In 1990, Two Fake Cops Stole $1 Billion Worth Of Art In 81 Minutes. Nobody Has Ever Been Caught

Art heists are irresistible Hollywood material. Matt Damon and Bill Murray hunted Nazi-looted masterpieces in "The Monuments Men." Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts joined Clooney and Damon for an elaborate European caper in "Ocean's Twelve." Bruce Willis took a more ridiculous approach in "Hudson Hawk."

Then there are films like "The Thomas Crown Affair," "Entrapment," Ben Affleck's "The Town," Mark Wahlberg's "The Italian Job," and Robert De Niro's "The Score."

The movies make stealing priceless art look glamorous, sophisticated, and almost impossibly clever. The reality is usually much less elegant. Modern museums use alarms, motion detectors, cameras, reinforced doors, guards, tracking systems, and carefully rehearsed security procedures. Stealing a famous masterpiece is difficult. Selling it without being caught can be nearly impossible.

And yet, during the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked out with 13 objects. The FBI officially values the lost collection at $500 million. Other estimates place the value at $1 billion. BUT, when you consider just how unique and irreplaceable some of the pieces are, the collection was effectively priceless.

They were inside for 81 minutes. No one has ever been arrested for the theft. Not one of the stolen works has been recovered.

More than three decades later, the Gardner Museum robbery remains the largest unsolved art heist in history.

How the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Came to Exist

Isabella Stewart Gardner was born in 1840 into a wealthy New York family. Her father, David Stewart, had made a fortune in the linen trade. She later married John Lowell Gardner Jr., a member of another prominent and wealthy family.

Gardner traveled extensively and developed a passion for European paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, furniture, textiles, and decorative art. With the help of art historian Bernard Berenson, she assembled a collection containing works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian, Botticelli, Raphael, Degas, Manet, and many others.

Rather than donate the collection to an existing institution, Gardner constructed her own museum in Boston. Designed to resemble a 15th-century Venetian palace, the building opened to the public in 1903.

Gardner did not consider the museum to be a building filled with individual objects. She saw the entire place as one unified work of art. Paintings, furniture, sculptures, and architectural fragments were arranged according to her personal vision.

When Gardner died in 1924, she left the museum an endowment of approximately $3.6 million, equivalent to tens of millions of dollars today. Her will prohibited the permanent collection from being sold or expanded and required that its arrangement remain essentially unchanged.

Those instructions would eventually make the theft even more haunting. The paintings could not simply be replaced with different works. The empty spaces became permanent wounds in Gardner's carefully constructed masterpiece.

(RYAN MCBRIDE/AFP via Getty Images)

A Museum With Serious Security Weaknesses

By the early 1980s, the museum was struggling financially. The historic building needed extensive repairs, lacked a modern climate-control system, and did not have the resources of a major government-funded institution.

After the FBI learned of a possible plan to rob the museum in 1982, its security system was upgraded. Dozens of infrared motion detectors were installed throughout the building. Four exterior cameras were connected to a closed-circuit television system.

There were no cameras inside the galleries, largely because installing them throughout a historic building would have been expensive and complicated. The night guards could summon police by pressing a panic button located at the main security desk.

Security specialists reviewed the museum's defenses in 1988 and recommended substantial improvements. The museum could not afford to implement many of them. Its guards were also paid only slightly more than minimum wage, making it difficult to attract and retain experienced security professionals.

Everyone working the night shift knew the system had weaknesses.

On March 18, 1990, two thieves exploited nearly every one of them.

The Night of the Robbery

The guards on duty were 23-year-old Rick Abath and 25-year-old Randy Hestand. It was Hestand's first time working the museum's overnight shift.

Shortly before the robbery, fire alarms began sounding in several rooms. Abath investigated but found no fire or smoke. Concluding that the system was malfunctioning, he disabled the alarm panel.

During his rounds, Abath briefly opened and closed the museum's side door. He later said he routinely did this to confirm that it was properly locked. Investigators would spend years debating whether the act was innocent or whether it might have been a signal to someone waiting outside.

At approximately 1:20 a.m., two men dressed in Boston police uniforms rang the buzzer at the museum's side entrance. They claimed to be investigating a reported disturbance.

Abath could see what appeared to be two uniformed police officers on the exterior surveillance monitor. Boston was winding down from its St. Patrick's Day celebrations, so the story probably sounded plausible. Perhaps someone had spotted an intoxicated reveler climbing the museum's fence.

Museum rules prohibited admitting unexpected visitors after hours. Abath let them inside anyway.

The men told Abath that he looked familiar and that there might be a warrant for his arrest. They ordered him to step out from behind the security desk, moving him away from the panic button.

Once Abath was away from the desk, the supposed police officers handcuffed him. When Hestand returned from his patrol, they restrained him as well.

The guards were wrapped with duct tape, taken to separate locations in the basement, and handcuffed to pipes and other fixtures.

The thieves now had the museum to themselves.

81 Minutes Inside the Museum

The museum's motion detectors recorded the thieves moving through the galleries.

In the second-floor Dutch Room, they removed Vermeer's "The Concert" and Govert Flinck's "Landscape with an Obelisk" from their frames. They cut Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" and "A Lady and Gentleman in Black" directly out of their frames.

They also took a small Rembrandt self-portrait etching, an ancient Chinese bronze beaker, five works by Degas, and a bronze eagle finial from the top of a Napoleonic flag.

On the first floor, they removed Manet's "Chez Tortoni" from the Blue Room.

The selection was bizarre. The thieves ignored several works that were more recognizable and potentially more valuable than some of the objects they chose. Stealing the bronze finial was especially strange. It was far less valuable than the paintings and would have been awkward to remove.

