Secrets of the Gardner Surveillance Video (The Indoor Camera) Part 2

Link to Part 1 

When the Visitor first appears inside we have the best view of him that appears on the entire tape.  His dramatic, first appearance is a challenge.  He seems to have come out of nowhere and looks as if he has been standing for there a while. There is no greeting or formalities shown. He has his notebook out of his pocket. It  already open and he looks to be thumbing through the pages.  

This is hardly a magician's trick, but to accomplish this in three seconds or even four seconds as some might conclude from look solely at the time-stamp,  would take effort.     

For comparison, at the nine second mark of the video we can see the older guard takes about three seconds to go from the entrance to situate himself at the counter nearest the entrance. The video switches from outdoors to indoors in three second intervals. And how is it that the guard's trip from the door to the counter is captured in its entirety while the Visitor’s transit is not recorded at all?  The visitor is set up further along on the counter in three seconds or under.   

The odds of recording and storing at least a one third portion of any event taking three seconds on camera was 87.5%. Anything over three seconds is 100%. It would be impossible not to capture at least some portion of the Visitors transit from the entrance to where he sets up near the far of the counter if he took more than three seconds. 

The visitor opens the door and makes it through, and set themselves up further down the counter in under four seconds without any of those preliminary activities being recorded at all. 

  

As the visitor leaves,  a stuffed toy first flashes on screen at 4:58.  We know the visitor’s exact position since his coat at least is partially in the shot too. In this case. after three seconds, the visitor is not yet close to the exit. He does not appear to be going at a pace to make it out of the exit and off camera in under five seconds though he does manage to get out in under six, we know, since he is not in the scene when the indoor scene is shown three seconds later. So the visitor’s exit is shown as completely as possible including the stuffed toy cameo appearance,, while his entrance, when his face would be captured on video is not shown at all. This is possible but highly unlikely to have had happened by chance

The way the video picked up the stuffed animal in the first sequence of indoor shots, which is followed by two more of his exit, combined with his not being recorded during his entrance suggests (possibly) a kind of choreography;  a knowledge not only of the range of the camera but the timing its recording capabilities as well.

By the time the visitor exits at around the 5:00 mark from his 3 minute 13 second meeting with Gardner security guard Rick Abath, he has shown that there is room to converse with Abath, off camera, that he is acutely aware of the camera’s presence, and precisely aware of its functionality

Therefore, anything we view on camera is likely at the visitor’s pleasure, and quite possibly deliberate. So what in these 24 seconds is the visitor either carelessly sharing about himself, indifferent to sharing about himself or deliberately sharing about himself? 

    

In the first image of the visitor he is holding a small book with his left hand. He may  well have a digital watch on his left wrist. He is looking down, and appears as though he could have a mustache since the dark shading beneath his nose extend outward on both sides past both of his nostrils.

The eye area is a monotone.  No details can be seen.  However, in the next video frame, there is an image of the visitor where he seems to have a dark circling around the right eye that is visible,  much like the older guard, who in various shots, is quite clearly wearing eyeglasses. 

The next image in the third frame seems to show that part of the eyeglass, extending across the visitor’s temple to over the ear also in a similar fashion as that of the older guard found at the of 1:11 of the surveillance video excerpt. Glasses and a mustache, like one of the robbers the following evening, cannot be ruled out.

“Nerd” Wristwatch

Several video stills seem to show that  the visitor was wearing a digital watch. The left wrist is darker and a deeper more consistent shade than the shadows appearing in the same shots. A typical digital watch of the time was most commonly encased in black plastic with a matching black wristband.

The popularity of digital watches were around their peak in popularity in 1990, although they have never been as popular as the traditional analog wristwatch. even in the men’s market. 

Not only are digital watches consider less attractive they are not as convenient to use for the two or three or basic functions people expect of a wrist watch.  This Gardner robbery was during the pre-cell phone era, and unless you needed those advanced features of a digital watch or just liked the idea of having them, it was not only more fashionable but more practical to wear an analog watch than a digital watch. 

Were digital watches a popular accessory with members of the local gangs, said to be involved in stealing the Gardner paintings by investigators. My guess is no.

The Notebook

In subsequent images of the visitor we see him mostly in profile in the lower left hand corner of the video. The visitor can be seen going through a notebook, but not just any notebook. It an unusual and kind of notebook sometimes called an “accordion fold notebook,” you were much more likely to find this kind of notebook in art supply store than a stationery store, and many people continue to make their own.         

