Gardner Museum Heist —Blog

                
 Gardner Heist Aftermath
Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part One)

Gardner Heist Aftermath
Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Two)

 Gardner Heist Aftermath
Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Three)

Gardner Heist Aftermath
Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Four)

Gardner Heist Aftermath
Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Three)

Perhaps it was something more than Connor's reputation, when ten years later, in 1984, Massachusetts Secretary of State Michael J. Connolly, suspected Connor of being behind the theft of the first page of the 355 year old Massachusetts Bay Charter, along with the King's original wax seal, even though Connor was incarcerated in state prison, when the two historic artifacts from the State Archives Museum were stolen. "'I have no doubt that Myles Connor from a cell inside MCI-Cedar Junction, engineered the theft,' Connolley said at the time of theft," the Globe reported, though not until shortly after the Gardner heist, 16 years later.

Both items were eventually recovered, twelve years apart and in different locations. The Charter was found just seven months later, during a drug raid, while the seal was not recovered until 1997. Both artifacts were recovered in the possession of individuals strongly linked to Myles Connor. The seal was returned by William Youngworth in exchange for making bail. "Connor was never charged in the charter caper, but there was little doubt among police or the underworld that it had been his score," Tom Mashberg reported the following year in the March 1998 issue of Vanity Fair.

In 1989, five years after Connor was released from prison (again) and had moved to Kentucky, he was arrested in yet another FBI sting, this time in Bloomington, IL. Over a thousand miles from Boston, Connor was charged with selling yet another item from the Woolworth Estate burglary, an enormous 18th century Simon Willard grandfather clock, (if that clock could tell more than time...) as well as two of the three paintings stolen from the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Massachusetts, two months before the Rembrandt robbery at the Boston MFA, in 1975.

While Anthony Amore, decades later, in the introduction of his book, The Art of the Con, suggested that the art of art theft is in the selling of the art, not the thievery of it, here was Myles Connor, the criminal he would later dub "the Greatest art thief in the history of the world," once again collared by an undercover FBI agent, this one posing as an Italian mobster, "Tony Graziano," with a passion for antique Simon Willard grandfather clocks.

By the time of the Gardner heist, Connor had been in jail, since March 10, 1989, over a year. He had pled guilty to charges of being in possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, a kilo of cocaine, and with interstate transportation of stolen property. In November of 1989, Connor struck a deal with federal prosecutors, and was awaiting sentencing, inside a cell in the ancient Sangamon County jail, for four months by the time of the Gardner heist.

That would seem to be an ideal time to make a deal. Despite Connor's stolen art pedigree, however, extensively summarized in news stories and charge-sheets spanning decades, and despite delay after delay in his sentencing, Connor offered nothing.

Connor claimed in his 2010 book, The Art of the Steal, that "in March of 1990," and "days" after the Gardner heist, federal agents had interviewed him in the Sangamon County jail, contradicting news reports from the time of the robbery. In fact, the Boston Globe did a short article, largely about how Myles Connor had not been interviewed.

"Dozens of prison inmates have called the FBI with tips about the Gardner Museum art heist, "but one-time art thief Myles J. Connor Jr. isn't one of them," a May 13, 1990 Boston Globe story began. "Information has poured in from far-flung spots around the world, including South America. "Fortunately, we have agents who speak those languages," said Quinn.

"Many clues have come to the agency from closer to home, particularly after the FBI published composite pictures of the two thieves." But where did the FBI "publish" these composite pictures? The Gardner heist took place well before the era of World Wide Web. The composite sketches of the Gardner heist thieves were not published in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, or any other publication within a hundred miles of Boston.

"'We've made no attempt to talk to Myles Connor,' said FBI supervisory special agent Edward M. Quinn. Adds Connor's defense attorney, Greg Collins: 'He has not been requested to meet with the FBI, and I am pretty sure he has not been in contact with them.'"

But twenty years later Myles Connor, despite having spent the ten years following the Gardner heist, all of the Nineties, in federal prison, had an offer for a book deal from Harper Publishing, a book deal that hinged on his personal link to the Gardner heist case, according to his own co-author, Jenny Siler.

"My agent told me a bit about him," Siler said on the podcast Empty Frames in 2018. "Of course the hook for getting me involved and sort of getting everyone involved was his [Myles Connor's claimed] connection to the Gardner heist, my introduction came through that."

Connor has no corroboration, of any kind for his claim that Houghton confessed to having committed the Gardner heist to him, or of his even having come to visit him in prison. "That's one of the things that only, you know Myles [Connor], says," Siler acknowledged. Everything linking Myles Connor to robbery fits into that category.

Starting in the sixties, Connor has left in his wake a host of criminal evidence trails, that have earned him over two decades of incarceration on a half dozen separate arrests and convictions, yet somehow not only does Connor, have only his own uncorroborated claims of a connection to the Gardner heist, he has been unable to keep some of the fundamental details of his story straight.

