Master Thieves

by Kurkjian, Stephen

  Hofmann used the money to make repairs to his home, also adding a back deck.

  I approached Hofmann not long after the auction, after learning how easy it had been for him to steal the painting and fence it through Sotheby’s. He maintained that Sotheby’s never pressed him for paperwork after he had told them that the painting was a family heirloom and he had no documentation to prove it. Also, he said that he had gotten possession of the painting legitimately; Rieff had told him for doing such a good job in transporting the artwork and antiques to New York City he could take any piece he wanted.

  But Rieff denied that claim, and in March 2011 a federal grand jury indicted Hofmann on two counts of transporting and selling a stolen item. He pleaded guilty to the charges the following year. Hofmann was placed on probation for three years and ordered to make restitution of $34,200 to Sotheby’s for bilking them into selling the piece he had stolen.

  _______________________

  The night before the FBI’s press conference, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, trying to figure out what was going to be said, and wondering if a recovery was about to be announced. What startling development were the FBI and the museum going to share that I had missed in my reporting on the case for the Boston Globe for more than a decade?

  The basic elements of what had happened the night of the theft—who might have been involved and, more important, where the paintings might be—were always kept confidential. Making such details public could jeopardize the investigation; that was the FBI’s familiar refrain. But in March 2013 there was a sense that the FBI might be ready to provide something more, or perhaps even something definite, about what it had discovered.

  Richard S. DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, did not disappoint in his announcement. In a gray pinstripe suit, with a bright yellow tie and his rectangle, wire-rimmed glasses pressed firmly to his temple, and flanked by US attorney Carmen Ortiz and the three investigators who had worked the longest on the case, DesLauriers declared that the FBI knew who had committed the robbery, knew the trail taken to hide at least some of the masterpieces, and even that an attempt had been made in 2002 to sell the pieces in Philadelphia.

  My contact had been right. DesLauriers’ seven-minute statement on Monday morning, March 18, 2013, at FBI headquarters in Boston was a bombshell. For the first time in the twenty-three-year history of the investigation, the FBI was providing the details of what the hard work of its investigators had yielded and, perhaps even more important, what still needed to be done.

  “Some have described the theft as one of the most significant art heists in the nation’s history,” the square-jawed Des­Lauriers intoned. “We agree. Today the investigation has had many twists and turns, promising leads and dead ends. But over the years, the FBI has never relented. Instead we persevere, analyzing and reviewing thousands of leads, interviewing many, methodically allowing us to move people in or out as suspects.

  “Remaining tenacious and not giving up is the key to solving these cases,” he went on. “Today, on the twenty-third anniversary of the theft, we are pleased to announce the FBI has made significant investigative progress in the search of the stolen art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. For the first time we can say with a high degree of confidence we’ve determined, in the years since the theft, the art was transported to Connecticut and to the Philadelphia area.”

  It was a classic public relations announcement that stressed the positive elements of what the FBI had learned—while leaning a little on the truth. “We know finding stolen art often spans decades, or longer. A Cezanne stolen from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1978 was recovered twenty-one years later. And five years after that, this office recovered the five works that were stolen with that piece. Remaining tenacious and not giving up is the key to solving these cases,” DesLauriers declared.

  The truth is that the recovery of the Cezanne in 1999 was engineered by Julian Radcliffe, a British investigator whose Art Loss Register tracked stolen art for the insurance industry, and who never worked for the FBI. It was Radcliffe whose unwavering efforts had located the individual responsible for stashing the stolen paintings, and it was Radcliffe who had followed that trail like a bloodhound to the ultimate recovery, without which the FBI likely would not have located the companion works. In fact, when they were offered a chance to get the Cezanne back in exchange for letting the other works go, the FBI seemed prepared to take it. It was Radcliffe who insisted that all six works be returned.

  In total, DesLauriers’ remarks about the Gardner theft had the assembled reporters scrambling, asking for details: Who had committed the robbery and stashed the paintings all these years? What had happened in Philadelphia in 2002 to make the FBI certain a sale had been attempted? And if nothing had been heard of the paintings’ whereabouts for more than a decade, why was the FBI so certain of its information?

  But DesLauriers resisted, saying giving out further details could jeopardize the FBI’s ongoing efforts to recover the paintings.

  Despite the troubling lack of details to the handful of reporters who had followed the Gardner case closely over the years, DesLauriers’ press conference was featured by all the major television news outlets and received front-page coverage in newspapers across the nation. So intense was the coverage that it soon became clear that there was another reason for DesLauriers’ announcement, something other than giving the public an update on the status of the investigation. The FBI needed the public’s help.

  Clearly the FBI had entered into the “final chapter” of the investigation, but the goal here was not to arrest the criminals responsible but, rather, to recover the stolen pieces. For that it desperately needed the public’s help.

  “It is likely over the years that someone, a friend, loved one, or relative, has seen the art hanging on the wall, placed above a mantle, or stored in an attic,” DesLauriers had said. “We want that person to call us.

