When Gardner Museum Director AnneHawley openly challenged the integrity of the FBI’s Gardner Heist investigation  by saying: ‘Their investigation was possibly corrupted and compromised from the start,” in the July 2005 issue of Smithsonian Magazine, it came at the historic low point for the FBI’s Boston office. Two months earlier, in May of 2005 Boston FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr., was formally charged with a 1982 gangland slaying in Florida. It was Connolly, who tipped off  James "Whitey" Bulger  about a pending indictment that led to his fleeing the state, triggering a worldwide 16 year manhunt. At that point, Connolly was already serving 10 years in federal prison for protecting FBI longtime informants including  Bulger.  That same month the Boston Globe reported another Connolly informant, “Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi, had said “in two recent depositions that he and Bulger paid more than $200,000 to their FBI handler, J...

The Sword AND The Stone (Part Two) Was there actually a serious and sustained, yet unsuccessful effort to determine who the thieves were in the Gardner Museum Heist in the days, weeks, months and years following robbery, as the public has been led to believe? Is the Gardner Museum Heist not only one of world’s great property crimes but also one of its greatest mysteries? Or was the identity of at least a couple of the participants quickly known, but the perpetrators, somehow, beyond the reach of law enforcement and so kept as a closely held state secret.  In my previous blog post I suggested that there was evidence that the thieves had contacted the FBI but were unable to reach a deal based on three occurrences.   1.  The thieves said they would be making contact.   2.That the Museum Director said that someone was frantically and quite despicably using threats against her and the museum to get in contact with the FBI.  in the months fo...