In Last Seen podcast, Connor claimed that, "how I'm 100 percent sure that they [Houghton and Donati] did it was because David Houghton, who was longtime friend of mine, flew all the way from Logan Airport to California just to tell me: 'We did it. And we got a bunch paintings, and we're gonna use a couple of these paintings to bargain you into a reduced sentence,'" But in Connor's book he stated that it was not until "the fall of 1990" that he was "transferred to federal penitentiary in Lompoc, CA," several [at least six] months after the Gardner heist, and in his book he said that Houghton came to visit him several weeks after the robbery, and "David's visit was the last time I heard from either man [David Houghton or Robert Donati]." So that means Connor's visit with Donati could only have been in Illinois.

Decades before Connor's book, two decades before Last Seen Podcast, in September of 1997, during the height of the negotiations with Youngworth, Connor's cellmate in Lompoc, CA, Rocco Ellis, told the Boston Globe that it was his understanding from Connor, that the visit Houghton made to Connor took place, in Illinois, and that it occurred "three months before the Gardner heist, where Houghton sought his [Connor's] advice." The same story quotes Connor's attorney Martin Leppo, saying that "Rocco Ellis plays an important part in the Gardner matter."

Since Ellis had been talking about Houghton's alleged role in the case for five years, and had been in the Lompoc, CA federal facility with Connor, he would likely know what Connor was claiming about where the meeting took place, (and when) and whether it was when they had been cell mates, or whether it was in another facility thousands of miles away.

"'It's very easy to lay this crime off on a dead man,' said a personal injury lawyer who had represented Houghton and remained friends with him. 'But I don't think David [Houghton] could find his way to the Gardner museum,'" the Boston Globe reported in a different news story, which also reported that "the FBI says it has no evidence linking either Houghton or Donati to the crime," or that the two men even knew each other.

But despite the utter lack of evidence supporting Connor's claims, his demonstrated willingness to lie, his strong longstanding motivation and incentive to link himself somehow to the Gardner case, and the complete lack of proof or corroboration of his claim, Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore, in an article about his media normalized "bromance" with Connor said that: “I believe Myles that David Houghton visited him in Lompoc federal prison and told him that he and Bobby Donati had committed the heist to get him out of jail. I 100 percent believe Myles that that happened.”

The question is why does Amore believe it? Why does he want the public to believe it? What is behind Amore's constant and unequivocal public endorsement of Myles Connor after calling him a huckster, and a real bad guy?

The goal of getting inside the mind of an experienced art criminal is how Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore justified his years long close association with Myles Connor, an association he himself initiated, decades after the Gardner heist, and a decade after he became involved in the investigation.

Amore did claim that "I like being around him [Myles Connor]" too, but in the same 2017 interview said: "Guys that hunt serial killers talk to serial killers, well I hunt art thieves so I talk to art thieves."

Certainly no one would have faulted the FBI for engaging with Connor, just to see if the career criminal, at the age 47, having spent most of his adult life in prison, would be willing to share his views on the case, with the people who would help decide his fate, in federal court.

As it was, the Judge gave Connor twenty years, double the recommended sentence under federal sentencing guidelines of the time.

But interviewing Connor in his cell, never mind going to a Bruce Springsteen concert with him as Amore would do decades later, that was not deemed the way to approach the Gardner heist mission, whatever that mission was, in the early days after the heist.

Or even in the somewhat later days. By 1992, two years after the heist, from his prison cell in Lompoc, CA, Connor was actively working to parlay his reputation as a stolen art trafficker, someone in the know, to help out his cellmate, Rocco Ellis.

With Connor's help, Ellis sought to use the two names given to him by Connor, Bobby Donati and David Houghton as leverage with federal officials in Boston. The two former associates of Connor, were the men responsible for the Gardner Heist, according to Connor, authorities were told by Ellis.

"By that time both men were dead, Donati in an unsolved gangland slaying and the 350 pound Houghton of natural causes." But why was Connor sharing this information through someone else, instead of going directly to authorities with it, to help himself? Was there an embargo on speaking with Connor about the Gardner heist, as seemed to be the case with an attempted robber of the Hyde Museum, Brian McDevitt?

A resident of Boston's Beacon hill, only a three miles from the Gardner Museum, McDevitt was not interviewed by the FBI until two years after the heist, although he says he spent the night alone at home, at 69 Hancock Street.

Whitey Bulger too, was a high echelon FBI informant at the time of the heist, who was not questioned by his FBI handler, John Connolly, until after he had retired from the FBI.

"The informant tips coming into the Boston field office regarding the Gardner theft were no doubt being finely screened, FBI special agent Thomas McShane wrote in his book, 'Loot: Inside the World of Stolen Art.' "It may also explain why a legitimate source may not have even bothered calling."

