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00:00If I walked into a museum and did this to one of the old masters, then understandably you would be horrified.
00:21But if I walked into the museum, lifted the same painting off the wall, dodged all of the high-tech security and spirited it away, then perhaps, if you're being honest, a small part of you might admire the daredevilry of the act.
00:34Which begs the question, just what is it about art theft that we can't resist?
00:41Every year, hundreds of thousands of works of art are stolen. Stolen from homes and galleries in every corner of the world.
00:53Only a fraction will be returned to their rightful owners.
00:57Now, you might think that none of this really matters. I mean, who cares if a few galleries or rich old men lose the odd painting?
01:03After all, the works of art, they're probably insured. No one's hurt.
01:07And we can all still see these paintings at the click of a mouse.
01:10Except I believe that's a load of baloney.
01:14Because original masterpieces are more than paintings. They're part of our history.
01:19And their theft is an assault on all of us, robbing us of our cultural heritage bit by bit.
01:27I'm going to visit the scenes of these audacious crimes, places all over the world that have lost precious objects that enrich our lives.
01:36I want to know, who are the faceless criminals stealing the world's greatest works of art?
01:45Why are they doing it? And why does so little ever return?
01:50Welcome to the world of international art crime.
01:56Where some of the most beautiful paintings on the planet end up in the hands of some pretty nasty people.
02:02Where some of the most expensive paintings anywhere on earth seemingly disappear into thin air.
02:07And where not everything is as it seems.
02:10Boston, Massachusetts.
02:24On St Patrick's Day 1990, this city was the site of the greatest art theft in history.
02:31Most of the city was partying.
02:33But the streets outside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were quiet.
02:37The museum is the former home of a wealthy Boston socialite.
02:43It's America's first great private art collection.
02:46And was Isabella Stewart Gardner's gift to the people of Boston.
02:52Her museum is packed with artistic treasures from all corners of the globe.
02:57Including pictures by Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
03:02But that night, 23 years ago, the integrity of this beautiful collection would be shattered.
03:13At 1.24 in the morning, a car approaches the employee entrance at the Gardner Museum.
03:18Two guys get out of the car and they ring the buzzer.
03:21And announce to the guard that they're Boston police.
03:24And they say they're responding to a disturbance.
03:27Against protocol and policy, the guard buzzes them in.
03:31There were only two guards in the entire museum.
03:36One was on the door and the other one was upstairs patrolling the galleries.
03:40And opening up this side door proved to be a fatal mistake.
03:44Because as soon as the robbers masquerading as policemen were inside,
03:48they quickly took charge of the situation.
03:50They asked the guard to step away from the desk.
03:53Big mistake.
03:54Behind that desk was the panic button.
03:56It was the last line of the museum's defence.
03:58They then asked him to summon his colleague downstairs.
04:01And as soon as he arrived, the thieves knew they had the entire museum,
04:05which from the outside seemed so impregnable.
04:07This stronghold had their mercy.
04:09The fake policemen bundled the guards down the corridor, bound their hands and announced,
04:18this is a robbery.
04:23The biggest art theft in history could begin.
04:28Among the stolen items were three Rembrandts.
04:31One Vermeer.
04:32Five works by Degas.
04:34A Manet.
04:35And, weirdly, an eagle from the top of a Napoleonic battle flag.
04:41In total, 13 works of art, many crudely cut from their frames, valued today at 500 million dollars, more than 300 million pounds.
04:55The value of these pieces, you can't put a price tag on them just because of the history of the museum,
05:02what Mrs. Gardner put in place there.
05:04These 13 pieces are taken from a collective work of art that she left the city.
05:09And, in a real sense, it's a hole in her collection and it's a hole in our hearts,
05:14not just at the museum but for all of Boston.
05:16A part of our heritage has been stolen from us.
05:21It's a barbaric act.
05:22Given that these pieces are very well known, who could possibly keep them?
05:27That's a very good question.
05:29Only, probably, a person who is determined to keep them private for the rest of their life.
05:35So, what can we say about this extraordinary crime?
05:41Well, the targets seem to be very particular.
05:45Of all the thousands of works of art inside that building, they zeroed in on 13 specific objects.
05:52So, it seems almost perfect.
05:54No one has ever been arrested for the theft.
05:57None of the art has ever been recovered.
05:59In fact, this looks like a sophisticated, well executed, very clever crime.
06:06Exactly the kind of crime that we associate with art theft.
06:10Hollywood has given us a certain image of art crime.
06:19It's a world of daring thieves, laser tripwires and abaned, sophisticated billionaires.
06:26People like the fictional art thief and connoisseur, Thomas Crown.
06:31In the film, he is the classic Hollywood art thief.
06:34The expensive clothes, the refined good looks and the unflappable poise under pressure.
06:40Crown makes stealing art look stylish, sexy and glamorous.
06:46And he only steals the best.
06:48In this case, an important and valuable Monet.
06:53And back in the real world, the paintings stolen from the gardener were very important and very valuable indeed.
07:01One of the most valuable paintings stolen from the gardener is this.
07:05It's the Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt.
07:08And traditionally, Rembrandt's been very popular amongst art thieves.
07:11In this instance, the thieves really struck gold because this picture, it's Rembrandt's only seascape.
07:16And it contains a self-portrait of the artist in the midst of the melee, holding onto his hat and staring out at the viewer.
07:23It was painted in 1633 and it depicts a famous biblical scene of Jesus with his disciples in a fishing boat that's got into all sorts of trouble as it's been struck by a tempest.
