whitey Bulger scandal, in which the nation’s premier law enforcement agency let a gangster eliminate his competition while he whispered sweet nothings in its ear.

But if a former Wakefield man sitting in a prison in Florida is telling the truth, the Rossetti case could be history repeating itself in a different way when it comes to putting people on ice to keep a sordid FBI deal from becoming public. From his prison cell, Michael Romano says he is preparing to sue the FBI and the Justice Department for framing him in an elaborate scheme to protect informant Rossetti. Romano says the FBI’s determination to protect Rossetti not only landed him in prison, but it also got his son and namesake, Michael Romano Jr., killed in 1994. It is an outlandish tale. And maybe the most outlandish part is that some or all of it could be true.

Mike Romano is no choirboy. And he admits he was trying to find out who killed his son, Mikey. He says that just when he was getting close to figuring out who did it, the FBI and Justice Department swooped in to take him and a faction opposed to then-Mafia boss Frank Salemme off the street. Romano says, and many in law enforcement agree, that Mark Rossetti was aligned with the Salemme group, which Romano believes was responsible for his son’s death. The FBI let Rossetti and his associates shoot and kill with impunity, Romano contends. “All we did was try to protect ourselves,’’ Romano said.

But the government says Romano was part of a crew that went gunning for the Salemme crowd. That crowd would have included Rossetti, the FBI’s prized snitch. Facing charges that could have landed him in prison for the rest of his life, Romano pleaded guilty in 1999 to charges that included plotting to kill Salemme. He is scheduled to be released in 2016.

The FBI did not respond yesterday to Romano’s statements.

Romano says a key witness against him - now retired FBI agent Michael Buckley, who was Rossetti’s handler - was acting to protect Rossetti, not the public interest, when the government accused Romano of offering $15,000 to anyone who took out Salemme. “This is the Teddy Deegan case all over again,’’ said Romano. That case cost taxpayers more than $100 million, paid to four men, two of them senior members of the Mafia, who served more than 30 years in prison after the FBI framed them for the murder of smalltime hoodlum Teddy Deegan. Those men were framed to protect an FBI informant. Romano says he is going to ask for $50 million.

Now, some people will ask, why believe a convicted criminal sitting in prison who has an ax to grind against those who put him there? That’s a fair question. But the true extent of the Bulger scandal was not exposed until career criminals and killers started talking: Stevie Flemmi, Kevin Weeks, John Martorano. They literally knew where the bodies were buried.

The only way we figure out the truth is to bring Mike Romano’s charges into the light. So far, there has been nothing from the FBI or Justice Department explaining why Rossetti was maintained as an informant for decades until the Massachusetts State Police arrested him last year or why an FBI supervisor lied when asked by State Police if Rossetti was their informant.

US Representative Stephen Lynch recently met with the FBI along with staff from the offices of Representatives Darrell Issa and Elijah Cummings, the chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Senator Chuck Grassley, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. The FBI said it was conducting an internal inquiry and promised a follow-up meeting. If prosecutors won’t hear Mike Romano out, there are congressional investigators who are willing to listen.

Stolen Art Watch, French Art Heist Trial

2011-12-03T17:31:00.002Z

3:30 After a deliberate, the court went below the requisitions of the Advocate General (3 to 15 years in prison)

Video

Aix: Trial tables: 3 to 15 years required
Watch this video
Aix: 2nd day trial stolen paintings
Watch this video
Aix: first day Trial stolen paintings
Watch this video
Aix: Trial of master paintings stolen from Nice
Watch this video

All videos

Fifth and final day of trial verdict: Two to nine years in prison:

The five men who recognized the flight in August 2007 four old master paintings
the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice were sentenced by the Assize Court
Bouches-du-Rhône to terms ranging from two to nine years in prison.
3:30 After a deliberate, the court, presided by Jean-Luc Tournier, went below the requisitions of the General Counsel, Marc taste, which had required three to fifteen years in prison.

Pierre-Noël Dumarais, 64, described as the organizer of the operation, was sentenced to the maximum sentence.
His "co-pilot", 59, Patrick Chelelekian, was given a sentence of eight years imprisonment. He is alleged to have triggered the case by order status of tables by U.S. buyers, which he had heard from an acquaintance, Bernard Ternus, currently detained in Miami.
Their accomplices, who appeared free, were sentenced to four years in prison for Lionel Ritter, described as "the perfect henchman" to three years to Patrice Lhomme, "at the forefront of the negotiations," according to the General Counsel , and two years for Moullec Gregory, the only one not to return to detention.

Monday to trial for armed robbery by organized gangs and criminal conspiracy, the defendants acknowledged at the hearing, having stolen Sunday, Aug. 5, 2007 1:02 p.m. to Bruegel, a Monet and a Sisley Jules Cheret museum, while denying being armed, unlike the testimony of employees.

Fourth day of the trial: 3 to 15 years in prison required:

Sentences ranging from three to fifteen years in prison were required.

Against Pierre-Noël Dumarais, 64, the man who organized the operation, the General Counsel Marc Gouton demanded the maximum sentence.
Against his "co-pilot", 59, Patrick Chelelekian he asked twelve years in prison, accusing him of having caused the case reports of unecommande of paintings by American buyers, which he had heard from an acquaintance, Bernard Ternus, currently detained in Miami.

Three to eight years in prison were required against their accomplices: Patrice Lhomme, "at the forefront of the negotiations," Ritter Lionel, described as "the perfect henchman", and Gregory Moullec, "the last wheel of the coach ".

Third day of the trial: a hunt worthy of Hollywood:
Undercover agents, FBI, fake drug traffickers, go on a yacht in Miami with girls in bikinis ... Investigators have released all the stops to track down and bring down the perpetrators of the theft of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice August 5, 2007, according to their story sitting at Aix.
If the French police had been on the trail of a conspiracy is an FBI intelligence that has truly advance the investigations beginning in January 2008.
"A thief offered them four tables that could correspond to the tables Chéret Museum" at the bar tells Lt. Catherine yellowish at the time the group leader at the Central Office for fight against trafficking in cultural property (OCBC) who coordinated the investigation.
The contact was established by the American agent Robert Wittman ("Bob") as part of an operation to recover stolen works of Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990, including a Vermeer and Rembrandt.
To set the terms of the transaction, appointment is made in Barcelona in January 2008 between the robbers and false buyers, namely "Bob" and agents of Miami playing the role of Colombian narco-traffickers.
"We go to a luxury hotel, we rented a suite, I met Bob, who was accompanied by the Colombians, two in the face sinister, like Scarface," he told one of the accused, Patrick Chelelekian.
"They put me in front of the air, I later learned that a camera was hidden there," he said, before launching: "Every day, I'm working, it is indigestible, j can 't understand how I could be led by the nose from beginning to end. "
From this date, "all picked up," says Ms. Yellowish. One of the accomplices Chelelekian, Patrice Lhomme, hand in Miami in April of that year to meet again the false buyers.

An interview on a yacht with girls in bikinis, "which raises many fantasies," joked the president of the court, Jean-Luc Tournier, in reference to the Hollywood version of the case book that Robert Wittman in "Priceless" ( published in April 2011 Sonatine Editions).
Faced with criminals "extremely cautious" - "they made several rounds of the roundabout to be sure of not being followed, stopped at an intersection unexpectedly, gave themselves go to the parking" - the OCBC is "a French request for infiltration."
This engages the agent "Bernie" who, posing as the Swiss financial Colombians, sets the decisive meeting of 4 June 2008 on the Corniche in Marseille
where the protagonists will be stopped and retrieved the file Bruegel, Monet and Sisley stolen in Nice.
Marc Ferrarone, Deputy Service interdepartmental technical assistance (SIAT) authorized to make such missions, took up the side "extremely professional" of the accused, far from the image of non-violent fans they are trying to return from the start of the trial.
Asked about the presence on it of a grenade and a gun the day of his arrest, Pierre-Noël Dumarais, presented as the gang leader, was justified: "I 'd go with narco- Colombian traffickers, they do not have a reputation for being soft! The pomegranate is a deterrent, little atomic bomb to me. "

Second day of the trial: Safety of the Museum of Fine Arts in question:
An investigator has expressed his surprise to the faults of the security of the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice. "It was fairly surprised by the lack of supervision", or alarm or camera inside, "and the limited number of staff" for a museum of this size, said at the helm Daniel Schuler, Police Commander the CSI of Nice, in charge of the spot investigation.
"The paintings were hung on the wall in a rudimentary way," he added, noting "a mismatch between the means employed and the value of the tables".

In this museum located in the hills above Nice, it took less than five minutes to robbers to steal, August 5, 2007, two oil on canvas signed Jan Bruegel, "Allegory of Water" and "Allegory of Earth" properties in the city of Nice, and two works from the Musée d'Orsay, "Cliffs near Dieppe" by Claude Monet and "Alley of Poplars at Moret" by Alfred Sisley.
"Surprisingly," the policeman, the last two paintings were not subject to any scrutiny, as they had been stolen in September 1998, in the same premises. To these facts, the then Conservative had been sentenced.
That having heard of this case that Pierre-Noël Dumarais, the organizer of the operation, had set his sights on the tables in particular.

For employees, the investigations revealed a dilettante atmosphere: one of the guards "smoked the carpet" in the words of an accused knowledgeable, and "was accustomed to be delivered personal consumption at the Museum" another had called in sick for "spending the day at pool."
"The staff was not very successful," summarized the President of the Assize Court, Jean-Luc Tournier.

For Me Adrien Verrier, lawyer for the city of Nice has a civil party, "the museum met the safety standards in force", even if the device "has been considerably improved since."
Trial for armed robbery by organized gangs and criminal conspiracy, the five defendants are liable to 30 years in prison to life imprisonment.

First day of the trial: Defendants say they have been manipulated by the FBI:

The authors of the theft of four paintings by the master at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nice in August 2007, held the first day of their trial in Aix-en-Provence, to return the image of non-violent criminals, fallen into a trap the FBI.

Behind the glass of the dock, Pierre-Noël Dumarais, 64, organizer of the operation, immediately sought to minimize his criminal record, heavy eight convictions between 1971 and 1994. "He has 20 years, the criminal, it is almost obsolete,"
smiled the sixties, called "The Nice", groomed and graying hair.
"Opportunistic, but quite right, respectful of human life," he says of himself, when the President of the Assize Court of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Jean-Luc Tournier, asks him to describe.
"That's why I wanted to prepare myself theft of Nice, to avoid collateral damage," said he. Like his accomplices, he denies being armed, despite statements by Jules Cheret museum staff.
"The Nice", holds a degree in law obtained in custody, has not worked in his life (just over one year), preferring to "pick up the tickets in the trees," but "without violence and without a weapon" , he insists, seemingly forgotten in passing the robbery of a bank.
"I was so little armed the bank was not a civil party," he replies to the president, "have a weapon, it is not necessarily use it."
And conclude with aplomb: "I would not be here if I had not been spurred on by the FBI to steal the paintings" in the Sunday, August 5: Two Bruegel, a Monet and Sisley, estimated at 20 million euros.
A view shared by his partner, Patrick Chelelekian, also called "The Armenian" met "on golf ball and Sanary Bandol" (Var).
Time hairdresser for women, then manager of a hotel near Paris, this 59 year old man, imprisoned in Toulon, had been involved before the fact in cases involving narcotics. Former "cocaine addict", he describes himself as "non violent" with "horror of blood and brutality," and said "sorry for being caught up" in this venture, says investigator personality.

To his lawyer, Lionel Moroni, "the flight was caused inadvertently by the FBI" which launched the bids to try to recover stolen works of Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990, including a Vermeer and Rembrandt.
At the heart of the matter, the famous American agent Robert Wittman, specializing in the trafficking of art, which delivers a fictionalized account of the case in "Priceless" (published in April 2011 Sonatine Editions), a pad of 400 pages who exposed himself Monday on tables in the courtroom. He was summoned by Mr. Moroni, but is unlikely to be heard.
Another notable absentee, the man who put him in touch with the French criminals FBI undercover agent to monetize the tables: Bernard Ternus, from Bandol and based in Miami since 2007.
It was during the final transaction, the five thieves will be arrested and works recovered, 4 June 2008 in Marseille and its region, shortly before the arrest of Ternus Florida.
Sentenced in September 2008 in the United States five years and two months in prison for his participation in the negotiation, it is held in Miami. Prosecuted for complicity in the theft and criminal conspiracy, it is not present at trial, his case is the subject of an order of severance.

The three other defendants, Patrice Lhomme, 46, Moullec Gregory, 41, and Lionel Ritter, 39, who appear free, are presented as "simple handlers."

Background:

Behind the glass of the dock, Pierre-Noël Dumarais, 64, and Patrick Chelelekian, 59, presented as the organizers of the operation. Their accomplices, Patrice Lhomme, 46, Moullec Gregory, 41, and Lionel Ritter, 39, appear free.

On Sunday, August 5, to 13 hours, the five men come to the museum entrance Jules Cheret, neutralize the guards and go with four priceless paintings: two oil on wood signed Jan Bruegel, Bruegel says "Velvet "(1568-1625)," Allegory of Water "and" Allegory of Earth ", property of the city of Nice, and two paintings from the Musée d'Orsay," Cliffs near Dieppe "by Claude Monet ( 1840-1926), and "Avenue of Poplars at Moret" by Alfred Sisley (1839-1899).
In all, the operation of the robbers, carried with ease, is complete in five minutes.

At the beginning of the case, sixth man, Bernard Ternus, from Bandol (Var) and moved to Miami since 2007. It was he who reported that U.S. buyers were interested in old master paintings.
In fact, it was the FBI - including the famous agent Robert Wittman to book an account of the affair in "Priceless" (published in April 2011 Sonatine Editions) - and trying to recover stolen works to the museum Gardner Boston in March 1990, including a Vermeer and Rembrandt.

Once the paintings stolen from Nice, Ternus intervenes to sell at a price of three million euros. It was during the final transaction that his accomplices were arrested and recovered the paintings, 4 June 2008 in Marseille and its region. Ternus was arrested in the wake of Florida.
Sentenced in September 2008 in the United States five years and two months in prison for his participation in the negotiation, he is currently detained at the prison in Miami and is not present in Aix-en-Provence.

Prosecuted for complicity in the theft and criminal conspiracy, his case is subject to an order of severance.
Verdict expected Friday.

Stolen Art Watch, Robert Wittman Vindicated As Court Convicts Art Heist Gang

2011-12-02T15:15:00.003Z

French court convicts art thieves stung by FBI

AIX-EN-PROVENCE - A French court on Friday convicted five men arrested in an FBI sting after stealing paintings by Monet, Sisley and Brueghel and sentenced them to between two and nine years in prison.

The thieves, who pulled off the brazen heist in 2007 at the Musee des Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret in Nice, had claimed they were enticed by the FBI to commit the crime.

Judge Jean-Luc Tournier sentenced the ringleader of the operation, 64-year-old Pierre-Noel Dumarais, to nine years in prison and his chief co-conspirator, 59-year-old Patrick Chelelekian, to eight years.

Their three accomplices were sentenced to two, three and four years in prison.

Prosecutor Marc Gouton had urged the court to ignore their claim of having been entrapped, saying: "At no time were their hands being held when they planned or committed the hold-up or when they negotiated the sale of the paintings."

The suspects' lawyers had alleged that Robert Wittman, the FBI's chief art crimes investigator, had effectively ordered the heist to infiltrate European art crime gangs.

The works, valued at 20 million euros ($27 million), were seized in a raid that saw the thieves threaten staff, stuff the paintings into bags and escape in under five minutes.

The five admitted at the trial in southern France to having carried out the robbery but denied accusations from museum staff that they were armed.

The paintings - "Cliffs Near Dieppe" by Claude Monet; "The Lane of Poplars at Moret" by Alfred Sisley; and "Allegory of Water" and "Allegory of Earth" by Jan Brueghel the Elder - were recovered in a sting organized by the FBI and French police in June 2008.

The paintings were stolen on the orders of a French citizen living in Florida, Bernard Jean Ternus, who pleaded guilty in a US court in 2008 to conspiring to sell the art works. He was sentenced to five years and two months in prison.

Ternus told the thieves he had buyers lined up to pay three million euros for the paintings, which because of their fame would have been difficult to unload on the black market.

Ternus arranged for the thieves to meet the buyers in the southern French port city of Marseille but was unaware that he had been dealing with undercover French police and FBI agents reportedly working for Wittman.

The five were arrested after finalizing the deal and Ternus was detained in Florida.

stolen Art Watch, Nuremberg Defence, Best Form Of Attack

2011-11-28T15:21:00.003Z

'The FBI told us to do it!' Seven robbers go on trial accused of £20 million art heist

Art thieves stung by FBI on trial in France

Five art thieves arrested in an FBI sting operation went on trial today for the brazen theft from a museum on the French Riviera of four paintings by Monet, Sisley and Brueghel.

The five were detained in 2008 following an operation involving a famed FBI art crimes investigator, Robert Wittman, but their lawyers claim they were enticed by the agency into committing the crime.

The works, valued at 20 million euros ($27 million), were stolen in August 2007 from the Musee des Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret in Nice in a heist that saw the thieves threaten staff, stuff the paintings into bags and escape in under five minutes.

Two of the men, Pierre-Noel Dumarais, 64, and Patrick Chelelekian, 59, are accused of having organised the heist with their alleged accomplices, Patrice Lhomme, 46, Gregory Moullec, 41, and Lionel Ritter, 39.

The five admitted at the trial in southern France on Monday to having carried out the robbery but denied accusations from museum staff that they were armed.

They face between 30 years and life in prison if convicted on the charges of organised armed robbery and criminal association. A verdict is expected on Friday.

The paintings -- "Cliffs Near Dieppe" by Claude Monet; "The Lane of Poplars at Moret" by Alfred Sisley; and "Allegory of Water" and "Allegory of Earth" by Jan Brueghel the Elder -- were recovered in a sting organised by the FBI and French police in June 2008.

The paintings were allegedly stolen on the orders of a French citizen living in Florida, Bernard Jean Ternus, who pleaded guilty in a US court in 2008 to conspiring to sell the art works. He was sentenced to five years and two months in prison.

Ternus allegedly told the thieves he had buyers lined up to pay three million euros for the paintings, which because of their fame would have been difficult to unload on the black market.

The five were arrested after finalising the deal and Ternus was detained in Florida.

The suspects' lawyers allege that Wittman, who last year published a book on his exploits entitled "Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures", effectively ordered the heist to infiltrate European art crime gangs.

Wittman was working undercover at the time on the world's biggest unsolved art crime -- the 1990 theft of works worth an estimated $500 million by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Manet and other artists from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

"It is a shame that (FBI) agents, in order to recover paintings stolen on their territory, are making orders that... lead to other thefts on French territory," said Ludovic Depatureaux, a lawyer for Dumarais.

Both the Monet and Sisley paintings had previously been stolen from the same museum in 1998 when thieves were said to have broken into the curator's home and forced him to drive to and let them into the premises.

But they were recovered a week later and the curator subsequently pleaded guilty to having masterminded the theft.

The FBI was implicated in a £20 million art theft today - as seven armed robbers went on trial accused of stealing a Monet, a Sisley and two Breughels.

All face up to 30 years in prison following the heist at the Beaux Arts museum in Nice, on the French Riviera, in August 2007.

Now their high-profile trial in nearby Aix-en-Provence is set to throw light on the apparent links between the American crime-fighting organisation and those it tries to bring to justice.

Pierre-Noel Dumarais, the 64-year-old leader of the gang who broke into the gallery dressed as cleaners, insists they were all 'persuaded' by the FBI to do so.

He admits that he brandished a Colt 45 pistol and hand-grenades at staff as he stole 'Allegory of Water' and 'Allegory of Earth' by Breughel, as well as Alfred Sisley's 'Avenue of Poplars at Moret' and Claude Monet's 'Cliffs Near Dieppe'.

Their combined worth was at least £20 million.

But Ludovic Depatureaux, for Dumarais, insisted that 'the operation only went well because the museum was not protected at all' with CCTV or armed guards.

Defence counsel argues that Robert K Wittman, a 55-year-old FBI special agent from Miami working undercover as a corrupt art dealer called 'Bob Clay', effectively 'ordered' the heist because he wanted to infiltrate art crime gangs working across France.

His ultimate aim was to recover a Vermeer and two Rembrandts stolen from a museum in Boston, USA, in 1990 .

Wittman thought Dumarais might lead him to 'the Dutch paintings', but only if he remained convinced that he was a gangster who approved of stealing paintings to order, said Depatureaux.

Mr Depatureaux said: 'Wittman thought that he would infiltrate those who stole or still hold the Vermeer and Rembrandt. The Nice heist was just collateral damage.'

The barrister added: 'My client's modus operandi did not start from the premise: let's steal some paintings then find a buyer. They were a bunch of amateurish stooges some of whom only met on the day of the heist.

'These canvasses disappeared in order to recover two key paintings belonging to U.S. heritage. I'm not sure that the U.S. would appreciate it if French agents acted likewise.'

Calling for the charges to be dropped, Mr Depatureaux said gang members were the victims of 'police provocation'.

But Mr Wittman said: 'In the U.S., we law enforcement officers used to call that 'throwing fecal matter against the wall and seeing what would stick'.

'I don't think anything I did 'encouraged' anyone to obtain Chechen hand grenades and semi automatic pistols in order to commit armed robbery. It is a fanciful defence at best, at worst, it is a defence of desperation used only when criminals are caught.'

Denying that the gang members were amateurs, Mr Wittman said: 'They were good criminals, but terrible businessmen.'

Mr Wittman, now retired, recovered around £200 million worth of stolen art during his career, including Geronimo's war bonnet, an original copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and works by Rembrandt, Rodin and Rockwell.

His ultimate aim has always been to recover the Vermeer, two Rembrandts and five sketches by Degas worth £350 million stolen from Boston and remaing one of the art world’s most enduring unsolved crimes.

The latest case in which he is involved in Aix, which is expected to end on Friday, continues.

The defendants deny a charge of ‘armed robbery and possession of stolen goods committed by an organized gang’, the court heard.

All of the paintings were recovered with the help of the FBI 10 months after the heist, which took less than five minutes, French police admitted in court.

It was Bernard Ternus, a Frechman based in Miami, who first told the gang that U.S. criminal buyers were interested in old master paintings.

In fact, the buyers were the FBI and trying to recover the works stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston in March 1990.

It was while Ternus was trying to sell the Nice paintings to Wittman at a ‘knock down’ price of £2.7 million pounds, that he was arrested and the works recovered

Ternus is already serving a five year, two month sentence in Miami for his part in the negotiations to sell stolen art.

Stolen Art Watch, FBI Icon Robert Wittman Accused Of Gardner Art Heist Sting Attempt

2011-11-25T22:04:00.006Z

FBI art crimes chief 'ordered theft of Monet and Sisley paintings from French gallery'

Seven people go on trial on Monday for the multi-million pound theft of a Monet, Sisley and two Breughels in Nice but their leader claims the FBI's art crimes chief "ordered" the heist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/8916105/FBI-art-crimes-chief-ordered-theft-of-Monet-and-Sisley-paintings-from-French-gallery.html

The men face maximum sentences of 30 years in prison for armed robbery at the end of the week-long trial in Aix-en-Provence. The leader's lawyer claims they were a bunch of bumbling art amateurs talked into the heist by the world's most notorious art detective bent on catching bigger prey.

At lunchtime on August 5, 2007, thieves dressed in blue overalls and ski masks burst into the poorly guarded Musée des Beaux Arts.

Their leader, Pierre Noël-Dumarais, then 60, pointed a Colt 45 at the welcome desk while four accomplices unhooked four paintings from the museum walls and stuffed them into black bin bags. Five minutes later, they made their escape in a blue Peugeot van.

In the boot were two Breughels – Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth – Alfred Sisley's Avenue of Poplars at Moret and Claude Monet's Cliffs Near Dieppe. While their combined value has been estimated at 22 million euros, their stolen sale price would be no more than three million euros.

The French police had few leads bar DNA from a cigarette butt and a bin bag, but they would soon receive help from across the Atlantic.

Robert K Wittman, then FBI special agent and chief of its Art Crimes Team, first got wind of the paintings while undercover as a shady American dealer moving stolen art for crime syndicates and drug lords. He was told about the works by Miami-based Frenchman Bernard Jean Ternus, with links to Marseille's Brise de Mer Corsican mafia clan.

Now retired, "Bob" Wittman recovered around $300 million-worth of stolen art and objects in his 20-year career, including Geronimo's war bonnet, one of the original 14 copies of the US Bill of Rights, and works by Rembrandt, Rodin and Rockwell.

But the greatest unsolved art crime in history still eluded him, namely the 1990 theft from the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston of a long-lost Vermeer, two Rembrandts and five sketches by Degas worth around $500 million.

His pulse raced when his plump, shaggy-haired French connection, Mr Ternus, alias "Sunny" boasted that he could get hold of the Vermeer and a Rembrandt.

To "hook" Sunny, Mr Wittman invited him to a party on a Miami yacht, complete with bikini-clad models and staged the sale of five fake masterpieces to a Colombian drugs baron in exchange for gold and diamonds. The entire crew and cast were FBI agents, but Sunny fell for it.

This is where the version of events diverges.

Mr Wittman says that during subsequent conversations about the Rembrandt and Vermeer, Sunny offered him and his co-agents other works, including two Picassos and the Nice paintings.

"I had no idea about the Nice theft nor had I ever met or spoken to the defendants until after it occurred," Mr Wittman told The Daily Telegraph.

"We couldn't turn down (the sale offer) as they were all crimes."

However, Ludovic Depatureaux, the lawyer of the gang's alleged leader, Mr Noël-Dumarais, claims that Mr Wittman encouraged the theft by expressing an interested in "Dutch paintings".

"In autumn 2006, he effectively placed an order with Bernard Ternus, saying he was interested perhaps in Vermeer and Rembrandt, but in Dutch paintings in general, and had buyers.

"Wittman thought that (via the Nice thefts), he would infiltrate those who stole or still hold the Vermeer and Rembrandt. The Nice heist was just collateral damage.

"My client's modus operandi did not start from the premise: let's steal some paintings then find a buyer. They were a bunch of amateurish 'stooges' some of whom only met on the day of the heist.

"These canvasses disappeared in order to recover two key paintings belonging to US heritage. I'm not sure that the US would appreciate it if French agents acted likewise."

He said Mr Wittman was guilty of "police provocation" and that he would call for charges to be dropped.

Mr Wittman said: "In the US, we law enforcement officers used to call that 'throwing fecal matter against the wall and seeing what would stick'".

"I don't think anything I did 'encouraged' anyone to obtain Chechen hand grenades and semi automatic pistols in order to commit armed robbery. It is a fanciful defence at best, at worst, it is a defence of desperation used only when criminals are caught."

He denied they were amateurish. "They were good criminals, but terrible businessmen."

The trial runs until Friday.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Search Not Close, Myles Away !!

2011-11-23T14:32:00.004Z

‘NOTHING BUT AGGRAVATION’: Anthony ‘Chucky’ Carlo, 62, said investigators punched holes in walls and tore through closets looking for some of the missing art stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.

