The Gardner Heist Investigation In The Media (Part I)

What began with a thunderclap ended with barely a whisper.  On August 6, 2015, a statement released by the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz announced the release for public viewing a Gardner Museum surveillance video from just 24 hours before the Gardner Heist. 

Beginning in 2013 there was “an exhaustive re-examination of the original evidence, law enforcement officials were “seeking the public’s assistance in identifying an unauthorized visitor to the museum from the night before the theft.” 

News of the release quickly became national and international news. "it sparked an Internet frenzy," the Boston Globe reported in a follow up story two weeks later.  

Now it was over, the crowd which had been sourced, as it were, in the crowd-soucing effort to identify this individual in the video had been pink-slipped. It had been nearly two years, May 23, 2017, just a few months after U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz left office, and without so much as a press release or an announcement of any kind. 

The news that the visitor had been identified was never formally announced, but instead hidden in plain sight, relegated as a subordinated bit of backstory, in an article headlining the doubling of the reward by the Gardner Museum:

“Last week, in response to inquiries from the Globe, [FBI Spokesman Kristen] Setera said investigators have identified the man, but declined to name him publicly or say whether his admission to the museum is considered suspicious.”

“Investigators have determined the identity of the individual and the public’s assistance is no longer needed,” Setera said.”

So the public was only informed in response to an inquiry from a major media source. The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office did nothing to inform the public on its own, that the mystery man had been identified.  And the Globe, New England’s biggest daily newspaper, had reported it as something they received word about the previous week.   

How different the coverage when the video was released on August 6, 2015,  The Boston Globe's Stephen Kurkjian then told the Portland Herald that he considered "the surveillance footage the biggest, most hopeful development since I began working on this case."

After publishing six stories in August about the video that August the Globe did a follow up story four months later. Around Thanksgiving.  It was a lengthy article speculating about who the visitor might have been. Now, 18 months later, the mystery finally(?) solved, it was not even worthy of immediate mention, never mind its own story.

Since that time, no other newspaper or media outlet ever picked up on that aspect of the Boston Globe story, that the FBI now claimed the mysterious visitor having being identified. 

    From: Kota Ezawa’s “Thirteen Stolen Works 

                 of Art and a Videotape 2016

Investigators had identified the visitor. The crowd sourcing had been a success or at least some kind of progress was being made seemingly. The FBI at least was now claiming they knew who the unauthorized visitor in the video was. Just as they knew who the thieves were local thugs long dead, they claimed. So why was there no “Mission Accomplished” declaration? Why no thanks to the public for their assistance?  Why no informing the public their assistance was no longer needed? Why wait instead to respond to an inquiry? The media's acquiescence was establishing a disappointing precedent or had the precedent been established long ago and this was just one more example of something that is not widely know about or understood?   

The FBI would not even say whether they considered the visitor’s presence there suspicious. That in itself was suspicious. Surely, if the person had been there for an innocent reason, there would be no reason to conceal his identity and the circumstances of his visit. 

If investigators had indeed concluded that the individual was involved, there could be some valid reason why the FBI would not want to announce it. It could be perhaps a justifiable imposition on the public's time and attention, to first seek their help and then not even acknowledge their help is no longer needed.  

Maybe.

However, in a November of 2015 article by the Boston Globe, speculating about who may have been involved, four former Gardner Museum security guards said they believe the visitor was one of their own supervisors, Lawrence O’Brien of Somerville, MA, then a 51 year old retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. O'Brien was not the kind of person to either be involved, nor more importantly to forget he had been to the museum the night before.

The same article examining the possibility that it was O’Brien also reported that the theory had  “been discounted by investigators.”   Still the visitor appeared to these guards, by his haircut, his clothing, his comportment, his walk, to be someone who could be a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and a museum Security Guard supervisor. 

Over time people begin to look like their career and lifestyle choices. Local thugs do not look like Museum Security supervisors. Museum security supervisors do not look like local thugs.  The mysterious visitor on the surveillance does not look like a local thug.  Rick Abath “this hippie guy” had no known associations with Boston gang members. And now this visitor, who is clearly not a local thug, if this visitor was involved, then the whole “local thug” theory put forth by the FBI and diligently follow by the Gardner Museum, and the Boston media falls flat on its face. 

Stylistically the mysterious visitor more closely resembles one of the Boston Police Gardner Heist investigators than the local thugs, who the FBI decades later claimed were responsible. 

Laying the blame on generic “thugs” of a particular community, while perhaps, convenient can be more of a problem than might be expected, as Stephen Kurkjian eloquently (if unintentionally) illustrated on WBUR on August 3, 2015. When asked what the failure to solve the crime says about Boston, he replied.

"My feeling, as far as what is unique about Boston, is the tribalism and that is intense. And I think that that has factored into a code of silence. You know, you don't help out, those aren't us, you know, we're, whatever your high school is. We're old school. And that stopped an easy flow of — a sense of, if I haven't lost something, I'm not going to get involved in the recovery. I'm not going to try to clean it up. Unless it hurts me and my family, I'm not going to raise my hand, because it's going to get me in trouble."

So local toughs expands outward, to cast a negative light on the friends, neighbors, relations, and co-workers, within the circle of people who might through circumstances of demographics, cross paths with this particular criminal element. Some of whom, Kurkjian has concluded, have chosen to say nothing.

In an editorial written for the Tampa Tribune Kurkjian writes how when nine Impressionist paintings had been stolen in Paris, a city police detective said to him: "’It was like a pall of gloom had fallen over the city,’ Pierre Tabel said. ‘Every Parisian felt it.’" And that deep collective sense of loss motivated so many — from legislators to common folk — to maintain a commitment to solving the crime.’”

“While federal investigators believe that the two thieves who pulled off the heist are dead, there are others, including family members or other criminal associates, who might know essential pieces of the puzzle,” Kurkjian wrote in the Tampa Tribune.  

The Boston Globe ran a version of this opinion piece by Kurkjian wisely leaving out the part where Kurkjian casts aspersions on a swath of city residents.

But another version by Kurkjian in the Albany Times Union was even more direct:

"Secrets that could lead to the whereabouts of the artwork remain hidden among associates, family members and friends of the thieves, and it's these individuals who must be convinced to break their traditional code of silence."

Blaming local thugs, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Gardner Heist eve surveillance video serving as one more example pointing in an altogether different direction, not only requires the suspension of critical thinking it also means maligning an entire demographic of residents, the white urban working class of Boston and the Greater Boston area, and quite unfairly under the circumstances.