07:34And to show off his talent, Rembrandt's deliberately decided to depict this moment of maximum danger when all of those disciples are about to lose faith.
07:42They fear that they're about to die.
07:44Only before they're then calmed by the contrasting very calm and serene figure of Christ himself sitting in the boat.
07:52It's an example of a young artist flexing the muscles of his artistic powers.
08:02But the Storm on the Sea of Galilee isn't the most valuable painting in the Garden of Lute.
08:06That honour belongs to this.
08:08It's the concert by the 17th century Dutch artist and contemporary of Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer.
08:14It's a typical Vermeer scene of well-heeled people making music in a very refined, opulent interior.
08:20But all isn't quite as straightforward as it seems because this is very much a world of artifice.
08:27It contains these paintings within paintings.
08:30Two Arcadian landscapes.
08:32But then there's this image, this third painting.
08:35It presents a brothel-goer who's interested in a prostitute who's playing a lute, whilst this old crone of a procurus is negotiating a fee.
08:45Maybe we're meant to try and draw some subtle comparisons between them.
08:50But that sense of complicated open-endedness, that sense of sexual intrigue is the hallmark of Vermeer.
08:58And in 1892, Isabella Stewart Gardner paid 29,000 francs, $6,000, for this picture.
09:05Today, it's estimated to be worth $300 million, round about £184 million.
09:12This is one of just 36 paintings attributed to Vermeer still in existence.
09:16And that rarity is right at the heart of its stratospheric value.
09:20Almost all the other Vermeers in the world belong to one museum or another, and none are minded to sell.
09:26Which means that no matter how much money you have, Vermeer's work is simply unbuyable.
09:32So in order to acquire it, you'd have to steal it.
09:36The Gardener theft certainly seems to fit the idea of a connoisseur art thief.
09:41But there are also puzzles.
09:44If you're going to steal a Vermeer, why not steal the equally valuable pictures nearby in The Gardener?
09:51Like Titian's Rape of Europa or Michelangelo's Pietà?
09:56And why waste time on this odd little finial?
10:01What's the finial? I've never quite understood this.
10:04The finial rests at the top of a Napoleonic flag from his first regiment.
10:08It's just a kind of ornament at the top?
10:10Yeah.
10:11And not actually worth very much money at all?
10:13Exactly.
10:14The more you look at it, the more curious this robbery seems.
10:19The varied, mismatched collection of stolen art suggests to me that if a connoisseur was indeed behind this,
10:26then he or she appears to have had very specific, even idiosyncratic, tastes.
10:33Presumably they, or the mysterious shadowy power that was paying him to commit the crime,
10:40had a particular love for Rembrandt and Vermeer,
10:44as well as a keen interest, presumably, in Napoleonic history,
10:48hence that unremarkable finial that went missing.
10:51So you'd be forgiven for thinking that this couldn't be an opportunistic, random act.
10:58It must have been a very precise and deliberate crime.
11:08Nine years after the Gardiner, another museum was hit.
11:12And again, the robbery had all the hallmarks of a Thomas Crown-style heist.
11:17Police have revealed more details about the theft of a £3 million Cezanne painting
11:22from a museum in Oxford on New Year's Day.
11:25They believe the landscape was stolen by professional art thieves from the Ashmolean Museum
11:30for a private collector.
11:36Picture the scene. Oxford. Eve of the millennium.
11:39And just like in Boston, the whole city's out parting on the streets.
11:43Up on the rooftops, skulking about in the shadows, a thief is going about his business.
11:48Now, police have got a theory. They think that this thief took advantage of scaffolding
11:53to get up onto the roof of the Ashmolean Museum.
11:57And he made his way across until he found the skylights that he was looking for.
12:01And he removed a section of the glass and, using a rope ladder,
12:05then lowered himself into the museum.
12:08The thief dropped a smoke canister, which set off the fire alarm.
12:15But that meant guards couldn't enter the gallery. Fire regulations prevented it.
12:20Quick, cunning, and with a particularly inventive use of a smoke bomb,
12:25you can see why it reminded so many of the Thomas Crown affair.
12:29This was The Thief's Target, The View of Auvers-sur-Oise by Paul Cézanne.
12:39Cézanne is an exceptionally important figure in modern art.
12:43Picasso called him the father of us all,
12:45because he laid the foundations for the radical developments of cubism.
12:50He's not replicating the real world in any illusionistic fashion.
12:55Instead, you start to see Cézanne putting down, in places,
12:58these careful, parallel brushstrokes, leaving patches of canvas bare.
13:03He's placing blocks and dabs of colour next to each other,
13:07like a kind of patchwork.
13:09This is artifice, he's saying. This is a work of art. It isn't the real world.
13:13And that was what he would be remembered for.
13:16So this is why it's an important picture,
13:17because it's a transitional canvas leading towards the great art
13:21that Cézanne produced towards the end of his life.
13:24So the Ashmolean theft looks like an example of a professional art thief,
13:32stealing to order for a Cézanne enthusiast.
13:35One man I hope can help shed light on this shadowy figure is Dick Ellis,
13:40who set up the Met's Art and Antiques Squad
13:43and is now one of Britain's most successful art crime investigators.
13:47In your career, have you ever come across some nefarious billionaire
13:52who has commissioned some criminals to steal a work of art to order
13:56so that he or she can venerate this piece at home in private?
13:59No.
14:00Never?
14:01Never.
14:02I think it's, you know, it's a lovely concept, but it's not the reality.
