Gardner Museum Heist: 27th Anniversary Story: The True Story; Not the FBI’s One: 2/8

Using informants means that you don’t have to do the hard work involved in truly investigating matters. You just have to make a call or a meet and act like a stenographer writing down what the informant said. Live by the informant, die by the informant. 27 years later the FBI is still without a clue as to whom pulled the job. You would think it would realize it has been had.

From the beginning when I read about the case I concluded it was a well planned robbery by well paid skillful art thieves who knew what they wanted, were hired to do the job, and had a fence or customer waiting to take the art work from them. The package I received suggests something along the line I figured out but goes deeper into it by identifying the people who did it.

It should have been so easy for the FBI to figure this out. The first thing the FBI should have recognized was that this was a well planned robbery. It was done by people who had specific art works in mind. Specific items were taken from two different floors and three different rooms. That meant someone went in there with a plan as to what to take. To do this the thieves would have had to case the Museum on several occasions prior to the theft.

Had the FBI recognized that it would not have beat the informant bush looking for someone to rat someone else out. It would have gone through all the retained video tape recordings, if any, of people who visited the museum. It would also have reached out to foreign police agencies, gone through the international flight passenger lists of each airline as well as the records of each hotel and motel in the Boston vicinity looking for people who visited Boston from overseas.

That is a lot of hard work. That is why the FBI did not do it. It is easier to rely on informants.

If it started with the idea that this was a pre-cased robbery and the thieves knew what they wanted, it would have also concluded that the thieves were professional art thieves who had been hired by a corrupt art dealer (fence) who already had customers waiting for the art work. It would also have recognized that the type of theft committed was one common to Europe and not to America. (That is my theory. The package claims otherwise.) It would have secured help from the international community. None of that seems to have been done.

To understand this more it is necessary to review some of the actions and statements of the FBI. Four years ago this March 17^th the FBI SAC in Boston said the FBI “had identified the thieves” without naming them. 

At the same time the FBI agent in charge of the investigation Geoffrey Kelly said because one painting was sliced out of the frame “that’s indicative of a rank amateur when it comes to art theft.”  He went on to say the FBI’s working profile “points to inexperienced art thieves” although  in his description of how they worked that night (taking the surveillance tape and a print out of the motion detector) seems to point to professionals.

What was so astonishing is the FBI was issuing statements that contradicted themselves. If the FBI knew who the thieves were, as the FBI SAC stated, it would not be working with a “working profile.” It knows them. It would  know whether or not they were amateurs.

When I juxtaposed these statements it was clear to me the FBI had no idea who the thieves were. It was a con. It was putting this disinformation out hoping to shake the bushes so that somehow, someone, somewhere even as far away as Finland, might give it some information. (You might remember a short time earlier the FBI used this approach to get information that led to the capture of Whitey Bulger.)