Gardner Museum Heist —Blog

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March 27, 2024

The Misidentifying of Reissfelder and DiMuzio
as Gardner Heist suspects

A case study in how disinformation from powerful status quo interests made its way into the news feed of a top notch, top rated local news provider

On February 27, 2024, the Boston ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV reported on its website that:

"The FBI said in 2015 that the men investigators believe committed the robbery, George Reissfelder and Leonardo DiMuzio, died within a year of the heist."

Tracing how this bit of false history ended up in news a story, by a top rated news outlet with a well-deserved reputation for independent, and accurate reporting, illustrates how powerful status quo interests launder disinformation about the Gardner heist and the Gardner heist investigation, into the mainstream media,

This recent example goes back 2015, when Gardner heist investigators, had the crazy idea that they should disseminate through the news media, that the two thieves responsible for the Gardner heist were George Reissfelder and Leonard DiMuzio. but without actually saying so. Sadly, it was a successfully executed feat, thanks to the assistance of only too-eager-to-please journalists.

On March 1, 2015 shortly before the Gardner Museum heist 25th anniversary, Tom Mashberg, co-author of 'Stealing Rembrandts' with Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore reported in the NY Times that:

Mr. [FBI's Geoff] Kelly showed me that Mr. Reissfelder and Mr. DiMuzio closely resembled police sketches of the two men who had entered the museum.

But then, a week later, in an interview that aired on March 18, 2015, Anthony Amore, who was also interviewed by Mashberg, along with Kelly, and was quoted in that same New York Times story, strongly denied what the WCVB story of February 27th, nine years later reported, that Reissfelder and DiMuzio had been named as suspects. In fact, he strongly denied it. TWICE:

When GBH Executive Arts Editor Jared Bowen said to Amore in a television, that "there have been reports over the weekend in the New York Times naming these individuals," and then asked, "has that changed the nature of the investigation at all?"

Gardner Museum Security Directory Anthony Amore: "In the recent interview that you refer to, if you read it very closely, nobody really named anybody. a The New York Times article provides conjecture based on a theory, that was presented to the reporter. So again in that interview we didn't name the two people. Those were the two that the reporter surmised from the information."

So first the FBI, in the company of the reporter's co-author, nonverbally suggests the two thieves were Reissfelder and DiMuzio, and then their surrogate, Anthony Amore, quite vigorously denies that this is definitiely an established fact of the case.

Ironically, this type of media manipulation always, to some extent, depends on the very fact that people, putting their faith in the profession of journalism and the professionalism of journalists, reduce the extent to which, even executive arts editors, feel the need to "read it [a news story] very closely." Or maybe Bowen had read it very closely and wanted to inject some precision into an accusation that was most definitely lacking in it.

Two weeks after the Mashberg story, in the Boston Globe, Shelley Murphy, one of the very few reporters, who was shown the FBI PowerPoint, wrote: "The FBI’s presentation notes that George Reissfelder, who was implicated in the heist by an informant and died of a cocaine overdose in 1991, matched a composite sketch of one of the thieves." The term "matched" is a pretty powerful word to be used regarding a police sketch in a historic criminal investigation, especially one like Gardner heist investigation, which has failed to render any fingerprint matches DNA matches, or paint chip matches, and potential opportunities to do so have been squandered by the FBI.

Unlike these other types of evidence, composite sketches are barred by the hearsay rule and thus are generally inadmissible against defendants to prove guilt.

Murphy's story does not even mention DiMuzio, only Reissfelder. And in both new stories, neither Mashberg, nor Murphy says that the FBI believes or said that these men were responsible. They both reported only that the FBI PowerPoint suggested that they resemble the sketches.

So not only did the FBI not say Reissfelder and DiMuzio were the guys, they did not even explicitly say they resembled the guys. (They do not resemble the guys.)

Here we have veteran journalists, Murphy and Mashberg, who both nine years later, in 2024, are both still covering the Gardner heist anniversary, for the same leading newspapers, and who had both been reporting on the case since the nineties, and both quoted a PowerPoint in their 2015 Gardner heist anniversary stories.