Ex-con: Investigators scoured home in Gardner museum probe

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1383174&srvc=rss

Investigators on the long, cold trail of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum thieves searched for the elusive stolen art in the home of a grizzled former safecracker from Worcester last month but walked away with only a handful of postcards, an envelope, an old photo and pieces of the ex-con’s unfinished crime-caper novel, the Herald has learned.

Anthony “Chucky” Carlo, 62, said some 30 investigators — including officers in riot gear — punched holes in the walls of his duplex, rifled through closets, cut open couches and tore up attic insulation in a 10-hour raid to find any trace of the treasures stolen by night 21 years ago.

“I opened the door and there they were in battle gear. Vests, big guns, everything. Like they were expecting me to bust out a carbine. Needless to say, I was kind of shocked,” Carlo told the Herald of the Oct. 25 search. “They had some heavies there. I told them, ‘Hey guys, this is going to be an embarrassment to you.

“They pretty much looked everywhere and they left. The warrants said they were looking for the paintings or anything pertaining to the Gardner museum,” he said. “They thought they were coming up with something. They weren’t doing it just to roust me.”

Officials from the FBI and the museum declined to comment.

Carlo, whose last brush with the law was a minor drug rap a decade ago, said authorities seized an envelope, postcards he received some 30 years ago and the outline of a lurid page-turner he never finished writing.

“You know, just crime, sex, drugs, rock and roll,” he said. “Then I realized I didn’t have the talent.”

They also took a photograph of the old Summer Street jail in Worcester as workers prepped it for demolition.

“They said, ‘What do you have that for?’ I says, ‘I don’t know. I must have been planning to break in there,’ ” Carlo said. “It was an amusing photo.”

What it wasn’t was one of the 13 pieces of near-priceless art stolen in the early-morning hours of March 18, 1990, when men dressed as cops infiltrated the museum and made off with works, including Rembrandt’s only known seascape, a rare Vermeer, a series of drawings by Edgar Degas, a finial from a Napoleonic flag, and a Chinese beaker. Suspects have died and disappeared; clues have led to dead ends.

Carlo said he knows of the heist only what he saw in media reports. He said he helped police recover paintings stolen from the Worcester Art Museum in 1972.

“That’s when I learned about art. Nothing but aggravation,” he said.

Carlo says the search and subpoena are evidence of a lesson he’s learned the hard way over the years: Once a con, always a suspect.

“I’m an old man and they still won’t get off my case,” he said. “They don’t ever let you live it down.”

Stolen Art Watch, FBI Indifference Prevents Gardner Art Recovery

2011-11-22T20:38:00.005Z

Another Bulger? Feds Probe FBI Mob Informant Use - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston

Another Bulger? Feds Probe FBI Mob Informant Use

Mark Rossetti Charged With 'Criminal Enterprise'

BOSTON -- The Department of Justice is investigating the Boston FBI’s relationship with a reputed East Boston mobster who worked as a paid informant for the agency for decades, Newscenter 5 has learned.Last week a six-person panel of investigators began to look at allegations from Massachusetts law enforcement officials that the FBI lied about its use of reputed Mafia capo Mark Rossetti, 54, as an informant, said Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston).

An FBI spokesman in Washington said the agency is conducting its own investigation. “Regarding the Rossetti matter, an inspection team from FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., is currently reviewing.’’Lynch – who has filed legislation that would give Congress control over the FBI informant program – told Newscenter 5 it appeared that Rossetti was “running a criminal enterprise” while in the informant program.Rossetti was an informant on par with James “Whitey” Bulger – whose unholy marriage with the FBI led to a 2004 Congressional investigation.

Several sources told Newscenter 5 Rossetti's cooperation earned him hundreds of dollars in taxpayer monies a month, and a free cell phone.“He was a top echelon informant,’’ said defense attorney Steve Boozang, as he argued during a court hearing that wiretaps used to snare Rossetti and his accused underlings should be thrown out. “You don’t start off as a top echelon informant. You have to rat yourself up the ladder.”

Rossetti’s alleged criminal enterprise was busted by prosecutors from the Attorney General and Essex County District Attorney’s Offices in March of 2010 after a sweeping indictment that put Rossetti at the head of a crime family chart alleging drug dealing, racketeering, shakedowns and other violent crimes.

In a court hearing last month, prosecutor Dean Mazzone said that the FBI was not truthful with investigators about Rossetti’s informant status when the 18-month sting began with wiretaps at the reputed Mafiosi’s East Boston headquarters, The Bunker.

His informant status was discovered by accident. State troopers listening to wiretapped cell phone conversations recognized the voice of an FBI agent talking to Rossetti.“The federal informant was intercepted talking to his federal handler on a wiretap in this case,’’ said defense attorney Robert George, who also argued on behalf of an accused bookie in the Rossetti case that the wiretap evidence should be disregarded.

The FBI’s lack of cooperation with the Rossetti case led State Police Lt. Col. Steve Matthews to seek a meeting with Boston agency heads. He was quick to say that state police have a good relationship in terrorism and bank robbery and other joint squads.Organized crime cases have long been a problem, he added.“It’s well documented we have had some issues historically concerning organized crime cases,’’ Matthews said. “I do have some concerns and we will address that with the FBI.”

Back-story

FBI The Set Up (Part one)

An armored car heist gone south and the biggest museum theft in history combine to expose more dirt on the secretive Boston FBI. Did the feds frame a suspect for a different crime just to make him talk?

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/fbi_the_set_up_part_one/

As David Turner rode past TRC Auto Electric -- a notorious Dorchester hangout of thieves, dealers, and other assorted lowlifes -- he had no idea how badly things had gone wrong. All he could see was that the repair shop looked deserted. That was troubling since this was where he and his companion, Stephen Rossetti, were supposed to meet three other men this Sunday morning to pull off an expected $50 million robbery of an armored car depot.

Circling some 3,500 feet overhead, the two FBI agents watching from a surveillance plane must have chuckled as the would-be millionaires turned their red Honda Accord around and drove back the way they'd come. After all, Turner and Rossetti couldn't be caught joyriding at 6:30 in the morning with a trunkful of semiautomatic weapons. A few minutes later, they pulled into a parking lot in Quincy, tossed the guns into Turner's Chevy Tahoe, and drove back to Dorchester, continuing to circle aimlessly around the neighborhood of Vietnamese lunch counters and auto service centers.

By this time the FBI's patience had worn thin. As Rossetti tells the story, he was driving down Morrissey Boulevard when two GMC Suburbans came out of nowhere and smashed the Honda to the side of the road. Agents swarmed around the vehicle, busting out all four windows with the butts of their guns and pointing pistols at the occupants, screaming at them to get out.

The FBI's search of the Chevy Tahoe back in Quincy turned up five semiautomatic handguns and a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle -- all of them loaded. And there was more. Along with Halloween masks, police scanners, and masking tape, authorities discovered an explosive-fragmentation hand grenade. Possession of one of those by a felon is worth 30 years.

Now in prison after being convicted on six counts of conspiracy, attempted robbery, and firearms possession, David Turner awaits sentencing this month. He'd be hard-pressed to deny that he was on the way to a criminal rendezvous, or that he was present at another meeting to plan the robbery. After all, reams of surveillance reports, photos, and wiretap recordings place him at the scene of the crime. Cases don't get shut more tightly -- but that's when this one takes a bizarre turn.

Turner insists the reason he was arrested in Dorchester that frosty February morning is that the FBI framed him -- essentially recruited him to do the crime and did everything but bring the guns themselves. What's more, an agent of the Boston office of the FBI has since admitted to lying in court and withholding evidence that could bolster Turner's story. Not that this should surprise anyone. This is, after all, the same FBI office that turned a blind eye for years to the murderous rampages of South Boston mob lord James "Whitey" Bulger -- and just last month saw a former agent accused of even helping Bulger commit murder.

That same willingness to bend the rules may explain why, when agents finally got Turner under the bright lights of an interrogation room, they didn't just want to talk about the armored car theft. They wanted to talk about a different, unsolved crime that has haunted and embarrassed the FBI for more than a decade: the theft of 13 priceless paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

"They think that I was the person who committed the robbery, which is false," says Turner in a letter written from Plymouth County Correctional Facility. "They thought that if I was facing serious charges, I would be motivated to help facilitate the return of the paintings. Well, they got the serious charges against me, and now I am going to die in prison."

One lawyer familiar with Turner's long history with police, however, sees this as nothing more than an 11th-hour tactic to avoid prison: "A lot of luck combined with a keen ability to manipulate the criminal justice system resulted in Turner having avoided prosecution far too long," says former assistant attorney general Bob Sikellis, who unsuccessfully pursued Turner for years. "The supposed Teflon has now worn thin."

The rainbow tie-dyed T-shirt asks it. Why are those frames empty? The guide explains that Mrs. Gardner left strict instructions in her will that nothing in the museum could be moved, or the entire collection would be sold. So when two thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum at 2 a.m. after St. Patrick's Day 1990 and cut several paintings out of their frames, the frames were left hanging in place. "Thankfully," says the tour guide, "she didn't stipulate anything about art being stolen."

Among the pieces lifted were Vermeer's The Concert, Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and a later Rembrandt self-portrait. Together, the 13 works are now worth an estimated $500 million -- making the heist, some say, the largest art theft in history. Any hopes of speedily recovering the artwork were dashed in a twisting investigation littered with colorful suspects. There was Myles Connor, an art thief convicted for shooting at a police officer. There was William Youngworth III, an antiques dealer and sometime car thief. Then there was Carmello Merlino, a career criminal who robbed a Brinks truck in 1968, and more recently ran a million-dollar cocaine ring out of the auto repair shop he managed in Dorchester -- TRC Auto Electric.

Into this cast stumbled an oily lowlife named Anthony Romano, whose rap sheet reads like the U.S. Criminal Code. Then a 40-year-old car mechanic, he'd been convicted several times for assault and armed robbery, among other crimes. In court he freely admitted having been a heroin addict for most of his life. In short, he was a perfect FBI informant.

Romano called the feds when he was serving time in Concord, New Hampshire. He claimed to have a bead on some books stolen from the Adams Historical Museum in Quincy, and, sure enough, the tip panned out, the museum got back its books, and Romano got parole. So when in the fall of 1997 he called again with some information on the infamous Gardner Museum robbery, he earned a meeting with Neil Cronin, the FBI's lead agent on the case. Romano explained that a fellow convict, Carmello Merlino, had talked about the paintings as if he knew where they were. He mentioned another suspect, too: a guy in Merlino's crew by the name of David Turner.

Coincidentally, Romano had called his old friend Merlino after getting out of jail -- completely on his own initiative, he says -- and got a job at TRC as a mechanic. For a few hours every morning, the two worked alone, bullshitting about lottery tickets, teenage girls, and rumors of potential scores. It was then, Romano says, that Merlino asked him if he knew anyone "clean" who might be willing to get a job at an armored car drop-off.

"What are you looking at, anyways?" Romano asked. "The joint in Easton," answered Merlino. Romano knew the spot. The Loomis, Fargo depot in Easton seemed the perfect score. It was in a quiet, rural area mostly ignored by police, and was rumored to hold up to $50 million. Or so Romano told David Nadolski, of the FBI's Bank Robbery Task Force, who he says he promptly called to report Merlino's plan. For the next year, Romano continued working double shifts as a mechanic for TRC and as an informant for the FBI. At the same time, the FBI was negotiating with Merlino for return of the paintings. Agent Cronin visited him three times, twice with Nadolski in tow, but was unsuccessful in securing the booty. Then, in the fall of 1998, Nadolski asked his informant, Romano, a question: Would he wear a wire to secretly tape conversations with Merlino about the Loomis robbery?

The day after Thanksgiving that year, Romano told Merlino that a "gambling fucking degenerate" he knew had gotten a job as a guard at the depot and would let them past the door. Over the next few weeks, Romano insisted the robbery would be a breeze. The vault was always open, he told Merlino, and there were few alarms. As the plan came together, Merlino said he'd recruit his nephew Billy as the getaway driver, and they would all split the cash. Romano didn't think that would be enough manpower. "You gotta have five or six guys," hesaid. "You're gonna have to have a fuckin' donkey chain lugging them fuckin' bags." It's unclear who first raised David Turner's name -- that conversation occurred off tape -- but once Turner's name had surfaced, Romano asked Merlino several times about his attempts to reach him. Merlino complained that Turner wasn't answering his pages until, finally, in early January, he said angrily: "I'll call him once more today, and that will be the end of it." The next day, Merlino had good news: Turner had called back.

David Turner grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Braintree and worked side-by-side with his father to fix up a tired house on Sagamore Street. Then one day when he was 13, he found his father lying on the floor, dead of a heart attack. "David was devastated for months," says Joan Moran, a former neighbor. "He became very shy and very withdrawn."

It wasn't until high school that he blossomed. He was nicknamed "crackerjack" because he seemed to excel at everything. "Whatever he did, he was the best at it," says Chris Ruggiero, a longtime friend of Turner. Voted "most unique" in the high school yearbook, Turner was a star on the football and basketball teams, and well liked by teachers, coaches, and girls.

He also attracted some less savory admirers. At night in the park near his home, he hung out with Charles Pappas, a neighborhood kid who had also recently lost his father -- a drug dealer, shot dead in Chinatown in 1981. When Turner and Pappas ventured into Kenmore Square, Pappas would tap his connections to get them into the clubs. Turner's friends say that's where their mischief stopped. But police say Pappas introduced Turner to Carmello Merlino and the two became "right-hand men" in his drug empire, selling cocaine at area motels.

Try as they might, however, police couldn't get the goods on Turner. In 1985, Pappas and Turner were charged, but acquitted, of murdering a gay New Bedford social worker who allegedly offered them a ride from Provincetown. Six years later, Turner was charged with a daring robbery of nearly $50,000 from two safes at Boston's Bull & Finch Pub, better known as the inspiration for the Cheers TV show -- but again a jury found him innocent.

Even more chilling, in 1990 two hoodlums burst into a Canton home, handcuffed a woman to the stairway with a gun to her head, and stole $130,000 in cash and jewelry. The woman, Andrea Freedman, identified Turner as the man who held the gun and agreed to testify. Pappas, too, agreed to testify against Turner. But Charlie Pappas died in a hail of bullets in Braintree a few weeks before the trial. Turner's alleged accomplice turned up dead in the trunk of a car in East Boston, at which point Freedman and her boyfriend changed their minds about testifying. Turner walked.

Friends say rumors of Turner's exploits are nothing more than guilt by association. "When Charlie started hanging out with us, that's when all these bad accusations came to be," says his friend Ruggiero. He confirms that Pappas introduced them to Merlino and his crew, but says they were merely casual acquaintances. "We used to stop there on a summer day," he says, "and listen to the old-timers and their stories. That would be the extent of it."

A 1996 Boston Globe story offered a different opinion, calling Turner "the Teflon gangster of the South Shore" for his ability to squirm out of convictions. With Merlino scheduled to be released from jail the following year, the article went on to say: "Police have a hunch the two men might revive their working relationship." None of the diners at the Bickford's underneath the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester on January 28, 1999, were aware of the conspiracy in their midst. Silverware clinked as families and elderly couples finished off southwestern scrambles and fisherman's platters, paying little attention to the four men hunched over coffee at a green Formica tabletop.

Merlino was worried about the guards. "Just supposing whatever fuckin' freaky thing happened that these two motherfuckers or one of them can get up," he blustered. Romano shifted in his seat, conscious of the FBI wire hidden underneath his denim jacket and jeans.

"He's not gonna get up," said a shifty-looking guy in a dark shirt and tan vest. "I'll make sure these guys are secured." This was Stephen Rossetti, a wiseguy who had robbed an armored car in Revere in 1982. The guards, Rossetti explained, could be tied with nooses that would tighten if they moved. That was enough to ensnare Rossetti in the conspiracy. Wearing a red jacket, David Turner sat quietly, listening to Merlino and Rossetti brag about their scores. He added only a few words, saying that the cops would know something was up if he and Merlino were seen together, and that during robberies "a half-hour feels like three hours."

Prosecutors later tried to use those words to prove that Turner had taken part in schemes like this before -- and so wouldn't have blinked at taking part in this one. Merlino had said as much several times on tape, calling him a "veteran" who was "good with" guns. But those statements were hearsay. Prosecutors needed more to prove that Turner walked willingly into the Loomis robbery and that this wasn't what his lawyer claimed it was: entrapment.

It's one of the first rules of law enforcement: Police can't perpetrate crimes in order to catch criminals. That's why the cops on TV don't sleep with prostitutes or deal coke on street corners. In reality, of course, it's never that simple. To prove entrapment in court, a defendant must show that he was targeted (someone wanted him to do it), coerced (somebody pressured him to do it), and not predisposed (he wouldn't have done it if somebody hadn't encouraged him). That's why entrapment defenses almost always fail. The bar is set too high. But this case seemed to have all the necessary pieces. The FBI confirmed to lawyers that Merlino and Turner had been targeted as suspects in the Gardner robbery since 1992. The FBI's Cronin, during questioning, even admitted that he believed that if Turner was facing heavy charges, he could provide information on the Gardner robbery -- though he later said at trial he didn't have "any information at that point indicating that David Turner had access to the paintings."

But Merlino's defense weakens under the weight of a year's worth of informant reports saying that the repair shop manager was cajoling his subordinate Romano to find him a "clean" insider at the armored car facility. When Romano finally said he had the insider, Merlino did initially balk at the plan, saying, "It ain't for me." But he was soon dictating the terms of the plot himself. And if Merlino was predisposed to committing the crime, then the other men he recruited lose any claim that they were entrapped.

All of them, that is, except Turner. Of Merlino's three coconspirators, Turner is the only one who could say that the FBI directly targeted him because of his suspected role in the Gardner robbery. He could also say he was coerced to participate, since Romano pushed Merlino to get in touch with him. (In legal terms, this is called "vicarious entrapment" -- when a government agent directs an unwitting intermediary to put pressure on a third party to commit a crime.) As for whether he would have committed the crime on his own, without a nudge from the FBI, the evidence is split.

In addition to the fact that he had not said anything incriminating on the tapes, Turner could point out that he had never actually been convicted of any serious crimes. His previous convictions include only drug and a few gun charges. And he had a good job at the time he was recruited, working construction on the Big Dig. He'd just bought a plot of land in Canton and was building a house. Whatever he had done in the past, it didn't appear that he was looking for trouble -- until an insistent friend kept dangling a $50 million score before his eyes.

At trial, however, prosecutors argued that Romano was hardly hell-bent on recruiting Turner -- on tape, he told Merlino only that they would need more guys, and asked several times whether he'd been able to reach Turner. That, they argued, was hardly coercion. "This isn't a case done as a means to an end," assistant U.S. attorney James Lang told the Boston Herald. "The government didn't bring a hand grenade, five pistols, assault rifles, walkie-talkies, and masks to an armored car depot." And that's where Turner's argument falls apart, say prosecutors. The agency didn't stash Turner's car with enough firepower to start a small army. He did.

In a small victory for Turner, the judge did give the jury instructions to consider his "vicarious entrapment" defense. But the jury apparently was uninterested. Three jurors in the case, reached separately, all say that they barely considered entrapment in their deliberations. "I felt the Gardner had nothing to do with it," says one, who asked not to be identified. "I believe that the other jurors didn't either."

Billy Merlino's mother broke down crying after she heard the verdict read in court on October 24, 2001. All four men, guilty. Carmello Merlino got 47 years. Stephen Rossetti, 51 years, 10 months. Billy Merlino got 13 years, 4 months. But Turner's sentencing hearing has been delayed twice, as his lawyer fights to get him a new trial. It turns out that even with all the evidence introduced in court, the FBI kept some to itself -- evidence that suggests its agents were more interested in Turner than they let on. Evidence about a character known as the "Fat Man."

The group that would walk through the door at TRC Auto Electric on any given day could put The Sopranos' Bada Bing to shame. If there was a Big Pussy character among them, it had to be the corpulent Richard "Fat Richie" Chicofsky. An FBI informant since the 1960s, he had been recruited by Paul Rico, the same agent who cultivated Whitey Bulger and now faces trial for helping him murder an Oklahoma businessman. In the late 1990s, however, Fat Richie was assigned to Special Agent Neil Cronin, who he was helping with the investigation into the Gardner Museum robbery.

It was a period of hope for the retrieval of the paintings. The Boston Herald ran stories almost weekly about the negotiations with Myles Connor and William Youngworth III. After those public negotiations had failed, however, far more private discussions were taking place at TRC Auto Electric. According to FBI informant reports, Chicofsky was talking constantly to Merlino about returning the paintings, even bringing him a contract that specified when and where the booty would be handed over.

In fact, while Romano was gathering information for the FBI about the Loomis, Fargo robbery, he was noting the comings and goings of Fat Richie, unaware that he, too, was an FBI informant. And Merlino wasn't the only one Chicofsky suspected of having knowledge of the Gardner crime. According to reports filed in court, he told agents he believed that Turner was one of the people who actually stole the paintings, and that Turner would collect a portion of the reward money for their return. Once, Chicofsky even met with Turner. "Would you be willing to do something with me, work with me?" Turner allegedly asked Chicofsky. Chicofsky, the report says, "was 100 percent sure Turner was referring to the return of the Gardner Museum paintings." None of this was revealed at Turner's trial, even though the defense had asked for all documents that named Turner or Merlino in connection with the Gardner robbery and even though it refutes the agents' assertions that they had no specific information linking Turner to the paintings. "The government had possession of the very evidence that was requested by the defendant pretrial and that would have supported his defense, but they failed to disclose that evidence," Turner's lawyer Robert Goldstein argued in papers filed in court.

The FBI blamed a faulty indexing system for its failure to reveal the "Fat Man" reports. Besides, the agents added, FBI policies compelled them to protect the identity of an active informant, a point Turner's lawyer finds preposterous. "FBI institutional guidelines do not trump a person's constitutional right to have evidence brought forward that could exonerate him," Goldstein says. Put on the stand in a hearing after the trial, Special Agent Nadolski struggled to explain the omission. "Would you ever testify falsely or misleadingly to protect the identity of an informant?" Goldstein asked him. "No," Nadolski said. But Goldstein reminded the agent of his testimony during trial that the FBI was getting information that Merlino had access to the paintings only through Romano. Goldstein asked, "That's not true, is it?" Nadolski said nothing for several seconds. "No," he finally said, "I would have to say that we were also getting that information through Chicofsky." Goldstein pounced. "So you failed to disclose the fact that there was, in fact, another confidential informant?" "I did not talk about Chicofsky." After that admission, the defense tried to put Chicofsky himself on the stand, but the Fat Man refused to testify. The judge let him off, saying, "It is doubtful that the failure of the government to produce the Chicofsky . . . reports prior to trial, while lamentable, in any way prejudiced Turner's right to a fair trial." The judge's reasoning was, in effect, that while they may have provided more evidence that Turner had been directly targeted by The Dutch Room in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an eerie place. No impressionist flowers or ballerinas here: The portraits are as dark and heavy as the furniture. "Bloody Mary" Tudor glowers with pursed lips of accusation. The enigmatic face of Van Dyck's A Lady with a Rose -- the so-called "Gardner Mona Lisa" -- seems to conceal more than it reveals. And a self-portrait of Rembrandt stares with eyes like black marbles at the opposite wall, where only the backdrop of a faded tapestry fills a golden frame carrying his name.

The question comes up on practically every tour. This afternoon, a heavyset woman with a southern accent and a rainbow tie-dyed T-shirt asks it. Why are those frames empty? The guide explains that Mrs. Gardner left strict instructions in her will that nothing in the museum could be moved, or the entire collection would be sold. So when two thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum at 2 a.m. after St. Patrick's Day 1990 and cut several paintings out of their frames, the frames were left hanging in place. "Thankfully," says the tour guide, "she didn't stipulate anything about art being stolen." Among the pieces lifted were Vermeer's The Concert, Rembrandt's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and a later Rembrandt self-portrait. Together, the 13 works are now worth an estimated $500 million -- making the heist, some say, the largest art theft in history. Any hopes of speedily recovering the artwork were dashed in a twisting investigation littered with colorful suspects. There was Myles Connor, an art thief convicted for shooting at a police officer. There was William Youngworth III, an antiques dealer and sometime car thief. Then there was Carmello Merlino, a career criminal who robbed a Brinks truck in 1968, and more recently ran a million-dollar cocaine ring out of the auto repair shop he managed in Dorchester -- TRC Auto Electric.

Into this cast stumbled an oily lowlife named Anthony Romano, whose rap sheet reads like the U.S. Criminal Code. Then a 40-year-old car mechanic, he'd been convicted several times for assault and armed robbery, among other crimes. In court he freely admitted having been a heroin addict for most of his life. In short, he was a perfect FBI informant.

Romano called the feds when he was serving time in Concord, New Hampshire. He claimed to have a bead on some books stolen from the Adams Historical Museum in Quincy, and, sure enough, the tip panned out, the museum got back its books, and Romano got parole. So when in the fall of 1997 he called again with some information on the infamous Gardner Museum robbery, he earned a meeting with Neil Cronin, the FBI's lead agent on the case. Romano explained that a fellow convict, Carmello Merlino, had talked about the paintings as if he knew where they were. He mentioned another suspect, too: a guy in Merlino's crew by the name of David Turner.

Coincidentally, Romano had called his old friend Merlino after getting out of jail -- completely on his own initiative, he says -- and got a job at TRC as a mechanic. For a few hours every morning, the two worked alone, bullshitting about lottery tickets, teenage girls, and rumors of potential scores. It was then, Romano says, that Merlino asked him if he knew anyone "clean" who might be willing to get a job at an armored car drop-off. "What are you looking at, anyways?" Romano asked. "The joint in Easton," answered Merlino. Romano knew the spot. The Loomis, Fargo depot in Easton seemed the perfect score. It was in a quiet, rural area mostly ignored by police, and was rumored to hold up to $50 million. Or so Romano told David Nadolski, of the FBI's Bank Robbery Task Force, who he says he promptly called to report Merlino's plan. For the next year, Romano continued working double shifts as a mechanic for TRC and as an informant for the FBI. At the same time, the FBI was negotiating with Merlino for return of the paintings. Agent Cronin visited him three times, twice with Nadolski in tow, but was unsuccessful in securing the booty. Then, in the fall of 1998, Nadolski asked his informant, Romano, a question: Would he wear a wire to secretly tape conversations with Merlino about the Loomis robbery?

The day after Thanksgiving that year, Romano told Merlino that a "gambling fucking degenerate" he knew had gotten a job as a guard at the depot and would let them past the door. Over the next few weeks, Romano insisted the robbery would be a breeze. The vault was always open, he told Merlino, and there were few alarms. As the plan came together, Merlino said he'd recruit his nephew Billy as the getaway driver, and they would all split the cash. Romano didn't think that would be enough manpower. "You gotta have five or six guys," he said. "You're gonna have to have a fuckin' donkey chain lugging them fuckin' bags." It's unclear who first raised David Turner's name -- that conversation occurred off tape -- but once Turner's name had surfaced, Romano asked Merlino several times about his attempts to reach him. Merlino complained that Turner wasn't answering his pages until, finally, in early January, he said angrily: "I'll call him once more today, and that will be the end of it." The next day, Merlino had good news: Turner had called back.

