Word: thefts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...karate kah-dah-tay), he once escaped from prison by carving a bar of soap into "the most perfect-looking pistol you've ever seen," and he is described by the FBI as a master of disguises. He once proclaimed, in his faintly Continental intonation, "The thing about art theft is the Robin Hood element in it." Not your common thug...
...There's no comparison relative to one place having half a dozen of what could be called real masterpieces and the other one maybe 50 to as many as 100," Connor says. He also knew that the Gardner had no theft insurance--the last thing a thief needs; no insurance company to sell a stolen painting back to. And he "had inside information" about an insured Rembrandt hanging on loan in the Museum of Fine Arts, an institution with serious "political clout" that would send up "a huge hue and cry" and therefore was "the much, much more desirable place...
...Connor, who once took several slugs in a blazing gun battle with a Boston police officer, says, "There isn't a museum in the world that's invulnerable" to a true professional. He won't say exactly how the Fine Arts caper came off, or even admit to the theft. But he arranged the return of the Rembrandt later that year--in exchange for avoiding prison after pleading guilty to the theft of Andrew Wyeth paintings from an estate in Maine...
Connor says Donati, who, he assumes, hired two mugs to actually carry out the theft, initially intended to use the loot as a bargaining chip, though he won't say for what. "Then they got a tremendous offer for it," he says. Not from the Irish Republican Army, a name that has surfaced over the years, and not "from, per se, a political organization. But something a little more powerful than just a wealthy, eccentric collector." Whatever, it fell through, and the pieces were put into storage. Connor says Donati and Houghton later told him that if anything happened...
Mitby calculates that 138,200 pennies, or more than $1,000, will be needed to completely cover the walls. But organizers say they are not afraid of theft...