It’s now been thirty years since
two thieves dressed as police officers stole 13 artworks worth $500 million
from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990 and we are still no
closer to solving this enduring mystery.
But there’s always a story within
the story and that is certainly the case with the Gardner heist which has more
layers than a Russian nesting doll.
The investigation gets curiouser
and curiouser with a cast of characters that appears to have jumped off the
screen from a Guy Ritchie film.
First, there's "Turbo"
Paul Hendry, a former art thief turned sleuth living in England who has been
following the case since it broke three decades ago when Vermeer’s “The
Concert” and Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee” vanished
into thin air. Hendry is a popular voice in the Gardner Heist community, having
been featured in the 2005 documentary Stolen. He had a bone to pick with me when I gave celebrated Dutch art investigator
column. He's right... Turbo Paul came up with the original idea years ago. Nevertheless, he shared my article on social media He's been working this case like
a dog with a bone for years and has been a vocal critic of Anthony Amore, the
museum's longtime director of security.
This criticism reportedly prompted
an angry phone call from *******, . Hendry alleges that ******* threatened to “destroy” him if he
didn’t remove more than 30 tweets from his Twitter profile “Art Hostage”
criticizing Amore’s lack of results.
Is the museum security director
using a proxy to crush any dissent of his investigation? I asked that question to ****** himself by phone. He calls Hendry’s accusations
“ridiculous”. I also reached out to the museum for comment. “The allegations
that the Gardner Museum or Mr. Amore are encouraging or condoning any
intimidation or pressure efforts by ***** toward the recipient are
categorically false," said Griff McNerney, Museum Communications Manager.
The museum’s cocksure declaration was curious as no one at the institution ever
even asked to speak to the alleged victim in this case.
If this is the way the
investigation into the stolen artwork is being conducted also, it’s no wonder
they haven’t recovered anything in thirty years.
Is this the image the Gardner
Museum wishes to project to the world?
If thuggery and intimidation are
tactics being used to quash criticism of the Gardner investigation, museum
director Peggy Fogelman should step in and make changes immediately.
First, it’s time to fire security director
Anthony Amore who has been leading the museum’s investigation for the past 15
years. He’s never recovered a piece of stolen art in his life.
Imagine if Bill
Belichick had never won a playoff game in 15 years? He’d have been out of a job
a long time ago.
Instead of chasing leads, Amore
spends more time on social media on any given work day than Perez Hilton.
He’s also used his position to
launch a disastrous run for Massachusetts Secretary of State and has published
four books about stolen art including two coloring books. It seems that the
only person that has profited from the art heist, outside of the thieves, is
Anthony Amore.
Arthur Brand, dubbed “The Indiana
Jones of the Art World”, has taken to social media calling for Amore to “move
over” and let more seasoned investigators take the lead on recovering the
stolen art. Brand made headlines last year for finding and returning a $68
million Picasso that was stolen twenty years ago from a luxury yacht in the
French Riviera. Amore’s dismissed Brand, telling me during an online
conversation,
“We have no comment on some guy’s (bleeping) twitter.” This
institutional arrogance is one of the many reasons that not one stolen art work
has been recovered on Amore’s watch.
It’s like Inspector Clouseau thumbing
his nose at Hercule Poirot.
Is Anthony Amore the person we want
leading the charge to return 13 artworks to its rightful place here in Boston
as we mark the 30th anniversary of the notorious heist? I think not.
Casey Sherman is a New York Times
bestselling author of 11 books including the upcoming Hunting Whitey: The
Inside Story of the Capture and Killing of America's Most Wanted Mob Boss.
Follow him on Twitter @caseysherman123
How the Gardner Museum’s security head befriended ‘the greatest art thief that ever lived’
Can Anthony Amore and Myles Connor’s unlikely bond help crack the greatest unsolved art heist in history?
By Kelly Horan Globe Correspondent,Updated March 14, 2020, 6:09 p.m.
The Gardner Museum's
head of security, Anthony Amore (left) and art thief Myles Connor
shared lunch recently at La Scala restaurant in Randolph.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Anthony Amore is not having it.
“Who in the world forgets they were involved in a Rembrandt theft?” he asks. “Who forgets that?”
This isn’t an interrogation, although Amore is directing his question to an art thief. This is lunch between good friends.
The
head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Myles
Connor, a man Amore calls “the greatest art thief that ever lived,” have
only just been seated, and already the conversation has turned to art
crime. How could it not? Connor, 77, began stealing from museums before
Amore was born.
By
1975, when Amore was an 8-year-old Yankees fan growing up in
Providence, Connor was already such an accomplished thief that he
committed one heist — the broad daylight theft of an oval Rembrandt oil
painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — to use as a bargaining
chip for a reduced sentence in connection with another, earlier theft
from the Woolworth Estate in Monmouth, Maine (which included five Wyeth
paintings: two by N.C., three by Andrew).