14:08It's fiction?
14:09Complete fiction.
14:10So the mysterious private collector on whom this crime was initially pinned
14:14is about as real as Thomas Crown himself.
14:17Life isn't like the movies.
14:20But who then has been stealing art from museums like The Gardener and The Ashmolean?
14:25Who was stealing it?
14:27Well, these were people who had previously been doing armed robberies.
14:31A lot of the time they were organised crime groups.
14:34These were people who had made career decisions.
14:37At the age when people were leaving school and thinking,
14:40am I going into insurance, am I going into, you know, whatever,
14:43these people made career choices that they were going into crime.
14:47So they're nasty sorts?
14:48They were professional criminals.
14:49Tough people.
14:50So the reality is rather different and more mundane.
14:54We're dealing with everyday criminals, not billionaire connoisseurs.
14:59And presumably these criminals believe they can sell the paintings back
15:04onto the legitimate art market.
15:07One organisation has been set up specifically to prevent them from doing so.
15:13The Art Loss Register is the world's biggest database of stolen art.
15:18It's run by Julian Radcliffe.
15:23His mission is to help return stolen paintings like this one to their legitimate and grateful owners.
15:30Standard Dutch school of that sort of time.
15:33The Register also tracks art thefts from around the world in order to choke off the trade in stolen paintings.
15:42Every year we search about 400,000 items looking for those that are stolen.
15:47Those searches are what produce the actual matches which are on that board.
15:54If you say what is the overall recovery rate of stolen art, it is disappointing.
15:59It's probably only 15%.
16:01It's a very, very small fraction.
16:04It is.
16:05The effect of the Register is to make it difficult for stolen art to be sold for cash on the legitimate market.
16:12So criminals must be finding other ways to convert their thefts into money.
16:17They realise some cash value in the underworld.
16:22There's a criminal and he owes you a million dollars.
16:24He's only got half a million dollars.
16:26He'll give you the picture and say, I'll get you the other half a million dollars next week.
16:30You keep the picture in the meantime.
16:31We know that that happens.
16:36This is very different to the idea of a billionaire aficionado stealing art just for the love of it.
16:43It's not simply about selling art back onto the market.
16:47It seems that art can be used by thieves as a kind of underworld currency, greasing the wheels of the criminal economy.
16:55And that explains why great paintings have been targeted for decades.
17:0160 million dollars, 61 million dollars.
17:04The more valuable art is, the greater weight it carries as collateral for criminals.
17:09As the art market has risen over the past 60 years, it's little wonder that art thefts have also increased.
17:16The work of some artists has shot up in value by 1,000% since the late 1950s.
17:22And since then, the record for the most expensive painting at auction has been broken more than ten times.
17:29As art prices rose, the near impossibility of selling paintings on didn't deter criminals. Quite the opposite.
17:37Starting in 1960, there were world record prices for Picasso, Cezanne and Rembrandt that were announced on television.
17:44And dutifully watching television like the rest of us were members of organised crime groups.
17:48And they stole exactly what they saw on television was valuable.
17:52In 1969, here in Sicily, a TV programme was broadcast which attracted the attention of the local criminal fraternity.
18:08And it featured the work of one of Europe's most celebrated and notorious artists,
18:13who by the time he arrived here, in the early 17th century, was on the run, wanted for murder, Caravaggio.
18:22He was famously arrogant, tempestuous, forever getting into sword fights and brawls.
18:28There's this great anecdote about how he once threw a plate of scalding artichokes over a waiter
18:33because he thought the waiter had disrespected him.
18:35But he was also an unbelievably gifted artist, a genius who was decades ahead of his time.
18:41It's wonderful coming to Italy because elsewhere, masterpieces, they get cordoned off in museums and galleries.
18:55But here, some of the greatest paintings in the world still hang in these tiny churches that commission them,
19:00like this place, the Oratory of St. Lorenzo in the heart of Palermo.
19:05But whilst that's a blessing, obviously, it can also be a curse.
19:09Because one night in 1969, two men saw this church featured in a television programme about Italy's artistic treasures.
19:17And inside, they learnt, was one of the final works of Caravaggio.
19:22So they decided to take a closer look.
19:25Ludovico Geppetto is a local art historian.
19:37Ludovico Geppetto is a local art historian.
19:41Ludovico Geppetto del Libro Giallo
19:43Locati.
19:48Ludovico Geppetto پ стали,
19:51he was very good with an excellent fireside.
19:53He has been determined by the trees
19:57until the room where it was placed together.
19:58He has been fim $250,000
20:01and he has taken the door directly from Montevideo at where it is.
20:04this is really quite an odd experience for me because usually i'd come into a space like this
20:19to rhapsodize about a work of art but this isn't a real masterpiece this obviously is a replica
20:26of a caravaggio of his nativity which he painted for this very space in 1609 when he was on the
20:33run in sicily just a year before his death and it's better i guess than having just bare brick
20:42and staring at an empty frame this is a scene stock religious scene where the virgin mary has
20:52given birth to christ caravaggio is injecting this brutal note of realism there's nothing
20:59prettified here even the virgin herself well she doesn't look like she's glowing with divine
21:08inspiration aware of what she's just done instead she's completely exhausted but she's staring down
21:16despite that exhaustion with tenderness at her child who's just been sort of plonked on the floor
21:22beneath her following the theft there were several questions who were the thieves and what were their
21:32motives this being sicily one organization quickly came under suspicion
21:38so this means that there is an entity behind it that can be interpreted as a criminal
21:46organized organization that has interest in having art works to be able to circulate as if they were
21:52credit, as if they were circulated, as if they were circulated, as if they were circulated
21:55then the mafia enters in a predominant way because it is an organization almost perfect with
22:01ramifications in the whole world with art works to be able to pay drugs and weapons.
