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 Amer...

Blog Table of Contents Statehouse Commonwealth of Massachusetts Looking at the Gardner Heist investigation, from the standpoint of those most directly touched by it, in nearly every instance, the investigation has either been openly criticized, or else the first person accounts of people’s experiences with the authorities on matters related to the case cast serious doubts about the quality of the investigation.   And not for the actions of investigators, but for their inaction, along with their imposition of inaction upon others, such as the museum and state and local law enforcement, who might otherwise have an interest or some formal legal basis pursue it.   Former Gardner Museum Trustee Francis W. Hatch Jr.  Gardner Heist investigation critics include: The former head of the Gardner Museum Anne Hawley, a leading Gardner Museum trustee and citizen of the Commonwealth, Francis Hatch, the Director at the Hyde Collection, Frederick J. Fisher, the current...

Blog Table of Contents Whitey Bulger “In the immediate aftermath of the April 15, 2013, bombings, Boston police commissioner Ed Davis. said, “you can’t let the latest technology pull you away from the easiest thing. Sometimes old-fashioned shoe leather works best.” This is something organized crime figure James "Whitey Bulger" understood as well.  After the Gardner Heist, Bulger dispatched two of his most senior and trusted confederates, Kevin Weeks and Stephen Flemmi to find out who took the paintings. Anne Hawley understood: "Hawley was so desperate she reached out to the Vatican to ask Pope John Paul II to issue a papal appeal. She also approached William Bulger, president of the state Senate, asking that he to his brother Whitey to see what he knew.  The notorious gangster was fruitlessly chasing leads himself. The heist had happened in his territory and he figured he was owed tribute." the New York Daily News reported in 2015.  Ulric...

Blog Table of Contents In a radio interview on WNPR in September of 2017" Stephen Kurkjian said that "for 28 years the FBI has labored diligently on the case." That is the very opposite of the conclusion anyone would draw, who considered Kurkjian's own book, Master Thieves , the last word on the diligence, or lack thereof,  of this investigation by the FBI, most especially in the book's fourth chapter, called  "Anne Hawley's Burden"  Kurkjian offers his own first-person account, i n a later chapter,   of bringing what he considered credible information about the Heist and the possible location of the stolen paintings to investigators in 2014, not as a journalist but as a citizen, describing an utter absence of any follow-up up with him, or replies to his own inquiries after that met even a minimum standard of common courtesy:   " I had met both men [Geoff Kelly and Anthony Amore] numerous times in the past, but on  each of those oc...