Connor’s
rap sheet dates back to 1966. He had evaded capture for robbing the
Forbes House Museum, in his hometown of Milton, until a shootout with
police on a Marlborough Street rooftop left him nearly dead from four
gunshot wounds. Connor shot and almost killed a State Police officer in
the run-up to that melee, earning an attempted murder charge on top of
the one for art theft. He served six years — his first prison term — at
MCI-Walpole.
His
memory isn’t great these days, but Connor remembers that particular
episode with sparkling clarity: the news trucks broadcasting live from
the street below, the Boston Fire Department captain whose intervention
on the rooftop he says saved his life.
But
this Rembrandt business that Amore is talking about? Connor honestly
can’t recall. That’s because the Rembrandt in question is yet another,
this one taken from a private home in Cohasset during the summer of
1975. It so happens that Connor, following the MFA heist earlier that
spring, was living on the lam that summer. In Cohasset.
“You were involved in that,” Amore says.
“I
was?” Connor asks, letting loose a laugh so mighty it shakes his entire
body, as well as the table. Flatware jumps. Ice cubes clink in water
goblets.
Connor has no memory of it, but he is tickled to think so.
With friends like these
In
the annals of confounding bromances — think of the Old West lawman
Wyatt Earp’s deep friendship with the gun-slinging outlaw Doc Holliday —
the genuine affection between Anthony Amore and Myles Connor has to be
right up there.
The
men’s chosen vocations would seem to rule out an easy bonhomie. Amore
leads the investigation into the world’s greatest unsolved art heist, a
mystery entering its 30th year with the heist’s March 18 anniversary.
The
broad strokes of that dead-of-night crime are by now well known: Two
men wearing glue-on mustaches and police uniforms bluffed their way into
the old Palace Road entrance of the Gardner Museum, handcuffed the two
on-duty security guards to pipes in the basement, and vanished with 13
works of art into the predawn dark after St. Patrick’s Day.
Their
haul included three works by Rembrandt and Vermeer’s “The Concert.”
Today, the stolen works’ value is estimated to exceed, collectively, $1
billion. In the three decades since the heist, there has not been a
single arrest, not one piece of the lost art recovered.
If
the Gardner case is both a bane and what drives Amore, his friend
Connor says the whole thing was his idea. “I had intended to be involved
in the theft, but I got nailed by the feds.”
“I had intended to be involved in the theft," says art thief Myles Connor, "but I got nailed by the feds.”John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
When
the thieves hit the Gardner Museum, Connor was locked up in a federal
prison in Chicago. Some time later, he was transferred to a facility in
Lompoc, Calif. A visitor there told Connor that he and an accomplice had
robbed the Gardner to get him out of prison. That man was the late
David Houghton. He told Connor that his accomplice in the Gardner heist
was Bobby Donati (like Houghton, Donati died the year after the heist in
1991). It was Donati, Connor says, who helped him rob the Woolworth
Estate, in 1973.
Connor
also says that he and Donati cased the Gardner Museum together, in
1975. The pair pointed out would-be souvenirs. For Donati, the bronze
eagle finial perched atop a Napoleonic regimental banner. For Connor, a
Shang Dynasty ritual bronze vessel, or Gu, from the 12th century, B.C.
Both items were among the pieces stolen. Connor believes the Gu was
taken for him, and he’s pretty certain that Donati ended up with that
finial.
“The
only real reason that I know that they did it,” Connor says, “was
because David Houghton came all the way from Logan to Lompoc,
California, and told me.”
Amore
doesn’t confirm or deny that Donati and Houghton were involved in the
Gardner heist. But he does buy Connor’s account. “I believe Myles that
David Houghton visited him in Lompoc federal prison and told him that he
and Bobby Donati had committed the heist to get him out of jail. I 100
percent believe Myles that that happened.”
Amore adds, “I do believe that Myles is the inspiration for the Gardner theft.”
Knuckleheads
Amore,
53, is tall, soft-spoken, and dresses in tidy civilian camouflage: navy
blazer, pressed khakis, tie. His taciturn nature lends itself well to
the delicate balance he must strike between granting interviews to press
from all over the world and the imperative never to reveal more than he
can or wants to about the ongoing investigation. Amore can be
infuriatingly adept at scuttling a reporter’s efforts to probe.
Before
taking over the theft investigation, in 2005, Amore had been in only
one other art museum in his life. He says of his previous job, helping
rebuild security at Logan Airport after 9/11, “When your objective was
preventing terrorism, your goal was never to meet the people on the
other side. In this [work at the Gardner], you have to meet the people,
that is the only way to accomplish it.” And by people, Amore means, more
often than not, the so-called bad guys.
