Gardner Museum Heist —Blog

History's Worst Draft

14 times in the last ten years, and as recently as March 18, 2025, the Boston Globe has falsely and deceitfully reported that: "In 2013 the head of the FBI’s Boston office [Richard DesLauriers] said at a press conference that the agency knew who had pulled off the robbery and that both men were dead," as Kurkjian put it in the December 27, 2015 edition of the Boston Globe.

In fact, the head of the FBI's Boston office did not say this in 2013. The FBI changed their story. They did not claim that the thieves were dead until two years later. What DesLauriers suggested at the 2013 press conference was that the Gardner heist thieves were still alive, and still in control of the art as recently as 2003.

For proof that the Boston Globe backdated the FBI's claim about the thieves being dead, look no further than the Boston Globe's own news coverage on the day of the March 18, 2013 FBI press conference. And at the many references to the 2013 press conference, which appeared in the Boston Globe prior to the August 7, 2015 Associated Press story, none which included anything about the Gardner heist thieves being dead.

In their reporting that day, the Boston Globe quoted FBI Boston's SAIC, Richard DesLauriers saying:

“The FBI believes with a high degree of confidence in the years after theft the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region and some of the art was taken to Philadelphia where it was offered for sale by those responsible for theft." With that confidence, we have identified the thieves, who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the mid-Atlantic states and New England."
https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2013/03/18/fbi-says-it-has-identified-the-thieves-in-gardner-museum-heist-paintings-location-still-unknown

The Globe reporters did not mishear, or fail to accurately transcribe DesLauriers' remarks that day. That statement from the Globe story is exactly the same, word-for-word, as what appeared that day in an FBI press release.
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/boston/press-releases/2013/fbi-provides-new-information-regarding-the-1990-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-art-heist

But then two years after their 2013 press conference, the FBI changed their narrative:

"2 suspects in Boston art theft worth $500 million are dead,"

That was what the headline read in an Associated Press story published by the Washington Post, on August 7, 2015, and numerous other news outlets both nationally and internationally:

"Now Peter Kowenhoven, the FBI’s assistant special agent in charge in Boston "has settled the lingering mystery," AP reported, "of why no one was ever charged in the biggest art heist in U.S. history: The suspects are dead. 'The focus of the investigation for many years was: Who did this heist? And we have, through the great investigative work, identified who did this heist, and both those individuals are deceased,' Kowenhoven said. 'So now the focus of the investigation is the recovery of the art.'" https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/07/fbi-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-art-theft-suspects-dead

The wire service story was picked up by dozens of newspapers across the country, several in Canada, and the Guardian in the UK. At least three newspapers in Massachusetts ran the story, and two of those had it on the front page. But the Boston Globe did not run the story at all, although the Globe was an AP wire service subscriber and made use of AP stories and other AP content in nearly every edition of the newspaper, at that time.

How could it be national and international news that the FBI was saying the thieves were dead in 2015, if they had already announced it over two years earlier at a press conference? Yet this is what the Boston Globe began claiming, starting the day after the AP story ran:

"Two years ago, the FBI announced it was confident that it had identified the thieves, but declined to name them, citing the ongoing investigation. Authorities said they believed some of the artwork changed hands through organized crime circles, and moved from Boston to Connecticut and Philadelphia, where the trail went cold. They also said they believed the thieves died shortly after the heist, leaving the fate of the artwork unknown." https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/07/tips-flow-mystery-visitor-before-gardner-heist/FBX1GcLNdTRuDTa2zX8waI/story.html

Kowenhoven had said something similar five months earlier. Exactly two years after the 2013 press conference, on the 25th anniversary of the heist on the local news station, WCVB, he said that "the two individuals that took them and committed this crime are currently dead." Despite the troubling wording there was no follow up question or request for clarification by the interviewer Karen Anderson, and no one else in the news media picked up the story.

"Despite the troubling lack of details, "DesLauriers’ press conference was featured by all the major television news outlets and received front-page coverage in newspapers across the nation," Kurkjian wrote in his book about the case, Master Thieves.

And what few details there had been, would be revised two years later. Since then, in the Boston Globe, references to the press conference have been frequent, and always rendered into a single, misinforming paragraph, repeatedly inserted for twelve plus years now, into Boston Globe news stories about the Gardner heist and the FBI's investigation, ritualistically around the time of the anniversary.

Kurkjian wrote in Master Thieves: "Richard S. DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office, did not disappoint in his announcement. In a gray pinstripe suit, with a bright yellow tie and his rectangle, wire-rimmed glasses pressed firmly to his temple, and flanked by US attorney Carmen Ortiz and the three investigators who had worked the longest on the case."

While some may find these details interesting, if the press conference was actually of historic significance what really matters is what was said at the press conference, as well as any changes to those official statements that were made by the FBI later, in subsequent interviews and announcements, and not the color of DesLauriers' suit, or the brightness of his tie.