But people in the FBI made the PowerPoint. PowerPoints are not a "who." PowerPoints don't point at people, people point at PowerPoints. Otherwise they would be called PeoplePoints.

Maybe they should be called PowerfulPoints, when they are made by institutions so powerful, and secretive, no individual's name need be attached to them. And when they are accessorized with fabulism, made up events, lacking any basis in reality, as was the case with this page-one 25th anniversary story in the Boston Globe, which begins: "The FBI is so confident it knows who stole $500 million worth of masterpieces from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, it has repeatedly touted its theory in recent months with PowerPoint presentations at libraries, colleges, and museums." STOP

This is 100% FALSE.

The FBI did not make ANY public appearances about the Gardner heist, anywhere, during this period, in New England, or ever in the state of Massachusetts, or within a hundred miles of the Gardner Museum. Seven years later they FBI made an appearance in Bath, Maine, and there was another event at Fairfield University by Geoff Kelly, a few months before he resigned. I was turned away, for instance, at a talk given by FBI Special Agent Geoff Kelly at Providence College, about the Gardner heist, in 2016. because it was a private event.

Maybe the FBI did not see the story, in the same way Justice Alito did not see the upside down American flag hanging off the front of his house on January 6, of 2021, but Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore used a photo of himself from the story on his twitter, now X profile for over a year, and would certainly have read the first paragraph and known that the lead paragraph was completely false.

This false claim in the lead paragraph of Murphy's 25th anniversary story gave the FBI credit for an openness about the case that did not, and does not exist, and that has never existed, a vetting by the public, on the FBI's thinking about the Gardner heist that never happened, not anywhere. Neither was the public engaged, through any other process or method, except by way of trusted, handpicked, friendly media, and a couple of two minutes videos, one by FBI special agent Geoff Kelly, and one by FBI SAIC Richard Deslauriers, both now on YouTube, which were made public shortly after the 2013 press conference, with the comments shut off.

Here's an example of the FBI's actual 'Glasnost' about the Gardner heist, and at a time when it might have actually made a difference:

"The museum’s trustees also felt they were being kept in the dark about the status of the investigation. Trustee Francis W. Hatch, Jr. recalled one meeting held ostensibly to gain a briefing from the agent and supervisor on the case. 'They wouldn’t tell us anything about what they thought of the robbery or who they considered suspects,' Hatch recalls. 'It was very embarrassing to all of us.'" Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian, page 95.

When in 1991. the Gardner Museum hired their own private investigation firm, IGI, " based in Washington begun by Terry Lenzner, who had cut his teeth as a lawyer for the Senate Watergate Committee, US attorney Wayne Budd, fired off a memo warning the museum that it faced prosecution if it withheld information relevant to the investigation. Hatch responded, saying in his letter that he was 'shocked and saddened' by Budd’s attempt to 'intimidate' the museum and that it cast 'a pall over future cooperative efforts.'” Master Thieves by Stephen Kurkjian, page 95.

The following year President George H. W. Bush appointed Budd to serve as Associate Attorney General of the United States, overseeing the Civil Rights, Environmental, Tax, Civil and Antitrust divisions at the Department of Justice, as well as the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

In terms of being "so confident," the only thing this false claim, in Murphy's anniversary story suggests is in the FBI being "so confident" of their capacity to control the narrative up to and including patently false claims, concerning the Gardner heist investigation, within an enabling and timid media ecosystem.

Incidentally, Richard Abath, one of the two guards who was working when thieves entered the Gardner Museum, insisted to Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist, several times, and posted a comment on Boser's website saying that Reissfelder was not one of the thieves. That means if Abath wasn't involved, then neither was Reissfelder, yet the unchallenged official narrative continues to have it both ways on these two, mutually contradictory assertions.

The FBI said in June of 2023 on their podcast, Inside The FBI that "In March 1990, art thieves conned their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum." It's the first sentence! So either Abath wasn't involved and neither was Reissfelder, or Abath was involved and perhaps, although not necessarily, Reissfelder was involved also

Abath even posted about it not being Reissfelder on Ulrich Boser's website:

Rick A.
 "I’m always late to the party. I can tell you that George Reissfelder wasn’t one of the guys in the museum that night. For one thing he was too old (49 at the time of the robbery). But also, from the pictures I’ve seen of him he was too swarthy. Unsub #1 was very white, not an albino but his skin tone was whiter than Reissfelder’s.

