The Gardner Museum Heist Basement Crime Scene (Part Four)



A Historical Examination of the Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene 

Link to Part One

 Virtually every other stage of the eighty one minutes the thieves spent in the museum have been pored over, debated about, and second guessed: Were they pros? Were they thugs? Why this paintings and not that painting? Why were they let into the Museum at all?

If the guard Rick Abath was involved in the robbery, something the Museum’s past and present security directors as well as the FBI have sometimes suggested is a distinct possibility, then clues to his possible involvement might be found from what is known and can be discerned about what actually occurred in the basement that fateful night.

But details are contradictory and scarce, and with authorities less than forthcoming (“It’s an ongoing investigation”) actual clarifications from authorities have become an unrealistic expectation.  Three decades later, should it be an open question for the public whether Rick Abath was handcuffed to a pipe, an electrical box or perhaps nothing at all.

It is not a simple matter for a journalist or anyone to call the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office or the museum and ask about these kinds of questions. Later on in his talk at the Weston Public Library about his book and the Gardner Museum Heist, author Stephen Kurkjian, a three time Pulitzer prize winner who has covered the robbery for the Boston Globe for over a dozen years said:  “They [The Feds] tell reporters like me nothing. 


Little wonder then that there is a lack of consistency in the details of the many stories over so much time.  The public has only the police photos, Rick Abath’s, exculpating-minded recollections and whatever investigators share themselves, or make available to the Museum through the security director. And here again is found distinct differences in comparing these three sources, with Abath winning the blue ribbon for consistency.

 Likely, it was this lack of openness that led to the Boston Globe two days before the 25th anniversary of the robbery to write an editorial suggesting that “after decades of frustration, the FBI ought to try opening its files on the Gardner Museum heist in hopes that fresh vision will help crack Boston’s most notorious unsolved mystery.”

 Link to Part Five




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