Growing
up in a modest Cape house sandwiched between two housing projects,
Amore says, he knew scofflaws to spare. Some were members of his own
family. “I grew up around those sorts of people. I’m comfortable
speaking to them.”
“My
inspiration for doing this work was talking to people who actually did
the crimes,” Amore continues. “The first most influential book I read
was ‘Mindhunter,’ by John Douglas. To stop serial killers, talk to
serial killers. That’s how I became friends with art thieves like Al
Monday and Myles Connor, and all these other knuckleheads.”
But
the knucklehead that Amore is genuinely fond of is Connor. “I liked him
from the minute I met him, in 2015,” Amore says. “When I sat down and
started asking him about the Gardner that first day, he told me
everything, and I told him some stuff he didn’t know that frankly
comported with some of his beliefs. And you could see his response to it
was visceral, that he wasn’t playing games with it. And I’ll go to my
grave believing that when he said, ‘I wish you’d get those paintings
back for [Gardner Museum director emeritus] Anne Hawley, she deserves to
have them back,’ he meant it.”
In
many ways, Connor could not be less like his law-abiding pal. He
unfurls his dress shirt to the third button and is wholly at ease
standing out in a crowd. The son of a Milton police sergeant and a
mother who was a Mayflower descendant, he remembers a rough-and-tumble
Irish paternal grandfather, and a more patrician maternal grandfather
who passed on to Connor a passion for Japanese weaponry and suits of
armor. Connor seems to have imbibed and combined both men’s influences.
An appreciation for art coursed through him from his earliest days.
Stealing it would come easy, especially when he felt that an institution
had been indifferent to him, to someone he loved, or to its collection.
Wound
tight as a toy snake in a can, Connor can be explosively uncontainable.
Over a meal with friends, when laughter overtakes him, it’s part of his
considerable charm. One can imagine that same unhinged energy producing
a more terrifying effect.
At
the old Al’s Spaghetti House in Nantasket Beach, where Connor’s band,
Myles Connor and the Wild Ones, drew sellout crowds in between his
prison stints in the 1960s, Connor was sometimes the target, and
sometimes the instigator, of some legendary dustups. His oldest and most
steadfast friend, Al Dotoli, towered over Connor then as now, and was
caught up in many of them.
Myles Connor's
oldest friend, concert producer Al Dotoli, smiled while reminiscing over
lunch. He regrets that he wasn’t able to keep his friend — who “could
play Chuck Berry like Chuck Berry” — on the stage. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
“I
remember barroom brawls we used to get into,” Connor says. “All I used
to see was arms and legs. Al was like a big spider monkey nailing these
guys!” He’s hoarse with glee at the memory.
“As
opposed to him,” says Dotoli, who has joined Amore and Connor’s lunch,
“all I saw was a pile, and he was on the bottom of it!”
Dotoli
has spent a long career producing concerts for the likes of James
Cotton, the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Dionne Warwick, and Frank
Sinatra. He regrets that he wasn’t able to keep his friend — who “could
play Chuck Berry like Chuck Berry” — on the stage. “I managed Myles
through his whole career. And it was always very difficult,” Dotoli
says, referring to Connor’s many arrests. “But the more he got in
trouble, the bigger he was a star. The fans loved it.”
The outlaw code
“The
things that matter to me,” Connor says, “are loyalty, ethics, believe
it or not, because it can be argued that I had none, but I do. It's like
the old outlaw code: You keep your word, don't backstab anyone, and try
not to hurt anybody that's innocent.”
But
not all of Connor’s exploits bore the cinematic shimmer of art theft.
“Myles and his coterie of friends do a lot to glamorize him,” says
Ulrich Boser, author of the book “The Gardner Heist.” “This is a
criminal.”
To
be fair, it’s not exactly hard to do. The once flame-haired rock star
is also a member of Mensa, the high IQ society. Upon his release — he
calls it “graduation” — from Walpole, in 1972, Connor says that his
near-perfect SAT scores had won him a spot in Harvard’s incoming class.
He chose opening for Roy Orbison and Sha Na Na over a more distant dream
of medical school.
But then, again and again, Connor chose crime.
“He
is unrepentant, in my opinion,” Boser says. “Look at what he has
actually done: shooting a police officer, knowing enough about a
gruesome [double] murder to lead police to [the women’s] grave. And
then, when I met him, he just told a number of stories that alone were
quite disturbing.”
What
of Connor’s friendship with Amore? “I do not believe that this
undermines Anthony’s work or his credibility,” Boser says. “Is Anthony
the best case, the best hope for bringing these paintings home? Yes. But
I would add an addendum. Someone somewhere knows where these are, and
that someone almost certainly has a connection to someone who has done
some unsavory things. It makes sense to me that Anthony is reaching out
and having conversations with people like that.”