22:13Italian police estimate that half a million works of art have been stolen in Italy over the last four
22:19decades and this confirms what Julian Radcliffe of the art loss register told me that stolen art works as a
22:28criminal currency. The ordinary foot soldiers of the mafia have been stealing paintings to sustain
22:34their criminal activities for years.
22:39But the theft of this nativity was so outrageous it spurred the Italian state into action.
22:45They established the world's first specialist art crime department. One of its leaders was General
22:52Giovanni Pastore. I start by asking him what we know for certain about this case.
22:58The truth is that we do not have certain because we do not know the names of the people who have
23:05done this crime and we do not know the sort of the painting itself.
23:14For years there was silence. Then slowly repentant mafia soldiers began to talk and what they said was alarming.
23:22One, Gaspare Spetuzza claimed the nativity was used as a trophy by mafia bosses and took pride of place
23:31at secret mob gatherings. However, he also claimed that after it was damaged the bosses judged it worthless.
23:39So it was doused in petrol and set alight. But Giovanni is unconvinced by the claims of former mafiosi.
23:51Giovanni won't be drawn.
24:14Giovanni won't be drawn. This is clearly a case full of cul-de-sacs and false leads.
24:21You've investigated this for many years. In your opinion, what do you think has happened to the painting?
24:26If the painting was destroyed or less, we can't try it. So in my opinion, to say if it's still in italy or no.
24:34And if it was destroyed or not, or who has it, it's useless.
24:39We often went close to solutions that are falling into nothing.
24:45It's been decades now since anyone laid eyes on this painting.
24:58I get the feeling from talking to Giovanni that all the rumours surrounding its whereabouts are just that,
25:05rumours, stories from former mafiosi which may or may not be true.
25:10I can't help thinking the chances of ever seeing the painting again in all its glory are slim.
25:19The FBI has valued the lost painting at round about 20 million dollars,
25:32which I suspect may even be an underestimate.
25:34But still, standing here, this monetary value is totally immaterial.
25:38Because instead of a brilliant picture, which was designed specifically for this space four centuries ago,
25:45we're left with this milky approximation of the original.
25:49It's a sickly ghost of a masterpiece.
25:52And why has this happened? For what?
25:54So that some gangsters can show off a trophy to a bunch of other gangsters,
25:58or maybe use the painting as collateral to finance some of these horrific crimes which have scarred the island?
26:05I know that Caravaggio was no stranger to criminality, but still,
26:09here, there is no doubt that his blazing, incandescent genius has been extinguished utterly
26:16by the gloom of the Sicilian underworld.
26:19So if the mafia was behind the Caravaggio theft, it makes me wonder just who was really behind the Gardner heist.
26:38Are those paintings now circulating among Boston's criminal underworld?
26:45I'm on my way to meet one man who might know.
26:49He's spent decades stealing art.
26:52And he claims he has inside knowledge of the Gardner theft.
26:59Miles Connor is a legendary figure in the world of art theft.
27:03A member of Mensa and a former rock and roll singer who once played alongside the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry.
27:09And who became one of the most prolific art thieves in New England.
27:14He's agreed to meet me at his attorney's office in the Boston suburbs.
27:18And in the lobby, there are promising signs I may have come to the right place.
27:23Hi. Hello.
27:26Hey.
27:26Miles.
27:28How are you, pal?
27:28How are you, pal?
27:28How are you, pal?
27:29Alistair.
27:29Hey, Alistair.
27:30Nice to meet you.
27:30Great to meet you.
27:31Great to meet you.
27:31No others go here.
27:32I don't.
27:33But you must be Marty.
27:35How are you, pal?
27:35Very, very good to meet you, too.
27:37Nice to meet you.
27:38It's kind of weird for me because I'm an art critic and, you know, you're the most notorious art thief in America.
27:43You're like the super villain of my world.
27:47One of Miles' most famous crimes was the theft of Rembrandt's girl wearing a gold-trimmed coat
27:53from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1975.
27:58The story of how he did it is hair-raising.
28:00I had grabbed the painting off the wall, and then I made my exit out down the stairs, out to the back.
28:10There was a phalanx of guards that pursued me, but there was one guard who was a retired Boston
28:19police officer, Polish. He grabbed the painting, and he would not let go of the painting.
28:25My friend hit the guy in the head with his barrel of the machine gun.
28:32As the saying goes, he could have done a lot worse, and then we took off.
28:40Miles didn't sell this painting on the open market.
28:44He had another way of making money, brokering its return for a cash reward.
28:49Well, you mean you got a cash reward?
28:50Mm-hmm.
28:51What was it?
28:52I think it was this kind of a sensitive issue, but I think it was ten thousand dollars.
28:59But hang on, I mean, they say crime isn't supposed to pay, Miles, and you look like a man who believes that it can.
29:09Well, obviously it can.
29:12Miles' career is proof that there is value in a stolen painting, even if it's too famous to sell on the
29:19legitimate market. And as his career progressed, he began to focus on another target, the Gardener Museum.
29:28I had targeted the Gardener for a while, and cased it up. Beside the Gardener, there's trees.
