The Gardner Heist Investigation In The Media (Part VIII)

Comparing Whitey Bulger/Catherine Greig Crowd Sourcing with Gardner Surveillance Video Campaign

One way to illustrate how the FBI did was not making a sincere effort to identify the visitor granted unauthorized entry into the Gardner Museum 24 hours before the robbery through the public release of a surveillance video from the museum, is to look at it alongside the “crowd sourcing” effort of a real FBI publicity campaign, the one to apprehend fugitive Boston crime boss, Whitey Bulger.

The destinies of the two individuals in both crowd sourcing campaigns, Whitey Bulger and the mystery visitor do overlap. Whitey Bulger was at his peak as a Boston underworld crime figure in Boston when the mystery visitor was allowed inside Gardner Museum for an unauthorized, rule breaking visit in the early morning of March 17, 1990. There was wide speculation about whether Bulger was involved, somehow profited from the robbery or knew something.

Many of the same FBI and U.S. Attorney personnel worked on both investigations and in both crowd sourcing campaigns.  The FBI and U.S Attorney's office had the benefit of their experience from the successful Whitey Bulger publicity campaign.  Potentially, It could have informed their efforts at crowd sourcing in determining the identity of the Gardner visitor four years later.  

1.  A definite beginning and an end.

The Whitey Bulger /Catherine Greig crowd sourcing campaign lasted but a very short time. It began on June 20, 2011 and the notorious pair were quickly captured in Santa Monica, CA on June 22, 2011, based on a tip, was a direct result of the publicity campaign.

In contrast The Gardner Surveillance video crowd sourcing campaign lasted an indeterminate amount of time from the public’s standpoint.  

In a May 23, 2017 article the Boston Globe reported that “Last week, in response to inquiries from the Globe, Setera said investigators have identified the man, but declined to name him publicly or say whether his admission to the museum is considered suspicious.”

Neither did the FBI ever say when the man was identified. 

It could be argued that the publicity campaign has not ended. There has been no press or formal statement from the FBI announcing its end. The Boston Globe tacked this news to the end of an article about the museum doubling the reward.

No other newspaper picked up on that aspect on the story. Only those who read the entire Globe story would be aware that the public’s help was no longer needed. And the Globe downplayed the significance of it by saying they learned it “last week.” How important is it, if the daily newspaper waited  to report it and did not even make the news a separate story.  The Globe reported that the public release of the video had “sparked an internet frenzy. But there was no announcement initiated by the FBI when the public’s help was no longer needed.  

2.  A heavy  investment in the launch 

For the Whitey Bulger publicity campaign there was a televised press conference, a press release and a news story on the FBI website about the publicity campaign.

For the Gardner Surveillance video release there was no press conference only a press release. And  there was no news story on the FBI website as there was for the White Bulger/ Catherine Greig publicity campaign.

The Gardner Surveillance video press release could not have been weaker.  The headline mischaracterized the crime as a “burglary.” It was a robbery that involved false imprisonment.  "Unlike other art thefts... at the Gardner they tied up the guards; it was a violent crime" Tron Brekke FBI Boston AAIC pointed out for the Boston Globe, 5/13/90

The press release included no video still from the released video or even pictures of the of the paintings, just a laundry list of stolen items.   It did not include any information about what the FBI intended to do to ensure maximum exposure of the video to the targeted audience. At the press conference for the Bulger/Greig publicity campaign the FBI explained what information resources they had put together and what they intended to do with them, not so with the Gardner surveillance video public release, which made sense since they didn't intend to do anything. 

3. A call to action

The Gardner surveillance video press release contained no call to action.  The Whitey Bulger press asked people to call if they had information. The Gardner Surveillance video press release advised anyone with information that they “should call.” Other of the usual tricks of writing a strong press release are glaringly absent.  

The FBI press release announced there is a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to Ms. Greig’s whereabouts. There was no reward offered for identifying the individual in the video.

4. Packaged and repackaged information for maximum public engagement

The Bulger/Greig effort included wanted posters as well as a 30 second PSA for the Whitey Bulger/Catherine Greig with old photos of the couple as well as how they might look today. 

But neither the FBI nor the Justice Department even made visual stills from the video directly available to the public, leading to confusion about who in the video is the actual visitor and who it was who let him in. They also did not include the police sketches of the two thieves, which could have help place the video in the context of the robbery. 

The original press release online did not even link to the video. It linked to a page that had a link to the video. And that was not even a web link, but a link that would download the video to a computer.   

On this page in small letters it says:

Still photos captured from video: 1, 2, 3, 4 with barely any guidance that these were even links.  And there was nothing pointing to this page as a place to find the photos in an case. 

5. TV interviews

When the Bulger Greig publicity campaign began. Special agents from the FBI did television interviews that very day  No one from the FBI has ever discussed the Gardner Heist surveillance video on camera.  The Gardner Museum security head, Anthony Amore spoke with Jim Braude on WGBH’s Greater Boston five days after its release.