No
one seems more aware of the optics of this friendship than Connor
himself. “Well, from my viewpoint, I’m very fortunate to have a friend
like Anthony, because of his position and situation, and my reputation,”
he says. “I’m aware that he must catch hell from people in his
profession that say, ‘What the hell are you hanging around with this guy
for?’ ”
Amore fields many
questions about his friendship with Connor. "You can't learn to be a
good art theft recovery person or a security person without speaking to
the experts in taking them," Amore says.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
It’s
true. Amore does. And he’s considered this question, too. “Yeah, you
know, I do stop and say my whole life is about returning stolen art.
Much of Myles’s was taking it. But pragmatically, too, you can’t learn
to be a good art theft recovery person or a security person without
speaking to the experts in taking them.”
Outlaw
code or no, Amore and Connor share more than a fascination with stolen
art. They go to concerts together — Bruce Springsteen, Kevin Hart — and
they often share a meal. They speak by phone several times a week and
leave each other jokey voice mails. Just like friends do.
When
Connor underwent triple bypass surgery last November, Amore was a
frequent visitor at his bedside. He recalls that Connor had asked him to
bring two things: a book about samurai swords — Connor is an aficionado
and a collector — and soy sauce. Another visitor had brought Connor
sushi, his favorite. Owing to his open-heart surgery, however, she
skimped on the high-sodium condiment.
“He
said, ‘Yeah, can you bring me some Kikkoman soy sauce?’ ” Amore says.
“And I forget what holiday it was, but nothing was open. So I’m driving
around, and I see a 7-Eleven. Believe it or not, they had soy sauce, and
I bring it to him. I go, ‘Hey, look what I got. I brought you the soy
sauce!’ He goes, ‘This is La Choy. It’s not Kikkoman.’ He doesn’t want
it! And he’s like, ‘It doesn’t matter. I ate the sushi anyway.’ ”
When Amore tells this story, he has to raise his voice a little to be heard, because Connor has unleashed that laugh again.
Amore
pauses for a moment, and says, “God, I wish Myles was the thief. I
think to myself, I wish it had been him, because we’d have our stuff
back. You know, it’s just, the one place he didn’t rob is the one place
that hasn’t gotten its stuff back.”
But
surely Connor, who knew the men he says robbed the Gardner, must have
some insight into what they would have done with the art.
“I’m not sure,” Connor says. “I know Bobby had some connections in New York with organized crime.”
Connor
recalls a New York trip with Donati “to meet a guy.” The man in
question claimed to run a lucrative side hustle, Connor says, fencing
stolen art to wealthy buyers overseas.
“And
I said, ‘How do you get these paintings out of the country?’ And you
know, I’ve always known you can’t roll up an oil painting because you
damage it. But he claimed that he could, and he had a couple of big
empty cardboard rolls. And he said, ‘I’d just put them in these things,
and then send them to Europe.’
“You
have people with billions of dollars,” Connor continues. “They have 20
Rolls Royces, a couple lions, a couple hippos. It stands to reason that
they have their own art collections.”
Fanciful,
Amore says. But unlikely. Asked where he thinks the art is, Amore says,
“In typical art theft scenarios, we know that stolen art doesn’t travel
far. But then, nothing about the Gardner heist is typical, which is why
I will continue to investigate every single lead.”
Dotoli
adds a note of hope. “If the fat lady is going to sing at all on the
Gardner thing, these two will do it. There’s no other way it’s going to
happen. This will be the team.”
Like
Rembrandt’s stolen seascape, there is a storm brewing over the
direction of the decades-old investigation to recover masterpieces
missing from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The first shot across the bow was fired by celebrated Dutch art
detective Arthur Brand who took to Twitter last week to call out
investigators while making a direct plea to the thieves who may still be
in possession of some of the 13 artworks stolen from Gardner Museum in
March 1990.
“Still working on the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft,” Brand wrote.
“And don’t believe those who say you can only deal with them. You can
always talk with me. The FBI and the museum and their allies are not
going to solve this case after 30 years. Move over …”
Brand, dubbed “The Indiana Jones of the Art World,” made
international headlines last year for finding and returning a $28
million Picasso painting that was stolen 20 years ago from a luxury
yacht in the French Riviera.
Speaking to Brand by phone in Europe, he told me that he fired off the tweet in frustration and has since deleted the message.
Although he praises the FBI and the museum for doing everything they
can to recover the stolen works, which include Vermeer’s “The Concert”
and Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” he believes
that investigators are sending the wrong message to anyone with
knowledge of the notorious heist. Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee
According to the museum’s website, a $10 million reward is still
being offered for information leading to the recovery of all 13 works in
good condition.