29:38And on Monday night, I stayed up in the trees, getting an outline, looking in the windows at night,
29:43to see what kind of rounds the guards made at night. I was going to take down the museum with two of my friends.
29:54And then I could grab by the feds.
29:59Miles ended up in jail for a crime unrelated to the Gardener. But this didn't stop the museum being robbed.
30:06He claims, by two of his associates. It was done by my friends. And they did it because
30:18I had planned it along with them. Are those friends still alive?
30:22No. One died from a heart attack. The other fellow was found decapitated in the trunk of his car.
30:29I'm getting a real sense now of the true nature of art crime. It's dangerous and squalid, murky,
30:37not at all like the movies. I wouldn't call it a glamorous crime, but it's a little above the more
30:47mundane crimes. And do you sort of think of yourself as some sort of connoisseur?
30:55I had a large collection of Japanese art. Legitimately.
31:02And so in that respect, I'm a connoisseur. I don't think it's quite what you're selling it as.
31:08It's, for me, it's that moment of your accomplice shoving the machine gun butt into a legitimate
31:15guard's face as you're running away with a Rembrandt and depriving that from the walls of the museum.
31:19I mean, that's just indefensible. It was sheer stupidity on his part.
31:25On the guard's part? Yes. This is madness. I mean...
31:28No, it's not madness. It's reality. Do you feel penitent? I mean...
31:34No, I don't feel penitent because in most of the cases, what I took was returned.
31:42The sad thing here is that the paintings were stolen, possibly according to your plan,
31:46Miles, and they've now been essentially lost.
31:49It's just not right. I mean, I feel kind of confused, actually.
31:57Miles has helped me to understand the world an art thief inhabits.
32:01It's a brutal, transactional business in which the fate of stolen paintings can never be guaranteed.
32:07There's one thing that's clear. He is adamant that it was his plan to heist the gardener that was
32:17followed and that his accomplices did it. And in a sense, if he hadn't been in jail that time,
32:23then he would have been the man carrying out that theft. And the funny thing is,
32:28perhaps they would have been recovered by now.
32:37Is that the real lesson from Miles? If there is a reward on offer, paintings can be returned.
32:44Some criminals are up for making a deal. And for one tantalising moment,
32:49it seemed like that might just happen in Boston.
32:52It's now been 23 years since those paintings were stolen from the Gardner Museum. And during all of
33:00that time, there is only one man outside of the criminal fraternity who claims to have actually
33:05set eyes upon them. And his name is Tom Mashberg. And back then, he was an investigative reporter for
33:11the Boston Herald. And he's the man I'm on my way to meet now.
33:14Tom's involvement in the case came five years after the heist, when the Gardner, desperate for any
33:22leads at all, upped their reward for information to $5 million. Tom knew that sort of money might
33:29flush out the thieves. And not long afterwards, his phone rang.
33:36One night when I was working late at the Herald, it was a Saturday evening, and I was actually working
33:41on my notes on this case. I got a call. And basically, I was told that if I peered out front
33:48of the newspaper's front door around midnight, I could get a ride to see something interesting.
33:57Frankly, I felt a little bit like it was perhaps a little silly almost, as if I couldn't really take
34:03it that seriously. It was sort of a midnight drive. People always ask, was I blindfolded? Which I wasn't,
34:09but that sort of gives you a sense of how odd it seemed. We wound up at a location,
34:16I mean, it's somewhat similar to this, really. It's sort of an industrial area. We're basically led
34:21up to the front entrance of this very dark warehouse. With the flashlight, we went up three flights of
34:29stairs. I remember counting the flights of stairs. And we walked down toward a specific locker. The only
34:36thing in there was this trolley in which there were various boxes and packages and some three or four
34:43large tubes, cardboard tubes. So your heart's now beating a little faster. Yeah, so now I'm getting a
34:47little more interested. You're thinking this is a career-defining moment. Right.
34:53The person I'm with goes in and opens the top off of one of the tubes and sort of, you know, lets out the item in it,
35:00sort of lets it because you sort of have to pull back so that it slides out. And he holds it up and
35:06he kind of unfurls it like this. So he just sort of holds it open and it kind of rolls open like that
35:14before my eyes. And there is the painting, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
35:21While he's holding, he's got the flashlight in the hand and he's sort of beaming the flashlight around
35:26so I can look at it. That was sort of kind of the ta-da moment.
35:35Here's the painting. There we go. This is the stolen Rembrandt.
35:39Did you say anything? Well, I, I, you know, I kept, I wanted to touch it or I wanted to sort of take,
35:46but I, um, I was sort of getting a lot of body language, like don't get too close.
35:50You go into this dark warehouse and someone just for a minute shows you a painting and a couple of
35:57kind of, you know, flashes of light. If they really wanted you to know it was the painting,
36:00turn on the light, here's the painting, inspect it front and back. You can look for some really,
36:05um, kind of key hallmarks and then you can report that back. No question. Everything always had to be
36:10done in a more shadowy and more secretive way than would really seem logical.
36:16On the 27th of August, 1997, Tom's late night encounter in the warehouse became front page news.
36:30But the Gardner Museum was sceptical and Tom's contact never invited him to see the paintings again.
36:37The opportunity to get them back, if that's what it was, had passed. The reward remained uncollected.