  “The FBI is not content to know just the general location of the art years ago, or the identity of those who committed the theft,” DesLauriers said in wrapping up his statement. “To close the book on this theft, we need to recover the art and return them to its rightful owner. We call upon the American public to assist us in this investigation as they have so many times before.”

  Although DesLauriers chose not to be specific, the most recent instance of the FBI asking for the public’s help had resulted in the arrest of notorious Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger. The FBI had asked that anyone who recognized Bulger’s girlfriend, who had been at his side for more than fifteen years, call a toll-free hotline. A woman who had been their neighbor in the Santa Monica, California, apartment complex where the pair had been living under assumed names alerted the FBI, and within days a capture was made.

  It made sense, therefore, that such a public appeal would be tried in the Gardner case. But the FBI needed to maximize the campaign, and the press conference was the answer. Thirteen pieces of artwork were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990, and many weren’t well known to the public at large. For twenty-three years there had been no “proof of life” of a single piece, and while people might recall what the two most valuable pieces—Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer’s The Concert—looked like, the lesser works were largely unknown. Any one of them could provide a trail that could lead to the recovery of the major pieces, if not all of them, so the FBI needed to make certain that as many people as possible looked at the website dedicated to the case or at least the advertisements that featured them.

  Providing a further sense that the aim of the press conference was a public appeal was US Attorney Ortiz, who followed DesLauriers to the microphone. Ortiz stressed that there were two incentives for those to come forward with information: They would not be prosecuted for any involvement they might have had in the theft or concealment of the paintings, and if their informat
ion led to a recovery, they could make a valid claim on the $5 million reward the Gardner Museum offered for returning the artwork.

  Having reported on the theft since the late 1990s, I, like DesLauriers, yearned for a final chapter to be written, for the paintings to be returned to their rightful places at the museum. But I feared that without a trial, it was up to independent reporting to tell the story of how and why they had been stolen and where they had been kept all these years. Otherwise, it would mean that Boston’s last best secret would go untold, and that all of us—and history—would be denied the chance of learning the lessons this extraordinary event had taught us.

  Although DesLauriers and Ortiz mentioned no names, sources familiar with the investigation put names and faces to those said to be involved: David A. Turner, Robert A. Guarente, and Robert Gentile.

  I knew these individuals by name, but why did the FBI now believe that all roads in the Gardner case led to them? What was their connection to the robbery? As I would soon learn, it all started with a failed lie detector test and three hundred tablets of prescription pain reliever.

  Chapter Six

  The Secret in the Shed

  Robert V. Gentile was losing control of the situation, and he knew it. For months the aging hood from the Connecticut suburbs around Hartford had been promising to aid the FBI in its investigation into the whereabouts of the nearly half billion dollars’ worth of paintings stolen in the 1990 Gardner Museum heist. But those promises had led nowhere.

  Instead, during the time he had been helping them, the same federal agents were arranging to bust him for selling more than three hundred tablets of Oxycontin, Dilaudid, and Percocet—all pain relievers he had been prescribed by doctors for his back pain—to an undercover informant. That way, if he backed out of cooperating with them on the Gardner score, they could arrest him and pressure him to talk anyway.

  The room in the US Attorney’s Office on the third floor of 450 Main Street in downtown Hartford was chaotic, crammed with prosecutors, FBI agents, and investigators that day in April 2012. They knew they had Gentile in a tight spot. Gentile had just been indicted on drug charges and, even though there may have been extenuating circumstances, he was well into his seventies and still faced the real prospect of a long prison sentence, one that in his health he might never return from.

  To Gentile and his lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, it seemed the only way around those charges was to submit to a lie detector test. If Gentile could pass the test, he thought, it might just convince the federal agents and prosecutors bearing down on him that what he had been telling them—that he didn’t know anything about the whereabouts of the Gardner artwork—was true and they would drop the drug charges against him, or at least let him off easy.

  The whole thing had started two years before, in 2010, when the widow of Gentile’s old friend Robert Guarente told investigators that before her husband died in 2004 he had given two, maybe three paintings to Gentile for safekeeping. They may have been from the theft at the Gardner Museum.

  “Sure, I knew Bobby Guarente,” Gentile had told the investigators when they originally approached him. “And yeah, maybe we did talk about the Gardner case. But it was only to talk about how great it would be to get that $5 million reward. Guarente never had any of those paintings, and he certainly never gave me any of them.”

  As Gentile walked into the interrogation room at the Hartford federal building and surveyed the determined faces, he thought to himself, The only way of getting them to drop these charges against me is to convince them I’m telling the truth.

  “Go ahead,” he told them. “Hook me up.” And they did.

  Ronald Barndollar, the retired FBI agent who was called in to conduct the polygraph exam, began things on a serious note, advising Gentile of his need to tell the truth. Then he asked the first question:

  “Did you know beforehand that the Gardner Museum was going to be robbed?” asked Barndollar.