“But what if thieves only have two or three of the stolen art works?”
Brand asks. “They are being dissuaded from coming forward because they
don’t have the entire collection. The museum is giving them an
all-or-nothing proposition.”
The art detective is calling on the museum to provide separate
rewards for the individual art pieces. Brand believes this change in
strategy could break the case.
“I’m also concerned about how the museum defines the “good condition”
of the art, that’s a very arbitrary statement,” Brand says. “I know how
the criminal mind works and language like that sends a big red flag to
the thieves.”
The FBI won’t comment on the art detective’s theory but when I
reached out to Anthony Amore, the museum’s director of security, during
an online conversation, he told me; “We have no comment on some guy’s
(bleeping) twitter.”
That no comment speaks volumes and I can understand his frustration.
Amore’s been working on the case since 2005, chasing leads around the
globe and he’s found nothing.
Now he’s got one of the world’s leading art detectives breathing down his neck and demanding results.
But to call Arthur Brand “some guy” speaks to Amore’s institutional arrogance
As we approach the 30th anniversary of the heist this year, the
museum would be better served if it brings in new investigators with
fresh ideas and new perspectives.
Brand tells me that he’s spoken with sources in direct contact with
the IRA. They have convinced him some of the missing paintings are
stashed away in Ireland.
This theory has been dismissed by Amore.
“He (Amore) calls me “some guy,” but I have recovered six stolen art
pieces in the past year alone, and what has he found?” Brand says. “I
always place myself in the minds of the thieves. I have a track record
of success while after nearly 30 years; the museum is still sitting on
nothing.”
Casey Sherman is a New York Times best-selling author of 11
books. His latest is the upcoming “Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of
the Capture and Killing of America’s Most Wanted Crime Boss.” Follow him
on Twitter @caseysherman123.
According to Chris Marinello of Art Recovery International, he has been appointed the Official Pro Bono Intermediary on the Gardner case who will pay the Gardner heist reward to anyone who steps forward, including criminals.
This goes against everything Chris Marinello says he stand for in regards morals and ethics in stolen art recoveries.
Are we to believe Chirs Marinello has had a change of heart, gone off the reservation, along with the Gardner Museum and FBI?
Do they want us to believe Chris Marinello will pay out the Gardner heist reward without any scrutiny, if so, then why not issue a Gardner Art Reward Price List to give further encouragement.
Perhaps a lesser valued stolen Gardner artwork can be used as a test balloon.
Chris Marinello wrote this on his website: https://www.artrecovery.com/campaigns/view-campaign/c2RpbU3HLB-CSIYkXbgxxris5d4SvHQ2jx-iojtdq9ynJ40JAaI0tHrFX0P8yDrn1TA54d5V1WJOb3N9YZsA4WMAoQDPoDDt --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2020 marks a rotten anniversary for any art-lover: thirty years since
thieves bolted off with 13 precious artworks from the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts. Two robbers dressed to
impersonate police officers carried out this infamous heist, considered
to be the biggest unsolved art theft in world history. Since that night
in 1990, quite a few real police officers have joined the international
hunt for the 13 artworks, not to mention lawyers, art experts, and
lately even podcasters. Valued at over $600 million (although valueless
in the marketplace as stolen objects) the search for masterworks by the
likes of Vermeer, Manet, Rembrandt, and Degas stays alive and relevant
thanks to current museum security director Anthony Amore, whose museum
is offering the largest reward ever offered by a private institution —
$10 million for information leading to the art's recovery.
What is
keeping someone from turning in the art and collecting a cool $10
million? Perhaps mistrust of the FBI’s and local prosecutors’ promise
that no one will be prosecuted for the crime.
That’s why Art Recovery
International’s founder and lawyer Christopher A. Marinello has, with
the consent of law enforcement, offered to serve as a pro-bono
intermediary between the possessors and the museum. ARI will happily
exchange the reward and artwork through attorney’s escrow.
In this way,
those collecting the reward will never have to deal directly with museum
security or law enforcement.
Marinello’s message to the possessors is
simple: “Thirty years is enough; you are not going to get a better deal
than the one on the table. Return the artwork and pocket the $10 million
before someone else goes around you and collects it for themselves”. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Marinello, Anthony Amore and the FBI are sending mixed messages, two faces of the same coin?
Anthony Amore, for the last two years has been writing a book about Rose
Dugdale and the IRA Vermeer theft to give himself cover in finally
trying to flush out any Irish Republican influence in recovering the
Gardner art.
Anthony has tried, in vain thus far, to convince people of the current
reward offer and immunity offer being collectable, therefore
negociations are at an impass.
