What began with a thunderclap ended with barely a whisper.   On  August 6, 2015, a statement released by the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz announced the release for public viewing a Gardner Museum surveillance video from just 24 hours before the Gardner Heist.  Beginning in 2013 there was “an exhaustive re-examination of the original evidence, law enforcement officials were “seeking the public’s assistance in identifying an unauthorized visitor to the museum from the night before the theft.”  News of the release quickly became national and international news. "it sparked an Internet frenzy," the Boston Globe reported in a follow up story two weeks later.    Now it was over, the crowd which had been sourced, as it were, in the crowd-soucing effort to identify this individual in the video had been pink-slipped. It had been nearly two years, May 23, 2017, just a few months after U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz left o...

This article by Kevin Lange ran in Salon.com from July 11, 2011 until April 1, 2015.  No longer active cached link from 4/5/2015 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GdKCgc38BlwJ:open.salon.com/blog/ellipses/2011/07/16/nobody_waits_tables_better_the_spy_who_served_me+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Nobody Waits Tables Better (The Spy Who Served Me) - Salon Every so often I like to check on old friends and acquaintances... and people who, for whatever reason, good or bad, make an impression on our lives. Facebook is often a good first step, if not a search engine.  Once these are exhausted, I like to visit more exotic places... like http://florida.arrests.org.  Their basic search algorithm is a little weak, requiring you type the name just right… but occasionally, with patience, you find someone you know. A number of weeks ago, I found one such individual. While I was wrapping up my undergraduate education, he was still a relative ...

Links To Resources referenced in The Gardner Museum Heist Basement Crime Scene Series  Link to Part One Gardner  Museum Robbery Security Guard Rick Abath on a StoryCorps podcast which aired on NPR March 13, 2015 https://storycorps.org/listen/rick-abath-and-diana-abath-150313/ August 11, 2015 WGBH   Greater Boston:  Jim Braude interviewing Gardner Museum Security Director and Chief Investigator, Anthony Amore, five days after the release of the Gardner Heist Eve surveillance video by the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts on August 6, 2015.   http://video.wgbh.org/video/2365543905/ Author Stephen Kurkjian discusses his 2015 book Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist and the Gardner Heist at the Weston, MA Public Library on January 20, 2016. https://archive.org/details/Stephen_Kurkjian_at_Weston_Public_Library_January_20_2016 The Gardner Heist and Stolen Art   February 24, 2010...

A Historical Examination of the Gardner Museum Heist's Basement Crime Scene   Link to Part One Was Abath really imprisoned in the Museum basement like the other guard? At least 13 minutes passed between the time the two thieves split off into different sections of the museum basement, each with one of the security guards in their custody, and when they were first detected in a Museum gallery, the Dutch Room. That was plenty of time for the thief, who escorted Abath away from the other security guard to remove the tape and handcuffs from him and then make his way to the second floor gallery with Abath along perhaps as a lookout. And since the other security guard was being taped up as well, that guard was not in a position to know to what extent Abath had actually been taped up in the first place. There is nothing about the way Abath is taped and handcuffed in the basement in the police photo that could not have been done by Abath himself, acting alone. ...

A Historical Examination of the Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene  Link to Part One Virtually every other stage of the eighty one minutes the thieves spent in the museum have been pored over, debated about, and second guessed: Were they pros? Were they thugs? Why this paintings and not that painting? Why were they let into the Museum at all? If the guard Rick Abath was involved in the robbery, something the Museum’s past and present security directors as well as the FBI have sometimes suggested is a distinct possibility, then clues to his possible involvement might be found from what is known and can be discerned about what actually occurred in the basement that fateful night. But details are contradictory and scarce, and with authorities less than forthcoming (“It’s an ongoing investigation”) actual clarifications from authorities have become an unrealistic expectation.  Three decades later, should it be an open question for the public whet...

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...