From the pictures I’ve seen William Merlino could have been unsub #1. It’s hard to say almost a quarter of a century removed from the incident, but out of all the pictures I’ve seen Merlino looks the closest to unsub#1." [End]

In any case, Reissfelder has a jutting, very distinctive squared-off chin, that is not depicted in any of the police sketches, the kind of detail the method of creating a composite photograph would surely have depicted. Nor does Reissfelder resemble the sketches and descriptions of the suspect in other ways as well.

After the 25th anniversary, on March 21, of 2015, radio personality Howie Carr, along with his then business associate, Gardner Museum Security Director Anthony Amore, were the headlining acts at a $20 per person event in Marlborough, A Night of Crime. Eight days later Carr reported in Breitbart:

"The FBI has positively identified the two robbers who in 1990 committed the largest art heist in history, stealing over $500 million worth of masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here. One of them is a local ex-con who was free only because his lawyer, now Secretary of State John Kerry, was able to get his first-degree murder conviction overturned in 1982."

Interesting timing for John Kerry's link to Reissfelder, the subject of a crude Swift Boat style attack ad on John Kerry, blaming him for the Gardner heist because of his past legal representation of Reissfelder, leading to his exoneration. The ad ran during Kerry's 2008 Senate reelection campaign. It was then in 2015, that the FBI formally first introduced Reissfelder's name into "the investigation," at a point when Kerry was contemplating another presidential run, in the upcoming 2016 election.

Carr: "Multiple [anonymous] law-enforcement sources here have told Breitbart News that the two career criminals who committed the historic crime were Kerry’s client, George Reissfelder, and a local thug named Lenny DiMuzio.

So even though earlier, that very same month, March of 2015, Amore denied to GBH's Bowen, that Reissfelder and DiMuzio were identified as the guys, Amore's business associate, Howie Carr, reported in Breitbart, that Reissfelder and DiMuzio were indeed the perpetrators. This was eight days after Amore and Carr appeared together publicly. If Carr had the story before the 25 Anniversary, it seems unlikely he or Breitbart would have held onto it until two weeks later.

So, of these "multiple law enforcement sources", are none of them Howie Carr's business associate, Anthony Amore?

Carr even references the PowerPoint, in his Breitbart story, writing, "this month, on the 25th anniversary of the crime, the Boston FBI office produced a power-point presentation for the media, [but not all the media, just a few trusted individuals,] hinting broadly that they robbed the museum.

So they didn't actually say that, Carr acknowledge, they merely hinted broadly about it. The only news outlet that aggregated Carr's "scoop" was USA Today.

This year on the 34th anniversary of the heist Anthony Amore turned up, as usual for an interview on the Howie Carr radio, show once again, to discuss the latest news of the Gardner heist case. Time: 21:00.

Carr, a fifteen plus year veteran of the Gardner investigation's trusted media inner circle, is so unequivocally devoted to narrative over fact, that his program is natural fit for Anthony Amore and the Gardner heist investigation team.

Carr regularly interviews Donald Trump, live on his radio show, which had the WRKO MyPillow.com Traffic Report in 2023, and liely will again too if Mike Lindell ever pays his bill.

In addition, I personally recall hearing Carr do a radio ad spot for the Google Pixel 4 phone, awkwardly praising features he sounded like he didn't comprehend. Google and iHeart Radio settled a false advertising lawsuit for $9.4M, filed by the FTC. "The settlement ended claims Google paid radio DJs, Carr was one, to endorse its Pixel 4 phone even though they hadn’t used it. (It had not even hit the market yet).

As with his Donald Trump interviews, Carr, while drained of all MAGA swagger, by Amore's maudlin miasma, deftly served up boilerplate talking points to Amore, while scrupulously on the alert for any subtle shifts, in the latest iteration of the official Gardner heist narrative. As with all Carr's interviews, there were a lot of, "you're exactly right Howie." Time: 21:00.