The suggestion of the Gardner Art Reward Price List would go some way to
establish the sincerity of the Gardner Museum and be an olive branch to
those would could help recover some Gardner art.
Those who hold or control some of the Gardner art fear the clenched fist
of the FBI will come crashing down on their houses with God's own
thunder if they step forward.
A test balloon of a lesser valued Gardner artwork being handed back
would also give confidence to follow through with the future recoveries
of the Vermeer and Rembrandts.
Much more will be revealed in the months ahead as we move towards the
thirty years since the Gardner Art Heist March 1990- March 2020.
Whomever holds any Gardner art must be terrified of stepping forward, so
reassurances should be given by the FBI and Gardner Museum, such as a
Gardner Art Reward Price List, to cover the distinct possibility the
thirteen Gardner artworks are not held together anymore.
Sadly, the assurances of Anthony Amore have rung hollow to those who can facilitate the recovery of some Gardner Art.
They think Anthony Amore is conducting "The Art of The Con" to quote the title of Anthony Amore's last book.
Lets Bring The Gardner Art Home, Change.org Petition:
Reward offered for information on German treasure robbery
BERLIN (AP) — German authorities are offering a 500,000-euro
($550,000) reward for information leading to the recovery of 18th
century jewels snatched from a unique collection in Dresden or the
arrest of the thieves.
A large diamond brooch, a diamond epaulette and other treasures were taken from Dresden’s Green Vault early Monday morning.
Police and prosecutors said in a joint statement Thursday that “we will leave no stone unturned to solve this case.”
A 40-member investigating commission is working on the robbery.
The Green Vault is one of the world’s oldest museums. It
was established in 1723 and contains the treasury of Augustus the Strong
of Saxony, comprising around 4,000 objects of gold, precious stones and
other materials.
Art Hostage Comments:
The tiny reward offered makes authorities look stupid.
First, the billion dollar value, although perhaps too high, means the reward offered is 0.05% and also the 49 ct "Dresden White" diamond is worth more in the Underworld than the total reward offered.
Furthermore, the cushion shape of the "Dresden White" makes it easier to re-cut and a reduction from 49ct to say, 35ct would disguise it enough for resale on the legitimate market for much, much more than the $550,000 reward offered for the whole stolen haul, seventeen pieces.
The Dresden White is by far the most valuable single item stolen. Augustus the Strong, the 18th century Prince-Elector of Saxony who founded the Green Vault, is said to have been so enraptured by the diamond he paid $1m for it — a fabulous sum at the time.
When a huge deep blue diamond known as the French Blue was stolen from
the French government following King Louis XVI's attempt to flee the
country during the French Revolution, it was recut from 67.125 carats to
45.52 carats, which in turn became known as the Hope Diamond.
It would have been far better to offer a "Substantial" reward leaving the actual figure as a matter of debate and a way to attract leads.
If, as suspected, the Remmo family are involved, if not the actual heist, then certainly the following handling of the Dresden Green Vault haul, then offering such a tiny reward might encourage the current handlers to break up and sell the whole haul on the black market, destroying the jewels forever.
Much better to replicate the Gardner Museum and offer a $10 million reward, thereby making the Dresden Green Vault haul worth much more as it is, rather than broken apart.
By offering $550,000 reward for all seventeen Dresden Green Vault pieces, authorities have given Underworld figures, such as the Remmo family a price benchmark, whereby if they offer $3-5 million for the total Dresden Green Vault haul, they will be the buyers.
An Underworld offer of $1 million for the "Dresden White" alone would secure it for Underworld figures such as the Remmo family.
To be continued..............................................
Burglars hit East German secret police museum in Berlin
Berlin (AFP) – Burglars broke into Berlin’s Stasi Museum, which
showcases items of East Germany’s hated secret police, making off with
collectible medals and gold jewellery, authorities said Sunday, days
after a spectacular diamond heist in Dresden.
The robbers broke in through a window on the first floor, “smashed
several showcases, and stole medals and jewellery”, said police in a
statement.
They made off with their spoils undetected.
The time of the raid was unclear but a museum employee found showcases smashed in the exhibition rooms on Sunday morning.
Museum director Joerg Drieselmann told the Tagesspiegel daily that
among the medals taken were a gold Patriotic order of Merit, an Order of
Karl Marx — the highest honour awarded in the former communist East
Germany and an Order of Lenin.
Stolen jewellery included rings and a watch, he said.
The items were confiscated by the Stasi from private individuals.
After the collapse of the communist regime, many items were returned
to their owners. But some which remained unclaimed were on loan to the
Stasi Museum as part of its exhibition.
“These are not huge treasures. But we are a history museum and don’t
expect people to break in,” the museum chief was quoted as saying.