36:46I can only say that given the context of everything I was going through at the time,
36:52of all of the people I was talking to, of how the FBI itself was pursuing the same characters that I was
36:59pursuing, suggests to me that that was the closest opportunity the museum had to actually recovering
37:07the objects. Tom's story is so good, you really want to believe that it's true,
37:13but ultimately it is unprovable. And over the years there have been so many different theories
37:18about who might have stolen or might have received those paintings. And leafing through them all,
37:23thinking about them, it's like reading this kind of rogues gallery. Investigators have chased down
37:28leads in Connecticut, in New York, in Japan, in Ireland. They've had all these different prime
37:34suspects, people like James Whitey Bulger, the criminal kingpin of South Boston, even the IRA,
37:41who surprisingly have been no strangers to art theft in their time. But every single one of these leads
37:46has ultimately gone cold, or proved to be a complete and utter dead end.
37:57Who knows whether the gardener thieves are dead or alive, or whether Tom Mashberg was shown the real
38:02Rembrandt. One thing we can say about this robbery, and all the others I've looked into,
38:08is that the whereabouts of the loot remains a mystery. But here in Amsterdam, there's an example of another
38:17kind of heist in which the thieves were quickly apprehended, where the loot may well resurface,
38:26and where it may transpire that crime can pay to the tune of millions of dollars.
38:38Thieves have stolen two paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. A spokeswoman for the
38:47van Gogh museum in Amsterdam said they were snatched early this morning, after the thieves got in through
38:52the roof.
38:56It's funny coming to the museum, because of course it feels remarkably solid. It's a big building, and it
39:02feels impregnable. It brings home quite how daring you'd have to be to come in here and actually nick one
39:08of these paintings off the walls. And it's that chutzpah, it's that daredevilry, that partially accounts for
39:14why thefts like the one that took place here in 2002 have this remarkable hold over the public imagination.
39:25In December 2003, a year after the break-in, police investigators arrested two men
39:31who were well-known in Amsterdam's petty crime scene. Henk Bieslin and his accomplice Octave Durham,
39:38who was nicknamed the Monkey because of his ability to evade capture.
39:43But despite their arrest, there was no sign of the stolen van Goghs.
39:51These were the paintings they stole, the view of the sea at Cheyviningen, and congregation
39:55leaving the reformed church at Noonan. And this was a period known as his
40:01dark years because his paintings were still dominated by these autumn colours, russets,
40:06browns, potato-like creams, ochres. This seascape was fashioned from these really thick gobs of
40:12paints, some of which still contain these little flecks and grains of sand from the beach that's
40:16depicted. And this picture commemorates the main church at Noonan, where his father served as a
40:22pastor. And it means that it has quite a personal significance. Now, van Gogh is one of the most
40:29valuable artists in the world. And together, they're valued at around about 30 million dollars,
40:33or nearly 20 million pounds.
40:40These paintings are certainly expensive, for you or me at least. But in this museum,
40:46they're not the most valuable paintings on the walls.
40:50Of course, it's slightly strange that if you were the thief and you made it in here,
40:55you wouldn't go for this, the most famous painting in the building.
41:01So why did the thieves, en route to stealing two relatively unknown van Goghs,
41:07not grab this? Or this? Or maybe even this?
41:15As an art critic, I don't often interview people who want to remain anonymous.
41:19But because of his past as an undercover detective, the museum's head of security insisted upon it.
41:27Why did they take the two paintings that they did? Because they seem like surprising choices.
41:33The thing was, they were the first two paintings in the catalogue from that time,
41:40as the 100 masterpieces, and they were the first two in there.
41:43So it's almost the case that the thieves got the book?
41:45First of all. Yeah, I would just take those.
41:47Yeah. Yeah, well, we don't know that for sure, but that's the only link we see.
41:52In 2004, the men behind the theft were found guilty, and each sentenced to less than five years in jail.
41:59Throughout the trial, and even today as free men, they've refused to divulge any information
42:06about the whereabouts of the paintings.
42:08The case is totally dead. The thieves are sentenced and free again,
42:12and nobody knows where the paintings are.
42:14We still believe... The case is dead?
42:15Yeah, it's... For the police, it's a solved case,
42:20with the exception that the goods are not found back yet. That's it.
42:23That's it for the police, but maybe not for the thieves. Because there's a bizarre,
42:32little-known loophole in Dutch law. A loophole that could see them become the rightful owners
42:37of the paintings they stole. There's no ransom involved, no dodgy deals with criminal associates.
42:45All they have to do is nothing. There is another hypothesis here, isn't there?
42:51Because there's a strange quirk, a loophole in Dutch law, which says that if you own a stolen object,
42:59if you own it for 30 years, then legally, you then do own it for real.
43:03Yeah.
43:03So there is a theory, as I understand it, that these two petty thieves who stole the paintings
43:09and haven't said a word, did it, aware of that loophole in the law, serve their time,
43:15which was, you know, four years, but in the big scheme of things, if they can keep those paintings
43:20in their possession hidden, they suddenly are owners of paintings worth a huge amount of money.
43:26Yeah, that could be a possibility and a thought of those two perpetrators.
43:30Well, I mean, it seems to me, as a layman, utterly bizarre that there is this position in law at all.
43:35I agree. To own stolen goods, that should not be possible.
43:41So by playing a 30-year game, have Mr Monkey and his accomplice actually carried out the perfect art crime?
43:49As it is, there's no reward on offer from the museum, there's no insurance company eager to get
43:55these paintings back, so they're just lost in this sordid criminal underworld. Who knows how they're
44:00going to be recovered in the end? Perhaps, after all, Mr Monkey and his friend, they're suddenly going
44:05to produce the paintings when, strange as it may sound, it's so perverse, they might legally actually own them.
