[MSN] {Spam?} The World's Greatest Art Heists

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The World's Greatest Art Heists
Forbes.com staff 02.12.08, 2:30 PM ET

Sunday afternoon, three men in ski masks entered the E.G. Buehrle Collection
in Zurich, Switzerland, a half-hour before closing time. One brandished a
pistol and ordered museum employees to the floor. The other two snatched
paintings off the wall. They bolted to a getaway vehicle parked outside the
museum.

The thieves' haul included masterpieces by van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne and
Degas. Estimated value: More than $163 million.

Stunning? Sure. But it's just the latest in a long line of similar
robberies. Art heists are probably as old as art itself. The modern era
dates to the 1911 theft of the "Mona Lisa," when the self-styled Marques
Eduardo de Valfierno paid three men to steal it from the Louvre in Paris.
It's usually seen as the first great art heist of the 20th century. Since
that time, countless works of major and minor art have been stolen.
In Pictures: The World's Greatest Art Heists

In another famous case, Charles Wrightsman, the oil-rich American collector,
bought Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" for $392,000 in 1961 and
planned to take it stateside. Such was the public outrage that the
government raised the necessary matching sum. Less than three weeks after
its triumphal hanging in the National Gallery, it was stolen. The thief
demanded a ransom of the same amount and said he was going to devote it to
charity. There was no response--unless you count the double take when James
Bond (Sean Connery) spotted the painting on Dr. No's wall in the movie of
the same name.

Another blockbuster crime was the theft of nine paintings--including
Renoir's "Bathers" and Monet's "Impression, Soleil Levant," which gave
Impressionism its name--from the Marmottan Museum in Paris in November 1985.
The police at first theorized that the radical group Action Direct had
committed the crime. But several paintings stolen from a provincial French
museum in early 1984 were recovered in Japan after a tip-off from a fence.
The paintings--including Corots--were in the hands of Shuinichi Fujikuma, a
known gangster. He had been behind the Marmottan heist too. Indeed, he had
circulated a catalog of the nine soon to be stolen paintings.

Japan's short statute of limitations on stolen art was notorious, and rumors
became rampant that the Japanese mob, aka the Yakuza, had penetrated the art
world. The truth was on a smaller scale. Fujikuma had been arrested in
France with 7.8 kilos of heroin in 1978. During a five-year sentence, he
came to know Philippe Jamin and Youssef Khimoun, members of an art theft
syndicate. They pulled the job for him. But the paintings were recovered in
1991--in Corsica. They had been too hot, even for Japan.

But the single largest theft of precious objects is still the December 1985
robbery of Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology. It was Christmas
Eve, and the eight guards on duty were not vigilant. Nor was it helpful that
the alarm hadn't been working since the system broke down three years
before. It was the new team of guards who arrived at 8 a.m. and discovered
that sheets of glass had been removed from seven showcases.

The 140 objects taken included jade and gold pieces from the Maya, Aztec,
Zapotec and Miztec sculptures (pictured is "Pacal's Burial Mask"). The
curator, Felipe Solis, estimated that one piece alone--a vase shaped like a
monkey--could be worth more than $20 million on the market--if a buyer could
be found. Most of the pieces were an inch or so in height. The entire haul
would have fit comfortably into a couple of suitcases.

America's greatest art mystery also remains unsolved. At 1:24 a.m. on the
morning after St. Patrick's Day, 1990, two men in police uniforms knocked on
a side door of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, mentioning a
"disturbance" on the grounds. The guards let them in and were swiftly
handcuffed and locked in a cellar. The work the thieves made off with
included "The Concert" by Vermeer, "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee"
(Rembrandt's only marine painting), "Chez Tortoni" by Manet, five pieces by
Degas and some miscellanea that includes a Chinese bronze beaker and a
fitment from a Napoleonic flagstaff. Untouched were the Renaissance
paintings, including Titian's "Europa," which is arguably the most valuable
piece in the collection.

The current dollar figure attached to the stolen work exceeds $300 million.
In 1997, with the investigation moribund, the museum raised the reward from
$1 million to $5 million. Tipsters understandably emerged, among them a
Boston antiques dealer, William P. Youngworth III. He was a shady character
but gained attention by telling Tom Mashberg, a reporter for The Boston
Herald, that he and Myles Connor could get the art returned. His price:
immunity for himself, the release of Connor from jail and, naturally, the
reward.

Connor was behind bars at the time of the Gardner heist--for another art
heist--but claimed he could locate the art if released. Credibility soon
began to leak. Then Mashberg got a telephone call that led to a nocturnal
drive to a warehouse, where he was shown--by torchlight--what may or may not
have been Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee." He was later given some
paint chips, supposedly from that painting.

Doubts sprang up, as the chips were not from the Rembrandt. The U.S.
attorney demanded that one of the paintings be returned as proof that the
works were on hand. This didn't happen. Negotiations petered out. Connor is
now out of jail, but the art is still missing.

--The Associated Press contributed to this article. 

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