The latest robbery came hot on the heels of a brazen heist at the Green Vault museum in Dresden’s Royal Palace on November 25.
Having sparked a partial power cut before breaking in through a
window, the thieves stole priceless 18th-century diamond jewellery —
including a famous 49-carat Dresden white — from the collection of the
Saxon ruler August the Strong.
Police are still hunting four suspects, and have offered half a
million euros ($550,000) as a reward for information leading to an
arrest or recovery of the stolen goods.
Investigators are also in contact with colleagues in Berlin to
explore possible connections to a similar heist in the capital two years
ago.
In 2017, a 100-kilogramme (220-pound), 24-karat giant gold coin was stolen from Berlin’s Bode Museum.
Four men with links to a notorious Berlin gang were later arrested and put on trial.
The coin has never been recovered, and fears are growing that the Dresden treasures will also remain lost forever.
Shaken by the loss, Germany’s culture minister Monika Gruetters this week called for a national conference on museum security.
“We need to look at how museums can protect their objects from such
brutal activities while still being accessible to the public in the
normal way,” she said.
Criminals large families: Where in Germany what are the Clans have to Say
With the deportation of a leading Bremer Clan member in the Lebanon
this week, the topic of criminals, puts families back into focus. How is
the situation in the whole of Germany – and in which regions the
phenomenon of the Clan, it is common to crime? An Overview of some of
these large families and police actions against members of such Clans
are:
When talking about Clan-crime in Germany, then two of the
most brazen acts quickly get out of this and the last year has been
stolen in the sense: As this may, from a Berlin primary school is a work
of art, the state office of criminal investigation quickly a well-known
large family in the suspicion that the “family R”, such as the
“Berliner Morgenpost” reported. The stolen “gold nest” should be about
80,000 euros in value. Even more rewarding is the theft of a 100-Kilo
gold coin from the Bode-Museum in Berlin-Mitte in March 2017. The
material value of the “Big Maple Leaf” will then have 3.75 million
euros. Where the coin is today, don’t know the police. Melted down and
made into money, it is suspected. Money that you can invest prima – in
real estate, for example.
However, such spectacular cases are not the Bulk of the illegal
transactions of criminals, members of large families – usually consist,
according to investigators from the fraud, extortion, burglaries,
thefts, drug trafficking and Prostitution.
night-and-fog action
Leading the Miri-Clan-member from Bremen deported
dpa police actions against criminal families
With illegal activities, it Makes such large families in many regions
of Germany, and wealth. The state has sent to break this Power, and
recently had several calls to the deportation of one of the leading
heads of a Lebanese clan from Bremen in the middle of the week belonged
to. The Person had been “obliged to leave the country,” said a
spokeswoman for the Bremen Department of interior on Thursday. From
media reports, that this “obligation to leave” already existed for a
good 13 years.
another spectacular use, there was over a year ago
in Berlin. There were seized at a large-scale action real estate is in
the million value. This, too, is regarded as a significant blow to the
Clan-crime in Germany.
But what the large families, and in which
areas of Germany family members are criminal activities? A spokeswoman
for the Federal criminal police office on star-demand in Berlin, North
Rhine-Westphalia and Bremen, as the focus of the Clan-crime – a General
Overview for the whole of Germany, the authority has not. As with all
police powers, the Clan-crime countries thing. And the number of people
counted on these networks, are usually appraised values.
Berlin: the capital of The Clans in Germany
The German capital is regarded in this country as the main location for
criminals from large families. There, according to media reports, up to
20 such Clans. Particularly well known is the Abou-Chakers
– also because of the friendship and subsequent enmity between the
Rapper Bushido and Clan-chief Arafat Abou-Chaker, against the
investigators in the past few years, more than 30 methods have hard are.
The Abou-Chakers come originally from Lebanon and immigrated in the 80s
to Germany. You are in Berlin, the most famous of the Clan – the
largest but they are not.
star talk
separation of Arafat Abou-Chaker
Bushido: “If anything happens to me, is taken care of for my family”
Bigger the Rammo-Clan
is supposed to be, sometimes Remmo-Clan written – with an estimated 500
members, about twice as large as the Abou-Chakers. Known to the family
Union, and also by his involvement in the Rapper scene. Bushido makes
according to his own statement in the star after his break with Arafat
Abou-Chaker now with a family member of Ashraf Rammo shops.
But in the music Business, including the Management of artists belongs
to, does not appear to be part of the business of members of this
family: A LKA-report listed in the past year 1146 of the operations on,
in which members of the family Rammo were considered as suspects.
In the summer of 2018, there was the already mentioned use in Berlin:
investigators seized 77 real estate this large family of more than nine
million euros: money laundering is suspected. According to the LKA, the
Clan is suspected of criminal profits in the amount of 28 million euros
scammed. Money that should be invested in the family in those
properties.
