The Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene (Part Three)
The Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene (Part Three)
Link to Part One
Link to Part Two
Link to Part Three
Link to Part Four
Link to Part Five
Perhaps seeing the dramatic potential of guards imprisoned in the basement, television news programs have stuck with the more lurid, often but inaccurate descriptions of the guards’ predicament. These have included programs with on-air appearances by lead investigators in the case, such as the Gardner Heist segment in 2013 on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. That broadcast reported that “his eyes and mouth were duct-taped and he feared for his life.“ On an American Greed, Season 2 Episode 9, which first aired on February 13, 2008, Boston Globe journalist Stephen Kurkjian said: "they quickly tied him up put around his mouth and his ears and everything."
But Abath's mouth was not duct taped and his eyes were less than completely covered. He said that he could see, even before the thieves left the building, according to the transcript:
“Either through sweating or struggling or both, at some point, the duct tape had slipped down. So I could see a little bit over the duct tape, kind of. And at one point, somebody did come and check on me.”
Despite what that CNN transcript and on a 2008 episode on CNBC of “American Greed,” only one of Abath's ears was taped and duct tape does little to block hearing to any signoficant extent.
Abath’s right ear is not covered with tape
According to Gardner Security Director Anthony Amore, Abath claimed that "the duct tape started coming loose because of the heat from the boiler," Duct tape adhesive however, is water and heat resistant. It is unlikely that heat and sweat would cause the tape to come off of the skin in under an hour; the amount of time between when the thieves left the basement the first time and they left the museum for good.
And six hours from when the thieves left, when the Boston Police photos are taken, there is no discernible sign of sweating or struggling. Abath’s clothes and particularly the duct tape appear fresh and smooth in the crime scene photograph.
In a book excerpt Abath posted on Facebook on a community page in 2015, Abath wrote that “I needed to learn new coping methods after being diagnosed with ADHD combined type, severe. Medication helped, but I had 48 years of dysfunctional coping mechanisms I had to unlearn.”
Yet in the ordeal of having been imprisoned in the Gardner basement he came through remarkably unscathed in the police photos. He was not released until noon from questioning by police then drove a hundred miles in a borrowed van to see the Grateful Dead at the Hartford Civic Center at 8:00 pm
.
Abath was able to see, to hear, to shout, and the only thing keeping him from simply walking upstairs in the museum, based on the Boston Police photos appears to be the duct tape around his ankles. A 23 year old man who stands and walks for a living as security guard and is a member of a rock band should be able to free himself from that amount of duct tape shown in the photo that was applied above his ankles, just by moving and twisting his legs in under an hour. But after seven hours, allegedly, the tape seems to remain tightly gripped around his lower legs, still crimping his pants-leg, even with his two feet close together nearly touching. There is no appearance of stretching of the tape from struggling against it over all of that time.
1. Buzzed the thieves posing as police into the museum,
2. Stepped away from the security desk where the only alarm connected to the outside world was located,
3. Opened the outside museum door just twenty minutes before the thieves showed up and
4. Had the only footsteps recorded in the Blue Room where Manet’s Chez Tortoni was stolen in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990.
They have not questioned the Abath account of his claim of spending seven hours, a virtual prisoner, in the basement of the Gardner Museum at all. And the extent to which Abath was, in fact, truly neutralized by the thieves has never been vetted publicly in any way by investigators or even a topic of curiosity in the mass media.
Master Thieves author Stephen Kurkjian did not raise the question, concerning the extent of Abath’s captivity during the robbery, in his recent book on the Gardner Museum robbery, published in 2015, but he raise the issue himself without prompting at a talk he gave about the Gardner Heist in Weston, MA in January 20, of 2016 (Time 28:30):
"Did they tie them up in separate places because Rick was an accomplice, and they wanted to be able to take the constraints and the duct tape off of him? I mean they really had duct taped him. Did they want to remove that duct tape from Rick until they’re done with their theft and then put it back on him? Big question," Kurkjian said.
The only person who may have questioned the authenticity of Abath’s incapacitation that night in the mass media may have been Jim Braude during an interview of Gardner Security Director Anthony Amore, when he referred to Abath as someone "who was allegedly tied up that night."
Absent the “big question,” of whether Abath was really imprisoned in the basement for seven hours, what really has only seemed to matter in the telling of the tale, to date, is not the details of how the guards were neutralized, as the museum’s only line of defense, rather just that they were neutralized; shook up a bit, but not injured.
There has been a tendency perhaps to go along with the glossing over of the details of the presumed false imprisonment of both of the guards by readers as well as by journalists, since following rapidly in the aftermath of this presumed fait accompli by the thieves is the complete vulnerability of one of the world’s great art collections to a pair of robbers off the street.
Link to Part Four
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