David Turner grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Braintree and worked side-by-side with his father to fix up a tired house on Sagamore Street. Then one day when he was 13, he found his father lying on the floor, dead of a heart attack. "David was devastated for months," says Joan Moran, a former neighbor. "He became very shy and very withdrawn." It wasn't until high school that he blossomed. He was nicknamed "crackerjack" because he seemed to excel at everything. "Whatever he did, he was the best at it," says Chris Ruggiero, a longtime friend of Turner. Voted "most unique" in the high school yearbook, Turner was a star on the football and basketball teams, and well liked by teachers, coaches, and girls.

He also attracted some less savory admirers. At night in the park near his home, he hung out with Charles Pappas, a neighborhood kid who had also recently lost his father -- a drug dealer, shot dead in Chinatown in 1981. When Turner and Pappas ventured into Kenmore Square, Pappas would tap his connections to get them into the clubs. Turner's friends say that's where their mischief stopped. But police say Pappas introduced Turner to Carmello Merlino and the two became "right-hand men" in his drug empire, selling cocaine at area motels.

Try as they might, however, police couldn't get the goods on Turner. In 1985, Pappas and Turner were charged, but acquitted, of murdering a gay New Bedford social worker who allegedly offered them a ride from Provincetown. Six years later, Turner was charged with a daring robbery of nearly $50,000 from two safes at Boston's Bull & Finch Pub, better known as the inspiration for the Cheers TV show -- but again a jury found him innocent.

Even more chilling, in 1990 two hoodlums burst into a Canton home, handcuffed a woman to the stairway with a gun to her head, and stole $130,000 in cash and jewelry. The woman, Andrea Freedman, identified Turner as the man who held the gun and agreed to testify. Pappas, too, agreed to testify against Turner. But Charlie Pappas died in a hail of bullets in Braintree a few weeks before the trial. Turner's alleged accomplice turned up dead in the trunk of a car in East Boston, at which point Freedman and her boyfriend changed their minds about testifying. Turner walked. Friends say rumors of Turner's exploits are nothing more than guilt by association. "When Charlie started hanging out with us, that's when all these bad accusations came to be," says his friend Ruggiero. He confirms that Pappas introduced them to Merlino and his crew, but says they were merely casual acquaintances. "We used to stop there on a summer day," he says, "and listen to the old-timers and their stories. That would be the extent of it."

A 1996 Boston Globe story offered a different opinion, calling Turner "the Teflon gangster of the South Shore" for his ability to squirm out of convictions. With Merlino scheduled to be released from jail the following year, the article went on to say: "Police have a hunch the two men might revive their working relationship." None of the diners at the Bickford's underneath the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester on January 28, 1999, were aware of the conspiracy in their midst. Silverware clinked as families and elderly couples finished off southwestern scrambles and fisherman's platters, paying little attention to the four men hunched over coffee at a green Formica tabletop.

Merlino was worried about the guards. "Just supposing whatever fuckin' freaky thing happened that these two motherfuckers or one of them can get up," he blustered. Romano shifted in his seat, conscious of the FBI wire hidden underneath his denim jacket and jeans. "He's not gonna get up," said a shifty-looking guy in a dark shirt and tan vest. "I'll make sure these guys are secured." This was Stephen Rossetti, a wiseguy who had robbed an armored car in Revere in 1982. The guards, Rossetti explained, could be tied with nooses that would tighten if they moved. That was enough to ensnare Rossetti in the conspiracy. Wearing a red jacket, David Turner sat quietly, listening to Merlino and Rossetti brag about their scores. He added only a few words, saying that the cops would know something was up if he and Merlino were seen together, and that during robberies "a half-hour feels like three hours."

FBI The Set Up (Part two)

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/fbi_the_set_up_part_two/

Prosecutors later tried to use those words to prove that Turner had taken part in schemes like this before -- and so wouldn't have blinked at taking part in this one. Merlino had said as much several times on tape, calling him a "veteran" who was "good with" guns. But those statements were hearsay. Prosecutors needed more to prove that Turner walked willingly into the Loomis robbery and that this wasn't what his lawyer claimed it was: entrapment.

It's one of the first rules of law enforcement: Police can't perpetrate crimes in order to catch criminals. That's why the cops on TV don't sleep with prostitutes or deal coke on street corners. In reality, of course, it's never that simple. To prove entrapment in court, a defendant must show that he was targeted (someone wanted him to do it), coerced (somebody pressured him to do it), and not predisposed (he wouldn't have done it if somebody hadn't encouraged him). That's why entrapment defenses almost always fail. The bar is set too high. But this case seemed to have all the necessary pieces. The FBI confirmed to lawyers that Merlino and Turner had been targeted as suspects in the Gardner robbery since 1992. The FBI's Cronin, during questioning, even admitted that he believed that if Turner was facing heavy charges, he could provide information on the Gardner robbery -- though he later said at trial he didn't have "any information at that point indicating that David Turner had access to the paintings."

But Merlino's defense weakens under the weight of a year's worth of informant reports saying that the repair shop manager was cajoling his subordinate Romano to find him a "clean" insider at the armored car facility. When Romano finally said he had the insider, Merlino did initially balk at the plan, saying, "It ain't for me." But he was soon dictating the terms of the plot himself. And if Merlino was predisposed to committing the crime, then the other men he recruited lose any claim that they were entrapped. All of them, that is, except Turner. Of Merlino's three coconspirators, Turner is the only one who could say that the FBI directly targeted him because of his suspected role in the Gardner robbery. He could also say he was coerced to participate, since Romano pushed Merlino to get in touch with him. (In legal terms, this is called "vicarious entrapment" -- when a government agent directs an unwitting intermediary to put pressure on a third party to commit a crime.) As for whether he would have committed the crime on his own, without a nudge from the FBI, the evidence is split.

In addition to the fact that he had not said anything incriminating on the tapes, Turner could point out that he had never actually been convicted of any serious crimes. His previous convictions include only drug and a few gun charges. And he had a good job at the time he was recruited, working construction on the Big Dig. He'd just bought a plot of land in Canton and was building a house. Whatever he had done in the past, it didn't appear that he was looking for trouble -- until an insistent friend kept dangling a $50 million score before his eyes.

At trial, however, prosecutors argued that Romano was hardly hell-bent on recruiting Turner -- on tape, he told Merlino only that they would need more guys, and asked several times whether he'd been able to reach Turner. That, they argued, was hardly coercion. "This isn't a case done as a means to an end," assistant U.S. attorney James Lang told the Boston Herald. "The government didn't bring a hand grenade, five pistols, assault rifles, walkie-talkies, and masks to an armored car depot." And that's where Turner's argument falls apart, say prosecutors. The agency didn't stash Turner's car with enough firepower to start a small army. He did.

In a small victory for Turner, the judge did give the jury instructions to consider his "vicarious entrapment" defense. But the jury apparently was uninterested. Three jurors in the case, reached separately, all say that they barely considered entrapment in their deliberations. "I felt the Gardner had nothing to do with it," says one, who asked not to be identified. "I believe that the other jurors didn't either." Billy Merlino's mother broke down crying after she heard the verdict read in court on October 24, 2001. All four men, guilty. Carmello Merlino got 47 years. Stephen Rossetti, 51 years, 10 months. Billy Merlino got 13 years, 4 months. But Turner's sentencing hearing has been delayed twice, as his lawyer fights to get him a new trial. It turns out that even with all the evidence introduced in court, the FBI kept some to itself -- evidence that suggests its agents were more interested in Turner than they let on. Evidence about a character known as the "Fat Man."

The group that would walk through the door at TRC Auto Electric on any given day could put The Sopranos' Bada Bing to shame. If there was a Big Pussy character among them, it had to be the corpulent Richard "Fat Richie" Chicofsky. An FBI informant since the 1960s, he had been recruited by Paul Rico, the same agent who cultivated Whitey Bulger and now faces trial for helping him murder an Oklahoma businessman. In the late 1990s, however, Fat Richie was assigned to Special Agent Neil Cronin, who he was helping with the investigation into the Gardner Museum robbery. It was a period of hope for the retrieval of the paintings. The Boston Herald ran stories almost weekly about the negotiations with Myles Connor and William Youngworth III. After those public negotiations had failed, however, far more private discussions were taking place at TRC Auto Electric. According to FBI informant reports, Chicofsky was talking constantly to Merlino about returning the paintings, even bringing him a contract that specified when and where the booty would be handed over.

In fact, while Romano was gathering information for the FBI about the Loomis, Fargo robbery, he was noting the comings and goings of Fat Richie, unaware that he, too, was an FBI informant. And Merlino wasn't the only one Chicofsky suspected of having knowledge of the Gardner crime. According to reports filed in court, he told agents he believed that Turner was one of the people who actually stole the paintings, and that Turner would collect a portion of the reward money for their return. Once, Chicofsky even met with Turner.

"Would you be willing to do something with me, work with me?" Turner allegedly asked Chicofsky. Chicofsky, the report says, "was 100 percent sure Turner was referring to the return of the Gardner Museum paintings." None of this was revealed at Turner's trial, even though the defense had asked for all documents that named Turner or Merlino in connection with the Gardner robbery and even though it refutes the agents' assertions that they had no specific information linking Turner to the paintings. "The government had possession of the very evidence that was requested by the defendant pretrial and that would have supported his defense, but they failed to disclose that evidence," Turner's lawyer Robert Goldstein argued in papers filed in court.

The FBI blamed a faulty indexing system for its failure to reveal the "Fat Man" reports. Besides, the agents added, FBI policies compelled them to protect the identity of an active informant, a point Turner's lawyer finds preposterous. "FBI institutional guidelines do not trump a person's constitutional right to have evidence brought forward that could exonerate him," Goldstein says. Put on the stand in a hearing after the trial, Special Agent Nadolski struggled to explain the omission. "Would you ever testify falsely or misleadingly to protect the identity of an informant?" Goldstein asked him. "No," Nadolski said. But Goldstein reminded the agent of his testimony during trial that the FBI was getting information that Merlino had access to the paintings only through Romano. Goldstein asked, "That's not true, is it?" Nadolski said nothing for several seconds. "No," he finally said, "I would have to say that we were also getting that information through Chicofsky." Goldstein pounced. "So you failed to disclose the fact that there was, in fact, another confidential informant?" "I did not talk about Chicofsky." After that admission, the defense tried to put Chicofsky himself on the stand, but the Fat Man refused to testify. The judge let him off, saying, "It is doubtful that the failure of the government to produce the Chicofsky . . . reports prior to trial, while lamentable, in any way prejudiced Turner's right to a fair trial." The judge's reasoning was, in effect, that while they may have provided more evidence that Turner had been directly targeted by the FBI, the reports wouldn't provide any new evidence about Turner's predisposition to commit the crime. The three jury members interviewed agreed. When told of the new information about Chicofsky, all three speculated that it wouldn't have changed their verdict.

The revelation does, however, provide another example of the Boston FBI's coddling of informants that goes beyond the case of Whitey Bulger. In congressional hearings on the subject last year, witnesses offered up damning testimony of what Congressman and former U.S. Attorney Bill Delahunt called the Boston bureau's ongoing "culture of concealment." Even while those hearings were being held in Washington, it was apparently business as usual back in Boston.

FBI special agent Neil Cronin was killed in September, not by a gun-toting thug, but by a tractor-trailer that collided with his Toyota Camry while he was driving on I-495 in Wrentham. The next day, September 4, David Turner's sentencing was again postponed. The judge is set to deliver a ruling on Turner's latest motion for a new trial this month. Turner's lawyer says that however unsavory his client may seem, he still deserves a trial based on all available evidence. "Today it could be David Turner; tomorrow it could be someone else," Goldstein says. "When people stop playing by the rules, the system breaks down." Convincing a judge that Turner was merely an innocent pawn caught up in an FBI sting, however, will be difficult. A car filled with loaded guns heading to the scene of an imminent $50 million heist is a hard image to shake. Cronin's death, meanwhile, is a major setback to the Gardner investigation -- but not the end of it. Another agent will pick up the trail, untangling a web of suspects with two fewer strands to consider. Some day, perhaps soon, that agent may succeed where others have failed in recovering the stolen Rembrandts and the Vermeer. Until then, the frames will hang empty in the Dutch Room. As the tour guide tells the woman in the rainbow tie-dyed shirt: "In some ways [the frames on the walls are] a tribute to the paintings coming back. But now it's getting on from the event, and they still don't have any idea who did the deed."

Stolen Art Watch, Myles Away From The Gardner Art Heist

2011-11-09T18:49:00.005Z

Art thief Myles Connor pleads guilty in Mendon hay heist

MILFORD —

Milford District Court Judge Robert Calagione has ordered notorious art thief Myles J. Connor to pay $300 in fines and serve one year of probation after Connor pleaded guilty to an Aug. 31 theft in Mendon.

On Oct. 13, the 68-year-old Connor, of 21 Residential Lane, Blackstone, pleaded guilty to trespassing, larceny from a building and larceny under $250. He pleaded not guilty to being a common and notorious thief, according to court documents.

Calagione dropped the charge of Connor being a common and notorious thief after defense attorney Richard Eustis argued that the conditions for that charge did not apply to the theft, according to court documents.

Police said officers caught Connor stealing bales of hay from Twin Elm Farm on Bates Street in Mendon on Aug. 31, arresting him at 11:44 p.m. after a brief foot chase.

Connor was ordered Monday to pay $100 for each guilty charge, serve probation until Nov. 5, 2012, and to stay away from the Twin Elm Farm and its owners and employees, according to the documents.

For decades, Connor made headlines for crimes, both alleged and admitted.

In 2009, he released a book called "The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Art Thief, Rock-and-Roller, and Prodigal Son," a memoir profiling his career as a cat burglar, con man, thief and museum heister.

In 1966, he was arrested after a rooftop shootout in Boston that ended with both a state police captain and Connor being shot. In 1973, Connor was arrested after leading undercover FBI agents to dozens of paintings that were stolen from the Woolworth family compound in Monmouth, Maine.

Connor was convicted in federal court of stealing several paintings from the Mead Museum at Amherst College in 1975 and served 10 years in prison.

In 1981, he was found guilty of fatally stabbing two 18-year-old women in 1973, but the conviction was overturned in 1984.

Stolen Art Watch, Boston Rivalry Prevents Gardner Art Recovery

2011-11-07T15:37:00.003Z

Rossetti case proves Congress should oversee FBI informants

http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2011/11/02/rossetti-case-proves-congress-should-oversee-fbi-informants/N0u1MJRiXdIx6whq2p4u2I/story.html

THE VIOLENT and symbiotic relationship between confidential informants and the FBI in Massachusetts is not just fodder for a few good movies. The Whitey Bulger saga may be decades old, but now the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking questions about the bureau’s handling of New England mobster Mark Rossetti, the confidential informant and Mafia “acting consigliore’’ who worked for the FBI up until last year. While the inquiry into the Rossetti case is welcome, the problem appears to be systemic. The FBI’s confidential informant system is broken and needs to be seriously reformed.

The Justice Department seems unable to prevent FBI investigators from developing relationships with unsavory characters and then standing by while their informants commit serious crimes; in some cases, the informants turn out to be every bit as dangerous as the targets they’re informing on. Rossetti is a convicted armed robber and a suspect in at least six homicides. Representative Stephen Lynch of South Boston filed a bill to give Congress a more active role in setting informant policy. If the Justice Department is unable to make effective changes, then Congress would be more than justified in stepping in.

The history of the rules regarding the use of confidential informants began in 1976, when Attorney General Edward Levi issued the first set of criteria to govern both who could become FBI informants and how the FBI would handle them. Then, in the 1990s, after the revelation of the FBI’s involvement in Bulger’s crimes, Attorney General Janet Reno set strict standards for disclosure to the Justice Department should an informant engage in illegal activity, especially violence. The government’s aim, maintained throughout subsequent changes to the guidelines, was to stop FBI agents from declaring themselves to be both judge and jury over their own investigatory techniques.

But the Justice Department discovered as early as 2005 in a report by its inspector general that the changes weren’t enough to prevent abuses. The guidelines themselves provided a careful balance between the competing needs of utilizing unsavory informants and ensuring that law enforcement doesn’t get sullied in the process. But in nearly 9 out of every 10 cases reviewed, the guidelines were violated. In many of these cases, FBI agents essentially ignored approval processes and supervisory controls, allowing informants to engage in criminal activities without any restrictions.

The use of confidential informants is a risky business. Sometimes, informants in drug and gang cases should be authorized to commit crimes to further an investigation into the entire criminal network; but the decision shouldn’t be made by an agent alone. If the FBI were better at following the guidelines, it might have protected its own reputation and effectiveness. Having failed that, Congress is entirely justified in probing the Rossetti case, and Lynch is right to call for congressional oversight over federal law enforcement’s use of informants. It might just be the necessary next step to control the FBI, since it can’t seem to control itself.

Lawyers to suggest feds framed client

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1377984&srvc=rss

Lawyers for an alleged Whitey Bulger victim’s brother, now facing trial on gun and drug charges, say their defense will include the theory that twice-convicted drug dealer Chris McIntyre was set up by the feds around the time his family won a $3.1 million wrongful death suit against the FBI.

“We’ll be pursuing the theory that it was more than a coincidence that within days after the final arguments were given in the case, in which we soundly criticized the FBI, he was stopped and arrested at a train station,” attorney Jeffrey Denner told the Herald yesterday.

But Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley, called the insinuation “absurd. (McIntyre) was arrested and indicted on the facts of this case and this case only.”

The FBI declined to comment.

McIntyre, 52, is the brother of Quincy fisherman John McIntyre, who was 32 when he was kidnapped and tortured to death in 1984 to stop him from informing against Bulger and Stephen Flemmi for smuggling arms to the Irish Republican Army, Flemmi testified.

Wark said Christopher McIntyre, a twice-convicted drug dealer, was arrested by Amtrak police on July 17, 2006, trying to board a cross-country train with luggage containing a handgun, ammo, heroin and OxyContin after a “standard” check of the passenger manifest revealed an outstanding warrant for his arrest. “He dropped the bag and tried to run,” Wark said.

Police claim McIntyre was traveling alone. Denner said his client was taking his late wife, the handgun’s licensed owner, to California for cancer treatment.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Don't Look Back In Anger !!

2011-10-18T18:14:00.002+01:00

Rumors Peter Boylan, the ex-cop suspected of providing the Police Uniforms for the Gardner Heist has appeared back on the FBI Radar.

Stolen Art Watch, Whitey Bulger, Catherine Greig, Sun, Sand & Serendipity

2011-10-09T12:56:00.006+01:00

Whitey in exile

It is a portrait of the gangster as a grumpy old man, hunkered down in a Santa Monica flat with his girlfriend. Neighbors liked them, but no one got close — or, rather, almost no one. And that was their undoing.

At least a twice a day, Carol Gasko would crouch on the sidewalk in front of her Santa Monica apartment building to feed an abandoned, tiger-striped cat while her husband, Charlie, stood by protectively. They brought Tiger to the veterinarian when he was sick and kept his picture on their wall.

Their devotion caught the attention of Anna Bjornsdottir, a former actress and Miss Iceland 1974, who lived in the neighborhood for months at a time and sometimes stopped to chat while they fed the tabby.

“Isn’t she nice?” Bjornsdottir said of Gasko to a neighbor.

It was this bond, formed over the cat, that proved the downfall of one of America’s most wanted men, South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, after 16 years on the run.

The Icelandic beauty, who gained minor fame decades ago starring in Vidal Sassoon and Noxzema commercials, was home in Reykjavik, Iceland, when she saw a CNN report on the FBI’s latest effort to track the 82-year-old Bulger and his 60-year-old girlfriend, Catherine Greig. Bjornsdottir recognized them immediately as the Gaskos, her former neighbors - Tiger’s benefactors - an ocean away on Third Street.

With a phone call to the FBI, Bjornsdottir ended one of the longest and most expansive manhunts in FBI history and brought Bulger home to face charges that he had killed 19 people, some of whose bodies were unearthed while the gangster was posing as a retiree in Southern California.

Now, through dozens of interviews with people who knew Bulger in Santa Monica and Boston as well as visits to Iceland and the couple’s California home, the Globe has drawn the first comprehensive picture of how Bulger lived on the lam all these years - and why he ultimately was caught.

The man once suspected of gallivanting through Europe had been holed up in the same rent-controlled apartment for at least 13 years, staying up late into the night watching television in his living room with black curtains drawn. When he finally went to bed, the aging gangster slept alone in the master bedroom - windows covered in opaque plastic sheeting - while his girlfriend used the guest room.

To fellow residents of the Princess Eugenia complex, the Gaskos were friendly retirees who valued their privacy. She sent thank you notes for small favors addressed to “kind neighbor,” but the couple seldom invited anyone into their home. Bulger once overruled Greig’s request to have a maintenance crew repaint the chipped walls in their apartment, perhaps because workers would have discovered the holes he cut to hide an arsenal of weapons and more than $800,000 in cash.

It was a carefully constructed life built on lies within lies, a life in which Bulger went by different names as the situation required. The FBI recovered 15 different aliases in the apartment along with a book, “Secrets of a Back-Alley ID Man,” about how to forge identification papers.

Bulger’s most important alter ego belonged to James William Lawlor, a destitute alcoholic with a resemblance to the gangster who gave Bulger his California driver’s license in exchange for money to pay the rent at a cheap motel. When Bulger needed to buy prescription drugs, drive a car, or dip into a bank account, he became Lawlor, even changing the man’s height and eye color on a state-issued identification card to match his features.

Despite Bulger’s post-arrest boast about trips to Las Vegas and visiting Boston “armed to the teeth,” there’s little to suggest the couple traveled much in recent years, especially after the crackdown in airport and border security following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Asked by a Santa Monica friend if she ever went anywhere, Greig mentioned only a single trip to San Francisco 10 years earlier.

Over time, the couple’s world grew smaller as the FBI pressured - or imprisoned - friends and family back east while boosting the reward for information leading to Bulger’s capture to $2 million. The FBI also offered a $100,000 reward for the capture of Greig, wanted for helping Bulger evade arrest.

Bulger became even more reclusive after the May 1 killing of Osama bin Laden, the only person on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List more notorious than the gangster himself. Greig began telling people that his Alzheimer’s was progressing - though, in fact, his mind remained sharp - putting up an additional barrier to outsiders’ questions.

But it wasn’t enough. Catherine Greig had made a lasting impression on Bjornsdottir, the former beauty queen and actress perhaps most famous for starring as one of the blondes in Noxzema’s iconic “Take It Off” TV commercials. Now a 57-year-old yoga instructor and graphic designer, Bjornsdottir recently collected $2 million of the $2.1 million in combined FBI rewards for her tip leading to Bulger and Greig’s arrest in the basement of their Santa Monica apartment building on June 22.

Still, it is a testament to how thoroughly people believed in Charlie and Carol Gasko that, even as Bulger stood in handcuffs surrounded by FBI agents, one resident tried to explain that, whatever Charlie had done, it was a result of his dementia.

That very ordinariness helped Bulger live undetected, according to Charles “Chip” Fleming, a retired Boston police detective who spent six years assigned to the FBI-led task force that worked full time trying to track Bulger. While the FBI chased reported Bulger sightings from a Native American reservation in Wyoming to Piccadilly Circus in London, the gangster was quietly living within walking distance of one of America’s most famous landmarks, the Santa Monica Pier.

“We were looking for a gangster and that was part of the problem,” Fleming said. “He wasn’t a gangster anymore.”

Did you rob a bank?The residents of Apt. 303 fit in comfortably with most of the neighbors at the Princess Eugenia complex, a 27-unit building at 1012 Third St. two blocks from the ocean that once was home mainly to art scholars from the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Property records, which were poorly kept at the time, indicate Greig and Bulger moved in to their two-bedroom unit in April 1998 - paying just $863 a month - but some neighbors say they were there a couple of years earlier. By then, young professionals and retirees had taken over the building, people who were curious enough about one another to spark friendly conversation but often too busy or too polite to question any idiosyncrasies.

And the Gaskos were model tenants - they never made any noise, they paid their rent early, and they treated most neighbors with almost unctuous kindness. The fact that they always paid with cash raised few questions because other tenants had paid that way.

Every month, about a week before the rent was due, Greig would walk across the street to the property manager’s office at the Embassy Hotel Apartments, owned by the same landlord.

One of the managers, Birgitta Farinelli, would take the crisp bills from Greig and joke “Carol did you rob the bank again?” The two would laugh.

Greig usually explained that she withdrew the money from the bank while running errands, said Farinelli, a friendly Swedish immigrant who often chatted with Greig about the best places to get a haircut or manicure.

“I can’t tell you how incredibly nice these people were,” Farinelli said. “They were very low-maintenance. These people never complained.”

Few who knew the hot-tempered Bulger during his Southie days would have described him as “incredibly nice.” The ruthless gangster allegedly strangled two women among his many victims, then took a nap while one of them was buried in the dirt cellar. He allegedly chained another man to a chair and tortured him for hours until he told Bulger where he had stashed cash, then shot him in the head with a machine gun.

Greig’s unstinting devotion to Bulger was remarkable, too, considering that she had tried long ago to break off her affair with Bulger and wasn’t even his first choice as a traveling companion.

A South Boston native who worked as a dental hygienist and dog groomer, Greig had been Bulger’s “other woman” for about 18 years while the gangster was sharing a South Boston home with Teresa Stanley and her four children.

Shortly before Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 to avoid arrest, Greig calmly revealed their on-and-off affair to a stunned Stanley, who had never met the younger woman.

“She wanted to break it off with him, and she had to do something that would just end it for them,” said Stanley.

The strategy worked - at first. A furious Bulger showed up as the two women discussed his infidelity at Greig’s Quincy home, Stanley recalled. The gangster got into a brief shoving match with Greig before leaving with Stanley.

A contrite Bulger, insisting the affair with Greig was over, took Stanley on a whirlwind tour of Europe that included visits to safe deposit boxes in preparation for their life on the run. When Bulger got word from a corrupt former FBI agent on Dec. 23, 1994, that he was about to be indicted on federal racketeering charges, Bulger hit the road with Stanley.

But Stanley missed her family and asked to go home after just a few weeks. On a winter night in early 1995, Bulger returned to Massachusetts, dropping Stanley off at a Chili’s Restaurant in Hingham. Then, he picked up Greig at Malibu Beach in Dorchester, and the couple headed south.

In retrospect, Stanley said Greig had done her a favor because if she hadn’t learned about the affair she might not have had the strength to leave Bulger.

“After 30 years I wouldn’t have been able to say: ‘That’s it. You’re on your own. See you later,’ ” Stanley said.

Greig was suddenly plunged into a fugitive’s life with a wanted man - and without the beloved French poodles she left at home - but she showed the gangster unwavering devotion. She changed her hair and her name, helping Bulger blend into the American landscape, and remained upbeat and affectionate even when Bulger seemed cranky and temperamental.

“She had this eternally positive energy,” said one Santa Monica neighbor who lived in their building. “She was almost too nice.”

Janus Goodwin, a longtime neighbor who was occasionally invited inside the couple’s apartment, recalled that Bulger would lie back on his futon as Greig bustled about the apartment.

When the two women talked in the hallway, Greig would often excuse herself, usually to take care of Bulger, Goodwin said. Greig suddenly would beam and her blue eyes would widen, Goodwin said, as she said, “Someone needs me. I’m needed!”

