Blog Table of Contents     The ransom note from 1994 essentially proposes that if authorities are not willing to give a sentence reduction to inmate or criminal “X,” then an alternative means of getting the stolen Gardner artwork back would be to pay a  $2.6 million dollar cash ransom instead.  “The letter writer stated that the paintings had been stolen to gain someone a reduction in a prison sentence, but as that opportunity had dwindled dramatically there was no longer a primary motive for keeping the artwork,” according to Stephen Kurkjian in his 2015 book Master Thieves Was the Note Authentic? Former Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley said of the April 1994 ransom note the museum received: It was a letter. It was extremely well written and it referred to things in the case that were not known publicly. And the FBI got very excited about it. "We took it seriously in 1994 and we continue to take it seriously," Geoff Kelly said on American Gree