During the interview Carr said: "the FBI said a few years back, that they knew or they thought they knew who actually committed the robbery, but the two people were dead. Now Does the FBI still think those were the two people who did it? Or did they change their mind?

Amore: Well yes. um, what I would say though, what's really important for people to remember is, when somebody calls me and says I have information about Mr. X and Mr. Y, and they're not the ones who we've spoken about previously, as having determined they were involved..."

At this point, Carr interrupts, Amore. He has a personal stake in it being Reissfelder and DiMuzio since his "scoop" that it was these two guys, was picked up by USA Today, back in 2015. Carr: [You mean] Reissfelder and that guy Lenny DiMurzio (sic) or something like that.

Amore: "Well I don't, we don't discuss the names." The government of the United States can announce that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, but "we don't discuss the names of who robbed the Gardner Museum 34 years later.

Those are names that have been passed around in the media before," Amore added.

Right. Passed around by the FBI and by Anthony Amore, with winks and index fingers, and then picked up by the guy he is that very second speaking with, Howie Carr.

And I specifically remember hearing Amore discussing Reissfelder on the Howie Carr Show during the Gardner heist anniversary in 2021, with Grace Curley filling in for Carr. At one point, while he was discussing Reissfelder, when Amore had to interrupt his live interview, to take a phone call, probably from the Gardner Museum director, telling him to shut it down about suspects. In any case, the topic was dropped when the interview resumed, about a minute later.

Amore then said about how he handles it "when somebody calls me and says I have information about Mr. X and Mr. Y, and they're not the ones who we've spoken about previously, as having determined they were involved," he reassured listeners that he is open to the idea that the information they might have about the location of the stolen Gardner art might still very well prove helpful.

That makes sense. It should go without saying, but he has to say it because it represents a break with what Amore has said in the past. In recent years he has been openly disdainful of people with different theories, and claimed he had a far different approach with people, whose theories do not match his own, on on WGBH's Greater Boston with Jim Braude.

Braude: "If they're dead why don't you tell me who did it?"

Amore: Well because if I tell you who did it, and we tell the public, and this is my perspective not the government's, I will go back to 7000 phone calls on my desk, from con men and people who are purporting to know them.

"Instead, what happens is when I get calls, and people mention the right people, we're able "to focus" in on good leads, because I am still to this day believe it or not, inundated with phone calls, and emails and letters, and most of the people are sending information that just sends you down the wrong track, a lot of red herrings, so we need to focus and that's why we keep it proprietary."A

Does Amore still have the contact info of those people who in the past, he suggested may have been screened out, perhaps mistakenly, for not naming the right people? Or was that just some b.s. to avoid telling the truth about why the FBI refuse to identify the thieves?

Why is it that the FBI has the manpower to help recover never-catalogued items pilfered by an employee from the British Museum, but they cannot commit to help out Anthony Amore with the deluge of phone calls and emails he claims he will receive, from all of the "con men [in assisted living centers at this point] and people who are purporting to know them," if the names of the thieve are released?

Admittedly, the FBI does not have a great track record in this area. In 2013, Gardner Museum Director Anne Hawley revealed for the first time that "the museum was experiencing these bomb threats coming from people in penitentiaries that were trying to negotiate with the FBI on information they said they had — and the FBI wasn’t responding to them so they were hitting us."

On March 19, 2013, FBI SAIC Richard DesLauriers said on WGBH's Greater Boston, "we're not in a position to identify those responsible, because it would hinder our ongoing investigation and it would hinder our ability to vet new information and to analyze new information as it is coming in, over ten years ago now.

DesLauriers had said much the same thing the day before at the historic FBI surprise press conference, on the twenty third anniversary of the Gardner heist, and also "that knowing the identity of the culprits has 'been opening other doors' as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork," the Globe reported that day.

Additional doors might well be, and might well have been opened without hindering their "ongoing investigation, by sharing the names of the thieves with the public," which has gone on another twelve years now with absolutely nothing to show for it, The FBI has actually taken the investigation backwards from its officially stated purpose by losing key evidence .

And after all these years, with nothing to show for it, the Department of Justice has other responsibilities to the taxpayers, beyond taking up their time and attention with this story with one nothing-burger after another every year.