Some people in the neighborhood described the Gaskos as a “darling” elderly couple, who sometimes held hands during their daily walks. But a few women who knew them said they rarely showed affection and that Bulger, almost 22 years older than Greig, seemed controlling.

“I never thought he treated her so well,” said Barbara Gluck, a photographer who lived down the hall and knew the Gaskos for more than 10 years. “I thought she was a very kind person . . . She was young and she looked very pretty. He was old and grizzled. I kept thinking to myself ‘What are they doing together?’ ”

A Whitey lookalikeWhen Bulger fled Boston with Greig, he had a rock solid fake identity in his pocket. Posing as Thomas Baxter, Bulger bought a car in New York and traveled the country with Greig from Chicago to a resort town in Louisiana’s Cajun country. But when his former girlfriend Stanley started helping the FBI in 1996, she told agents about the Baxter alias and where Bulger had been staying, allowing them to track him to Louisiana. She quickly regretted what she had done and told a Bulger associate, who warned the gangster and sent him scrambling for new identities.

By the time, Bulger and Greig arrived in Santa Monica, they had settled on “Charles and Carol Gasko,” names they invented. It worked for paying bills with cash and cashier’s checks. But if they planned to drive, bank, or get health care, they would need identification in the form of driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers.

Sometime between 1998 and 2000, Bulger was walking in the Los Angeles area when he saw Lawlor, a homeless man living on the streets, according to two people who were briefed on the details of the relationship.

“He literally saw him on a bench,” said one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Bulger apparently was struck by how much they resembled each other: Both men had white beards, were bald on top, of Irish descent, and had the same ruddy complexion. Though Bulger was seven years older, the gangster, who had always taken good care of his health and appearance, looked younger than his age.

Bulger immediately devised a plan to assume the man’s identity.

“He saw the guy and realized there was some ability for them to be confused,” one of the two people said. “He took care of him and got him off the booze. They became friends.”

Bulger told Lawlor he had entered the country illegally and needed to use his identification so he could stay in the United States. Bulger took Lawlor’s Social Security number, driver’s license, and birth certificate, information he used to pick up medicine at a Santa Monica pharmacy and dip into a bank account to buy clothes and health products, according to the federal indictment against Greig that identifies Lawlor only by his initials, JWL.

There were crucial differences between them - at 5 feet 4 inches tall, Lawlor was 4 inches shorter than Bulger and considerably heavier. Lawlor’s eyes were also hazel.

Bulger took care of that by lying to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency’s records suggest. In 2003, when the state of California issued Lawlor a senior citizen’s identification card by mail, Lawlor had grown 4 inches in height, weighed only 170 pounds, and had blue eyes, according to Department of Motor Vehicles records.

In exchange for letting Bulger take his name, Bulger agreed to pay the rent on Lawlor’s home, a one-room apartment at the West End Hotel on Sawtelle Boulevard in Los Angeles, a place where some other hard-luck people have lived for years.

It was in that tiny apartment that hotel employees found Lawlor dead of heart disease on Aug. 8, 2007. He had been dead for days.

Bulger was devastated by the news, according to people familiar with their relationship. But grief didn’t prevent him from continuing to use Lawlor’s name when he sought treatment at a Los Angeles clinic last year.

Nobody asked about Lawlor again, until late June of this year when two detectives from Massachusetts walked into the hotel, according to the building manager who declined to be identified.

“It was about a week after Whitey got popped,” the manager said.

They said they were visiting “in reference to Whitey Bulger.” And they were very curious about Lawlor: Who visited him? Who were his friends?

“I said, ‘Are you sure you got the right guy?’ ” said the manager, mystified that the short, overweight man with no money and seemingly no connections outside the hotel could be connected to Bulger.

“He wasn’t a flashy guy,” the manager said. “He was nondescript . . . Just a plain Joe.”

The Gaskos at homeThe view from the balcony of Bulger’s apartment showed palm tree-lined Third Street and the elegant, Mediterranean-style hotel across the street. But the couple was less interested in enjoying the view than in keeping prying eyes out.

Black curtains hung over the windows in the living room, where Bulger often spent the night, watching television with headphones on from a futon that folded out into a bed.

The fugitives, who told people they were from Chicago or Boston, kept most neighbors out of the dark, sparsely furnished apartment. The few who went inside said there were no pictures of the couple or any relatives. The only framed photos were of dogs and cats, including Tiger, recalled Enrique Sanchez, the building’s longtime maintenance supervisor. Mirrors and framed prints of works by Getty artists - pieces that had been hung by management before the couple moved in - were the only other wall decorations.

Bulger slept in the master bedroom, tucked in the back of the apartment and far out of sight from the front door. He covered the windows, which faced the building next door, with opaque plastic held by duct tape and covered them in black curtains.

Greig slept in the guest room, which had more closet space.

The rest of the apartment was austere, containing the same gray carpet that had been there since the 1990s, a big, oversized blue chair in the living room, a green, fraying couch that one neighbor described as being so shabby that the Salvation Army would have refused it.

The apartment looked like it belonged to “a very, very, very poor retired couple living on what they had,” said Goodwin, a 62-year-old minister who lived a few doors down from the couple.

Bulger painted the fireplace in the apartment black and covered the kitchen cabinets with brown stain, Sanchez said.

“I think he was bored,” he said, noting that Bulger also kept about 200 books on shelves.

Bulger made other, less obvious changes.

He cut several holes in the apartment, including the bathroom next to his bedroom and the wet bar. Inside them, he stuffed 30 knives and highpowered guns and wads of cash. More than $822,000 was found neatly stacked inside the holes at the time of his arrest. Bulger had amassed the weapons while still in Boston, then took them with him when he fled, according to a former Bulger associate who spoke on the condition he not be named.

The couple’s frugal lifestyle allowed them to pass themselves off as a retired couple on a fixed income - they didn’t even own a car. They dressed casually, Bulger usually wearing a fisherman-type hat with a brim pulled low over his face and concealing his bald head.

Greig, described as vain by law enforcement officials, let her hair go gray and, for the last several years, got the same haircut, a close-cropped shag, according to her longtime hairdresser.

The couple rarely talked of their past, though Sanchez said Bulger told him he once had a violent streak and a neighbor said the gangster admitted he carried a knife.

“He said, ‘I used to like weapons and I used to fight,’ ” Sanchez said. “I just thought that was because he was in the military.”

Mostly, though, the Gaskos’ life centered on the mundane.

Greig shopped at the nearby farmer’s market twice a week, always pulling a metal cart down the street filled with her purchases and munching on dried apricots and nectarines she had bought at one of the stands. Under the name Carol Gasko, Greig ordered from catalogs like The Vermont Country Store, which sells flannel nightgowns and New England jellies.

Bulger worked out on a punching bag in the living room and eavesdropped on neighbors such as Joshua Bond, a tall, 28-year-old Mississippian who lived next door and played in a country band.

“He could relay word for word conversations I had with my friends,” said Bond, who is also a property manager. The couple never complained when he and his friends played country music well into the night.

Sanchez, a 64-year-old native of Guatemala, came to suspect that Bulger was using binoculars to peer in the windows of the Embassy Hotel across the street.

“I told the maids to be careful when they were cleaning, because the little old man across the street was spying on them,” he said in Spanish.

Bulger left the household chores to Greig.

Sanchez said Bulger refused to do laundry, though he always accompanied Greig when she went to the basement to clean their clothes.

“Enrique, why don’t you teach him how to do laundry?” she would joke.

“I don’t want to learn how to do that,” Bulger would shoot back. “That’s why I have you.”

Bulger also sometimes showed a softer side.

He occasionally took Greig to Michael’s, a high-end restaurant two blocks away. They always asked to be seated in the same place, Table 23, nestled in the corner of the restaurant’s outdoor courtyard by the trees and bushes, said Andrew Turner, the restaurant’s general manager.

“It’s its own little nook,” Turner said. “It’s the best table in the sense of being able to have a view of everything, but also being isolated.” Bulger always paid in cash and, during a 2009 visit the month that Bulger turned 80, they left more than a 20 percent tip.

Bulger was also generous with neighbors, giving a woman with lung disease a $400 air purifier, tools to Enrique, and flashlights to women in the neighborhood. One young female tenant recalled that Bulger gave her a can of Mace.

“You have to protect yourself,” he told her, according to her account, which she gave on condition of anonymity because of the media attention the case has drawn. He demonstrated how she should use it if someone accosted her. “Just flip it open and spray it in his face,” pointing the can at her.

Bulger closely followed local crime. He would place the free Santa Monica newspaper at the doorsteps of the tenants he befriended and cautioned them to read the police blotter on Fridays. When a homeless man began loitering on the front steps of the apartment, Farinelli said, he went outside and told him to leave before he called the authorities.

“We thought he was a paranoid guy telling us to watch out, be careful of crime,” said a middle-aged man in the building. “We didn’t know he had experience.”

In the months before his arrest - beginning around May 1 when Navy SEALS killed bin Laden - Bulger stopped circulating the newspaper and spent more time inside. Greig, who had already told neighbors that he had emphysema and early Alzheimer’s, said his condition was deteriorating.

“Charlie’s sleeping,” some neighbors recalled her saying in recent months. “He can’t breathe. Don’t bother him.”

Greig still wrote to her neighbors, but there was a hint of anxiety in the notes.

“Just wanted to send a (belated) thank you for the Sudoku Books,” she wrote to 88-year-old Catalina Schlank, who gave the puzzle books thinking they would help Bulger fight symptoms of Alzheimer’s. “Charlie is too overwhelmed, but it is on my list to do. I’ve just been very busy every day . . . Thank you kind neighbor.”

Where’s Whitey?The FBI never stopped looking for Bulger. But after the FBI publicly admitted in 1997 that Bulger had been its longtime informant - confirming what the Globe had reported nine years earlier - many questioned whether the agency really wanted to catch him. That year, the FBI brought in other law enforcement agencies, creating a task force that once averaged about a dozen agents, officers, and analysts assigned full time to tracking Bulger.

During Bulger’s first two years on the run, he and Greig made dozens of calls to the Boston area. But their connections appeared to dry up after the depth of Bulger’s corrupt relationship with the FBI was exposed and relatives and friends of the fugitives were pressured to cooperate with the search.

Bulger’s former associates turned against him, leading to the discovery of secret graves and a new racketeering indictment in fall 2000 charging him with 19 killings. Bulger’s former FBI handler, John J. Connolly Jr., who tipped the gangster off that he was about to be arrested, was eventually convicted of racketeering in Boston and murder in Florida.

Authorities launched billboard campaigns and media blitzes throughout the United States and Europe. The task force chased alleged Bulger sightings all over the world, but he remained elusive.

Though the FBI has declined to say how much the manhunt cost, Fleming, the retired Boston police detective who served on the task force until 2003, said it was easily the most expensive in FBI history

“I would say it’s in the millions,” said Fleming, noting that any promising Bulger tip became a top priority, no matter what the cost of pursuing it. “Whatever we asked for we got.”

But nothing worked and the simple two-word question, “Where’s Whitey?” became a standing rebuke to the FBI.

All along, there were clues that Whitey Bulger was in Southern California, but they were among hundreds of sightings reported to the agency each year.

In January 2000, after “America’s Most Wanted” aired a segment on Bulger and Greig, a viewer called to report she had spotted them a couple of weeks earlier at a hair salon in Fountain Valley, Calif., a town located about an hour south of Santa Monica. The caller said Greig had her hair dyed, while Bulger waited outside in a car.

The owner of the salon told the Globe that Greig walked into her shop without an appointment in early 2000.

“I was busy with a lot of customers,” said the owner, who asked that she only be identified by her first name, Kim. “She brought the color when she came and I put it in for her. I think it was blonde.”

Kim said one of her former customers, whose name she couldn’t recall, called in the tip, prompting FBI agents to interview people at the shop.

Agents returned several times over the years, but Greig has not been back, she said.

Then, in September 2002, a British businessman claimed he spotted Bulger strolling through London’s Piccadilly Circus. The FBI considered it the first credible sighting of the gangster in years and intensified its manhunt overseas. But several law enforcement officials say they now believe the London sighting was bogus.

In 2008, a Las Vegas man told “America’s Most Wanted” that he had spotted Bulger on the Santa Monica Pier talking about Boston with a young passerby who was wearing a Celtics shirt. Though the man, Keith Messina, left his name and cellphone number, which were later passed along to the FBI, he said he never received a call from the FBI about his tip.

Fleming said that the death of bin Laden may have been a turning point in the search.

“Once bin Laden was killed that freed up money to go toward Whitey,” said Fleming.

He added that Bulger was familiar enough with the inner-workings of the FBI to suspect that the terrorist’s death would shift more resources to him, given that the reward for his capture was the highest of any American fugitive.

But, even during the lean years when one reported Bulger sighting after another turned into dead ends, Fleming said members of the Bulger task force remembered one thing: “He’s got to be lucky every day, we’ve got to be lucky once.”

Miss CongenialityLuck finally came in the form of Anna Bjornsdottir, who had gained fame after moving from her native Iceland to Southern California in the late 1970s.

She had competed as Miss Iceland in the 1974 Miss Universe pageant, where she was voted Miss Congeniality by her fellow contestants. By 1980, she and her Icelandic rock musician husband were living the glamorous life in Los Angeles. A profile of the couple in People magazine described her as “one of the world’s most beautiful and successful models,” who earned more than $2,000 a day for appearing in commercials for Noxzema and Vidal Sassoon.

She eventually divorced her husband, and over the years settled into a quiet life, away from the spotlight in Iceland. She married Halldor Gudmundsson, an Icelandic businessman, with whom she published a book, about the exploits of Mosa, a cat they adopted after it survived weeks being lost in the mountains of Iceland.

The couple has rented apartments in Santa Monica over the past decade, staying up to six months at a time, according to several people who know them. Until about six years ago, they stayed at the Embassy Hotel, across from Bulger’s apartment. Then they moved to another apartment less than three blocks away.

After Tiger the cat’s elderly owner died, the tabby roamed the neighborhood, but initially wouldn’t go to anyone except Carol Gasko, who would come out at 6 a.m. daily and again in the evening carrying tin cans of food or plastic bags filled with tuna, according to neighbors.

When Bjornsdottir was out walking, she would often stop to talk to Greig while she fed the tabby.

“They both loved cats,” said a neighbor who immediately suspected Bjornsdottir was the tipster after learning the call came from Iceland. “Anna thought it was so nice that she took care of this cat. They became friends.”

When a Boston Globe reporter approached Bjornsdottir outside her Reykjavik apartment in July and again in September, she ran inside without saying a word.

In response to a note from the Globe asking about her role in Bulger’s capture, Bjornsdottir’s husband sent an e-mail on her behalf saying she would not talk.

But one friend of Bjornsdottir in Iceland, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was not surprised that the former Miss Iceland would be the one to recognize Bulger and Greig.

“She’s a clever woman,” he said. “She’s good at noticing people.”

The Gaskos unmaskedOn Monday morning, June 20, the FBI launched a publicity campaign focused on Greig, in the hope that the sociable younger woman might be more recognizable than the much older Bulger.

Thirty-second television spots featuring photos of the couple and the worldwide effort to find them aired during commercial breaks of popular daytime shows that ran in 14 cities nationwide, including San Diego and San Francisco. But they did not run in the Los Angeles area.

Still, the campaign garnered international attention, with CNN reporting on the Bulger media blitz.

The FBI said the tip came into the agency’s Los Angeles office shortly after 8 p.m. the next day and was relayed to the Bulger task force in Boston, which by then had dwindled to a handful of investigators.

Just before 4 p.m. on June 22, the FBI began surveillance outside the Princess Eugenia complex. A couple of agents met Bond in his office at the hotel across the street. When they showed him photos of Bulger and Greig, he immediately recognized them.

When asked how sure he was, Bond said, “100 percent,” according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

Hoping to draw Bulger outside peacefully, the FBI instructed Bond to call the Gaskos’ apartment and tell them someone had broken into their storage unit in the garage.

At 5:45 pm, when Bulger arrived to inspect his storage locker, he was immediately surrounded by FBI agents and Los Angeles police.

Goodwin was walking toward the laundry room in the garage when she spotted her elderly neighbor standing in handcuffs.

“You know, sir,” Goodwin said as she approached FBI agents and police. “This man has Alzheimer’s .”

The officers stared back at her.

“Ma’am, when you see so many FBI you should know something serious is going down,” an officer responded.

FBI agents ordered Bulger to get down on his knees, but he refused.

“He looked old; he looked dejected,” Goodwin said. “He looked at me and he was sort of ashamed. He looked down.”

Goodwin said FBI agents instructed Bulger to call Greig and she overheard him talking to her on a cellphone.

“Carol, stay in the apartment,” he said. “I’ve been arrested.”

Minutes later, Goodwin said, she returned to the third floor and heard Greig speaking calmly to officers.

“In my opinion, she seemed glad it was over,” Goodwin said.

The next day, Goodwin said, she searched the Internet, read about the murder charges against Bulger and burst into tears.

“I cried for the families,” Goodwin said. She asked that the victims’ relatives know this:

“Just let them know he did not have a nice life. He lived afraid in his little apartment with the curtains drawn without any opportunity to spend his money and enjoy his life.”

Other neighbors said they felt bewildered and sad.

“I miss them,” said Gayle Shankle, who received the air purifier from the couple.

Sanchez, who cleaned out the apartment after the FBI left, said the allegations against Bulger have not diminished his affection for the couple.

“We really were friends,” Sanchez said. “For me, they remain Charlie and Carol.”

The FBI took nearly everything from the apartment. But the black curtains remained, as did Bulger’s futon and innocuous items like the frozen food and dozens of paper towels and rolls of toilet paper the couple had hoarded.

The holes in the wall remained for the building staff to repair. Above a hole cut into the master bathroom wall, the gangster had apparently written a cryptic message.

In pen, he had scrawled “Mice,” then drawn an arrow pointing to the words “All done.” Below, in Spanish, he wrote “Fin. Muerte.” End. Death.

Sanchez said one of the FBI agents asked him what he thought the message meant.

“I had no idea,” he said.

Three months after the couple was captured, the apartment was refurbished and decorated almost entirely in white. The gray old carpet was replaced with one that is plush and cream-colored. The fireplace Bulger painted black is now white.

In the kitchen, the stained cabinets are now a soft cream, but the brand-new refrigerator and LG stainless steel dishwasher the couple bought remain.

The rent increased from the $1,165 a month the couple was paying at the time of their arrest to $2,772. Two men, friends, signed the lease last month.

Two weeks ago, Sanchez received a letter from Bulger, who is being held without bail at the Plymouth County House of Correction, awaiting trial.

Sanchez declined to provide a copy of the letter, but spoke generally about its contents.

“He said he was sorry he wasn’t able to say goodbye, that he never told me who he really was,” said Sanchez.

He said Bulger seemed resigned to dying in prison - his age made it hard to believe he would live to face trial.

“ ‘For me, it’s over,’ ” Sanchez said Bulger wrote. But he wrote of his hopes that Greig, now being held without bail in a Rhode Island jail, might still be freed.

Somehow, the couple is still able to communicate, Sanchez said, because Bulger wrote him that Greig had delivered a message to him.

“She told him she doesn’t regret the 16 years she lived with him,” Sanchez said. “And he doesn’t either.”

Shelley Murphy can be reached at shmurphy@globe.com. Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.

Drug-dealing killer: Chicago cop stopped DEA investigation of me

Shades of mobster Whitey Bulger?

You might recall that the Boston FBI created one heck of mess when it continually covered for Whitey Bulger, an FBI informant, while he was off killing people and committing other serious crimes. In fact, one of the agents is now behind bars.

Well, in Chicago, drug trafficker Saul Rodriguez, who was a Chicago police informant, has told the feds he was involved in three murders after Chicago cop Glenn Lewellen, who was his handler, talked the DEA out of investigating him in the 1990s, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

He also told the feds that he and Lewellen were partners in crime and ripped off drugs dealers and split millions of dollars in proceeds, the Sun-Times reported.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty last month to federal drug conspiracy charges and has agreed to testify against Lewellen and other defendants, the Sun-Times reported. The information about his crimes was contained in a 188-page document containing juicy evidence prosecutors plan to use against Lewellen and others.

Rodriguez was an informant for Lewellen for years, according to the Sun-Times. Prosecutors said that from 1996 to 2001, the Chicago Police Department paid Rodriguez $807,000 for information leading to seizures of drugs and cash, all the while committing crimes while Lewellen kept him out of prison, the Sun-Times reported.

According to court document, Lewellen persuaded the DEA to stop investigating Rodriguez in 1996 after 154 pounds of marijuana were seized from his Buick by telling the DEA an investigation of Rodriguez would harm ongoing cases, the Sun-Times reported. Rodriguez was subsequently involved in the murders of three people in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Lewellen retired in 2002 to become a homebuilder. But in 2006, even after leaving the department “he still managed to obstruct a separate DEA investigation of Rodriguez,” by telling Rodriguez not to talk to a drug courier whose phone was tapped, the Sun-Times reports.

Sun Times Article:

A high-level drug trafficker admits he was involved in three killings after a Chicago Police officer scuttled a federal investigation into his illegal activities in the mid-1990s, according to a recent court filing.

Saul Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty last month to federal drug conspiracy charges, was an informant for Officer Glenn Lewellen for years.

But Rodriguez told authorities he and Lewellen were also longtime partners in crime. They allegedly worked together to rip off other drug dealers, splitting millions of dollars in loot.

Lewellen recruited Rodriguez as a police informant in early 1996. Rodriguez’s undercover name was “Bill Pager.” From 1996 to 2001, the Chicago Police Department paid him $807,000 for information that led to seizures of drugs and cash, prosecutors said.

All the while Rodriguez was making cases for the police, however, he was committing crimes. And Lewellen repeatedly stepped in to keep Rodriguez out of jail, prosecutors said.

Rodriguez’s statements to authorities are included in a 188-page document containing evidence prosecutors intend to present against Lewellen and other defendants who face trial in the same case. Rodriguez has agreed to testify against them.

According to the document, Lewellen in mid-1996 persuaded the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to stop investigating Rodriguez after 154 pounds of marijuana were seized from a secret compartment in his Buick. Lewellen told the DEA its investigation would harm ongoing Chicago Police Department cases, prosecutors said.

Lewellen, who joined the police force in 1986, retired in 2002 to become a homebuilder. But he still managed to obstruct a separate DEA investigation of Rodriguez, prosecutors said.

In 2006, Lewellen warned Rodriguez not to speak to a drug courier whose phone was wiretapped, Rodriguez said. At the time, the DEA was investigating Rodriguez’s ties to a cocaine wholesaler, prosecutors said.

Lewellen told Rodriguez he got the information from an “agent” who previously worked in Colombia, but didn’t say what agency was involved in the investigation, according to Rodriguez.

As Lewellen was allegedly protecting Rodriguez from the DEA, Rodriguez was involved in the murders of three men, prosecutors said. Rodriguez has confessed to orchestrating the slayings in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

Rodriguez has also told authorities he arranged for a friend to “escape” from a prison in Mexico in 2003. He said he met with the prison warden while on vacation in Mexico and promised to pay him a $250,000 bribe in exchange for his friend’s freedom.

In addition to his career as a drug dealer, Rodriguez became involved in managing boxers and developing real-estate in Chicago and Nevada, records show.

The document detailing Rodriguez’s statements to federal prosecutors, filed last month, provides new details about Rodriguez’s relationship with Lewellen.

For example, Rodriguez said he bought Lewellen a Ford Crown Victoria equipped with a siren. Lewellen allegedly drove the car while posing as a legitimate cop during drug rip-offs, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez has told authorities that another Chicago Police officer participated in at least one rip-off, but he believes the officer is now deceased.

The prosecution’s evidentiary document also provides more information about the three murders in which Rodriguez admits to having a role.

Rodriguez said he persuaded Lewellen to frame Juan Luevano with a drug case in 1999. Luevano, who was dating Rodriguez’s former girlfriend, was released from jail after posting bond in the case.

Rodriguez said he then met with a high-ranking Satan Disciples gang member who was in prison. The gang leader was angry Luevano was dating his wife, Rodriguez told authorities.

The gang leader asked Rodriguez to find someone to “get” Luevano. So Rodriguez said he hired a high-school pal, Manuel Uriarte, to kill Luevano.

Uriarte and Andres Flores allegedly shot Luevano to death in 2000 near his home in Cicero, prosecutors said. They’re charged with murder in the same federal drug conspiracy case.

Rodriguez also admitted he arranged for the 2001 murder of Michael Garcia. Rodriguez said he acted at the request of a friend who suspected Garcia had killed his brother, prosecutors said.

And Rodriguez said he was involved in the 2002 murder of Miguel De La Torre. Rodriguez said he arranged the kidnapping of De La Torre to scare him into providing information about the location of cocaine and money.

Rodriguez said he hired Miguel Uriate and his brother Jorge Uriate to squeeze the information from De La Torre, a drug dealer. If De La Torre refused to talk, they agreed the Uriates would kill him, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez admitted he provided Uriate brothers with an electrical cord they used to strangle De La Torre in a garage. Jorge Uriate also faces murder charges in the same case. Lewellen, who is free on $1 million bail awaiting trial, is not charged with any of the killings.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist On Film !

2011-10-01T13:46:00.003+01:00

Titian, (1490-1576), Rape of Europa, 1559-1562, oil on canvas, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

A Trip to Boston and a Documentary Add to My Gardner Museum Heist Obsession

I was in Boston for a couple of days last week. On the top of my list of things to do, there was my first ever, long overdue visit to the fabulous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Adding to the mystique of the beautiful outside-in Venetian palazzo that Gardner herself designed and its dazzling array of masterpieces and artifacts, was my curiosity about the still unsolved 1990 Gardner Museum heist. Thirteen masterpieces, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer, were stolen. Some were slashed from their frames -- frames that still eerily hang where Gardner originally placed them.

After my visit, I arrived back in L.A. pleasantly haunted by the history-laden cobblestone streets and cemeteries of Boston, and decidedly under the spell of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Finding Rebecca Dreyfus's 2006 documentary about the Gardner heist, Stolen, was the perfect segue from an all-too-short vacation back to my hectic life.

In an interview, Gardner biographer Douglass Shand-Tucci sets the tone for the present day visitor and echoes my own feelings: "The Gardner Museum is now touched with evil as a result of the robbery in a way that has deepened the experience going through it. Many people made it into a pretty postcard kind of place. Mrs. Gardner was not a pretty postcard kind of person...."

The story of the heist is set against a background of grainy black and white footage of turn-of-the-century Boston, voice-overs of Gardner's letters read by Blythe Danner, and the ongoing investigation of fine art detective Harold Smith. Adding to the complexity of the investigation, we intermittently hear snippets of voice messages left on a tip line -- even one from a who woman claims the culprits were John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The Beatles did it!

We learn about Gardner's motivations for amassing her collection:

"They say that Isabella Stewart Gardner is the original Victorian salvage hunter. She'd go off on a rummage hunt, often a salvage hunt. Mr. Gardner would be, at times, very upset. She wouldn't leave a note at the hotel, she'd be out looking for her favorite pieces of salvage that she could save and then resurrect them. Broken columns, balconies, fireplaces from Northumberland, were in attics and basements of churches, stained glass windows from 1150 a.d., [unclear] Cathedral covered with vestments and cobwebs, and she recycled all the things in Europe that no one seemed to care about."