6.  The ingredient of hope: Suspect are alive vs. suspects are dead

On the first day of the Bulger/Greig publicity campaign, Then Boston FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers made a point of saying that “there is no reason to believe Mr. Bulger is deceased right now.”

On the first day of the Gardner Surveillance video publicity campaign, Boston FBI assistant special agent Pete Kowenhoven, who had overseen the Gardner investigation since 2013, “The evidence led us to two suspects who we know to a high degree of confidence committed that crime, and both are deceased at this time.’’

7. TV Air Time

The FBI ran PSA’s in 16 communities on 350 stations with the Bulger/Greig publicity campaign. For the Gardner Surveillance video campaign the video was just uploaded to youtube.

8. Targeted Audience 

For the Bulger/Greig campaign the FBI targeted their campaign to specific demographics.

Hoping to reach women around 60 years old, Greig’s contemporaries,  who might have crossed paths with her over the year, the FBI took out commercial time for programs like “Dr. Oz,” “The Nate Berkus Show” and “The Ellen Degeneres Show,” all morning and daytime programs they believe these women are watching.

For the Gardner Surveillance video campaign, investigators did not even contact security guards who worked at the museum at the time of the robbery.

“The four [former security guards] said they had not been contacted by investigators, though Galas said she called an FBI hot line” the Boston Globe reported.  

9. Enhancing with technology... or not

In the Bulger Greig publicity campaign the FBI used age progression software to give the public an idea of how they might look after 15 years in hiding.

With the Gardner Surveillance video, agent  Kowenhoven  said “’The six-minute video was sent to the FBI lab, where they hoped to enhance it using technology that wasn’t available during the original investigation… but added that efforts to enhance the video were unsuccessful.”  How about letting someone besides the FBI try? 

Instead of adding context one of the still images from the justice.gov website, removes all of the background in its entirety on the pictures from the video of the visitors.  It also removed the frizz from the visitor’s hair a distinguishing characteristic which appears in the video in the shot used to make video still and other shots of the visitor’s head from the video. In addition to smoothing out the hair, removing the background altered the profile slightly in one of the pictures.  

Overall the video footage video suggest whatever the opposite of enhancement is. There is measurably less tonal contrast, consistently between the facial images of the visitor and everything else in the photo, as if a tonal contrast filter had been applied to the visitor’s facial areas.

10. Aides and embellishments

Unlike the PSA put together to locate Catherine Greig and Whitey Bulger, there is no music, voiceovers or other embellishment to the video, and no voiceover, or any call to action at any point embedded into the video. There are also no arrows or other guides to help the public with a video that has been described by reporters who viewed it as “grainy” and “dark.”

11. Background Information.

While the Bulger Greig publicity and press conference gave additional details about the suspects, the FBI did not share any information about they had learned about the visitor in the Gardner surveillance video, such as an approximate height and weight, whether he had a mustache or was wearing glasses, if he was wearing a watch or jewelry or any information they had learned or concluded about the suspect based on the video that could assist the public in making an identification.

News journalists who were encountering the video for the first time grappled with what the video “showed” without any input from the federal investigators who had been studying it for two years. 

There was no guide or introduction to some of the idiosyncrasies of the video, such as that the first person shown on the video is neither the visitor nor the security guard who let buzzed him in that night. 

Confusing? Eight days after the video was released, the Boston Globe ran an article about the Gardner Heist with a video still of the other security guard, the one who did not let the visitor in.  

There was also no introduction or explanation provided that the video flips back and forth between an outside camera and an inside camera.

Or that the outside camera and inside camera are not time-synchronized exactly. The inside camera is five seconds behind the outside camera.  And since the video proceeds in time stamp time, not chronological time, early on the visitor is actually  seen leaving the building after a very brief trip inside before he is seen entering it.

The video is presented as if it is just raw footage put up there, but it is not. The video has been edited.

The outdoor camera goes from 47 minutes and zero second to 54 minutes and 53 seconds, or a total of 7 minutes and 53 seconds, but the video sequence is only 6 and 34 seconds long.  So there is one minute and 19 seconds missing.  There is also 31 seconds missing from the part from when the visitor is first seen in the video and when he leaves.  Roughly half of that would be outdoor footage, but that is still 15 seconds of missing images from when the visitor was inside the security station.  As long as they were editing, they could have created a thirty or sixty second edited piece with the most useful parts. 

In total, what appears to have happened was the U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts initiated the release of the video to the public and charged the FBI with handling the details of the publicity campaign. 

But the FBI does not seem to believe that the video in any way related their one goal with respect to the Gardner Museum robbery:  

“We remain committed to one goal: the return of all 13 works to their rightful place, which is here at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Vincent Lisi, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Boston said. 

Lisi, who retired a few weeks later that same month, also stated in the press release: “This latest request for the public’s assistance illustrates the FBI’s continued commitment to the Gardner investigation."  

But since the release originated with the Massachusetts U. S. Attorney office and not the FBI, who did nothing to support it, and actively undermined the video’s presence in the public discussion, what it illustrates is that while the FBI may be determined to recover the paintings they perfectly content to let the robbery component remain a mystery.