As federal prosecutor Fred Wyshak, who prosecuted Whitey Bulger, said in 2005, "the criminal justice system is served not only when people go to jail, but also when the wrongdoing is brought to light so that the public can see it."

At the 2013 "surprise press conference where Richard DesLauriers gave something of an update to the public on the Gardner heist investigation, there, flanking the FBI's SAIC of the Boston Office was U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, and Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore.

But when the U.S. Attorney had first announced her plans, nine months earlier, the FBI played no public part. The FBI was referenced six times in the Boston Globe story, but only as background, there were no quotes or endorsements of the Ortiz initiative of any kind.

Even more strangely, the Gardner Museum refused to comment. The Department of Justice publicly committed to the expenditure of millions of tax dollars on the Gardner Museum's behalf and the Museum would not even publicly endorse the move.

"'We are declining commenting at this time,' Gardener Museum spokesman Michael Busack said," it was reported by WCVB.

Earlier the Boston Globe reported: "Museum officials would not comment for this article. But Amore sounded optimistic recently at a lecture at the Plymouth Public Library when he said he believed the works will be found."

It is highly doubtful that the Boston Globe had any reporter at Amore's lecture in Plymouth that day, and that is merely an educated guess about what Amore said at his "lecture." It was just a convenient way to deflect from an awkward but significant facet of the story.

The Boston Globe in their story called Ortiz's plan "a public awareness campaign." But given the extent to which the public, the Mayor, the Governor, other law enforcement agencies, and even the museum itself had been kept in the dark all those years, not only monopolizing the investigation, but slamming shut the free flow of information about it, and with not so much as a fingerprint, never mind an actual stolen painting to show for it. calling this planned effort a public awareness campaign was a gross overstatement, as the would be demonstrated time and again in the weeks months and years, which followed.

In contrast, WCVB, in their story called the upcoming effort by the Feds an "ad campaign," which as things turned out was about right.

But which news outlet was given the exclusive interview, and photo-op inside the U.S. Attorney's Office, the access, the interview the scoop? The same one that served as a surrogate member of the U.S. Attorney's public relations team, when they wrote up and published their story, the Boston Globe.

After the tumultuous Gardner heist 25th anniversary year of 2015. The investigators switched their focus, publicly, from Reissfelder to Bobby Donati in 2016, and completely dropped DiMuzio as a named or hinted at suspect.

In September of 2016 Amore sent an email to me stating they were looking at Donati, but not for the reasons in Kurkjian's book.

What distinguishes Donati and Reissfelder from other names that have been circulated as possible suspects, is that in the case of both men, people have come forward and claimed to have seen them in possession of stolen Gardner art.

That the publicity centering on Reissfelder and Donati by naming them as the thieves, could potentially shake loose additional information with the public, could be the rationale, as utterly improbable it is that either of these two men were actually the thieves. It has now been over 15 years that investigators have been pushing Reissfelder as a suspect, and nearly ten years of touting Donati, with nothing to show for it.

The two men, both long dead by the times their names were raised publicly, also serve as convenient stand-ins for an investigative team, whose members come and go, but who have consistently withheld the identities of the perpetrators from the beginning.

The name of DiMuzio, who served four years in the Marine Corps during Viet Nam, was honorably discharged as a corporal, and wound up the victim of a brutal, still unsolved homicide, was no longer mentioned after 2015. DiMuzio was essentially dropped, while Reissfelder's name was kept in the mix. Perhaps there had been some informant lead, that led to DiMuzio's naming being brought into the case publicly by investigators too.

But in the highly publicized WBUR/Boston Globe podcast on the Gardner heist, Last Seen, in 2018 for example, DiMuzio's name did not come up at all, in any context, while Amore did have this to say about Reissfelder in Episode Four of the joint Boston Globe/WBUR podcast production.

"I’m not saying George Reissfelder committed the heist. I’m just saying the work of art looked exactly like George to the point where we had a police uniform photoshopped onto him, and you hold the two and he looks exactly like this composite work of art."

