The Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene (Part One)
A Historical Examination of the Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene
Link to Part Three
Link to Part Four
Link to Part Five
It is a generally rushed over little series of storyboards in the Gardner Museum Heist drama; how the Museum's security guards were handcuffed by the robbers, wrapped with duct tape, and then led down to the Museum's basement.
The accounts of what happened next have varied over the decades, to what might be considered an astonishing degree, that is, if this were some other enduring true crime tale. In the case of the Gardner Museum robbery, though, it is just one more example of how the Gardner Heist is both one of the most covered and least covered in American history. With the epic nature of the thefts, it quickly became easy to forget perhaps, that as Tron Brekke reminded almost two months after the robbery, in the May 13,, 1990 Boston Globe, "Unlike other art thefts... at the Gardner they tied up the guards; it was a violent crime."
There are three sources of information as to what happened in the basement during the Gardner Museum robbery in the public domain. The Boston Police crime scene photos of Rick Abath taken several hours after the thieves left the building, the accounts given by federal investigators and the Museum's security director, and the words of but one of the guards Rick Abath, which, given the suspicions of his possible involvement, must be considered in that light.
Abath is also the only one, of the two guards confined in the basement, who appears in the crime scene photos that were made public. He is shown seated in the place where he was found the next morning:
"You can see the duct tape wrapped around his head and he's still cuffed and he's in the basement, and he had to stay that way until the police photographer came because we needed to get the the m.o. of how these guys did it," Museum Security Director Anthony Amore said in 2015.
Descriptions of Abath’s state when he is found by Boston Police in the morning, have been frequent and dramatic, yet highly divergent, in their particulars, and in contradiction of what these crime scene photos clearly show.
In books, on cable news and in newspapers Abath has been variously described as having been “gagged,” “almost gagged,” “left nose holes for breathing,” as well as having had his mouth “taped shut,” and with “tape around his mouth and his ears and everything,”
A feature story in Yankee Magazine in 1992, "The Night They Robbed the Gardner" reported that : “Strips of plastic tape were wrapped around their eyes, ears, and mouths. They were hustled down a nearby flight of steps to the basement, taken to opposite ends of a long corridor, manacled to heating pipes, and left to lie on the concrete floor.”
The Boston Police photos and Rick Abath himself contradict this description, however. Rick Abath. On StoryCorps in 2015, Abath stated that the thieves “duct taped like the bottom of my chin to the top of my head.”
The Boston Police photos and Rick Abath himself tell a different story, however. On StoryCorps in 2015, Abath stated that the thieves "duct taped like the bottom of my chin to the top of my head," and Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore told in great detail how the other guard was handcuffed to a post holding up an old sink.
Abath has no incentive to understate the extent of his incapacitation at the hands of the robbers, and his description is consistent with the crime scene photos. But not until Abath himself spoke directly on StoryCorps about his experience, was this peculiar head-duct-taping put directly put into words for public consumption in a way that is consistent with the crime scene photos.
Stephen Kurkjian’s 2015 book Master Thieves describes how the police took great care in preserving Abath’s state of confinement at the crime scene as he was found prior to taking the photos:
“There, seated on a perch, still handcuffed, with his shoulder length curly hair nearly completely wrapped in duct tape, sat Rick Abath. Hestand [the other guard], too, was nearby. ‘We’re Boston police,’ 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.’”
In March of 2017, however, Anthony Amore contended that “the guard was gagged and handcuffed to a pipe. Those were removed before photography,” contradicting a statement he himself had made two years earlier about the effort put into preserving that part of the basement crime scene for the photographer.
The accounts of what happened next have varied over the decades, to what might be considered an astonishing degree, that is, if this were some other enduring true crime tale. In the case of the Gardner Museum robbery, though, it is just one more example of how the Gardner Heist is both one of the most covered and least covered in American history. With the epic nature of the thefts, it quickly became easy to forget perhaps, that as Tron Brekke reminded almost two months after the robbery, in the May 13,, 1990 Boston Globe, "Unlike other art thefts... at the Gardner they tied up the guards; it was a violent crime."
There are three sources of information as to what happened in the basement during the Gardner Museum robbery in the public domain. The Boston Police crime scene photos of Rick Abath taken several hours after the thieves left the building, the accounts given by federal investigators and the Museum's security director, and the words of but one of the guards Rick Abath, which, given the suspicions of his possible involvement, must be considered in that light.
Abath is also the only one, of the two guards confined in the basement, who appears in the crime scene photos that were made public. He is shown seated in the place where he was found the next morning:
"You can see the duct tape wrapped around his head and he's still cuffed and he's in the basement, and he had to stay that way until the police photographer came because we needed to get the the m.o. of how these guys did it," Museum Security Director Anthony Amore said in 2015.
Descriptions of Abath’s state when he is found by Boston Police in the morning, have been frequent and dramatic, yet highly divergent, in their particulars, and in contradiction of what these crime scene photos clearly show.