In a letter to her art agent in Europe Stewart wrote: "Dear Berenson, I suppose the picture habit, which I seem to have, is as bad as the morphine or whiskey one. And it does cost. I am drowned in a sea of debt. You would laugh to see me. I haven't had but one new frock in a year."

A museum docent recounts Gardner's frame of mind after acquiring Titian's Rape of Europa:

"One evening so ecstatic, after a wonderful dinner party in the Titian room, she swirled into a frenzy and said, 'Tis I who have hopped upon the back of Zeus and become Europa, the mother of Europe' and left her ball gown. Of course as we all know in the portrait the goddess is upon the back of Zeus flying around the heavens in a night gown. So Mrs. Gardner disrobed her ball gown, ran through the long gallery back up to her dressing room on the fourth floor, changed into another gown and came back downstairs. So, for posterity, the green moiré fabric, Worth's Paris gown, is in the wall, under the Titian as sort of a replica and souvenir of the enchantment that Bel Gardner felt when she received and purchased her Europa. She was ecstatic with joy."

We meet dicey characters from the underbelly of the art world such as master art thief Myles Connor, antiques dealer and ex-con, William Youngworth and, through a Scotland Yard connection, reformed art thief, Paul "Turbocharger" Hendry. Much speculation surrounds the role Boston mob boss and then fugitive James "Whitey" Bulger may have played in the caper:

"In 1990 at the time of the Gardner heist, Whitey Bulger was the absolute lord and master of the Irish underworld... Whitey Bulger had a dark presence that cast a very long shadow over Boston. Chilling is the word... He ruled through violence and intimidation and fear.... In this town, if a consortium of thugs pulled off the Gardner heist, Whitey Bulger would hear about it in two seconds flat. "

By the end of the film, the investigation has widened to include IRA connections and never realized plans to use Senator Ted Kennedy as a go-between to negotiate for return of the stolen work. Art detective Harold Smith stayed on the trail of the theft until just a week before he died in 2005, and many others continue the hunt to this day.

James "Whitey" Bulger was arrested by the FBI in June of this year and is in custody in Boston charged with 19 counts of murder. Some speculate that Bulger knows the whereabouts of the stolen Gardner paintings and is using the information as a get-out-of-jail free card.

We can only wait and hope!

Stolen Art Watch, Whitey Bulger Reward Paid, Gardner Art Reward Remains Unclaimed

2011-09-24T16:09:00.003+01:00

FBI pays reward in capture of accused mobster 'Whitey' Bulger

The FBI confirmed Friday that it has paid a $2.1-million reward to the informers who helped end the 16-year manhunt for fugitive crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his companion, captured in June in Santa Monica.

But the identities of those who led the agency to the Santa Monica apartment where Bulger and Catherine Greig were arrested June 22 remain a mystery, according to news reports.

On Friday evening, the Boston Herald reported this statement from the FBI's Boston division:

"On Monday, Sept. 19, 2011, the Boston Division of the FBI received final authorization from the United States Department of Justice to pay the $2.1 million reward to those responsible for providing information which directly led to the arrest of former Top Ten Fugitive James 'Whitey' Bulger and his companion Catherine Greig. This information was generated as a direct result of the FBI’s Public Service Announcement (PSA) campaign, which was initiated on June 20, 2011.

"The FBI offered $2 million for information leading to the arrest of Mr. Bulger, and $100,000 for information leading to the arrest of Ms. Greig. As of Friday, Sept. 23, 2011, the FBI has paid this reward money to more than one individual.

"To protect the anonymity and privacy of those responsible for providing information which directly led to the arrests of Mr. Bulger and Ms. Greig, the FBI will not comment further regarding this matter."

Bulger, 82, was on the FBI's 10-most-wanted list in connection with 19 homicides and other crimes in Boston. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Greig, 60, has also pleaded not guilty in the case.

A Las Vegas man, Keith Messina, 45, said he tried to collect the reward because he spotted Bulger in Santa Monica in 2008 and called the television show "America's Most Wanted," according to news reports.

The FBI denied his claim and told his lawyer that the money was given to a tipster in Iceland, reports said.

Messina reportedly plans to file a lawsuit, seeking a share of the reward money.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Operation Haystack

2011-09-06T01:26:00.003+01:00

Reports eminating from Germany that some Gardner art may have been seen.

Could be part of Operation Haystack ??
More to follow.............

Stolen Art Watch, Myles Connor, The Final Straw !!

2011-09-02T12:32:00.001+01:00

Infamous art thief charged with stealing hay from farm

MENDON —

Police chased and arrested a notorious art thief Wednesday night after they say officers caught him stealing bales of hay from Twin Elm Farm on Bates Street.

Myles J. Connor, 68, of 21 Residential Lane, Blackstone - a self-proclaimed master art thief - was arrested at 11:44 p.m. and charged with trespassing, larceny from a building and larceny under $250, Detective David Kurczy said.

Connor was released without bail and is scheduled to appear in Milford District Court on Oct. 13.

Since Connor has had more than three charges on his record, he was also charged with being a common and notorious thief, Kurczy said.

Police say Connor was arrested shortly after they saw him trying to make off with the hay.

A few weeks ago, an employee at the cattle farm told police that hay bales had been sporadically disappearing from the farm overnight. The hay was valued at more than $1,000, so police started keeping an eye on the property.

On Wednesday, Connor threw the bales over a fence, then jumped the fence and ran from police, Kurczy said.

"He ran for the woods, but police got him pretty quick. He didn't get very far," Kurczy said.

Connor was charged with larceny because he had four bales of hay in his possession Wednesday night, police said.

Connor told police he forgot to leave money for the hay.

Police said they think Connor was planning to use a car, which was parked nearby, to drive back and pick up the bales he threw over the fence, Kurczy said.

Connor may have planned to use the hay for horses he owns, Kurczy said.

Twin Elm Farm's owner, Linda Varney, could not be reached for comment.

For decades, Connor has made crime headlines, some merely alleged, others for which he was convicted, and still others to which he has admitted.

In 2009, Connor, the son of a Milton police officer, released a book called "The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Art Thief, Rock-and-Roller, and Prodigal Son," a memoir outlining the story of his career as a cat burglar, thief, con man and museum heister.

In 1966, Connor was arrested after a rooftop shootout in Boston. A state police captain was shot in the exchange, and Connor suffered four gunshot wounds.

In 1973, the Woolworth family compound in Monmouth, Maine, was robbed of dozens of paintings. A year later, Connor was arrested after he led undercover FBI agents to the paintings.

In 1975, two 18-year-old girls were stabbed to death after they witnessed fugitives shooting two men. One of the murderers, Thomas Sperrazza, later said Connor arranged the murder.

Connor was found guilty in 1981, but his conviction was overturned in 1984.

In 1978, Connor was accused of stealing Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Girl, Wearing a Gold-trimmed Cloak," from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. He never admitted to the crime but brokered the painting's return in exchange for avoiding prison time for the Woolworth art theft in Maine.

In 1990, he was convicted in federal court of stealing several paintings from the Mead Museum at Amherst College in 1975. He served 10 years in prison.

While in custody in 1990, two men stole an estimated $300 million worth of paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The FBI suspected Connor was the mastermind, but he was never charged.

Connor offered to help get the items returned in exchange for the reward and his release from prison. Authorities refused, and the paintings have yet to be recovered.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, William Youngworth Muses, Charles Sabba Listens

2011-08-20T12:59:00.004+01:00

William P. Youngworth III and the artist Charles Vincent Sabba Jr. in front of the large Gardner Gossips canvas in its early, underpainting stage 2009.

Charles Vincent Sabba Talks Gardner Art With William Youngworth

“ A mega budget movie coming soon about the world’s largest unsolved art robbery? “.

http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/ has learned that prominent New England Antiques Dealer William P. Youngworth, III, has been approached by consortium representing a Hollywood Production Company with an intense interest in Boston based crime dramas.

In 2010, with an Academy Award winning mega Boston colored success under their belts, their focus has now turned to the Holy Grail of all Boston crime mysteries-The 1990 robbery of Boston’s Gardner Museum! http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/, like many others close to the case, has long considered Youngworth the key to solving the mystery of the World’s largest unsolved art robbery that has dogged investigators for over two decades.

Youngworth, angered over what he calls “extortive strong arm methodology”, to force his cooperation in the multi million dollar 21 year old investigation into the robbery that’s stymied law enforcement, has walked away from the negotiating table for good.

When asked for comment Youngworth said “Every few years someone has an idea for a book or a movie. I guess that after Bulger came up a dry hole its back to me again.”

These days Youngworth, 52, is semi retired “living off a few small investments” dedicates his time to helping his son who has his own Antique Furniture and Collectibles business. “Its been a tough year on my boy”. In his son’s first year of business he lost one building to a fire and a second to a freak tornado suffering in access of a million dollars in losses. Despite two disasters Youngworth’s son William, IV has built such a successful business following his (late) mother’s & father’s business model that it continues to grow and prosper.

Youngworth promises that if he did undertake any movie or book projects he would insist on some level of control that probably conflict with artistic license. “There is nothing formal at this stage but all parties are listening”.

Youngworth promises that if he decides to undertake any projects that new details of one of the world’s greatest mysteries would be forthcoming. http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/ asked Youngworth if we all could be in on solving the Gardner case for the price of a movie ticket? Youngworth stated that “I wouldn’t go that far, the Gardner and the Feds will buy it on bootlegged DVD’s off street corners”.

On a serious note Youngworth noted that the head of the Gardner Museum’s Security Anthony Amore teaming up with Boston tabloid reporter Tom Mashburg are now on the road promoting their book on Rembrandt thefts. “It just proves one more time that profiting off the theft as opposed to meaningfully trying to resolve it is the Gardner’s main objective”. More to come soon! -

William Youngworth has an open voice at www.YourBrushWithTheLaw.com and we will never censor him when he agrees to be interviewed. I would like to include a disclaimer however that his views and opinions do not express the viewpoints and opinions of http://www.yourbrushwiththelaw.com/ and http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/ . This should be especially noted as concerns our respect for Anthony Amore and our love and dedication to both the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Isabella's memory. We have stated many times that we think this little museum is one of the most precious in the United States and we are dedicated to assisting in the recovery of their treasures in any manner. -Sabba-

Stolen Art Watch, Mark Rossetti, Mafia & Boston FBI, Joined At The Lip

2011-08-16T12:46:00.001+01:00

Sleeping with enemy, again

Consider this: The FBI gets into bed with a suspected killer, on the dubious premise that he can give it information on other criminals, even though he is, by deed and reputation, far worse than any of the people he’s supposedly informing on.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s Whitey Bulger all over again. Except this time Mark Rossetti is Whitey Bulger. And this isn’t ancient history. It was going on until just last year, and is only now coming out.

Rossetti is a reputed caporegime in the Boston faction of the Mafia. He is a convicted armed robber and is awaiting trial on charges that he ran a loan sharking and heroin ring. He is considered a suspect in at least six unsolved homicides, according to multiple law enforcement officials.

Despite his record and reputation, Rossetti was recruited as an informant by the FBI. The FBI won’t say when. Spokesman Greg Comcowich declined to say whether the FBI was aware that Rossetti was a suspected killer when it recruited him.

A couple of years ago, the Massachusetts State Police targeted Rossetti. But even before the State Police began that investigation, they asked the FBI if Rossetti was an informant. The FBI categorically denied it, according to state law enforcement officials familiar with the exchange.

The State Police went ahead and got the legal authorization for electronic surveillance of Rossetti’s phones, and soon they were listening in as Rossetti talked to his FBI handler, a young agent named Jesse.

Now, this isn’t about Jesse. He is by all accounts an earnest, honest agent who merely inherited Rossetti as an informant. This is about people in pay grades above Jesse’s. Supervisors who are supposed to know better. People who are supposed to know that the FBI shouldn’t be playing footsie with people like Mark Rossetti.

I know State Police officers, the workers - not the ones who make policy or are required to play nice with the FBI - who were furious after reading the joint statement of their commander, Colonel Marian McGovern, and FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers, which asserted that the FBI assisted the State Police in nailing Rossetti last year.

That statement, issued Friday after the Globe reported that Rossetti was an informant, is a case study in parsing words and deflecting attention. It said that when the State Police told the FBI they had Rossetti on a wire “the FBI was prepared to cease its association’’ with Rossetti.

“However,’’ the statement continued, “the Massachusetts State Police specifically requested the FBI continue its association with the individual for logical strategic reasons.’’

In other words, maintain the status quo so Rossetti wouldn’t become suspicious if his FBI handler suddenly closed him out or acted differently. But that statement ignores the reality that the FBI initially denied Rossetti was working for it. And while accurate as far as it goes, the statement is mendacious and misleading by implying that the issue at hand is when Rossetti should have been terminated as an informant, while the real, screaming issue here is that Rossetti should never have been an FBI informant.

This goes to the very heart of what the FBI was supposed to have learned over its craven and criminal coddling of Whitey Bulger. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. The FBI should have been trying to put Rossetti in prison, not paying him and giving him a cellphone.

The extent of the FBI’s corruption in its handling of Whitey Bulger was exposed only after a courageous federal judge named Mark Wolf convened a series of extraordinary hearings, forcing the FBI to publicly explain itself. The FBI’s courtship of Mark Rossetti suggests it didn’t learn the lessons it claimed to have after Whitey Bulger. It got into bed with a guy it should have been trying to put into a prison bunk.

This is history repeating itself. Time for more hearings.

Stolen Art Watch, Rossetti The Rat, Rhetoric Won't Recover Gardner Art

2011-08-12T10:05:00.008+01:00

Reputed mob boss is called FBI informant

Court papers say state was wiretapping Rossetti

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/08/12/reputed_mob_boss_rossetti_is_called_fbi_informant/

Mark Rossetti, a reputed Mafia leader who was indicted last year on state charges of running a sprawling criminal enterprise of drug trafficking, gambling, and loan sharking, had been working all along as an informant for the FBI, according to documents filed yesterday in Suffolk Superior Court.

The documents, filed by two lower-level players in Rossetti’s alleged crime ring as part of a legal strategy in their own case, do not identify Rossetti by name. But he can be clearly identified through descriptions of his conversations with his FBI handler, and through a State Police organizational chart of his alleged crime ring, the Rossetti Criminal Organization. Rossetti is a reputed capo in the New England Mafia.

State Police recorded more than 40 conversations between Rossetti and his FBI handler in the spring of 2010, through a wiretap on Rossetti’s FBI-issued phone, according to the court documents. In the conversations, they discussed other Mafia figures and the possible role of Rossetti’s cousin in the 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, as well as Rossetti’s debt collections. According to the documents, it was during these conversations that State Police discovered Rossetti was an FBI informant.

Rossetti later grew concerned that he was being investigated by the State Police. He revealed to his handler on May 14, 2010, that his phone had been tapped, according to court records.

The disclosure that Rossetti, a high-ranking Mafioso, was working with the FBI at the same time he was being targeted by the State Police raises questions about how closely the FBI was monitoring him and whether the bureau was aware of the extent of his alleged activities.

The complete nature of Rossetti’s relationship with the FBI was not immediately clear yesterday.

When working with informants, the bureau is required to follow clear guidelines that restrict what the informant may do.

Gregory Comcowich, a spokesman for the FBI’s Boston office, said last night that he was aware of the court filings but would not comment on details of Rossetti’s relationship with the bureau.

“The Department of Justice rules require us to report criminal wrongdoing by any of our sources,’’ he said. “The FBI followed those guidelines.’’

According to court documents, Rossetti expected to be spared from prosecution for the crimes he committed with the FBI’s knowledge, but he worried for his safety if it appeared he was getting special treatment from authorities.

“In a compelling exchange, [Rossetti] states . . . he knows he will be protected for the crimes he has been committing with the knowledge of his handler but that he is concerned about the appearance of his not being sent to prison if everyone else in the upcoming case is incarcerated and whether he will be forced to testify before a grand jury,’’ one court filing states.

“His handler promises that [Rossetti’s] safety is his biggest concern and that he will deal with the fallout from the upcoming state wiretap [this wiretap] as it progresses.’’

The conversations continue, with Rossetti calling his handler asking for permission to meet with loan collectors, to back off other collections, and to aid people who needed him to intercede with other criminals on their behalf.

His handler tells him on several occasions that he must file the proper paperwork before he “makes his next move.’’

Stricter FBI guidelines were adopted a decade ago after the bureau’s scandalous relationship with longtime informants and gangsters James “Whitey’’ Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman’’ Flemmi was exposed, requiring more oversight of the agent-informant relationship.

Rossetti’s lawyer on the state charges, Randi Potash, argued that there is no public proof that her client worked as an informant.

“I urge you not to print something very dangerous, not based on facts, and that’s my comment,’’ she said. “It’s not based on public information, it’s not based on facts. It’s hurtful, and I urge you not to print it.’’

The FBI’s mishandling of longtime informants Bulger and Flemmi was exposed in federal court hearings in Boston in 1998, triggering a national scandal resulting in congressional hearings, the revision of the informant guidelines, and an avalanche of lawsuits brought by victims’ families.

Flemmi is serving a life sentence for 10 murders and Bulger is awaiting trial on charges that he killed 19 people, most while he was an FBI informant.

Bulger was arrested June 22 in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years in hiding.

State prosecutors described Rossetti as a violent gangster when they indicted him in October 2010 on charges he ran a criminal enterprise with the involvement of at least 30 other people.

The investigation, conducted by troopers assigned to the State Police Special Services Section, involved the execution of 30 search warrants and the seizure of $1.3 million in cash from extortion cases, $120,000 in alleged drug money, more than a kilo of heroin, a heroin press, 200 pounds of marijuana, a pipe bomb, two bulletproof vests, a rifle, a loaded handgun, and five motor vehicles.

One of the men charged was Darin Bufalino of Winthrop, Rossetti’s alleged “soldier.’’ He pleaded not guilty to attempted extortion, conspiracy to commit attempted extortion, and being a habitual offender.

The Suffolk Superior Court records were filed by Boston attorney Robert A. George on behalf of his clients Joseph Giallanella and Michael Petrillo, two alleged players in Rossetti’s crime ring.

They are seeking to have charges dismissed based on Rossetti’s relationship with the FBI.

According to the documents, they argued that any evidence obtained in relation to Rossetti should be dismissed because his relationship to investigators was not disclosed to judges who approved wiretaps and search warrants.

Milton J. Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com; Shelley Murphy can be reached at shmurphy@globe.com

FBI had OK from police on Rossetti

Agency wanted to maintain wiretap

The Massachusetts State Police warned the FBI last year that it had learned while tapping the phone of reputed Mafia capo Mark Rossetti that he was an FBI informant, but urged the bureau not to drop him, for fear it would make him suspicious and derail its investigation, according to a joint statement issued by the two agencies yesterday.

The FBI was prepared to end its association with Rossetti after learning he was being targeted by the State Police in alleged criminal activity, according to the statement, “however, the Massachusetts State Police specifically requested the FBI continue its association with the individual for logical strategic reasons in furtherance of the State Police investigation.’’

The two agencies cooperated with each other, with coordination from the US attorney’s office, until the investigation culminated last October in a sweeping state indictment charging Rossetti with overseeing a sprawling enterprise involved in heroin and marijuana trafficking, home invasions, gambling, and loan sharking.

The FBI said it ended its association with Rossetti, 52, of East Boston, after his arrest.

Documents filed Thursday in Suffolk Superior Court by two men accused of being low-level players in Rossetti’s alleged crime ring revealed that State Police recorded 44 conversations between Rossetti, talking on an FBI-issued phone, and his handler from February to May 2010. The documents do not identify Rossetti by name, but provide descriptions of the informant’s role in the organization that clearly identify him.

The disclosure that Rossetti was working with the FBI at the same time he was being targeted by the State Police, reported by the Globe yesterday, raises questions about how closely the FBI was monitoring him and whether the bureau was aware of the extent of his alleged activities.

When working with informants, agents must follow clear guidelines, which include a requirement that the FBI report any alleged criminal wrongdoing by an informant to federal prosecutors.

Colonel Marian McGovern, head of the State Police, and Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston field office, issued a statement yesterday in response to the Globe report.

“Specifically, the FBI employees responsible for handling this matter did not engage in any inappropriate activity and acted in accordance with Department of Justice and FBI rules,’’ they said. “They demonstrated a high level of integrity and professionalism.’’

The two agencies did not refer to Rossetti by name in the statement. The FBI would not comment on how long he had been an informant.

David Procopio, a spokesman for the State Police, said the agency contacted the FBI as soon as Rossetti was overheard talking to his handler and urged the bureau to keep the information from the handler and allow the association to continue.

“If the handler was notified and there was a change in the normal pattern of behavior between the two of them, the target would suspect something was up, and it would compromise the value of the wire we had up,’’ Procopio said.

Stricter informant guidelines were adopted a decade ago after the bureau’s corrupt relationship with longtime informants and gangsters James “Whitey’’ Bulger and Stephen “The Rifleman’’ Flemmi was exposed.

Yesterday, retired State Police Colonel Thomas Foley, who spearheaded the investigation that led to murder charges against Bulger and Flemmi, criticized the FBI’s decision to recruit Rossetti as an informant, citing his high-ranking status in the New England Mafia.

“After everything that we have been through with the Bulger case, nothing has been learned, and nothing has been changed,’’ Foley said.

Rossetti “has been a player for a long time,’’ Foley said. “He has been involved in some very serious crimes. . . . How do you balance what he has been out there doing with what kind of information he’s been providing?’’

Foley said it is critical to use informants who are providing information about criminals who are at higher level than themselves.

“You don’t deal down; you deal up,’’ Foley said.

Former US attorney Michael J. Sullivan said the informant guidelines allow agents to use high-ranking members of organized crime as informants, but there are added layers of oversight for handling them.

“You need to make an assessment of what value does the informant bring,’’ Sullivan said. “Can they provide information that gets at the heart of a criminal organization, helps solve unsolved crimes, or provides evidence that takes some dangerous targets off the street? It very much has to be case-specific, but you can’t rule out the value of signing up a high-ranking echelon informant.’’

Sullivan said informants are critically important to all law enforcement agencies.

“I think most people look at them as a necessary evil within their various agencies,’’ he said.

Rossetti was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 1983 for the $300,000 robbery the previous year of an armored truck outside a bank in Revere. In 2001, he was sentenced to 51 months in federal court for being a felon in possession of a weapon.

The Suffolk Superior Court documents that disclosed his informant status were filed by Boston attorney Robert A. George on behalf of his clients Joseph Giallanella and Michael Petrillo, two alleged players in Rossetti’s crime ring. They are seeking to have evidence gathered from the State Police wiretaps suppressed based on Rossetti’s relationship with the FBI.

According to the court filing, Rossetti and his handler discussed possible involvement of Rossetti’s cousin in the 1990 art heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They also discussed other Mafia figures and Rossetti’s debt collections.

James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University, said, “There’s information you can get from informants that you can’t get from anywhere else.’’

But “the issue is you can’t rely too heavily on them,’’ he said. “There’s always issue with the reliability of their information, and law enforcement should work to do its own investigation other than rely on the testimony of nefarious individuals.’’

Gardner Art Heist Theory
It was a cold winter afternoon in 1998, nearly eight years after the theft of 13 priceless artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the FBI finally had some good news for Anne Hawley, the museum director.

As they walked the bare grounds that surround the museum that February day, Special Agent W. Thomas Cassano told Hawley, according to notes made after the conversation: “It looks like we know who did it. One is in jail, one is dead, and one is on the street.”

The FBI, Cassano said, had picked up the Gardner trail during an undercover operation targeting Dorchester crime boss Carmello Merlino. Word was that Merlino, along with three South Shore men, had been responsible for the historic heist

And so the agency went all out. One of the three Merlino confederates was dead, but they pressed the other two hard. Agents put an undercover informant in the jail cell of one, Peter Boylan of Weymouth, and later offered to drop federal charges against the other, David Turner of Braintree, if he would tell what he knew.

No dice.

The men kept their silence, and the investigation, in the end, didn’t yield much. Like so many other apparent clues to what remains the largest unsolved art theft in history, this one led to an apparent cul-de-sac.

Turner and the others are in the news again, courtesy of a new book that identifies Turner as the most likely subject. But the reality is more complicated and elusive, which is ever the way with this case. If claims of proof were the same as proof, the Gardner would have had its paintings back years ago.

Still, there are aspects of the Turner-Merlino tale that remained tantalizing, even as the trail grew cold.

A member of Boylan’s family told the Globe in 2006 that the FBI focus was drawn to Peter Boylan, the son of a Boston police officer, after the young man engaged in idle and baseless boasting about the theft while in a jail cell.

Turner’s lawyer, Robert Goldstein of Boston, said his client has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the Gardner theft. Goldstein questioned why Turner, who is now serving a 30-year prison sentence after being convicted of armed robbery in 2001, would not cooperate with authorities and seek a reduction in sentence.

But while the several FBI agents who have been assigned the case have worked tirelessly chasing tips – the latest being searching without luck two possible stash houses in Maine and Dedham – the investigation has lacked a major commitment of manpower and coordinated strategy. The probe now rests primarily with one FBI agent who is also responsible for investigating other major thefts covered by the Bureau’s Boston office.

In addition, the FBI’s decision to handle the case entirely on its own, without the assistance of local and Massachusetts State Police, has undercut the probe’s effectiveness, according to local and State Police officers. For example, even though State and South Shore police coordinated a drug investigation that kept Merlino, Turner, and others under surveillance during the 18 months before and after the Gardner heist, the assistance of those officers was never sought by the FBI working the Gardner case.

Had they, they might have learned that the surveillance showed that Turner’s girlfriend was telling callers that he was on a “mini-vacation” in Florida during February and March 1990. While in Miami, three days before the Gardner robbery, Turner purchased $645 worth of unspecified merchandise from the Spy Shops International in Miami, a store that specialized in the sale of undercover and electronic surveillance equipment. Also viewed by the Globe was a receipt that showed Turner’s American Express card was used in Fort Lauderdale on the return of a leased car on March 20, 1990, two days after the robbery. While the receipt appears to be signed by Turner, another person’s Social Security card number is written on the receipt, which investigators say suggests someone other than Turner might have been using his credit card that day. Goldstein, Turner’s lawyer, declined comment on the documents.

In addition, Turner was observed by police surveillance in September 1991 carrying an “Oriental vase” from his car into the Boston office of Alfred Sollitto, a lawyer with whom he had become acquainted. Among the 13 items stolen from the Gardner Museum was a vase-like, Chinese bronze beaker. Sollitto acknowledged in an interview that he was a friend of Turner’s but could not recall Turner ever bringing a vase to his office.

On paper, too, the focus on Turner and his comrades made some sense.

Turner was tough, smart, and aggressive and in the months before and after the March 18, 1990 theft at the Gardner, he had pulled off two armed robberies of homes in Canton and Tewksbury. When his two associates in those crimes began cooperating with authorities, both were killed. No one has been charged in the murders, though police questioned Turner about them.

Although he grew up in middle-class Braintree, Turner, according to police, aspired to make it as a mobster. His ticket to that netherworld was provided by Merlino, a convicted drug dealer who ran an auto body shop in Dorchester, and had been aligned with organized crime figures Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and his brother John (Action Jackson) Salemme, since the early 1960s.