Yet five weeks before Episode 4 of Last Seen podcast was released, on Episode 39 of the Boston Herald podcast Animal House, Amore said: "Eyewitness accounts are really unreliable. It's quite common. They give descriptions but the descriptions are usually inaccurate. They were two nondescript people." So on one podcast Amore is claiming Reissfelder is a dead ringer, while on another one, he is saying nobody is.

On that same episode of Animal House Amore said: "He [Reissfelder] spent 16 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. But Reissfelder, was released in the late 80's."

Reissfelder was released on August 30, 1982. Surely if Amore thought Reissfelder was involved, he would have a more precise as well as more accurate awareness of his release date than "the late 80's."

Three weeks after the February 27, 2024 WCVB story about the guard Rick Abath having died, Tom Mashberg in the New York Times, reported that "in 2015 the FBI. named two long-dead, Boston-area criminals, George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio, as the likely bandits." Mashberg offered no source, although maybe the FBI's pantomimed insinuations, published in major newspapers, somehow take on the shape of actual words over time. The WCVB story may well have been Mashberg's source. But then who (or what) was the source for WCVB? If Mashberg was his own source he could have simply reported what the FBI had told him.

Was it the Howie Carr story in USA Today?

This year, after Anthony Amore artfully backpedaled on whether Reissfelder and DiMuzio were indeed the two thieves, Carr said later on the same segment of his show that, "I just tweeted out the story I wrote for Breitbart in 2015, identifying the two perps. "The FBI is sure... I'm not sure, but I was sure the FBI was sure, so I wrote the story."

But what the FBI said, what the FBI thinks, what the FBI knows, what the FBI is convinced about are all standard fare in these Gardner heist stories, which are filed with these kind of tropes always from the same handful of journalists, whose work is then aggregated (laundered) by publications nationally and worldwide.

Overall, WCVB is a local news organization of the highest standing, including with respect to their coverage of the Gardner heist, For the most part, WCVB manages to pass along the significant stories, while sidestepping the false facts. This WCVB story is a rare exception.

Overall however, aside from WCVB, the Gardner heist coverage in the local mainstream media, including WBUR and 'GBH, is a slice of Fox News style reporting, that has come to predominate in the Boston media market, where it is aggregated from Boston to the rest of the country and the world.

In an economically brutal mass media environment, true crime is a profit center, a rare bright spot for newspapers and other media organizations. Access to the stories and officials involved are valuable resources in this competitive and profitable area of reporting.

The Gardner heist investigation sources operate a media spoils system, rewarding friendly media with leaks and access, who assist in shaping, safeguarding and disseminating official narratives about the case, that generally do not square with established facts, or even with their own past statements.

A significant difference with the Gardner Heist investigation news coverage however, is that there is no "both sides." There is no pushback by either the "Fox" news sector nor the mainstream sector of the media, against this pollution of the community data stream, in what is viewed as a non-partisan, non-ideological public space.

But in the case of the Gardner heist investigation, at least, public servants are operating, in their relation, with the communities they serve, in a way that compromises, and undermines standards of "fact," and "reason," that are vital for a free and modern society.

How is a free press supposed to hold the powerful to account, when those powerful institutions can not only potentially hit back in some fashion, but are also contributing mightily to a media organization's bottom line? When they are only given access when they serve as extensions of the people they are supposed to be holding accountable?

If this kind of inside journalism continues to thrive without consequence, or risk of consequence, there is little to prevent these practices from spreading to other areas of community discourse-space, and the marketplace of ideas.

The criminal justice sector alone is sufficiently a fixture in our elections and political dialogue to put democracy in jeopardy.

We have seen a similar dangerous dynamic with the energy sector, the fossil fuels industry, which has endangered the very ground beneath our feet, with its coverups and bad faith engagements with the public over global warming through the mass media.

The commercial enterprise of mass media, with its dedication to compelling narrative, whoaboutism, and bothsiderism, (when there are two sides that are rich or powerful,) is no longer up to the task of holding powerful, status quo interests accountable. News media that is beholden to the people and instititutions and industries they cover is not a free press.

What will need to change is the very definition of what constitutes a journalist, and a news story, a metamorphosis which might already be taking place, on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit.

by Kerry Joyce

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