Factual Errors in Last
Seen Podcast Episode 1
1. HORAN: “The thieves wound duct tape
around Randy and Abath’s heads from chin to scalp across their eyes and across
their mouths with only a slit so they could breathe."
There was no duct tape covering Abath's mouth. See official crime scene photo above.
At a public talk he gave in Bedford, MA, Anthony Amore said: He [Abath] had to stay like that until the police photographer came "because we needed to get the m.o. of how these guys did it."
“We’re Boston police,” [Supervisor Patrick] Cullity told them. “Just sit there a couple of seconds longer; our police photographer is on his way and we don’t want to touch or change anything until he gets his pictures.” —Master Thieves page 59
2. RODOLICO: “Earlier in the evening the guards’ rounds had been interrupted by a fire alarm blaring from the museum’s carriage house outside. It had really spooked him. Maybe that’s why the cops had come and so he [Rick Abath] buzzed them into the museum.”
Rick Abath has done three interviews and written his own first-person account of what happened that night. He has given himself every opportunity to say the alarms going off 40 minutes earlier was a factor in letting the fake cops in, and he has not. Abath has never once mentioned that earlier alarm incident on his shift before the robbery in any context. Last Seen did not interview Abath. His voice in the video is from an interview by Steve Kurkjian of Abath in 2013.
An explanation offered by Stephen Kurkjian, consulting producer of Last Seen, in 2016, years after he last interviewed was that Abath "knew he wasn't supposed to let anybody in, but he thought that maybe some kids might have jumped over the back iron fence and gotten into the yard and there is a nursery back there for Mrs Gardner's plants and he was worried about that."
3. "The fake cops told the museum guard on duty that they were responding to a disturbance...so he buzzed them into the museum." According to the Boston Police report,
"The victim further states that after gaining entry the suspects told the the victim they were responding to a call for the kids outside the museum."
4. RODOLICO: ”The thieves who pulled off the greatest art heist in history had a pretty simple plan."
They had walkie talkies and spoke in code numbers. — according the Boston Police report. “It was well planned, well thought out, perfectly executed.” FBI Gardner heist investigator Thomas McShane, "Boston's Unsolved Art Heist," Mission Declassified, Aired April 14, 2019
5. RODOLICO: "Nothing about what went down in the early morning hours after St. Patrick’s Day on March 18, 1990, fits the Hollywood-fueled mind’s eye notion of a museum heist."
Only a small fraction of what “went down” is known, but disguises, walkie talkies, and speaking in code numbers certainly fit the bill. And Abath said in a 2013 CNN interview thatHe finished cuffing me, and he cuffed my partner and very dramatically said, ‘Gentlemen, this is a robbery’" on CNN. https://youtu.be/bJ7Y_U7ppp0?t=34
6. HORAN: “Thieves slashed “Christ In The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee” from its frame with something razor-sharp, like a box cutter, Same episode: “AMORE: “It’s a very clean cut."
The definition of slash is to cut with a swinging motion. You can't slash and have a very clean, precise cut. Also, the two paintings were not cut from the frames, they were cut from their stretchers, which does less damage than cutting from the frame, according to then FBI Gardner heist Supervisor Thomas Cassano in 2000.
7. RODOLICO: “We know from Anthony Amore's PowerPoint that the thieves, along with 13 irreplaceable artworks, were last seen at 2:41 a.m.”
The thieves and the art were not seen leaving. It is not even established that the time when they left, only that it was when the door was last open and shut until the following morning when the robbery was discovered. “We know how they came in, but we don’t know how they got out.” Retired FBI Gardner heist Invesitgation Supervisor Thomas Cassano. And it was 2:45 not 2:41 that the door was last closed.
8. HORAN: “Remember, they were quick to get Rick Abath away from the panic button."
In Abath’s own account, which is the only one anyone has, the thieves coaxed him away, they talked to him for a bit, then asked to see his identification. They did not hustle him away from the silent alarm (“panic button”). If you match up Abath's account with the other guard's, Abath did not step away from the security desk where the alarm button was located until after, the other guard, Randy, returned to the security station. About three minutes total according to Anthony Amore on the Herald podcast "Animal House," a week before this Last Seen Podcast episode aired.
9. RODOLICO: “81 minutes. From the moment they were buzzed in at 1:24 until they left at 2:41."
That's not 81 Minutes that's 77 Minutes. (The door last closed at 2:45.) It is not established that they left by the door at that time.
10. “We’ve mined all of it in search of new insights into this old case.”
Last Seen ignored my persistent attempts to even speak with them about the case, though I was interviewed by Stephen Kurkjian in 2014, he tried repeatedly to meet with me again in 2016. I was interviewed for another Gardner heist podcast called Empty Frames that also came out in 2018. The name William Youngworth, who made national news over the course of several years with his not disproven claim that he could and later could have returned some of the Garnder art, is not even uttered in Last Seen podcast.
Last Seen ignored my persistent attempts to even speak with them about the case, though I was interviewed by Stephen Kurkjian in 2014, he tried repeatedly to meet with me again in 2016. I was interviewed for another Gardner heist podcast called Empty Frames that also came out in 2018. The name William Youngworth, who made national news over the course of several years with his not disproven claim that he could and later could have returned some of the Garnder art, is not even uttered in Last Seen podcast.
11. HORAN: “We are devoting our entire second episode to Rick Abath."
The entire second episode is not devoted to Rick Abath.
12. RODOLICO: “A few months into his job, Randy began filling in on the overnight shift. The pay was better: “$11 an hour versus 7 or 8 bucks for the daytime shift.”
Both “Master Thieves” by Kurkjian and “the Gardner Heist,” by Ulrich Boser, by authors both of whom were involved in the production of Last Seen said it was "Randy's" first night working that shift in their books. And less than a week before the release of this first episode, Anthony Amore said on the podcast "Animal House" Episode 39 that Randy "had very limited experience on the first shift."
Kerry Joyce
Copyright © 2020
Kerry Joyce
Copyright © 2020