In books, on cable news and in newspapers Abath has been variously described as having been “gagged,” “almost gagged,” “left nose holes for breathing,” as well as having had his mouth “taped shut,” and with “tape around his mouth and his ears and everything,”
A feature story in Yankee Magazine in 1992, "The Night They Robbed the Gardner" reported that : “Strips of plastic tape were wrapped around their eyes, ears, and mouths. They were hustled down a nearby flight of steps to the basement, taken to opposite ends of a long corridor, manacled to heating pipes, and left to lie on the concrete floor.”
The Boston Police photos and Rick Abath himself contradict this description, however. Rick Abath. On StoryCorps in 2015, Abath stated that the thieves “duct taped like the bottom of my chin to the top of my head.”
The Boston Police photos and Rick Abath himself tell a different story, however. On StoryCorps in 2015, Abath stated that the thieves "duct taped like the bottom of my chin to the top of my head," and Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore told in great detail how the other guard was handcuffed to a post holding up an old sink.
Abath has no incentive to understate the extent of his incapacitation at the hands of the robbers, and his description is consistent with the crime scene photos. But not until Abath himself spoke directly on StoryCorps about his experience, was this peculiar head-duct-taping put directly put into words for public consumption in a way that is consistent with the crime scene photos.
Stephen Kurkjian’s 2015 book Master Thieves describes how the police took great care in preserving Abath’s state of confinement at the crime scene as he was found prior to taking the photos:
“There, seated on a perch, still handcuffed, with his shoulder length curly hair nearly completely wrapped in duct tape, sat Rick Abath. Hestand [the other guard], too, was nearby. ‘We’re Boston police,’ 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.’”
In March of 2017, however, Anthony Amore contended that “the guard was gagged and handcuffed to a pipe. Those were removed before photography,” contradicting a statement he himself had made two years earlier about the effort put into preserving that part of the basement crime scene for the photographer.
The Boston Police have never made commented publicly about the case, the FBI was on the scene and took control of the case within a few hours of the Boston Police arriving on the scene. Even those directly involved and long retired refrain from speaking of it, leaving no quality control check by the first responders, the actual eyewitnesses who could corroborate the official account that to most careful observers is something less than convincing.
"I struggled to understand why the FBI had provided such scant—and, as it turned out, debatable—details of its investigation," Stephen Kurkjian wrote in Master Thieves. Clearly the Boston Police reports and accounts of Boston Police officers who arrived first on the scene, could prove valuable in resolving these most basic of unanswered questions.
The lavish use of duct tape by the thieves on the heads of the guard, or on Abath anyway (the police photos of the other guard have never been made public), seems to have done the trick in establishing an never disputed narrative of the two guards’ utter helplessness.
In fact, a strip of duct tape wound from the top of the head and around the chin as shown in the police photo and described by Abath, is really not going to have any effect on a normal healthy person’s ability to speak, shout or cry out for help. Yet Abath told CNN in 2013 that “the police came around the corner with flashlights, and the guy seemed surprised and screamed out, whoa, we have got another one.” Abath was found at the furthest point from the stairway in the basement. Police began their search on the top floor and worked their way down. They had been in the Museum an hour before they stumbled upon Abath, yet he made no effort to call out to the police. They were "surprised" when they came upon the guard in the basement.
In addition to the Yankee Magazine article, Rick Abath has also been described, in the books and mass media as having been “taped to a post,” “secured to a work bench,” “handcuffed to a sink,” “handcuffed to a pipe.” and “handcuffed to an electrical box.”
For a 2010 videotape supplement of the public radio program “On Point,” Gardner Security Director Anthony Amore showed the program's host, Tom Ashbrook the place where he understood Abath to have been seated by the thieves in the basement, explaining that “the cuffs were cuffed to another one of these pipes. Amore points in the general direction of some pipes but they are never actually shown on camera. Amore never says that Abath was handcuffed to a particular pipe and instead says: "He was seated here. Ankles taped the same thing the cuffs were cuffed to another one of these pipes, and he spent the night here."
Amore specifically discusses a second set of cuffs when speaking of the other guard. In describing Abath’s confinement, however, he makes no direct reference to a second set of cuffs on Abath. during an OnPoint video segment shot in the Gardner Museum basement.
With no second set of cuffs, Abath would have to be un-cuffed and then re-cuffed to the pipe. Abath has never described anything about a second set of cuffs, or of being recuffed in his CNN, StoryCorps, or Boston Globe interviews.
In addition, the place where Amore brings Ashbrook does not appear to be the same spot where a Boston Police Department crime scene photographer took Abath’s picture when he was found in the morning.
On three occasions Abath has stated publicly that he was cuffed to an electrical box. While a BPD crime scene photo does not show Abath in front of a cluster of electrical boxes, and he is indeed handcuffed, the picture does not show him handcuffed to anything. Nor are they any pipes of any kind shown on the wall behind Abath, an unlikely spot for pipes given the proximity of electrical panels which could be damaged by a burst pipe.
Not unexpectedly perhaps, nearly all of this ambiguity, the differing accounts, and the lack of clarity centers on just one of the guards, Rick Abath, adding to the questions about the nature of his role, if any, as an accomplice in the robbery, as well as the investigative response to and explanation of the details of this historic crime.
Link to Part Two
Copyright © 2017 All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials on these pages are copyrighted by Kerry Joyce