The apparently random choices have led many investigators to believe that the robbers were not sophisticated art experts. They may have entered with a vague shopping list, misunderstood what they were looking at, or simply grabbed objects that caught their attention.

Before leaving, the thieves took the security videotape that showed their arrival. They carried the stolen objects to their vehicle in two separate trips and departed at approximately 2:45 a.m.

The guards remained restrained in the basement until police arrived shortly after 8 a.m.

The 13 Stolen Objects

The stolen haul consisted of:

• Vermeer's "The Concert"
• Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee"
• Rembrandt's "A Lady and Gentleman in Black"
• Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait"
• Manet's "Chez Tortoni"
• Flinck's "Landscape with an Obelisk"
• Five works on paper by Degas
• An ancient Chinese bronze gu
• A bronze eagle finial from a Napoleonic flag

"The Concert" is the most valuable and famous piece in the collection. Vermeer produced only around three dozen paintings that are generally accepted as authentic. His work almost never becomes available for purchase, making it extraordinarily difficult to assign a traditional market value to the painting. Therefore, "The Concert" is considered the most valuable missing painting in the world.

"Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" is also irreplaceable. It is Rembrandt's only known seascape and contains a small self-portrait of the artist among the terrified passengers aboard the boat.

The FBI officially values the complete collection at more than $500 million. Other estimates have placed its potential value at approximately $1 billion. In reality, the most important works are effectively priceless.

They are also nearly impossible to sell. Any legitimate auction house, dealer, museum, or collector would recognize them immediately. Their value on the open market is enormous, but their value to a criminal trying to sell them may be close to zero.

Suspects, Mobsters, and Dead Ends

The FBI has investigated professional art thieves, local criminals, Boston organized-crime figures, international gangs, and members or associates of the Irish Republican Army.

One early person of interest was Rick Abath. Investigators focused on his decision to open the side door shortly before the thieves arrived and his violation of museum policy when he admitted them.

Abath always denied being involved. He was never charged, and later investigators reached differing conclusions about how suspicious his conduct really was. He died in 2024.

Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger was also examined. Bulger had deep connections to corrupt members of Boston law enforcement, potentially giving him access to realistic uniforms or police information. He also had connections to Irish republican figures, helping fuel theories that the art had been transported to Ireland.

Bulger, who was portrayed by Johnny Depp in "Black Mass," reportedly denied involvement. No convincing evidence has ever connected him to possession of the paintings.

Other investigators focused on Boston mob associate Robert "Bobby" Donati. Donati had reportedly visited the museum with experienced art thief Myles Connor before the robbery. According to one account, Donati had specifically discussed stealing the Napoleonic finial as a calling card.

Donati was murdered in 1991. His body was discovered in the trunk of a car.

Another suspected figure was George Reissfelder, a Boston-area criminal whom investigators have linked to a vehicle potentially used in the robbery. A former FBI agent later said Reissfelder's brother recognized Manet's "Chez Tortoni" as a painting he had once seen hanging above Reissfelder's bed.

Reissfelder also died without the art being recovered.

The museum received an anonymous letter in 1994 from someone claiming to have information about the stolen works. Authorities examined possible leads involving Connecticut, Philadelphia, New England crime families, international art traffickers, and various attempts to trade information for money or reduced prison sentences.

None produced a painting.

The FBI Believes It Identified the Thieves

In 2013, the FBI announced that investigators believed they had identified the men responsible for the robbery.

The agency did not publicly name them. It said the suspects were associated with a criminal organization operating in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region. Investigators believed some of the artwork had traveled through Connecticut and the Philadelphia area and had been offered for sale.

After that attempted sale, the trail went cold.

Former FBI agent Geoffrey Kelly, who worked on the investigation for more than two decades, later offered a more detailed theory. Kelly has argued that figures connected to a Boston-area criminal crew, including Donati and Reissfelder, played central roles in the theft or the movement of the stolen art.

But identifying likely suspects is not the same as proving a criminal case. Many of the most important potential suspects and witnesses died before investigators could obtain definitive evidence.

The paintings could now be anywhere. The FBI believes the 13 objects were separated after the robbery, meaning they may no longer be stored together.

The $10 Million Reward

The museum initially offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the collection. The amount was later raised to $5 million and then doubled to $10 million.

That reward remains available for information leading to the safe return of the stolen art in good condition. A share of the money may be paid for information that recovers an individual object rather than the entire collection.

The museum has also offered an additional $100,000 specifically for information leading to the return of the Napoleonic eagle finial.

The statute of limitations for prosecuting the original theft expired years ago. That does not necessarily provide blanket immunity for possessing, hiding, transporting, or attempting to sell stolen property. Prosecutors have indicated that requests for immunity would depend on the specific circumstances.

The museum's priority is not punishment. It wants its art back.

The Empty Frames

In 1994, the museum placed several of the empty frames back on the walls where the missing paintings once hung.

They remain there today.

The frames serve as reminders that the theft did not merely remove a group of expensive objects. It damaged a larger work of art that Isabella Stewart Gardner had intended to remain intact forever.

The case remains active. The Gardner Museum continues to work with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office. Tips still arrive, investigators still follow leads, and experts continue to believe that at least some of the paintings may survive in an attic, basement, storage facility, private residence, or criminal cache.

The great irony is that the thieves successfully stole some of the most valuable paintings on Earth but apparently never found a way to profit from them.

More than three decades after two fake police officers walked through a side door in Boston, no one has been arrested, none of the 13 objects has returned, and the empty frames are still waiting.