44:17The desirability of a painting hasn't always been defined by its financial worth.
44:22The desirability of art thefts have been carried out, not by individuals, but by armies.
44:41And when they steal, it's not about the money, it's about ownership and status,
44:47and claiming the art of a vanquished nation.
44:52Here in Belgium, there's a work of art that some consider to be the most important painting ever.
45:00Perhaps, that's why it's also the most stolen painting in history.
45:06Today, it sits heavily protected behind bulletproof glass in St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent.
45:22I'm bowled over by the scale of this thing. I didn't quite realise how big the Ghent altarpiece was going to be.
45:35That initial impact, nothing can quite prepare you for that, even if you've seen it in reproduction.
45:41Even with two panels away being restored, it's still an overwhelming display of exquisite technique and detail.
45:50It was begun in the 1420s, probably, by a little-known artist called Hubert van Eyck,
45:58completed after Hubert's death in 1426 by his much more famous brother, Jan van Eyck.
46:04And it's considered not just one of the splendors of the Northern Renaissance,
46:08it's considered one of the real splendors of the entire tradition of Western painting,
46:12in part because it sits at this joint, if you like.
46:16It's on the cusp between medieval painting and then the new Renaissance style.
46:23And that's why, ever since it was painted, it's been one of the most famous,
46:28and also, as a result, one of the most coveted paintings in the world.
46:36In the 600 years since it was painted,
46:39the Ghent altarpiece has been stolen, in whole or in part, seven times.
46:45Napoleon nicked it, and Hitler got his hands on it too.
46:49Each wanted to own a unique piece of European history.
46:53But for eight decades, part of this magnificent work of art has been missing.
47:04One of these panels is a reproduction.
47:08And the panel in question is this one down here. It's known as the Righteous Judges.
47:15Eighty years ago, it was stolen in a plot to hold the church authorities in Ghent to ransom.
47:23It was a plot which went terribly wrong.
47:26And the story of its theft, and the investigation into its recovery,
47:31is so far-fetched, it feels like a piece of fiction, a thriller.
47:42On the evening of the 10th of April, 1934,
47:45passers-by witness something suspicious at St Bavo's Cathedral.
47:53Art historian Noah Charney has pieced together what happened that night.
47:59Someone saw a light on.
48:01Shortly after that, someone else spotted two men dressed all in black,
48:04carrying something that looked like a panel wrapped in black cloth into a waiting car.
48:09And it drove off into the night.
48:11Despite eyewitness accounts, the police appeared to have no real leads until the Bishop of Ghent
48:25received a ransom note a couple of days later.
48:28The ransom demand was one million Belgian francs, more than 600,000 pounds today.
48:37But with the official line that no ransom be paid, the case ground to a halt,
48:42until a few months later, when there was a bizarre turn of events.
48:46After suffering a massive heart attack, a stockbroker called Arsene Rudetier insisted on speaking alone to his lawyer.
48:57With his last breath, Arsene Rudetier whispered,
48:59I'm the last man on earth to know the location of the judge's panel.
49:04His last words were armoire, key.
49:06He died before he could reveal anything further.
49:11Arsene Rudetier's wardrobe was searched by his lawyer,
49:14who found a key which unlocked a drawer.
49:17And he found carbon copies of all of the ransom notes,
49:21plus a final unsent ransom note that had a line in it to the effect that no one,
49:27not even I, can recover the judge's panel without attracting public attention.
49:31So what does that tell us?
49:33Well, it tells us that circa 1934, the panel was hidden somewhere in plain sight,
49:39or in the midst of a public space.
49:43But the investigation was interrupted by war, when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940.
49:51They plundered Europe's art.
49:52Hitler coveted the Ghent altarpiece, despite its missing panel.
49:57So the Nazis stole Van Eyck's masterpiece,
50:00storing it alongside thousands of looted treasures.
50:03The 101st Airborne Division uncovers Herman Goering's personal art collection,
50:08hidden in a separate...
50:12Following the Nazi defeat, the altarpiece was returned to Ghent,
50:16where the investigation could continue.
50:18The case remains unsolved to this day, and all new leads are considered.
50:29One recent tip-off led investigators to this church, St Gertrude's, just outside Ghent.
50:36The long-dead suspect Arsene Goudetier used to play the organ here.
50:40It was down to Detective Jan de Kessel to investigate.
50:53Yeah, this is all a little bit surreal. Why have you brought me here?
50:57Well, we are here at the back of the altar. You see here a space, an opening, and it's the same size
51:09of the missing panel that just the judges.
51:13Well, so there's a theory that the righteous judges once was hidden here, in this cavity?
51:19It's possible because Arsene Goudetier, he lived here 200 metres from here. In this church he was the organist.
51:29He knew the existence of this room.
51:32If the panel was here once, it clearly isn't any more.
51:37I can't help feeling that the Belgian police haven't made much progress in the last eight decades.
51:43Do you feel in your guts that you're going to get it back?
51:46Well, deep in my heart, I hope one day we find it back.
51:54Well, hope is a very different thing. I mean, do you have the conviction that you will get it back?
51:59You don't sound like you're very close to it.
52:00Well, in those ten years we had so many leads and so many disappointments.
52:07But I hope one day we only have to have one lead, one big lead, the right one.
52:23Talking to Jan, it appears that the investigation has very little to go on indeed.
52:29As things stand, it seems unlikely that this panel will ever be seen again.