Through Merlino, Turner might have learned something about vulnerabilities of the Gardner from Ralph Rossetti, the patriarch of an East Boston crime family, who was friendly with Merlino and had plotted to attack the museum in 1981. FBI agents held an emergency meeting with museum officials in September 1981 and told them Rossetti and another career criminal were planning to throw smoke bombs into the museum during a Tuesday night chamber music performance and in the ensuing chaos speed through the galleries and steal priceless paintings.

Although the pair were not prosecuted for that plot, they were convicted of breaking into a Newton home a few months before the planned Gardner robbery and stealing 23 valued paintings, rare coins, and jewelry.

Ralph Rossetti died in 1998, but Merlino stayed in contact with his family members. The following year he called on Stephen Rossetti of East Boston, Ralph Rossetti’s nephew, to join him in robbing the Loomis-Fargo armored car warehouse in Easton of $50 million.

Turner was the fourth member of the gang.

Turner has also been the focus of some intriguing jail house whispers about the Gardner case. Robert Beauchamp, who is serving a life sentence in MCI-Norfolk, says Turner, accompanied by an associate George Reissfelder, visited him in prison in 1991 and Reissfelder told him they had pulled off the robbery and that the Gardner paintings had been hidden in a house in Maine.

The Loomis-Fargo heist was foiled when the FBI became aware of the scheme through an undercover informant and arrested them before they could reach their target. According Martin Leppo, a Brockton lawyer who represented Merlino and Turner in the past, FBI agents approached both men after their arrests in their holding cells and told them that if they would cooperate on the museum case, the charges against them would be reduced or dropped.

Both maintained their silence then and at trial, and received long prison sentences. Merlino died at age 71 in federal prison in 2005 without providing useful information to the authorities on the Gardner theft. Turner, whom Leppo nicknamed “Hollywood” because of his boyish good looks, is not due to be released until 2032, when he will be 65 years old. “These are not men who cooperate easily,” Leppo said. “Not unless they have nowhere else to turn.”

Art Hostage Comments:

Knowing who committed the Gardner Art Heist does not recover the Gardner Art.

Authorities have been turning a blind eye to many serious crimes over the years in Boston so why not turn a blind eye to the Gardner art coming home ?

Art Hostage does not seek a single dime from any reward offered by the Gardner Museum.

Time for everybody to hold their collective noses and allow the Gardner Art to surface.

Remember for every criminal Italian American there are one hundred honest, hardworking, decent, honourable and patriotic Italian Americans, Charles Vincent Sabba and Anthony Amore to name but two.

Stolen Art Watch, Amore-Sabba, Men Of Respect !!

2011-08-06T14:50:00.007+01:00

Mr. Anthony Amore's portrait will be revealed soon at Gardner Gossips:

http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/

Charles Vincent Sabba states: "I have alot of respect for this man.

As an American art lover, I am content the Gardner Museum had enough sense to hire a such a man of intense ability and high integrity.

As an American of Italian origin, I feel a sense of great pride that a fellow Ital-American is making such a fine contribution to the protection of the cultural patrimony and artistic treasures of the United States of America.

Back in 1990 there was a lot of criticism of the lax, ridiculously low budget security that was in place at the Gardner (indeed, a pothead musician security guard was in on the crime).

I criticized the museum for their security many times, but that was the distant past. Today, thanks to Anthony Amore and his highly professional staff, the most amazing museum in America is secure. Grazie Dottore Amore!"
(B.O.L.O. for your portrait that I will unveil here soon!) http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/

Flashback: Anthony Amore Interview

Art Hostage Interviews Anthony Amore

(1) What is your favourite colour

Anthony Amore: That’s easy: the Azzurro of the Italian national soccer team.

(2) What is your favourite curse word

AA: I have too large a stable to choose from to pick just one.

(3) When you reach Heaven what would you like God to say to you

AA: Anthony, you did your best.

(4) The public reward offer made by the Gardner Museum contains the line “in good condition” can you elaborate on this because some of the stolen Gardner paintings were cut from their frames, therefore their condition could not be described as good.

AA: The Museum’s Board of Trustees is aware that two of the stolen paintings were cut from their frames and were damaged in the process.

This fact was taken into account when the verbiage surrounding the reward offer was crafted and the fact that the paintings were cut from their frames will not adversely affect an individual/s eligibility to cash in on the $5 million reward if the stolen artworks are returned in otherwise good condition.

(5) Can you confirm the amount of stolen artworks from the Gardner museum as there have been indications the list is not completely true, i.e. Eagle was not stolen

AA: I can definitively confirm that thirteen works of art were stolen. The Napoleonic finial which rested atop the flag of Napoleon’s first regiment was indeed among the art objects that were stolen during the heist. Some early newspaper accounts incorrectly stated that twelve pieces were stolen and that reporting error is still perpetuated in articles now and then.

(6) It is common knowledge within the stolen art world, both the Criminal underworld and those who recover stolen art, that Mark Dalrymple and Dick Ellis both met with Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley and subsequent to those meetings both Mark Dalrymple and Dick Ellis came to the conclusion the reward offer was not sincere, can you please put the record straight once and for all.

AA: If your readers can take away only one message from this interview, it is that Anne Hawley is a woman of the utmost integrity.

For more than 18 years, Hawley has stated publicly that the Museum is offering a reward of $5 million for information leading directly to the recovery of the all 13 pieces in good condition.

She would not make this statement if it were not absolutely true. Further, Anne’s commitment is echoed and fully supported by the Museum’s Board of Trustees.

It also bears mention that the Board of Trustees re-authorized the reward this past November – and all of us at the museum look forward to the day when the stolen artworks are returned to the museum and to an awaiting public where they belong and can make good on the $5 million offer.

(7) To prevent any stings and arrests at the actual recovery of the stolen Gardner art, do you agree a neutral place should be chosen and then authorities, or better still Anthony Amore, is directed to the location to collect the stolen Gardner art?

AA: The museum can ensure confidentiality to anyone with information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks. My hope is that whoever is in possession of Mrs. Gardner’s art will come forward in a manner that best protects the condition of the artwork.

(8) If you agree with a neutral location to receive the stolen Gardner art, do you also agree a Catholic Church confession box would be ideal, not least because of the symbol of absolution and also because a Catholic church confession box prevents any trace as to who handed back the stolen Gardner art.

AA: In an absolute best case scenario, I believe it best that the art not be moved at all so that the museum’s conservators can handle any movement, thus protecting the art in the best possible manner. In line with this, I would remind those in possession of the art that it should be stored at 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 50% humidity.

My hope is that an individual/individuals with information that will help us locate the stolen artwork will come forward – and that he or she will come forward in a manner that best protects the condition of the artwork. Again, the museum can ensure complete confidentiality of anyone with information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks.

(9) Geoff Kelly, lead FBI Agent in charge of the Gardner Heist investigation is clearly a thoroughly decent and honest hardworking FBI Agent, how will the FBI react if they are not included in your recovery of the stolen Gardner art, will they allow it to happen, will they stand aside.

AA: Special Agent Kelly has proven to me that his main concern is the return of all of the art in good condition. The FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office, have given me every reason to believe that they are, as is the museum, seeking a successful resolution to this tragedy, not credit.

(10) There have been many references to Ireland during the Gardner Heist investigation can you confirm your findings

AA: As an open, active investigation, I cannot speak to any specific theories or leads in the case – other than to say that the museum follows each and every lead and encourages anyone with any information about the stolen artworks and/or the investigation–no matter how seemingly small – to contact me, Anthony Amore, Director of Security, directly at 617/278-5114 or theft@gardnermuseum.org .

The museum is offering a reward of $5 million for information leading directly to the recovery of the stolen artworks in good condition, and can ensure confidentiality.

(11) Dick Ellis claims he obtained an immunity agreement from the Boston D.A. in 2002, have you obtained an immunity agreement, if so, would it be possible for Art Hostage to post it on the blog so the public, and those in control of the stolen Gardner art can review it.

AA: Because the matter is in the hands of the Federal government, your question would pertain to an immunity agreement from the United States Attorney for Massachusetts. I have no information about such an agreement, although, I can say that United States Attorney Sullivan has in the past expressed a willingness to grant immunity (depending on the circumstances, of course) in this matter.

(12) We have, and the criminal underworld have, seen the Lawyers and private detectives who handed back the Da Vinci Madonna arrested and indicted, what assurances can you offer to allay the fears of those with the stolen Gardner art they will not suffer the same fate

AA: The Museum’s sole concern is the recovery of all of the art in good condition. The Museum is offering a reward for $5 million for information leading to the recovery of the stolen artworks in good condition – and can ensure confidentiality. Anyone with information about the theft or the location of the stolen artworks can contact the museum – and me directly via theft@gardnermuseum.org or my direct line, 617 278 5114. Matters related to arrests and indictment are the responsibility of Federal law enforcement authorities.

(14) Some people have said over the years they thought the Gardner art was really insured and the $5 million reward offer is coming from the insurance payout, can you confirm whether the Gardner art was really insured, and if not, where has the $5 million reward come from and is it sitting in an account waiting to be paid.

AA: The Gardner art was most definitely not insured. These stolen artworks are invaluable and irreplaceable. The $5 million reward is indeed real, and the Museum is eager to disburse the full $5 million the reward for information that leads directly to the return of the stolen artwork in good condition.

(15) How do you intend to pay the reward, have you obtained permission from the FBI and the Boston D.A. to pay the reward without informing them.

AA: The reward is being offered by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, not the FBI or the D.A. and will be paid by the Museum at its discretion on the receipt of information that leads to the return of all of the stolen artworks in good condition. The reward will be awarded at our discretion.

(16) Do you intend to keep FBI Agent Geoff Kelly informed as to your negotiations, or will you work without a net, so to speak.

AA: Special Agent Kelly has expressed his willingness to support me and the museum’s efforts to recover our art. He respects our working relationship and the museum’s needs to pursue its interests directly

(17) Would you be prepared to recover the stolen Gardner art covertly and face the wrath of law enforcement post-recovery.

AA: I don’t foresee facing “the wrath of law enforcement.” I see law enforcement as an understanding partner in my efforts to recover the Gardner’s stolen artworks – and to return them to the museum, and an awaiting public, where they belong.

(18) Would you be prepared to break the law, even go to jail, in recovering the stolen Gardner art.

AA: Absolutely not.

(19) If you were able to only choose one stolen Gardner painting to recover, which one would that be, Art Hostage would choose the Vermeer.

AA: I am well aware of Art Hostage’s love for the Vermeer, and it speaks to your good taste in art! We at the Museum see all 13 pieces as parts separated from the entirety of Mrs. Gardner’s collective work. She placed each of the thousands of pieces of work in the Museum in an exact location in order to create a larger work of art. With even one piece gone, her work is incomplete.

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(20) How do you react to those (Mark Dalrymple) who accuses you of being nothing more than a civil servant pen pusher who has no authority and experience in recovering stolen art.

AA: Mr. Dalrymple and I do not know each other. I’ll assume that this accusation—if truly made—was taken out of context.

(21) Rocky has been working for the Gardner Museum for a few years now and has received payment for his work, how do you react to those (Mark Dalrymple) who say Rocky is just scamming the Gardner Museum without any realistic prospect of recovering any of the stolen artworks.

AA: I cannot confirm that your depiction of Mr. Rokoszynski’s relationship with the Museum is accurate. I can say that I know Mr. Rokoszynski very well. He is an investigator with a record of remarkable success in his distinguished career with Scotland Yard. I trust him and consider him a close friend and valued mentor. In my years of dealing with him, he has acted with honor and integrity. I seek his counsel regularly, and the Museum welcomes his guidance and assistance in our recovery efforts

(22) Finally Anthony, imagine Art Hostage could convince those with the Gardner art to hand the Vermeer back via a Catholic Church confession box, how would they get paid the reward.

AA: I don’t know that it serves the Museum or those in possession of the art well to disclose publicly how the reward would be handled, other than to say that it would be handled legitimately and discreetly. Further, there are myriad ways in which the reward could be paid out, so it is difficult to speak to this with any useful specificity.

(23) Alternatively, lets take it step by step, Anthony could you take us through each step of your proposed recovery of the stolen Gardner art, avoiding arrests and ending with the reward payments made.

AA: Art Hostage, I welcome you to ask me that question again after the recovery!

Thank you for the opportunity to address these important matters – and for the work you do.

Charles Vincent Sabba Interview

Art Hostage- In your painting Michel the Merry Drinker, Michel is so clear it brings the Merry Drinker up to date and allows us to see through the stereotype of a dirty, un-kept drinker.
To me this shows drinking can be merry, even though excessive, it shows life can go on even if heavy drinking is a major part. Why have you painted this depiction of Michel Van Rijn as the Merry Drinker of Frans Hals?

CS- Michel has an interesting face and a strong character. He is one of those larger than life personalities that attempt to force an acknowledgement of their presence and abilities on the world. Many people hate him and some love him, but whether or not you approve of him or his style of operating, an honest person would have to admit Michel, and the life he has lived, is very interesting. Sometimes one crosses paths with a person who believes they are pre-destined for greatness. I wanted to capture this self-confidence in his face and eyes. Yes, as you have said, he does not appear in the picture to be an incoherent, slobbering drinker, but an alert, clear minded human being who is confident of his abilities and possesses self-assuredness that he is destined for greatness. He appears to be cloaked in the dignity of man (as I like to paint all of my subjects), albeit one who indulges in all of the available fruits and joys that life has to offer.
I see an old school adventurer in Michel Van Rijn. Prior to, and in, the early 20th century, we had many freebooters who were steeped in Nietzschean thought, created their own value systems and did not believe that man’s justice could touch or judge them. I’m talking about men like the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, the writer and cultural minister Andre Malreaux and the artist Amedeo Modigliani, to name three of my favorites. Again, whether or not you like them as people or approve of their work is not the point. The point is that they created amazing works and attempted feats of action and daring that you just don’t see as frequently in the world today. Also, they constantly attempted to reinvent themselves making something stronger and more powerful on top of what went before. Michel for sometime had a Machiavellian approach to life and I see in his biography a mirror of Rudiger Safranski’s ideal of Nietzsche’s Ubermensche, that being a combination of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance that was prominent in the Italian Renaissance princes.
I have not always approved of how Michel has treated some of the people he has had issues with in the past, but I respect his abilities, such as his profound knowledge of art and antiquities, his survival skills and some of the amazing feats and stunts he has pulled off. One feat of his I am particularly fond of is the faking of an artifact and getting it included into a major auction house catalogue, only to inform them on the day of the auction that they were duped. The auction had to pull the piece and admit it was a fake. This was Michel’s way of saying that sometimes even our art world’s largest institutions may be corrupted, as he implied that their experts must have known the piece was a fraud, but included it in the catalogue anyway just to make the sale. That stunt showed an inclination of artistic brilliance.

AH- What attracts you to Frans Hals?

CS- I’ve always been very passionate about the Italian old masters and spent a lot of time looking at their works and reading their art histories. I neglected my Dutch studies until I was enchanted by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist magic spell that has been cast on so many of us in the investigative world. I fell in love with Rembrandt’s works of genius and eventually discovered that Frans Hals was an outstanding portrait artist. Hals just resonates with me. One good thing about being an art lover in New York is that our museums own quite a number of Dutch works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals.

AH- The Gardner Gossips blog was created to promote the huge canvas Gardner Gossips, what is the back-story to this project?
http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/

CS- This painting is 8 feet tall and 6 feet 8 inches wide. There are two versions of 32 different faces all talking to each other. Paul “Turbo” Hendry commissioned this piece for his son last March. He told me he thought it would be appropriate if an artist painted most of the main suspects and characters who have been involved in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist investigation. Turbo mused that over the last twenty years many suspects, investigators, reporters, writers, curators, documentary film directors and art experts have had much to say about the heist, who they thought pulled it off, and where they thought the paintings are, but to date no one really has a clue. Many books have been written, but they are books without an ending. Thousands of articles have been written that have started out with “On March 19, 1990, at 01.24 hrs, two thieves dressed as cops…. .” There has been a lot of talk and many leads in the investigation, but not a trace of the $500 million in art.
I start the picture with Isabella Stewart Gardner, she is talking to Rembrandt and it appears she is telling him his works are about to get nicked off of the walls. He turns to the person next to him and tells him. This continues through all 32 subjects and ends with the last person turning back to Isabella. Every character we chose for this canvas is bigger then life. Very interesting people with very handsome and beautiful, strong features. One cannot find an American in history much more interesting then the eccentric art-loving Isabella. There are the reporters Mashberg, Kurjian, Jill Rackmill and Brian Ross; suspects like William Youngworth and Myles Connor, who were once close friends and then ended up bitter enemies; Gangsters like Whitey Bulger and the FBI agent Connolly who was in Bulger’s pocket. Don’t forget the politico Bulger who grew up with his brother Whitey and agent Connolly in the Southie projects. There are many very intricate and intriguing stories behind all of the people and their relationships to each other on this canvas that transforms it into a Herculean epic poem in oil paint.
My friend William P. Youngworth III visited my studio and posed for portraits. He is the first person who is depicted on the canvas to see it in person the second was Oliver Hendry when he visited last March. Billy Youngworth is an amazing person and again, he epitomizes what I am saying about the wide array of characters, one more interesting then the other that has been a part of the Gardner heist tragedy. Billy was really beat up by everyone since he emerged as a suspect. He was attacked and double crossed by the Feds and law enforcement, he was thoroughly abused by the press, especially Tom Mashberg who attempted to “smoke him out,” and he was even targeted by some criminal groups, one of which planned to kidnap his son to force him to reveal info about the whereabouts of the stolen masterpieces. In spite of all of these trials and hardships he remained strong. He proved to be quite resilient, A real survivor. Billy never changed or backed away from his claim to be able to help facilitate the return of those art works. Everyone thought he would break or make mistakes, but he was very stoic and toughed out the hardships. Now, years later he owns and runs an extremely successful antiques business. More importantly he has proven to be a loyal husband and a loving father. His kids have turned out great. He has now turned his back on the Gardner caper and confidently states that both the museum and the authorities blew their only chance to recover the works. He boldly states that the works won’t resurface for at least another hundred years. I have painted Billy onto the Gardner canvas as he appeared back in the 1990s, and I am currently painting two portraits of him as he appears now. He has been a great supporter of me as an artist and has visited both my old Manhattan studio and my current New Jersey studio in the Rahway Arts District of Rahway, New Jersey many times.
http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/

AH- What are you trying to achieve by depicting figures from the art crime world and where do you see the convergence sometimes referred to as the grey area?

CS- First and foremost my ardent desire is to conduct “visual investigations” in the art theft world. I, as a trained police observer and visual artist, wish to document this realm in the same spirit that the war artists documented the people and action of WWII. This is my niche; this subject is what I, as an artist who is employed as a law enforcement officer, was naturally attracted to and fascinated by.
Second in importance is getting to know interesting people in the art world. I want to approach these portrait subjects, not as a police officer, but as an artist. I want to establish myself as a neutral observer. My intention is not to lock these people up, or get them charged for crimes they may have had committed, my intention is only to paint the involved men in women in all their human dignity. I want to know everyone in the art crimes arena. I want to forge true friendships with people I can trust, but I am also content in developing instrumental friendships and mere acquaintances as well. I will let the person’s words, actions and sincerity decide what group they are slotted into in my mind. I like to know very interesting people in the art scene and art theft investigators, art thieves, antiquities smugglers, forgers, and stolen art fences have proven to be very, very fascinating to talk to. Many reporters and investigators often insist there aren’t lady or gentlemen thieves who are aesthetes who appreciate the beauty in that in which they steal. Also, many of the masters and doctorates in the art world underestimate the level of art history knowledge an investigator or police officer can attain. To the art snobs that are out there, and unfortunately there are some, both groups are just knuckle draggers and thugs with mediocre or no level of sophistication. I can tell you that amongst both art theft investigators and art world criminals, I have found some very intellectual people who have a sound grasp of art history and art theory and have a feel for what is going on in the contemporary scene as well. Granted, the conversation is usually dominated by, or at least flows back into, business as usual, that being the investigations, art crimes, market place values, and war stories. But don’t underestimate criminals and never underestimate the police. A good investigator can attain important knowledge swiftly when he gets on a case and there are many lady and gentlemen gumshoes out there prone to aesthetic thought. I remember when I first met Scotland Yard’s Vernon Rapley I was impressed that he would spend his lunch breaks visiting the National Gallery. I think veteran investigators like Col. Musella, Gen. Conforti, Dick Ellis, Charlie Hill, and Bob Wittman can hold their own in conversations with the best in the curatorial field. As far as criminals go, if they are art lovers and they get locked up, they have the advantage of time to devour art history and theory books and magazines in the prison library or in their cell, and time is a commodity many of us don’t have. When I studied at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, one of the teachers, Monroe Denton, insisted we read the NY Times daily, all the art magazines in existence, all the important works by various critics, and many, many important art theory books. I have tried to keep this impossible discipline up the best I can, but there is so much to read and learn and so little time to accomplish this. Convicts have nothing but time on their hands and some are very well read.
Before I became a police officer I worked as a correctional officer for four and a half years. I worked a full year in a federal maximum security witness protection unit and I met a convict there who was involved in the art world. I told this protected “pentito” that Michelangelo Buonarroti was a hero artist of mine and he turned me onto De Tolnay’s writings. He couldn’t believe I had not read DeTolnay. He also turned me onto the Irving Stone novel Agony and Ecstacy which I ended up loving. So you see, knowledge and influence can come from the least expected places and I like to absorb from all interesting people I meet. I study them, pick their brains, then suck knowledge from them and make it my own. That is one way I constantly reinvent myself and build on what was there before.
Third and not least, I hope to build enough trust in the criminal circles that they get comfortable enough to tell me important info that may be helpful in stolen art recoveries. Hopefully, after word gets out that I can be trusted and am not out to hurt anyone or get them locked up, I will be asked to act as a middleman in recoveries between both law enforcement/institutions and the thieves. There is a sort of hairdresser effect when someone is painting your portrait. Everyone opens up to the hairdresser and barber. They end up being the all knowing in a neighborhood. The same goes for a portrait artist. People get comfortable and open up.

AH- What draws you towards the law enforcement and underworld figures that operate within the art crime arena?

CS- In the art crime arena, as in all areas of the art world, you can meet both boring art snobs as well as exciting, interesting people. The murky seas of the world of art crimes is very small and the people who navigate its waters often cross paths and know each other, or at least know of each other. I, as a navigator in this perpetual odyssey of human creation, want to be known as the explorer who actually charted those waters visually.
You could never find more interesting people, or stronger intellects, as you find in the art crimes arena. The art theft investigators you find there, such as Vernon Rapley, Ian Lawson, Michelle Roycroft, Dick Ellis, Col. Musella, Robert Wittman, to name a few are the most upstanding and dedicated law enforcement personnel I have ever met. To me, they are the defenders of culture and their level of excellence and dedication to recovering the world’s patrimony should never be underrated.
As far as criminal operators go, many are common thugs, some are crafty thieves that a Dickensesque Fagin would delight in breaking bread with, and a small number are actually accepted as geniuses who possess artistic brilliance, much like the poet Villon is accepted as, yes a criminal, but also an important poet.
Myles Connor is a fascinating example to discuss. Other police officers feel I should hate him because of his criminal past, not to mention that he once shot a cop. As an artist, I can’t help but see the strong visual in his face from various points of his life. I’ve painted him with his beard twice and he posed for me last year clean shaven while holding one of his 16th century Samurai swords from his collection. This is an outstanding portrait of Myles. I had lunch with him in Blackstone, Massachusetts last year, right after his book came out, and I really enjoyed hearing the episodes from the book first hand. For me life and literature, and life and art, often are a seamless unity. I don’t believe in judging people’s ethics or morals, I only judge levels of artistic skills and knowledge of art and aesthetics. Are you a Bourgeois Philistine, or are you an artist or aesthete. As far as ethics and morals are concerned, who is actually fit to judge these things? I am a cop. I arrest people. I’m not a judge. A judge sits on the bench and gets paid more then me. So I can strike up a friendship and break bread with any man or woman who shows me respect and offers a handshake in friendship.
When Myles was arrested for the art thefts at the Woolworth Estate and faced a long sentence with a habitual offender tag, a Rembrandt “fell off of the wall” at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Myles helped facilitate the return of the painting and received a reduced sentence. This was a perfect example of the mix of ruthless warrior pride and artistic brilliance I previously discussed. It was a brilliant move and in itself can be viewed as a conceptual art piece worthy of Maurizio Cattalan’s approval. As you may recall, Maurizio Catalan once burglarized the Galerie Bloom in Amsterdam and stole all of the gallery’s contents- the artworks, fax machines, filing cabinets-everything. He packed up the gallery’s property in boxes and transported them to Galerie de Appel where he exhibited them the next day under the title Another Fucking Readymade. This “theft” was a statement about displacement; one gallery was transported completely to another. The police were soon summoned. The owners of Galerie Bloom soon calmed down and made a deal to not press the issue if Maurizio would do a show in their gallery on a future date, so he did not get arrested and got another art show out of it. Brilliant.
Don’t get me wrong, I think art theft and art crimes involving the world’s cultural property are serious crimes against humanity, just as detrimental to humankind as genocide, human trafficking and slavery. But in both Myles and Maurizio’s cases works and items were stolen with the intention to return them and in both cases they were indeed returned with the actors’ desired results. Si guarda al fine, or the ends justify the means in an artistic sense. We as a society sometimes need to laugh at things. One of the reasons Andre Malraux had the big rift with the Surrealists was because he thought they took themselves too seriously. Malraux always said we shouldn’t take things too seriously and I agree- a little bohemian fumisme and blague is needed in life. And to avoid any criticisms or nasty phone calls, I do want to make it clear that I do not condone of the theft of the BMFA’s Rembrandt, nor do I find humor in it. As far as I remember, and this story was told to me by a participant in that crime, a guard was almost shot in this crime. There were guns present in the get away vehicle, so this was far from funny and a very serious crime. My point again is the artistic brilliance of the plot. This was a very creative chess move that got Myle’s a reduced sentence. I’m not one to judge morals or ethics, just ability and artistic creativity. Machiavelli and Cesare Borgia would have approved of the action as long as it went as planned. When the Pazzis killed Giuliano De’ Medici but failed to kill Lorenzo, the Florentine populace, who supported the Medici, still thought the plan was ingenious. The Pazzi were dubbed idiots not because they attempted to seize political power but because they failed. Their crime was not the murder of a Medici in the middle of the Eucharistic celebration, the crime was that they planned something that ultimately failed and led to their demise. I respect action and ability

AH- What is your favourite color?

CS- I love the entire color spectrum and for me they must be taken in by the retina in combinations to have a true psychological or emotional effect. I will use the colors of the heroic revolutions of the West as an example: red, white and blue (U.S.A. and France- rights of man); red, white and green (Italian Unification/ Young Italy); green, white and orange (Irish Independence); black, red, purple ( I Carbonari); to name a few, but not all, of the colors and flags I love.

AH- What is your favorite curse word, both in English and Italian?