Accordionfold notebooks have no binder. Typically made from strong durable paper, they are like a map, except where a road-map unfolds in both a horizontal and a vertical direction, an accordionfold notebook unfolds only horizontally.

These notebooks are often handmade and are most popular with people involved in the field of graphic arts. They are especially helpful in the planning technique known as “storyboarding,” a process of creating a visual narrative. It was originally used in Western societies by the Walt Disney Company in the making of animated films. 

In business management, storyboards are sometimes used to develop a “process flowchart, which visually shows all activities and the relationships among activities.” An activity based costing system (ABC), is one example.  

So in the 24 seconds the visitor is viewed in this video, in this pre-graphics personal computer era, he is engaging with Abath using something then used as a specialized visual planning and management tool. A tool that would be ideal for developing and presenting the details of a soon to be executed robbery involving multiple crime scenes on three separate levels (basement, first floor, and second floor) of a museum.  

Hair

While not nearly as unique as a finger print, scar or tattoo. The visitor does have a bushy, frizzy, and full head of hair.  He also shows a bump or cowlick on the left side of his hair similar to that shown in a photo of convicted spy Rod Ramsay taken ten weeks after the Gardner Heist.  

A passport photo of Rod Ramsay from the 1980’s shows the more effectively straightened or slicked down, but there is a similar slanting the part of the hair from the front or perhaps a similar reflective sheen. 

A ball cap or A handful of water throw onto his head just before entering the museum would have made the visitor’s hair a good deal less distinctive than it appears in the video, if he cared enough to conceal his identity.

Left Handed

During the 24 seconds where some portion of the visitor is visible in the surveillance video, his left hand is shown with great frequency, and much more than the right hand.  One explanation could be that his left side is facing the center of the security station and is picked up by the security camera to a greater extent. 

However, in the very first shot, both hands are shown and the visitor looks to have the book open or doing something with it involving just his land hand.  In the second image of the visitor in the video, the left hand is seen, and not the right but the eyes seem to be looking toward the left one as if that hand the central focus. In another image, when the book is opened to more than two pages, at least three fingers of the left hand can be seen holding the book.

When the visitor flashes the stuffed toy, it appears he is cradling it from underneath and that you can make out the fingertips of the left hand.   

Prior to heading out, the visitor is shown doing a final on camera task. It look like he might be filling some kind of illicit prescription but does not seem to stay around long enough to imbibe of it himself.

  

Fingertips

A look at these final frames of the Visitor at work inside the museum reveal not only left handedness, a trait representing only ten percent of the population, but also possibly some unusual physical features of the hand. At the 2:32 mark of the video, abruptly stops fiddling with his note book and makes his hands still with the white thumb quite prominently, and possibly posed.  His fingertips show some signs of a genetic trait called with the genetic trait known as  Brachydactyl type D or BDD or some variant with a kind of “clubbing” of the fingertips. The thumb looks quite large with the Stetson hat close by for scale.

So in addition to what was shown in the outside surveillance camera in the previous blog post, combined with just 24 seconds of video from the indoor camera we can narrow down the possible candidates of who this might be to a considerable extent.  The visitor has given away enough physical detail to authenticate himself quickly and authoritatively with investigators, or with anyone he may have to and decide to negotiate with or establish with that he was involved. 

"On their way out of the museum on March 18, 1990, the thieves themselves apparently removed the video shot by the museum's surveillance cameras. It would have shown their arrival outside, and their entry inside the museum, after 1:24 in the morning ." 

But the young FBI agent assigned to the case did collect a video cassette from the recorder that had been in operation the previous day, March 17. This means the robbers had access to the surveillance tape from the previous evening and if the visitor were involved, therefore, he could have taken it, but may have deliberately left it for investigators.

The visitor may have considered the possibility or likelihood of resistance to negotiate with him as well as a strong aversion to having it come out who had been involved in taking the paintings. The robber may not have destroyed the video tape from the night of the robbery but actually kept it as a bargaining chip to avoid a life sentence.  If it were Rod Ramsay for example, his involvement would not only be embarrassing for the FBI, but would jeopardize pending espionage cases including one of a former U. S. Army non-commissioned officer,  Clyde Lee Conrad, a spy ringleader, which was being prosecuted by the German government at the behest of the Unite States at the same time that the Gardner Museum Heist took place. Here is a link to Part 1, which introduces some of the information found in this blog post. 


Find out can be learned from the surveillance camera that was positioned outside of the Museum in the first installment of this series called: "Secrets of the Gardner Museum Surveillance Video  (The Outdoor Camera)"