52:34And yet, art missing for decades can sometimes turn up,
52:43as a case in Munich proved recently.
52:46In one of the largest halls of its kind, 1500 paintings, including works by Picasso and Matisse,
52:57have been discovered in a small apartment in Munich.
53:00Investigators in Germany think the art could be worth nearly 850 million pounds.
53:06It will be years before the Munich case is fully untangled and the fate of those paintings is settled.
53:17Nonetheless, the news raised the hopes of art lovers everywhere.
53:21And today, in Boston, there is also hope.
53:30Earlier this year, the FBI announced to the world that they had made a significant breakthrough in the Gardner case.
53:37Jeff Kelly is the agent in charge of the investigation.
53:42We came forward and announced that the case is solved.
53:46We know who did it and we know where some of those paintings were.
53:50And we knew that it was going to cause the inevitable question from the press,
53:54which is, well, who did it?
53:56Well, sorry, the inevitable question from me would be,
53:59if you've solved the case, where the hell are the paintings?
54:01Exactly. Right.
54:02And that's one of the other reasons why we came forward is,
54:05some of those paintings were seen as recently as late 90s, early 2000s,
54:10and then they disappeared again.
54:12So we've kind of been able to track it for a period of time, but the trail's gone cold.
54:16The FBI now believe they know who broke into the Gardner that night in 1990.
54:23But there are no immediate plans to arrest their suspects.
54:29What's happened to them?
54:30I can't say that.
54:31But, I mean, they're not in jail, right?
54:33I can't say about where they are at this time.
54:37Because the statute of limitations on that actual theft expired in 1995.
54:41So if somebody were to come forward tomorrow and say that they were involved in the Gardner heist,
54:45there's nothing that we could do to prosecute them.
54:47So they got off?
54:49They did. Absolutely.
54:51There's a famous art thief in the area, a man you're very familiar with, called Miles Conner.
54:55It's fairly accepted, basically public knowledge here in Boston, apparently,
54:59that the FBI's working theory is that it was Miles Conner's plan that was implemented in the heist.
55:05Well, it's quite possible.
55:06He might have planned it himself.
55:07And when he got locked up, he let somebody else do it.
55:10I mean, it's, there's, there's no question.
55:13And that's one of the difficult things about this crime is that more people were involved in this,
55:20in this heist than the two that went into the museum.
55:23Whether, as art thief Miles Conner claims, the perpetrators are now dead, the FBI won't say.
55:30In fact, their position seems to me to be very odd. They know who did it, but won't say who.
55:37In the 11 years that I've been working this case, we've never been closer on the trail than we are right now.
55:42But to say things like, we're closer than we've ever been, and the case is solved,
55:46sounds like a madness, if you don't know where the paintings are now,
55:49and you don't know where they've been for 12 years.
55:51Yeah, absolutely, but it's the ultimate whodunit.
55:54Well, not least because it's the ultimate whodunit, but according to you, you know who did it,
55:58but it's still not solved.
55:59Well, whodunit sounds better than where is it.
56:05The Gardner theft remains the biggest single art crime in history.
56:09For many in Boston, the seemingly endless search for the paintings has become all-consuming.
56:17The case, I can't even describe the level of obsession.
56:20It's, I have them up in my apartment.
56:23There are things that I have become obsessed with.
56:25You've got replicas of all the works there, have you?
56:27Yeah, and there are things that I have to see back at the Gardner.
56:31Isabella Stewart Gardner specified that her collection should remain unaltered.
56:39That's why today, empty frames mark the spots where the Rembrandts and the Vermeer once hung.
56:44I see these empty frames every day, and I go to look at them every day, and it honestly is everything to me.
56:53I want these things back so badly.
56:56It bothers me that these great masterpieces, these representations of the best that man can achieve,
57:01are things that my own daughters can't enjoy because of some selfish, ridiculous, stupid act that somebody did 23 years ago.
57:17Since they were stolen in 1990, the value of the Gardner paintings continues to rise.
57:22They're now worth two or even three times what they were when they vanished.
57:28The thieves may have thought they'd hit the jackpot, but did they?
57:33They'll never be able to sell their loot on the legitimate market,
57:37and the world has been robbed of paintings worth more than just money.
57:43For me, that's what makes art crime so frustrating.
57:47It's futile, and it's miles away from the image of art theft we seem to find so seductive.
57:56It turns out that art thieves, well, they're not suave billionaires.
57:59They're not sophisticated connoisseurs.
58:02I think it's time that we ditched the Hollywood myths, toughened up, and got real.
58:07The truth about stolen paintings is anything but glamorous.
58:11Art crime is a brutal business with repercussions for us all,
58:15and that is why it matters.
58:23Who will be crowned best workplace choir?
58:25We find out tomorrow in the choir Christmas final at nine.
58:29Next tonight, profiling one of the country's best-loved comedy legends
58:33in the many faces of Ronnie Barker.
58:45I enjoy how the aisle is a tour of the city,
58:48of the city that wants to be a easily known as a man.
58:50That's what I describe as遠cque film.
58:50I am not, but I don't know what to do here.
58:52I'll be here in the choir.
58:53I need a little firefighter and a little bit where you can find it.
58:55It's a bit of a journey that the daddy carries my values,
58:56that is the journey that I have to live on with.
58:57I really do.
58:58I gotta encourage you and say thank you guys
58:59you guys.
58:59I'm not sure who will be the correct man for the tour.
59:01I need some luck of the tour.
59:02I'm meant to be that you guys and I will not be the correct man for the tour.