"Finely screened," like through a stone wall. Not much had changed when, in 1997, William P. Youngworth III made what seemed to be, and still seems to have been, a legitimate offer to return the stolen Gardner art. But he too deployed the same backstory as Rocco Ellis, the one long rejected by federal authorities, that it was Bobby Donati and David Houghton, who were behind the Gardner art heist.

"It's "no coincidence," the Boston Globe reported, because "the two long-time criminals [Ellis and Youngworth] are funneling information from the same fount; the notorious art thief Myles Connor,"

Donati and Houghton were the perfect candidates to put the blame on. Youngworth and Ellis need not worry about being labelled a "rat," by their associates in the criminal underworld, and the Feds could be assured that the original thieves would not be sharing in any reward money.

As with Rocco Ellis, the Feds were as unpersuaded by Youngworth's story about Donati and Houghton, having stolen the Gardner art, as they had been when Rocco Ellis, began telling it to them five years earlier.

In the 2005 Gardner heist documentary, Stolen, Youngworth said: "The FBI takes this public posture that 'listen we just want the stuff back and we don't really care how it comes back.' That's not true. I mean I have sat there behind closed doors and they only have one agenda the only thing they want is names," and "they want an informant, more than they want the art back." Clearly, the names of the deceased Donati and Houghton did not do not satisfy the federal investigators interviewing Youngworth, just as they had been left unmoved by Rocco Ellis with the same tale.

In his Vanity Fair article, Mashberg reported that "in interviewing Youngworth before he had decided to make a deal of returning some of the Gardner Museum art for the reward money, Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg wrote of Youngworth that he "obviously didn't know about Houghton's role in the Gardner robbery; in fact, he kept insisting that the theft had been commissioned by the yakuza, Japan's Mafia," suggesting that the Connor had passed along this backstory sometime later.

Youngworth seems to have underestimated the importance the provenance of the stolen Gardner art, in the minds of the Feds, in negotiating a return, Youngworth may have brought a misplaced sense of entitlement to the negotiations, at least in his dealings with the press, which while off-putting, also suggested a sincere self confidence in his ability to get the paintings back.

When Houghton died of a heart attack in 1992, and it was then that Youngworth was entrusted with his high school chum, Myles Connor's ill-gotten horde of art and antiques. When five years into this arrangement, Youngworth came forward to negotiate a return of the stolen Gardner Museum art, one of his demands was that Myles Connor, who still had two and a half years left on his prison sentence, be released. The spotlight, which never burned much brighter than a Thursday night gig at The Surf, on Nantasket Beach, during his low profit music career, was once again on Connor, for his criminal activities.

Now there were three things that connected Myles Connor to the Gardner heist, or at least to the missing stolen Gardner Museum art:

  • Youngworth was serving as a custodian of Connor's belongings at the time he made what still seems like a credible offer to return some of the art.
  • Part of the deal Youngworth proposed called for Connor's release as part of his offer for returning the paintings to the museum.
  • And Youngworth's backstory, of who had stolen the Gardner art was the same one as Connor's cellmate, Rocco Ellis.

    And all this brought with it a fourth link, for a marketing savvy former rock 'n roller, like Myles Connor, publicity. The value was in being linked to this historic crime in the eyes of the public.

    "After his conviction was overturned for the murders of Susan Webster and Karen Spinney in a second trial, in 1985, Connor was convinced his reputation was in tatters. "Boston the city that had once embraced me as its prodigal son, that had seen in me its own restless image, no longer wanted anything to do with me," he wrote.

    Connor's success as a rock 'n roll musician is quite overblown. He never earned enough to make a living, he acknowledged his book, and the only press he ever garnered about his being musician, aside from display ads for weeknight gigs at The Surf, in Hull, MA, were passing references in news stories after one of his arrests. If not for his criminal career, nobody outside of a dive bar in Revere, and a venue or two on the South Shore would have ever heard of Myles Connor and the Wild Ones.

    But Connor's abiding faith in his own legend had reached its limit: "The bank robberies and art thefts had been one thing; if anything my outlaw reputation had only added to my allure as a rock and roller. But the murders were another matter."

    The Gardner heist, however, was big enough and glamorous and mysterious enough that Connor's link to it, as questionable as it was, began to eclipse the reality of a violent criminal past, at least for the newspapers, if not family member of people victimized by Connor and his crew during their mid-1970's crime spree.

    The Boston Globe: "Rocco Ellis is not an art thief but he considers himself lucky to know the best in the business: Connor."

    Not the best at what is certainly not a business, but in the business of making newspaper headlines, and reporter's deadlines, Connor was demonstrating he had a real knack.

    by Kerry Joyce

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