CS- I don’t like to curse in English, because cursing in English sounds too vulgar and raunchy. Cursing in Italian can be very poetic and expressive. I say Non me ne frego un cazzo a lot. It was a favorite statement of one of my favorite poets, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and it exemplifies a stress free attitude towards life that I have accepted.

AH- Have you ever painted whilst drunk?

CS- Of course but it is very rare. When I work I am totally involved in my subject matter and do not need mind altering stimulus. I like to drink wine with my meals. My favorite is Barbera. I really love Sandro Chia’s wine as well. Sandro Chia founded his Castello Romitorio in 1984 and his wine is superb. I have become close friends with one of his U.S. distributors here in the U.S. I met this wine distributor at Sandro Chia’s last art exhibition at the Charles Cowels Gallery in Chelsea. I also met Sandro’s son Filippo who helps run Castello Romitorio.
Other then moderate drinking of wine with dinner, I only drink heavy when I’m out with my artist friends in Manhattan or Brooklyn. We like to party and absinthe, the real stuff, not the American version, is our favorite.

AH- Dean Martin portrayed himself as a drunk on stage, however, the truth was he only drank apple juice and the playing drunk was part of the act, do you think alcohol helps or hinders creating art?

CS- Unfortunately the art world has become quite conservative and it is frowned upon for an artist to attend exhibitions or art lectures intoxicated. In the 1980s and 1970s people were wild and had fun, but today one has to keep a professional bearing. I, however, like to remind myself of Henri Muger’s words of wisdom that art is more of a faith then a profession. Modigliani always painted while he was very drunk, but I would think any form of intoxication would usually hinder a creative flow.

AH- If you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would that be?

CS- Is that a romantic dinner date? I would definitely ask out Susan Valadon. Or any of the following sexy, intelligent ladies: Josephine baker, Lee Miller, Berthe Morisot. Oh yea, how about Lucrezia Borgia. I bet Lucrezia would be a hot date.

AH- What is your relationship with Oliver Samuel Hendry?

CS- Oliver is an amazing young man. I have no doubt that he will soon be known internationally as the new brilliant young British art collector on the scene. Oliver already has many of my works in his huge art collection. He has bought my entire past raisonne, or at least what I had left on hand, he has the 8’ by 6’ 8” Gardner Gossips and has paid in full in advance, he also commissioned and paid in full a 8’ by 10’ painting of the U.S. Presidents, and he is in the process of buying 32 portraits, all 24” x 28”, of various people involved in the art crimes arena.
The first time I met Oliver was last September when I stayed with him and his pop at their beach front home on the English Channel. Then he stayed with me for nine days here in the States when he came over to attend my art exhibition at the Y Gallery New York in the Bowery. We are going to spend time in Italy this July and August and I will visit them again in England next spring, when I am going to do an Ireland, England, Amsterdam sweep again in an attempt to get more art crimes subjects to pose for me. All in all, the Hendry’s are getting close like family.
My advice is to keep your eye on this kid, because he is going to be bigger then Charles Saatchi, or at least will be on a first name basis with Saatchi and attending his cocktail parties.

AH- What is your relationship with Turbo Paul Hendry?

CS- I first heard of Paul “Turbo” Hendry when I attended the Art & Antiques Crimes course in 2004. This was a class held by the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit at Scotland Yard. I then saw him in the Gardner Heist documentary Stolen. A brighton film company interviewed me and Billy Youngworth for a documentary called the Art of the Heist. Turbo and Dick Ellis were also in this and I was already curious about him. Then Ulrich Boser interviewed me for his Harper Collin’s book Gardner Heist. My self and Youngworth were in one chapter and Turbo was in another. So, long story short, I asked Ulrich to get me in contact with Turbo. As I said before, I like to know all the zany, interesting people in the art world and Turbo looked like a fun guy to know. Once we made contact, I turned him onto Skype and we would sit and talk about art and art theft cases for hours. We have really become best of friends. He is an amazing guy and much like Youngworth, was someone with a criminal past who completely turned his life around. He went on to further his education late in life and achieved his Masters Degree. He can talk fast and intelligently without missing a beat or losing his train of thought. I think this is an amazing skill. Also, he is very intuitive, almost psychic, in a way that he can sense what someone is feeling or thinking. These skills were acquired back in his “knocker” days and he has continued to perfect them.

AH- What would you like God to say to you when you finally meet?

CS- A lot of my outlook on art has been influenced over the years by the thoughts and beliefs of Michelangelo Buonarotti. In fact, he was such a heroic figure in my life that I named one of my daughters Michelangela in his honor. Michelangelo believed that an artist, instead of a mere imitator of nature, was a second creator, or a lesser creator under God’s guiding light. The artist as quasi-deity, whose mission on earth is to create. Nature is a weak reflection of reality, but God shared a small amount of his creative force with the artists and it is they who recreate the true reality of the world of ideas. When I am finally confronted by God the absolute artist, the creative force of the universe, I hope he will look at me and say that I was a good artist and that I fulfilled my mission on earth and left behind a significant body of work.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Coming Home, Carmen Cleans Closet

2011-07-25T15:20:00.006+01:00

For US attorney, another legal challenge

Bulger trial is Ortiz’s latest high-profile case

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/25/for_us_attorney_bulger_trial_is_latest_high_profile_case/?page=full

She is the United States attorney who barked back at former city councilor Chuck Turner, and it was her administration that convicted former House speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, once one of the most powerful political figures in Massachusetts.

US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz took office only 18 months ago and already she has amassed a list of successes, highlighted by the new flier in her office listing notorious fugitive James “Whitey’’ Bulger as captured.

Her next goal, she says with a smirk: to crack the mysterious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.

“I’m still holding out hope on that one,’’ said Ortiz, tapping the wooden coffee table in her ninth-floor office in the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse, overlooking Boston Harbor.

“Knock on wood,’’ she added. “I always knock on wood.’’

Ortiz, 55, has quickly become a high-profile figure, with her short tenure in office marked by the successful prosecutions of Turner and DiMasi on corruption charges as well as the conviction of former state senator Dianne Wilkerson for bribery. And she now will be watched closely as she prosecutes Bulger on a racketeering indictment that includes accusations of 19 murders.

Ortiz said it was always part of her plan to maintain a public presence, even if she never expected it to be in such a bright spotlight.

“It’s one of my key priorities, being public, to really let the community know what we’re about,’’ she said in a recent interview. “The most important part of my job is seeing the ability to make an impact, to make an impact on the community.’’

She added, with a deep breath, “It’s gone by extremely quick, in so many different arenas.’’

The more difficult task, she and others say, is to sustain the attention on her office with the work she vowed to do when US Senator John Kerry and the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy nominated her for the post.

While keeping the core philosophies of her predecessors to prioritize terrorism and corruption, she has also made her imprint on the office, strengthening the white-collar crimes unit to prosecute more economic and health care fraud, and creating a new civil rights enforcement team.

In addition, she has worked with police officials at the local level to promote youth programs and to prosecute violent crimes, a deterrent strategy because of the tougher sentences at the federal level.

“A lot of people don’t understand the role of the US attorney and the substantial impact it has, especially at the most local level,’’ said Michael Sullivan, Ortiz’s predecessor as US attorney, for whom she worked as a prosecutor in the economic crimes unit.

“I think as part of that she’ll have to communicate herself, in terms of where she wants to move the office and where she is right now,’’ Sullivan said.

Ortiz began making headlines when she was first nominated and appointed, becoming the first female - and the first Hispanic - US attorney in Massachusetts.

A mother of two daughters, she lost her husband, Michael, to cancer in 2000. On Saturday she married Thomas Dolan, an IBM employee.

Ortiz has spent her career as a lawyer, serving for 12 years as an assistant federal prosecutor and before that as a state prosecutor. She has also worked on social rights issues, such as a US State Department program two decades ago to help reform the legal system in Guatemala.

She is at once personable and guarded, watching her words as an attorney would, while speaking with the passion of a public servant. She is the federal prosecutor who lashed out at Turner for comparing his plight to that of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, saying “Mr. Turner is no Rosa Parks, he’s a convicted felon.’’

A graduate of Adelphi University and George Washington University Law School, Ortiz says her work is defined by her humble roots in New York City’s tough Spanish Harlem.

She has instituted a diversity hiring committee. And she works to serve as a role model for women and minorities.

“I hope I’m leading an office that really represents justice for all,’’ she said.

Recently, she played a more intimate role, in Bridges, a sort of collaborative in which federal law enforcement officials and members of the Muslim-American community meet regularly to establish and maintain relations. From that collaborative, several Somali women have formed their own group and meet regularly with representatives of Ortiz’s staff.

“We’re not just about law enforcement,’’ she said. “We should be playing a role in the community; that’s part of our job.’’

Ortiz may be enjoying her recent successes, but the future holds challenges, too.

Defense lawyers continue to question whether federal prosecutors should be handling so many low-level crimes, such as drug offenses, as has been the practice. Some argue that federal resources should be dedicated to more serious issues such as fraud and white-collar crime.

Individual groups have spoken out against prosecutorial decisions, too. Just last week, tens of thousands of supporters of open and free access to information on the Internet rallied behind a Cambridge man who was indicted in federal court on computer fraud charges, saying that criminal prosecution is too severe and Ortiz was being overzealous.

And dozens of supporters of Tarek Mehanna are expected to make headlines in the coming months as they plan to protest Ortiz’s office in support of the Sudbury native, who goes to trial in October on terrorism-related charges.

Martin Weinberg, a respected local attorney, whose client Richard Vitale was the only defendant acquitted in the DiMasi trial, said it is too early in Ortiz’s tenure to determine what stamp she will leave on her office. But he said she gets high marks for the team she formed, with prosecutors who have served in the Massachusetts district for years, including James Lang, head of the criminal division, and Jack Pirozzolo, the first assistant attorney.

“Eighteen months is a start, and she is at the beginning of a start, rather than at the end of a tenure,’’ Weinberg said. “But you want to look at the history, the character identity of those she’s put in positions of authority; it is skilled prosecutors who are running the office. It’s a professional office.’’

Ortiz welcomes the scrutiny and even the criticism, saying it’s one of the reasons she has sought to stay in the public’s eye.

It’s what she promised Kerry and Kennedy, as she recounts a heartfelt conversation with the late senator in which she told him she would “make him proud.’’ She keeps a photo of Kennedy’s old Washington, D.C., office near her desk, among mementos of her accomplishments.

“He was enormously impressed by her, her life story,’’ said Eric Mogilnicki, Kennedy’s former chief of staff, who met with Ortiz recently. “She’s no stranger to the ups and downs of life, so I’m very confident she’ll be able to handle whatever the future holds for her.’’

Art Hostage Comments:

Carmen Ortiz knows full well who committed the Gardner Heist, who handled the Gardner art afterwards and what it will take to recover the Gardner art. This has been known for many years to Law Enforcement but they did not want to concede one inch of ground in recovering the Gardner art. That is about to change so to speak and much will be revealed very shortly.

Gardner Degas on paper is already in the bag and has been for quite some time.

Things are happening on several fronts which will provide good news very soon.
Art Hostage does not want to reveal all just yet but will do so as soon as the coast is clear.

Carmen News conference is on the agenda pretty dam quick if all goes to plan, but there is enough Gardner art news to report already, so, over to you Carmen Ortiz, go on, throw it out there !!!

to be continued..................

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Charles Vincent Sabba, Patrick Nee, Blessed Be The Peacemakers

2011-07-21T13:25:00.010+01:00

Did Whitey Bulger just drop William Youngworth's name to the Feds as a past possessor of the stolen Gardner artworks?

http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/2011/07/did-whitey-bulger-just-drop-william.html

Did Whitey Bulger just drop William Youngworth's name to the Feds as a past possessor of the stolen Gardner artworks? Obviously immunity is completely out of the question for Bulger who is facing multiple homicide charges, so even if he could (and he cannot!) negotiate the artworks return it would not benefit him one bit. But he must know something about America's most tragic cultural loss. We are Gardner Gossips hear from the street that Whitey is whispering about who was involved. Here is what Billy Youngworth has to say:

"And its strike three-They finally had to haul Whitey in and “No Art”. How sad for the Gardner. Maybe you're still holding out hope. Sometimes its all you have. I bet the “world’s biggest crime scene” attraction is even petering out. The original racketeering indictment against Whitey has been dismissed so we won’t have to go through 30 years of dirty laundry. How convenient! What still dumbfounds me is you had it (the art works) all in your hands. This all could have ended where everyone walked away happy and now its an investigative text book on failure. The are even going to that ass clown who wrote that silly Gardner book as an authority here. Face it-its all gone, gone, gone! If there ever is an ending it won’t make a bit of difference to anyone around now. After I’m gone come see my son and explain to him why he had to grow up without his mother then maybe he’ll tell you something I’ll pass onto to him. But for right now, save it. I can’t help you anymore. "

William P. Youngworth, III

Myles Connor: New England's most notorious art thief

http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/2011/07/myles-connor-new-englands-most.html

Charles Vincent Sabba says: "The last time I saw Myles, we spent a nice day together in his hometown of Blackstone, Massachussetts. We ate Thai food and he fascinated me with his stories, which I had recently read in his book. It was nice hearing them first hand. Myles invited me into his home and showed me some of his antique Samurai sword collection. Alot of people believe I should hate Myles because he caused alot of problems for the police over the years (he broke out of jail, he shot a cop, he admits to pulling off over 20 art heists, he blew up a house in Mexico, to name a few). "A very famous and genuine master of martial arts (Bagua Quan to be precise, a version of an original Daoist Temple martial art that retained its temple standard in the modern era) stated that there exists a code of ethics based on respect for mastery; an appreciation for, and recognition of, the discipline it has taken, regardless whether one is on the side of good or evil, to reach a command of awareness and control. I respect Myle's grasp of beauty and art and his deep understanding of art and beauty. Many good citizens, the butcher, baker and candlestick maker could give two sheisse about art and beauty. And, Myles knows how to use those Samurai swords with expertise! So, if he shows me respect I show him respect.

Funny thing is, I don't think his lawyer, Marty Leppo , approved of me and didn't trust me because I was a cop. I think this is hillarious! Think of the irony of a defense lawyer who defended many, many mob guys and, and helped some beat their charges, saying you can't trust a cop. I hope you have a sense of humor Marty, I'm just joking ;-) One problem was my friendship with Youngworth. You see, Billy and Myles once were very close friends (in fact, I think Myles taught him Japanese Karate when he was only 16 years old). Billy claims he was the one who stole the Rembrandt from the Boston MFA on Myle's behest (the Rembrandt that Myles used to negotiate a lighter sentence back in the day). A kid with a pair of sneakers doing a sort of daytime smash-and-grab worth big denaro. I would love to see them actually become friends again, but I guess I can be to positive some times (they had a BIIIG falling out)."

The Feds offered Myles full immunity to talk about the Gardner Heist last year and they boasted the fact that he had nothing to say. But, one catch they didn't add to the news story is that along with granted immunity one would have to reveal everything he knew about the heist, including involved persons. Guys like Myles Connor don't talk. He would never, never accept immunity if he had to drop names of past friends or acquaintances. Note that at the end of his book, he thanks many people, including Mr. Patrick Nee. Mr. Patrick Nee is a big shot in Boston and was the leader of the Mullins (and he would be more valuable in tracking Gardner artworks then Whitey Bulger could ever be). Connor, who knows big people, and believes enough in his outlaw code to boast about his outlaw life in a book, would never, never talk. So the offer of immunity was a feeble attempt.

Art Hostage Comments:

Whilst others have wained and dissmissed William Youngworth, Art Hostage has always had faith that William Youngworth can help recover the Gardner art.

It would come as no surprise to learn Whitey Bulger has named William Youngworth as someone who had access to the Gardner art.

Above all else and cutting to the chase, the one person who stands tall above all else in the whole Gardner art debacle is Mr Patrick Nee, the one person who commands respect from all quarters and still retains the gratitude of the Irish Republican Movemant in Ireland from the soldiers right up to the leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein.
Patrick Nee has always been the number one Boston guy to brocker a deal for the Gardner art.

"Pat Nee would lay down his life for Irish freedom"
Martin Ferris Senior Sinn Fein Politician

"Paddy Nee stood tall as others fell by the wayside when it comes to the Irish Struggle" Gerry Adams Sinn Fein President

"Pat Nee is one of the few who I would have welcomed into the IRA South Armagh Brigade"
Thomas Slab Murphy IRA Chief of Staff

"An ocean away did not stop Patrick Nee from waging his own war for Irish freedom" Bobby Storey IRA Intelligence Chief

Memo to William Youngworth and Myles Connors:

The Irish ended the war with a peace deal and they put bitter differences behind them for the greater good.

In a similar vain Art Hostage extends an Olive branch to William Youngworth and Myles Connor to end their dispute and begin the negociating process that will see a peace deal agreed.

I am certain Charles Vincent Sabba is ready to brocker the deal and allows both William Youngworth and Myles Connor to agree to a ceasefire followed by a signed peace deal.

Charles Vincent Sabba also stands ready to bridge the divide between the Gardner Museum and those who can help recover the Gardner art.

Charles Vincent Sabba is depicting the Gardner Art Heist on canvas, recording the Gossip that has followed the Gardner case since 1990, see link to keep up with devlopments: http://gardnergossips.blogspot.com/

Charles Vincent Sabba, Patrick Nee Blessed be the Peacemakers !!!

Stolen Art Watch, Joe LaFratta jr. Balls of Steel, Names Mark Rossetti as Whitey Bulger-esque FBI Informant !!

2011-07-11T19:23:00.011+01:00

Mafioso Mark Rossetti arraigned in court

http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/undercover/mafioso-mark-rossetti-arraigned-in-court-20100521

LYNN (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - In Lynn District Court, Essex county prosecutor John Dawley confirmed what FOX Undercover has already reported. Law enforcement believes Mark Rossetti is a captain In the Italian mob.

Rossetti currently holds the rank of capo in la cosa nostra. He has been a member of the Boston mafia and that arm for more than 20 years.

The prosecutor says Rossetti used his position in the mafia to help run a heroin ring.

FOX Undercover was there when a handcuffed Rossetti was brought into the state police barracks in Danvers Thursday. The culmination of a months-long investigation.

Rossetti is charged with trafficking heroin. The prosecutor says Rossetti brought a heroin supplier and a drug dealer together in the driveway of Rossetti’s East Boston home.

That's where state police arrested Rossetti and some of his five co-defendants. Rossetti’s clout with the mafia was clear last fall when we recorded this exclusive video at rosette’s mother's wake in East Boston.

The men believed to run the mafia in New England gathered to pay their respects.

There was Peter Limone, the boss of the New England mob, and Bobby Deluca, the underboss, up from Providence, R.I.

Rossetti’s attorney says her client is severely disabled with arthritis and surviving only on a social security benefit.

She said police didn't find drugs or other evidence at his house and questioned whether he was the kingpin prosecutors made him out to be.

FOX Undercover obtained Rossetti’s criminal record and it's long. It dates back to the 1970s and includes convictions for armed assault with intent to kill and multiple firearms charges.

The judge cited Rossetti’s record when he ordered him held on $250,000 cash bail.

Boston Mafia Capo turned rat | The Next Whitey Bulger | FBI up to its old tricks

http://con-sulting.blogspot.com/

Joe LaFratta jr says: "Word on the street is that a Boston Mafia Capo (MARK ROSSETTI) has been a top echelon informant for the FBI for the past 10 years"

It would seem that the FBI is up to its old tricks. This guy was selling heroin out of his mother's house, extorting people, robbing drug dealers and is a suspect on multiple murders all while working with the Government.

I thought all of those Congressional hearing on informat procedures and the new guidelines were supposed to curtail this kind of thing. Then again I bet the FBI just doesn't care about "laws" and "rules". Those things have NEVER applied to them.

I guess they don't care about the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been paid out by the Government to all of the men they wrongfully convicted and the family's of victims of their informants. And why should they? It is all coming out of your pocket, the American tax payer, not theirs.

The Mass State Police arrested this guy for selling heroin last year along with a bunch of hispanic males. The Mass State Police have a long history of going up against FBI informants like this going back to Whitey Bulger. The Mass State Police actually want to charge people for committing crimes, unlike the FBI. The FBI don't care if you commit crimes as long as you work for them. Even murder is acceptable.

This case is going to get uglier and uglier as it goes on but remember you heard it here first MARK ROSSETTI is a RAT and has been working with the FED's for YEARS.

LET THE FUN BEGIN. Joe LaFratta jr

Stolen Art Watch, FBI Foxes Guarding The Whitey Bulger Hen-House !!

2011-07-10T15:46:00.006+01:00

Livid Reward Seeker Says FBI Ignored His '08 Tip About Whitey Bulger in L.A

In today's 15 minutes of fame news, comes a newly re-circulating story of a man named Keith Messina who is miffed the FBI didn't do anything about his hot tip that he saw Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in Santa Monica in 2008. Now, of course, Messina wants a cut of the $2 million reward cash.

The call was fielded by "America's Most Wanted," who have aired 16 pieces about the fugitive over the years. Those broadcasts resulted in 2,000 possible leads. The night Messina called in there were about 200 tips about Bulger logged by the popular crime-stopping show.

Messina, who hails from Las Vegas, is "livid" the feds ignored his tip in 2008. He told his tale to the Boston Herald:

“The FBI should at least come out and say that they did get a call three years ago. If they had called me back, they would have struck gold. But you know how they play their games, the feds. I guess this whole hunt for Whitey Bulger was a game. Now they are saying someone in Iceland found Whitey? Who is that person? I found Whitey three years ago.”
“I didn’t make the call for the reward. I just wanted the guy caught. But now the FBI is lying and saying the reward is going to Iceland. I saw the guy. I did the right thing and called. I left my name and number. I should be at least entitled to something."

Bulger was arrested, along with his girlfriend, on June 22 at their Santa Monica apartment. He pleaded not guilty to 19 counts of murder this week in a Boston court. The FBI is sticking by their guns; the reward bucks are Iceland-bound.

Mexican authorities want to prosecute officials responsible for program

http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=10247

by Jack Minor

Lawmakers from both houses, investigating Operation Fast and Furious, fired off a terse and angry letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, accusing him of issuing "false denials" and "distorting the truth."

On Independence Day, acting ATF head, Kenneth Melson, testified before Congress with his own attorney present. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Melson chose July 4 to show the public he was appearing voluntarily and on his own time.

Melson was scheduled to appear before Congress July 13, with DOJ and ATF lawyers present. According to Issa, Melson was never told by the justice department that he was able to attend a voluntary interview with his own lawyer present.

During the interview, Melson said when he first learned of the operation, he was, "sick to my stomach." He went on to say that he moved to reassign every manager involved in Fast and Furious; however, he was not allowed to tell Congress of the reason for the reassignments.

Following Melson's testimony, Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, fired off a five page letter to Holder.

Grassley and Issa said in the letter, "If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand. That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation." It went on to say, "The Department's inability or unwillingness to be more forthcoming served to conceal critical information that we are now learning about the involvement of other agencies, including the DEA and the FBI."

Holder's office responded with a letter, saying, "We reject entirely any suggestion that our extraordinary efforts have been designed to limit rather than facilitate the committee's access to information."

Operation Fast and Furious involved government officials permitting straw purchases to members of Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to identify higher-ups in the organizations. Over 2,000 guns were sold and they have been linked to the death of at least two Americans, border patrol agent, Brian Terry, and ICE agent, Jaime Zapata. Last week, ABC News reported Fast and Furious weapons were used in several crimes in Arizona.

The "higher-ups" authorities who were attempting to identify with the operation were already known to other agencies and may even have been paid as informants. Melson said other agencies, including the FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency, kept them in the dark. If they would have informed the ATF it could have had a material impact on the Fast and Furious investigation as far back as late 2009 or early 2010.

Appearing on the Hannity show, Issa said, unlike members of the justice department, Melson was very cooperative and answered all of the questions asked.

"His attorney never, never, never asked him to stop or have extensive consultation. He simply answered the question with his counsel present." Issa continued, "That's the opposite of what we've had in the previous interviews" with justice department officials with their attorneys present. "Essentially, they're trying to limit our discovery; they're trying to counsel their people to only give us certain things."

Holder has repeatedly said that he only became aware of Operation Fast and Furious a few weeks before being asked to testify before Congress. Issa told Hannity he found it hard to believe Holder's claim. "It's almost impossible to believe that everyone, including CBS news, big newspapers and Fox had already reported on Fast and Furious and yet Eric Holder still didn't know anything about it."

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo, who served during the Reagan administration, told the Gazette that while it is possible Obama knew nothing about the operation, Holder would have had to have known about it. "It is impossible to think that Eric holder did not know about it. It is likewise unlikely and almost impossible that Janet Napolitano did not know" , Tancredo said.

Lawmakers warned Holder against forcing Melson to resign or taking any other action against him. Melson is currently serving as an interim director of the ATF, which is a temporary job.

"Given his testimony, unless a permanent director is confirmed, it would be inappropriate for the Justice Department to take action against him that could have the effect of intimidating others who might want to provide additional information to the Committees."

The letter continued, "Knowing what we know so far, we believe it would be inappropriate to make Mr. Melson the fall guy in an attempt to prevent further congressional oversight."

Mexican lawmakers have said they will press for the extradition of any American officials who authorized and ran the operation.

Backstory: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july092011/holder-atf-death-tk.php

Art Hostage Comments:

Shame Law Enforcement didn't stick by the 30,000 guns sent to Mexico !!!

Stolen Art Watch, James "Whitey" Bulger Roadshow Rolls

2011-07-08T17:44:00.007+01:00

http://blogs.bostonmagazine.com/boston_daily/2011/07/08/dershowitz-bulger-brothers-cover-up-continues/

As those who follow Boston politics well know, there’s no love lost between Billy Bulger and Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Here, Dershowitz offers his characteristically pointed take on the government’s decision to drop a 1995 racketeering case against Bulger’s alleged mob boss brother, Whitey, to focus on separate murder charges.

The government’s decision to drop racketeering charges originally brought against James Whitey Bulger in 1995 may not have been motivated by a desire to continue the cover-up of William Bulger’s role in Whitey’s crimes, but the effect is likely to be just that. By throwing out these broad-based charges, the government achieves two results: it takes the case away from Chief Judge Mark Wolf, who had been assigned to handle the racketeering case; and it narrows the scope of the evidence that will be heard in court.

Judge Wolf is the courageous jurist who first exposed the massive corruption among law enforcement and political officials that enabled Whitey to continue in his murderous ways. Judge Wolf wrote a lengthy decision connecting dots that were always there for probing minds to see but had never quite been put together. He understood, as many politicians persisted in denying, that Whitey Bulger could not operate in a vacuum, and that a wide array of FBI agents, Massachusetts State Police, local policemen, prosecutors and politicians all contributed to the atmosphere in which Whitey’s power assumed legendary proportions as he persisted in his murderous ways.

Judge Wolf is known as a fair-minded judge who is equally tough on the prosecution, for which he worked for many years, and the defense. I have heard many prosecutors complain that Judge Wolf is too tough and too demanding on them. Current prosecutors apparently decided to go “judge shopping” to try to come up with a judge who would make their lives easier and serve their interests better.

What, then, are the prosecutors interests? To convict Whitey Bulger on the narrowest range of crimes — the multiple murders — without opening up a can of worms. These “worms” would almost certainly include past and present political figures and law enforcement agents.