And finally, three members of the Clan are just
currently due to the downturn in the Bode-Museum in front of the court,
in which those gigantic gold coin was stolen. According to current
planning, is expected to fall according to a court spokeswoman at the
end of September a judgment.
separation of Arafat Abou-Chaker
Bushido and his wife Anna-Maria from the pack: “We will not allow ourselves to be more intimidating”
the Rammo family immigrated in the 80s, during the Lebanese civil war,
to Germany. They were, so read it again and again in the media,
stateless, and were originally from the area of today’s Southeast
Turkey. Arrived in Germany, they were safe from war and violence, but at
the time, initially no permission to work in the Federal Republic of
Germany, and also the children were not subject to in the new home
first, the school duty. Both circumstances are considered to be one of
the reasons that a number of the former immigrants from Lebanon entry
into the criminal Milieu and the emergence of a criminal parallel
society in Germany.
A further in Berlin, well-known Clan Name in Berlin, the Miris
– a in Germany, wide-branched family with loud “welt.de” an estimated
2500 members are. However, the Miris should have their focus in Bremen.
Bremen: home base of the Miri-clan
Bremen Miri-Clan
is a family, which immigrated in the 80s, from Lebanon to Germany.
Family members of the Miris is accused of Organised crime in various
areas. But also in the Hanseatic city, the authorities try, the criminal
activities of the clan curb. So it was on Thursday, first through the
“image”newspaper known that one of the leading heads of this criminal
has a big family and chief of the Bremen forbidden Chapters of the
motorcycle club, Mongols MC in the early Morning at 3.40 PM in his at
home. Then, the 46-Year-old was deported to Lebanon, and, accompanied by
elite police officers, there flew out. The action are supposed to have
authorities from Bremen, Berlin, and the Federal government working
together in Secret for months.
North Rhine-Westphalia: Over a Hundred of families and thousands of crimes
North Rhine-with its many Metropolitan areas, the first state to the
presented recently a comprehensive picture of the situation to the
Clan-crime – and with spectacular data was the talk of the made
Westphalia. After the middle of may, the study presented 104 Turkish
goods in the past two years-Arabic immigrant families in the state for
14.225 crimes responsible, especially food as the focus of the clan
crime, followed by Recklinghausen, Gelsenkirchen, Duisburg and other
Ruhr area cities.
Also in the Ruhr area, many of these people
came in the 80s and 90s over Lebanon. And also, you are originally from
the Ottoman Empire, today’s Turkey. Clan name lists the picture of the
situation – the police in Germany is called, for reasons of privacy
protection, generally, no such name, of which there are also all sorts
of spellings. But observers of the scene will know who is meant, if in
the NRW collection abbreviations of the family names are called as “Clan
O”, “E”, “A.”, “K”, “S”, “I”, “F”, “Ta”, “R” or “T”.
Criminal Clans
Scam: Driving in Germany to know thousands without traffic rules?
As one of the larger clan families , the family Al-Zein ,
sometimes El is Zein wrote. She has, according to media Compounds
according to Berlin reports, but should be, especially in Essen and
Duisburg widely used. Also the Name Omeirat is considered to be a term in the Ruhr area, which was also in Bremen and Berlin-based Miris .
in Total, were assigned to the 104 clan in NRW 6449 suspects in the
investigated period. You have to do it not with “egg thieves or tobacco
smugglers”, said the then Minister of the interior, Herbert Reul (CDU)
at the presentation of the management report. More than a third of the
identified offences were threats, coercion, robbery and dangerous bodily
injury. Among the legal and illegal areas of business in which family
members are active, according to the report, the motor Vehicle trade and
rental, key services, as well as the drugs and red light district. It
is often used to hookah Bars for criminal transactions.
Postmarked by the last name
However, of course, anyone who is wearing one of the infamous last
name, or from one of these large and widely branched families, not a
Clan-Criminal. Also article on the topic back again. The Green Essen
Alderman Ahmad Omeirat, who came as a child from Lebanon to Germany, is
supposed to be a model example for Integration, Sr., But he met with
hostility by his own admission again and again – because he bears the
surname Omeirat.
sources: “Berliner Morgenpost”, “Bild-Zeitung”,
“WAZ”, Ralf Ghadban: “to integrate the Lebanon-refugees yet?”, “Clan
crime management report NRW 2018”, “Welt.de”
topics in this
article with Make family Germany Berlin Bremen Lebanon, LKA North
Rhine-Westphalia police of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bushido Berliner
Morgenpost Berlin-Mitte drug Offense Arafat Abou-Chaker Bild-Zeitung