  “No,” Gentile answered.

  In an adjacent room the polygraph machine registered that Gentile’s answer was a lie.

  Gentile was shown pictures of the thirteen works of art that had been stolen. With each one he was asked: “Did you ever have possession of any of the stolen artwork?”

  “No,” Gentile answered again, and again the polygraph machine registered each time that Gentile was lying.

  “Do you know the location of any of those paintings?”

  “No,” Gentile answered. And again, the polygraph machine registered the likelihood that Gentile was lying.

  When the exam was over, Barndollar excused himself and came back in a few minutes with the results: Gentile had been lying in response to every question.

  The investigators let out a howl in unison. “This guy is gonna rot in jail if he doesn’t give us something,” Gentile recalls one saying.

  McGuigan looked over at assistant US attorney Peter Markle, the veteran federal prosecutor who was assisting in handling the Gentile case, and asked if he could have a little time with his client. When they were alone, he shot Gentile a stern look that said, “What the hell are you doing?” McGuigan’s hope that the polygraph test might do Gentile some good had disappeared fast.

  Gentile was in failing health. He didn’t want to die behind bars. He knew his only hope was in the lie-detector results convincing the authorities that his claims of innocence regarding the Gardner heist weren’t just the rantings of a desperate man. This was it. It was, so to speak, his moment of truth.

  Gentile reached over and grabbed McGuigan’s arm. “I’m telling the truth; it’s that goddamned machine,” Gentile told him. “They’ve rigged it to make me look like a liar. Tell them I want to take it again. I’ve got an idea. You’ll see.”

  Gentile’s idea: In taking the test again, he would concoct a story that he had seen one of the stolen paintings in the past.

  Within minutes, the whole procedure was repeated. The images of the stolen pieces were again shown on a screen in front of him. As each one scanned past, Gentile was asked if he had ever seen the piece after it had been stolen.

  Vermeer’s The Concert?

  No.

  Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee?

  No.

  Rembrandt’s Lady and Gentleman in Black?

  No.

  The miniature self-portrait by Rembrandt? There was a long pause. The room suddenly went still.

  “Yes,” said Gentile. And on this question, the polygraph registered he was telling the truth.

  “What are you talking about?” one of the investigators asked Gentile, with an almost manic sound in his voice. “When did you see this? Where did you see it?”

  Like criminals of all stripes and at all levels, Gentile prided himself on never snitching, especially not in front of a room full of feds. But Elene Guarente had dragged him into this by implicating him in hiding three of the stolen paintings, so he figured the least he could do was return the favor.

  “Elene Guarente showed it to me,” Gentile said, referring to the widow of Robert Guarente, the mob soldier whose reach extended from Boston to Maine. “It was a long time ago. It was tiny. Like a postage stamp. She pulled it out of her bra, where she was hiding it, to show me. She told me it was going to provide for her retirement. Maybe get her a house in Florida with it.”

  The FBI agents and federal prosecutors were stunned. They looked around the room at each other, in disbelief at what they’d just heard. Barndollar, the FBI agent running the polygraph examination, excused himself and retrieved the results from the other room: it showed that Gentile had answered honestly when he told them he had seen the miniature Rembrandt self-portrait before. As far as the machine was concerned, Gentile was telling the truth.

  The name Elene Guarente wasn’t new to federal agents. In fact, just two years before, she’d told them that her husband had handed Gentile several paintings in
the parking lot of a Portland, Maine, restaurant. The feds had dug into Gentile’s background and discovered he had deep ties to organized crime figures in Connecticut and may have been operating a loan-shark business there. After that they’d tracked Gentile’s activities closely, waiting for the right moment when they could put the pressure on him to find out more about his mob dealings.

  But now, in the face of Gentile’s stunning admission, federal agents who had labored on the Gardner investigation for more than two decades had in their midst a suspect who was at the very least involved in hiding the artwork.

  Following the test, McGuigan remained convinced that Gentile’s disastrous showing had more to do with the raucous setting in which the exam was given than with Gentile’s veracity. But he realized he needed more than ever to convince the federal agents of that, so he asked for one final meeting in the US attorney’s office to try to convince the federal investigators that Gentile was being honest. Just Durham and James Lawton, the FBI agent who had labored for two years on the Gentile case, would attend this one. Gentile would be brought in from the state prison where he had been held since his February arrest, along with his wife, Patricia, son Bobby, and daughter Donna.

  To try to make the atmosphere more amenable for his client, McGuigan ordered special sandwiches from Gentile’s favorite Italian restaurant. The feds brought their own sandwiches—from a local Subway.

  From the outset, McGuigan did most of the talking, stressing to Gentile that this was his last chance to assist the investigators in their search for the missing Gardner paintings.

  “They are convinced you’re not telling them everything, and I’m telling you that this may be your only way out,” Gentile remembers McGuigan saying. “These people are serious. With these charges you’re facing and the condition of your health, if they get a conviction, they can put you away for the rest of your life.”