Primary among them is Whitey’s younger brother Billy, who recently visited with him. When Billy was the most powerful political figure in Boston, corruption permeated every aspect of public life, from the FBI, to federal prosecutors, to the state judiciary, to Beacon Hill, to building inspectors, to the State Police. Everyone — from governors, to justices of the state’s highest court — kowtowed to “The President,” which in Boston meant Billy Bulger. And everyone knew that messing with Billy was messing with Whitey. Even more important, everyone knew that messing with Whitey was messing with Billy. Billy believed his job was to protect Whitey and to keep him out of prison. Without Billy there would not, in my opinion, have been a Whitey — at least a Whitey who could persist in his murderous rampage for so long.

Those who went after Whitey — like an unfortunate state trooper at Logan Airport — were punished. Those who closed their eyes to Whitey — like FBI Chief John Morris and longtime agent John Connolly — were rewarded. The fix was always in when it came to Whitey (and to Billy as well.)

More than a decade ago, I was among the very few who wrote about these connections. In June 2000, I wrote this in Boston magazine:

It was Connolly’s friendship with William Bulger and Connolly’s hope of capitalizing on it financially that led him to give Whitey a blank check on committing crimes, a heads-up on wiretaps and a head start in evading arrest. Informants simply don’t get that kind of deal, even if they provide invaluable information. Whitey provided little and got everything in return. But it was not only in return for the meager information Whitey provided. It was also in return for what Connolly received and expected from William Bulger.

And in May 2006, I wrote, based on the evidence at the time, that:

I believed Godfather Billy made his homeboy Connolly an offer he couldn’t refuse: cash, career opportunities, and other considerations in exchange for protecting his bad brother Whitey from the real cops.

When I started to write about Billy and Whitey, I got an anonymous late night phone call from somebody who said, “When you mess with Billy, you’re messing with Whitey. Watch your back.”

Not only did John Connolly — who’s now serving a long prison sentence — keep the mass-murdering Whitey out of prison and in business for decades, but he also tried to keep Billy out of prison. Billy was suspected of extorting a quarter-million-dollar bribe from the Boston developer who was building a skyscraper at 75 State Street. Business as usual! According to an assistant U.S. Attorney who testified at Connolly’s trial, during the 75 State Street extortion investigation, Connolly improperly lobbied him to drop the scrutiny of this “special person.” Connolly also tried to milk the prosecutor for confidential information about the probe. It turned out, moreover, that the Chief Federal Strike Force Prosecutor in charge of investigating Billy Bulger’s corruption happened to be Whitey’s handler, Jeremiah T. O’Sullivan. The entire “investigation” of William Bulger was a scandal.

None of this is likely to come out at Whitey’s newly sanitized murder trial. They might have surfaced a broad-based racketeering case, had the original charges not been dropped. Suspicion will persist as to the mixed motives behind this move.

A recent anecdote seems to suggest that at least for some state troopers the Brothers Bulger still remain heroes. After Jay Carney — who boasts that “I limit my practice to the innocent” — was appointed to represent Whitey Bulger, he told the Boston Globe that he was driving aggressively to Plymouth, switching lanes illegally, when a state trooper pulled him over and asked him why he was in such a hurry. Carney said he was going to visit his new client, Whitey Bulger, at the Plymouth House of Corrections. The trooper offered the lawyer “congratulations, good luck and Godspeed,” and sent him on his way without a ticket. Business as usual on the highways of the Brothers Bulgers’ Massachusetts. Let’s see whether this attitude also persists among some elements of law enforcement in the courts.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Greig wants to be free while awaiting trial on charge of harboring James ‘Whitey’ Bulger

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/07/greig-wants-free-while-awaiting-trial-charge-harboring-james-whitey-bulger/hIAkGqoCjXBN6rCPlblaBO/index.html

By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

The attorney for Catherine Greig said the former dental hygienist was only James “Whitey” Bulger’s “traveling companion’’ during their years on the run from the law and argues in a legal motion that she should be free while awaiting trial on harboring a fugitive charges.

“There is no evidence of harboring or providing aid to Mr. Bulger,’’ Kevin J. Reddington wrote in papers filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston. “The conduct of this defendant falls far short of the activity … necessary to convict on the harboring charge.’’

Reddington also said that Greig and her sister, Margaret, are willing to post homes they own in Quincy and South Boston, respectively, as collateral so Greig can be released.

He estimated Greig’s Quincy home at 16 Hillcrest Road to be worth $350,000 while McCusker’s house at 889 East Fourth Str. is valued in excess of $500,000.

He wrote that the 60-year-old Greig is not likely to flee before trial because the case against her is weak, and the maximum she faces is five years in prison.

Reddington insisted that Greig was not a fearsome criminal whose freedom would put the public at risk.

“By all accounts, she is considered by family, neighbors, and acquaintances as a kind, gentle person with a loving personality,’’ he wrote. “She has no criminal conduct and the support of her family and close personal friends.’’

Greig was arrested by the FBI last month in Santa Monica, Calif., where she had been living with Bulger for years. Inside the two bedroom apartment, authorities found $800,000 in cash that Bulger claimed as his own during one court appearance. Authorities also found 30 firearms.

Following their arrest, Greig was ordered held pending a detention hearing now set for Monday afternoon in the South Boston courthouse. Reddington said Greig is willing to be placed under house arrest and to wear electronic monitoring equipment if released.

Stolen Art Watch, Sarkozy's "Mon ami Guy" Dr No Don't Exist..... Moon Made Of Cream Cheese

2011-07-07T18:34:00.012+01:00

Nicolas Sarkozy's wealthy friend accused over 'stolen' art

A billionaire friend and financial backer of Nicolas Sarkozy is facing a possible jail sentence for allegedly accumulating “lost” and stolen paintings worth millions of pounds.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8623431/Nicolas-Sarkozys-wealthy-friend-accused-over-stolen-art.html

Guy Wildenstein, 65, was accused yesterday of “obtaining goods through abuse of trust”. If found guilty, the art dealer faces up to three years in prison.

Police seized works by artists including Degas and Manet when they raided the Wildenstein Institute in Paris in January.

They included Edouard Manet’s “Cafe Concert Singer”, which is valued at more than a million pounds, and “La Chaumière en Normandie” (“The Concert in Normandy”), by Berthe Morisot, which is worth around £750,000.

Yves Rouart, the cousin and heir of Anne-Marie Rouart, a descendant of Manet, claimed that some of the paintings were his. Mrs Rouart bequeathed the antique furniture from her apartment to her relation, while also appointing Mr Wildenstein as an executor.

According to Mr Rouart, the dealer went to Mrs Rouart’s home following her death in 1993 and removed paintings, including La Chaumière en Normandie by Berthe Morisot, which was valued at £750,000.

Mr Rouart filed a writ when the painting appeared at the Wildenstein Institute, alleging that it had effectively been stolen, which led to the police raid. Alexandre Bronstein, a descendant of Joseph Reinach, whose collection was looted by the Nazis during the Second World War, also claimed that several missing works appeared in the Wildenstein collection.

Mr Wildenstein was also under investigation over allegations of tax avoidance on the family’s £3 billion estate.

In 2009, Mr Sarkozy personally awarded Mr Wildenstein the Legion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest awards.

Hervé Temime, a lawyer for Mr Wildenstein, had no comment to make over the charge. However, his client had previously claimed that paintings such as La Chaumière en Normandie had appeared at his Paris institute because of an “oversight”

The family's estate is conservatively estimated at being worth around three-and-a-half billion pounds and includes a whole island in the Virgin Islands and a vast ranch in Kenya where the film Out Of Africa was filmed.

While disastrous for Guy Wildenstein, the latest charge could also have wide-ranging political implications.

The dealer, who is now based in New York, is among the gilded First Circle of super-rich financial backers of Mr Sarkozy.

In 2009 the President personally awarded Wildenstein with a Legion d'Honneur - one of France's highest honours - after publicly referring to him as 'Mon ami, Guy'.

The Wildenstein case is potentially as compromising to President Sarkozy as the so-called Bettencourt affair, which also involves a billionaire family known to have given financial support to the ruling UMP party.

L'Orial heiress Liliane Bettencourt is said to have personally handed brown envelopes full of cash to Mr Sarkozy before he ran for president - something he vehemently denies.

Herve Temime, lawyer for Guy Wildenstein in Paris, had no immediate comment to make on the latest scandal.

However, Wildenstein has in the past claimed that paintings like La Chaumihre en Normandie had appeared at his Paris Institute because of 'an oversight'.

A Paris police spokesman confirmed that Wildenstein had been charged on Wednesday and then released on bail.

Art Hostage Comments:

Art Hostage posted this story back in March 2008:

http://stolenvermeer.blogspot.com/2008/03/stolen-art-watch-jean-marie-messier.html

Jean Marie Messier "Trainee Dr No" was the subject of an enquiry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/global/22vivendi.html?_r=1&ref=jeanmariemessier

Boston FBI agent Geoff Kelly flew with a colleague to Paris to discuss with French prosecutors a tip that discredited French business magnate Jean-Marie Messier had bought several of the stolen Rembrandt's from the Gardner Art Heist. Jean Marie Messier close friend with Sarkozy.

Still believe the so-called Dr No figure's don't exist.

Stolen Art Watch, James Whitey Bulger, Chained, Arraigned, & Fighting Fit

2011-07-06T20:44:00.004+01:00

Bulger, in a clear soft voice, pleads not guilty to federal indictment alleging 19 murders

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/07/bulger-clear-soft-voice-pleads-not-guilty-federal-indictment-alleging-murders/FwRrcmaYuZTzfAMks7WabP/index.html

By Maria Cramer, Shelley Murphy and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

With his two brothers looking on, James “Whitey” Bulger this afternoon pleaded not guilty to a 32-count federal indictment that alleges he participated in 19 murders in a brief court appearance.

Bulger appeared in US District Court wearing the orange jail uniform and New Balance sneakers issued to federal pre-trial detainees while they are being held at the Plymouth County jail.

He answered “not guilty’’ multiple times in a clear voice that was soft and just above a whisper and was closely watched by some of the relatives of people who were murdered.

The 81-year-old Bulger was flanked by his court-appointed attorney, J.W. Carney Jr., who introduced himself to Bulger’s brothers and asked them if they wanted a private moment with their notorious sibling.

The hearing took just 15 minutes to complete and Bulger is not scheduled to be back in court until Sept. 14.

Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler today rejected a request by Carney to let him add Janice Bassil to the Bulger defense team. Carney and Bassil have been partners in a Boston law firm since 1989.

Bowler said from the bench that Carney can tap Bassil’s expertise without formally adding her to the taxpayer-financed defense team.

Bowler appointed Carney as Bulger’s lead counsel last week after concluding the mobster could not pay for his own defense attorney. At the time, Bowler wrote she would consider adding Bassil, or another lawyer, to Bulger’s case because of the legal complexities involved.

Bulger arrived at the South Boston courthouse earlier today by car. Last week, Bulger traveled from the Plymouth County jail via a US Coast Guard helicopter, which landed at Logan International Airport where a caravan of heavily armed US marshals drove him to the court.

The US Marshals Service defended the use of the Coast Guard helicopter, saying it cost just $1,500 in fuel. The Coast Guard, while stressing the helicopter would have been in use anyway, said a trip on a Jayhawk chopper costs about $7,500.

The Coast Guard said they are not involved in Bulger’s transportation today.

At the same time that the criminal prosecution of Bulger finally got underway, an attorney for relatives of one of Bulger’s alleged murder victims were in another courtroom asking for a lien to be put on $800,000 cash seized from Bulger in his California apartment.

In papers filed in US District Court, Walpole attorney James E. Riley Jr. is asking that the family be given legal standing to tap into that cash to settle a $2. 2 million wrongful death judgment against Bulger.

Milano was 30 years old and a bartender at a North End restaurant when he was shot and killed while driving his Mercedes-Benz in Brighton in 1973. Confessed hitman John Martorano admitted in court that he shot and killed Milano at Bulger’s orders, but also acknowledged he was supposed to shoot the restaurant’s owner, who drove a car like Milano’s.

The Milanos are the second of Bulger’s alleged victims to ask the federal courts for the cash, which is currently being held by federal authorities. Riley noted in court papers that courts in the past have rejected claims by Bulger’s alleged victims for access to Bulger cash seized by federal authorities during his years on the run.

Late today, the US Attorney Carmen Ortiz filed papers urging US District Court Judge Richard Stearns to reject the Milano family request, and any others that may be filed.

The government wants Bulger to forfeit the cash as a result of his criminal activity, and no money should be distributed until Bulger’s criminal case ends, prosecutors wrote.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist, Alex Boyle Shoots at a Moving Target !!

2011-07-03T19:04:00.004+01:00

The Hon Alex Boyle Interview July 2011

1) How would you describe yourself in relation to the art world and in turn the Stolen Art Underworld?

Art dealer and art historian, being from New York, the center of the art trade it gives me a unique place to monitor the interesting trends and developments in the market. I prefer the regular art market, but in chasing the story of the Gardner heist it made great sense to learn more about the underworld, a perverse reflection of the regular market, which also because of the five families of the mafia is centered around New York City.

(2) What is your favourite colour?

Blue

(3) What is your favourite curse word?

Son of a *****

(4) Where were you born?

Westchester county, northern suburb of New York City

(5) What profession were your parents in?

Father was a journalist for Time-Life and my mother was a mathematician who worked on the design of 1^st generation surface to air missiles at M.I.T.

(6) The Gardner Heist of 1990 has provoked many theories, how was the Gardner Art Heist planned and by whom?

A crew of criminals associated with Myles Connor (in jail at the time), including Robert Donati, David Turner and William Merlino used police uniforms supplied by Peter Boylan (echoing the 1962 Great Plymouth Mail heist) to look like real cops when they knocked on the Gardner Museums door late St. Patrick's Day 1990. The Italians naturally thought every Irish cop in Boston would be cross eyed drunk that night too.

(7) Who actually carried out the Gardner heist?

David Turners photo matches the police sketch and I would say William Merlino was the other fellow dressed like a cop. Once the security guards were tied up, who knows who else came in to help the first two, since I heard the late Robert Donati (killed a year later for threatening to talk) was intricately involved in the planning as well

(8) Were the thieves given a shopping list of items or did they decide once they gained entry to the Gardner Museum?

Donati was behind the walk about and as such guided by past tours with Connor, so he selected what he thought important. The people at the Gardner told me they were stunned the Titian's Rape of Europa wasn’t taken, but I responded to that “Rape Scenes” are not commercial, they are tough sells, while Vermeers Concert painting is the ultimate high end commercial gentile painting and very easy to sell such a refined decorative subject.

(9) The use of authentic looking Police uniforms and radios could point to a Police insider, the name Boylan came up, does that resonate with you at all and if not, what does the tactics of the Gardner thieves tell us about the robbery, professional or amateur?

Peter Boylan supplied the uniforms, so the heist proceeded in a super professional manner right out of the long lost playbook for the 1962 Plymouth (Massachusetts) Mail robbery which is where guys dressed like cops, uniforms supplied by Gerry Angiulo, took a mail truck for almost $2 million. Fat Vinny Teresa wrote about that score in his book, “My Life in the Mafia.”

(10) Post theft, what happened next?

William Merlino and his uncle Carmello (a made guy in the New England Patriarcha family) handled the artowrk, the Flinck stayed in the states with them fencing it to a gay old master dealer from Newport, RI named Ed Pawlin. The rest of the stuff was kicked upstairs to the boss of the Family, “Cadillac Frank” Salemme. Salemme had a "sit down" with the Genovese in New York at a place called Friar Tucks, there it was agreed that the Genovese and Boston would split the proceeds with a commission going to the dealer, Andrew Crispo who handled the sale to his European client. The paintings were shipped from Boston to Halifax to Genoa Italy then described to me as being trucked by Italians known to former boss Fat Tony Salerno to a dealer in Paris named Andre Candillier.

(11) Who took control of the Gardner art post-theft?

The wiseguys said to me the Italians in Genoa brought the works to Candillier (one of truckers being an Italian-American who moved back to Italy, but who remained a liason between the US and the Sicilians) who took delivery of it, I think for getting any restoration work done, but the end purchaser for the two or three best works was the late Baron Thyessen

(12) What journey did the Gardner art take post-theft?

The sit-down to discuss the details of the sale in Catskill, NY while the paintings went from Boston to Halifax to Genoa to Paris then to Switzerland and/or England

(13) Who were the post-theft handlers?

New England family (Merlinos and Salemme), Genovese family of NY, dealer Andrew Crispo, Genoan truckers to Candillier

(14) The Irish connection has provoked many a column inch but where do you see any Irish involvement in the Gardner Art Heist, before, during or post-theft?

Only rumors after the fact. Once it gets to the British Isles, anything is possible, but the IRA has a strict ban on crimes in prime fund raising areas like New York and Boston, so any IRA guy involved in a huge theft in Boston would have faced ultimate sanction, death, with the body left in public for others to see an example.

(15) The Gardner Museum has offered a $5 million reward for recovery of all the Gardner art “In good condition” what are your thoughts on the validity of this reward offer?

I think it remains likely though reneging for various reasons is common.

(16) The Boston Assistant D.A. Brian Kelly has offered tentative immunity to anyone stepping forward to help recover the Gardner art, but they would have to reveal all they know and waive their 5^th Amendment rights and even testify against those who may be involved in the handling of the Gardner art as the statute of Limitations has run out on the actual theft, is this a sincere offer or just window dressing for the public?

That is fine print designed to maximize their appeal, but allow them maximum lee way to put the squeeze on somebody they perceive as getting in the way of their ambitious agenda(s)

(17) Where do you think the Gardner art is at this time, together or separate?

Separate. Completely chopped up like the smoldering wreck of a car on cinder-blocks on the side of the Major Deegan Expressway in New York City, circa 1977 in "The Bronx Is Burning."

(18) What actions could lead to the recovery of the Gardner art, other than Law Enforcement cracking the case?

Keeping earlier promises made by the FBI, like letting people out of prison, whom they already gave that promise to for solving double homicides, That would be a way to show good faith is real and not just some bs. “hey when we are done with you we leave you in the can to rot forever,” like they have done to people I know.

(19) What are your thoughts about doubling the Gardner Museum reward to $10 million to provoke new interest as it seems to have done in the Whitey Bulger case?

Bring it on.

What would you like God to say to you when you finally meet?

Can I stay up here?

Stolen Art Watch, J W Carney Jr Handed James "Whitey" Bulger Brief !!

2011-06-30T21:28:00.005+01:00

Judge taps high-profile defender for mob boss Bulger

Former Boston mob boss and accused murderer James "Whitey" Bulger will have a high-profile criminal defense attorney, J. W. Carney, represent him at public expense, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler rejected the prosecution's argument that Bulger should not get publicly funded counsel in his pending trial for racketeering, 19 counts of murder and other crimes.

There was no evidence that Bulger had the means to pay for his defense, Bowler said, setting his arraignment for July 6.

Bulger, 81, is the former leader of the notorious Winter Hill Gang, a mostly Irish-American organized crime operation based in Boston.

He had been sought by the authorities over murders committed in the 1970s and 1980s, many of them brutal slayings, and charges of drug dealing, extortion, money laundering and conspiracy.

Carney, named as one of the five best private criminal defense lawyers in Massachusetts by Boston magazine, takes the reins in what is expected to be a lengthy and complex case.

Bulger, who had been on the FBI's Most Wanted List, and long-time girlfriend Catherine Greig had some $820,000 of cash on hand when they were arrested last week in California after a 16-year FBI manhunt.

According to prosecutors, Bulger and Greig were able to finance a comfortable lifestyle during their time in hiding, replete with Las Vegas gambling trips and jaunts to Mexico to buy medications.

But proceeds of criminal activities cannot be used to bankroll a defense. Bulger has said through counsel that he did not want his family to be tapped to help pay for his defense.

Bulger, in an orange prison-issue jumpsuit, was in court for Bowler's ruling and for an earlier hearing, when a federal judge ruled on how his lengthy rap-sheet would be prosecuted.

Judge Mark Wolf allowed the government to dismiss a 1994 racketeering-focused indictment and focus on 19 murder charges contained in a separate indictment, while denying a defense bid to consolidate all the charges.

A conviction on just one count of murder in Massachusetts could send Bulger to prison for life, and authorities have said that focusing on the murder cases could bring quicker justice to the families of Bulger's alleged victims.

Judge Wolf said it was not clear that lumping the two indictments together, as Bulger's provisional attorney Peter Krupp requested, had any legal basis.

Brothers William "Billy" Bulger, the former Massachusetts Senate President, and John "Jackie" Bulger, a retired court clerk magistrate convicted of perjury in 2003, were seated in court, as were families of some of Bulger's alleged murder victims.

Stolen Art Watch, Judge Mark Wolf, Carmen Ortiz, Whitey Bulger, Gardner Art, Art Hostage Offers Sanity Amongst Madness !!

2011-06-29T17:16:00.013+01:00

‘Whitey’ Bulger lawyer asks to consolidate 1995, 2000 charges

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/06/whitey-bulger-lawyer-asks-consolidate-cases/wX0shf8rCGh4Q1bEsllShP/index.html

The lawyer for James ‘Whitey’ Bulger has asked a judge to consolidate the two cases against his client, arguing that federal prosecutors are “forum shopping” as they seek to drop an earlier, less serious case against his client.

Prosecutors, said attorney Peter Krupp, are attempting to “game the system.”

“Such forum shopping is disfavored,” Krupp wrote in a court filing today in which he attempted to get both cases consolidated under Chief US District Judge Mark Wolf.

Bulger, the alleged crime boss who allegedly participated in 19 murders during a vicious reign in Boston’s underworld, was captured last Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., where he had been living a quiet life in an apartment several blocks from the beach.

He was returned to Boston on Friday and prosecutors and the defense have sparred vigorously since then, first over whether he should get a court-appointed attorney and now over prosecutors’ decision to drop one of the cases against him.

Prosecutors said Tuesday they wanted to drop 1995 charges against Bulger so they could focus on charges brought in 2000. They said the latter case was stronger, involved more serious allegations, and would bring justice sooner to the families of murder victims.

The 1995 charges, which did not contain murder allegations, were assigned to Judge Wolf. The 2000 charges are assigned to US District Judge Richard Stearns.

Krupp has suggested that prosecutors are attempting to avoid having the case heard by Wolf, who held hearings in the late 1990s about the Boston FBI office’s corrupt relationship with Bulger. Bulger had served as an FBI informant while he committed his alleged crimes.

Krupp, in a filing today before Wolf, said that after Wolf had raised “difficult questions” in those hearings, prosecutors had chosen not to amend the 1995 charges but to include a new set of allegations in a later indictment. The prosecutors intended, Krupp argued, to get the case assigned not to Wolf, but to a new judge.

Saying the more recent case should instead be consolidated with the earlier case before Wolf, he argued that the 2000 charges “are directly related” to the 1995 charges and “involve the same time period, overlapping defendants, and, in many cases, identical or effectively identical allegations.”

“The government’s apparent forum shopping is contrary to the public interest and undermines public confidence in the judicial process,” he said.

Krupp also argued that consolidation would save “considerable judicial resources,” noting that Wolf is familiar “with the relationship between the parties and much of the factual predicate underlying the allegations” in the more recent case.

Retired Lawyer, 74, a ‘Glorified Fence,’ Gets 7 Years in Cezanne Case

A 30-year stolen art saga has ended with a seven-year federal prison sentence for a 74-year-old retired lawyer with dementia who was described by the judge in the case as a "glorified fence."

Robert Mardirosian, a retired Massachusetts lawyer, was sentenced yesterday for attempting to profit from the seven stolen paintings by famed Impressionist Paul Cezanne that he says a client left in his office loft after spending a night there, reports the Boston Globe. The paintings were stolen from a private home in 1978, in what reportedly was the state's biggest art theft ever, and the client, David Colvin, was shot to death in 1979.

Mardirosian says he found the art works in his office loft in 1980. Instead of returning them to the owner, however, he put them in storage in Switzerland and eventually agreed to return the most valuable one in 1999 exchange for title to the other six. However, that transaction resulted in a federal court conviction for possession of stolen property earlier this year, as discussed in an earlier ABAJournal.com post.

The Cezanne initially returned to its owner, Bouilloire et Fruits, was then sold at auction for nearly $30 million.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Mark Wolf gave Mardirosian less than the 10 years the prosecution had sought, but far more than the two years of home confinement that Mardirosian's attorney had recommended.

"The only reason I'm sentencing a 74-year-old man in the early stages of dementia is because you were calculating enough to get away with this for 30 years," the judge stated, explaining that it was important to set an example for any other lawyers who might be tempted by opportunities to profit from crime.

"You started as a lawyer," Wolf told Mardirosian. "As far I'm concerned, you became a glorified fence."

The judge hasn't yet decided whether to release Mardirosian pending an appeal.

Art Hostage Comments:

Time for some Art Hostage magic.

To overcome the need for the public to pay for the defence of Whitey Bulger, Art Hostage calls for Whitey Bulger to organise the safe return of the Gardner Art and the Gardner Museum putting the $5 million reward into a fund that Lawyers for Whitey Bulger can use to cover the costs of defending him.

This way the Gardner art comes home, the tax paying public of Boston avoid paying for the legal defence of Whitey Bulger, and Carmen Ortiz can solve two cases in one go.

Judge Mark Wolf, who has experience in cases of high value stolen art such as the Cezanne case from 2008, can preside over this deal and make sure all parties adhere to their word with regards recovery of the Gardner art, paying of the reward and immunity from prosecution for the return of the Gardner Art.

OK, some may argue rewarding Whitey Bulger for the return of the Gardner art is distasteful but remember the reward is saving the taxpayers of Boston several million dollars in Lawyers fee's and of course the Gardner art coming home would be a beacon of hope to come out of this whole debacle.

Perhaps Judge Wolf would be so impressed the Gardner art has returned because of his timely intervention he may excuse himself from the Whitey Bulger case and allow Judge Stearns to preside. The Whitey Bulger team may also not object as this way all parties get something and of course the Gardner Museum and wider public get to see Vermeer's The Concert and Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea again. A further temptation is the prospect of the Boston Public not having to pay the millions in Lawyers fee's to allow Whitey Bulger the defence he is entitled to under the Constitution.

So, to recap, the Gardner art surfaces, the Gardner Museum places the $5 million into an account for the defence of Whitey Bulger, Carmen Ortiz issues immunity for recovering the Gardner Art as well as the case transferred to Judge Stearns and Judge Wolf becomes the hero on all fronts, a true American legend.

And what, you might ask, does Art Hostage want ?

Nada, zero dime, zero dollars of the Gardner Museum reward, clear enough ?

Breaking News:

BOSTON — James "Whitey" Bulger has been brought to the federal courthouse in Boston, apparently to meet with his attorney.

Neither prosecutors nor Bulger's lawyer would comment on why Bulger was at the courthouse Wednesday. He did not have a hearing scheduled.

He is expected to be in court Thursday for a hearing on his request to get a taxpayer-funded attorney.

During a hearing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf held a private sidebar discussion after Bulger's lawyer said it would be difficult for him to meet with his client. Bulger is being held at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Plymouth, about 40 miles south of Boston.