Blog Table of Contents     Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Clyde Conrad convicted in Germany of high treason June 6, 1990 The 1990 Rod Ramsay Espionage Case in the Media Among the curious aspects of media coverage of the Ramsay espionage case is both the lack of coverage in Boston, and the lack of “Boston”  in the coverage.  Ramsay first appears in the media and the pages of the Boston Globe because of a leak in 1988 to the Washington Post, though he is not named. On August  26, 1988 Stephen Kurkjian, then the Boston Globe’s Washington bureau chief wrote that "He [Conrad] recruited another member of the US Army for espionage and paid him a sum in five figures for military documents."  It would be almost two years before it became known publicly that the other member of the US Army who had received that five figure sum was Boston area native Rod Ramsay. According to Traitors Among Us , Ramsay was “raised in a suburb of Boston ...

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...