Retired FBI agent Robert Wittman an FBI specialist in stolen art recovery before retiring, and who worked out of the FBI's Philadelphia office for over twenty years, including the years when an attempted sale was alleged to have occurred in that city, told Laurel Sweet, the reporter who covered the press conference for the Boston Herald that, "'It was my speciality, [art theft] and I didn’t have an inkling of it,' Wittman said of the attempted sale, cautioning that, like the other 'morsels' released yesterday, it [a possible attempt at a sale in Philadelphia] may be nothing more than 'camouflage' for the FBI’s true intent."

Independent voices in the news media also had a more skeptical take on the press conference. In an article called "The FBI’s Art Heist Flimflam" the Daily Beast's World News Editor Christoper Hickey reported that "when the Feds announced Monday that they had 'new information' on the heist, no meaningful details were given." In contrast, Kurkjian on the front page of the Boston Globe was describing the event as "an unprecedented display of confidence," and "the most extensive account to date of the investigation," in the first and second paragraphs.

On the supposed “new information” unearthed by the FBI in the Gardner Museum art theft, Hickey also spoke with Robert Wittman, who for over a decade, was a leading FBI Gardner heist investigation skeptic, and with an insider's take.

Wittman told Hickey that, "the announcement of 'new information,' however vague, is what Wittman calls “a hook”to get attention. “They want to use websites, digital billboards, Facebook, Twitter, all the social media, to get as many eyes as possible,” Wittman said.

But even that was not new information. Nine months earlier the Boston Globe reported on the top of their front page that "Federal officials investigating the 1990 Gardner Museum heist plan to launch a public awareness campaign similar to the one that led to last year’s arrest of James 'Whitey' Bulger."

But aside from some billboards and a few web pages, the kind of social media campaign described by Wittman never materialized.

Kurkjian wrote in his book that "the announcement created tremendous media attention and brought numerous calls to Boston’s FBI office. But within a month all had been followed up [on] to no avail, and the sense of an inevitable recovery soon faded. By that time the public’s attention, not to mention that of DesLauriers and every other FBI agent assigned to the Boston office, had rightfully shifted to another case: the Boston Marathon bombing."

One of the two terrorists in that case was killed three days later and the other, his brother, was captured the following day. The case was solved in under a week. Nonetheless Kurkjian continued, "the FBI’s press person began referring to the Gardner announcement as a 'publicity event.'”

In describing the purpose of the press conference DesLauriers said: “With this announcement, we want to widen the ‘aperture of awareness’ of this crime to reach the American public and others around the world.”

DesLauriers, however, was taking special care not to open that aperture too much, saying that "because the [23 year old] investigation is continuing it would be 'imprudent' to disclose their names or the name of the criminal organization," but also: "that knowing the identity of the culprits was opening other doors' as federal agents continue their search for the missing artwork."

Former Deputy District Attorney for Norfolk County and Patriot Ledger columnist Matt Connolly, however challenged the strategy of witholding the thieves names, while making light of both the FBI's claims in their press conference and the Boston Globe's coverage of it:

"I’m sure everyone has heard and is relieved to know that the FBI has identified the thieves who committed the Gardner Museum Robbery. What is a little disconcerting is it says it would be imprudent to tell us who they are. I don’t get it," the retired career prosecutor wrote, "the thieves know who they are, if they are still alive. Wouldn’t it make sense to publicly identify them and wait to see if there’s some feedback in information from the public about them?" https://mattofboston.com/the-fbis-desperate-gambit-23771/

Taking a shot at the Boston Globe's fawning coverage Connolly wrote in the same column: "The FBI has one true believer. It is Kevin Cullen in the Boston Globe. Cullen writes, 'the feds think the art heist was pulled off by a combination of wiseguys from Boston and Philadelphia. Makes sense to me.' Cullen supports his belief by pointing out that gangsters in Boston knew gangsters in Philadelphia."

Not only did DesLauriers suggest that the thieves were alive, but he also claimed that they still controlled the art. "Those responsible for theft" were the individuals who offered stolen Gardner art for sale, he stated. This might explain the FBI's unwillingness to make a deal with William Youngworth, who claimed that the art had been stolen by Bobby Donati and David Houghton, but he was unable to convince the FBI, that the thieves didn't still control the art, or stand to profit from the reward from a return.

"The FBI takes this public posture," Youngworth said in the 2005 documentary "Stolen" 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."

In the New York Times' coverage of the 2013 press conference, Tom Mashberg reported that FBI Gardner heist lead investigator Geoff Kelly "would not say whether they [the Gardner heist thieves] were dead or alive." Up until this press conference, most of the suspects written about in the news media, who had been mentioned by investigators, such as George Reissfelder, and Carmello Merlino, were already dead, although at least one, David Turner, was not.

If the FBI had announced that they were dead at the 2013 press conference, Mashberg would not have asked Kelly if the thieves were dead and Kelly would not have refused to say whether they were dead or not.

In December of that year, Alastair Sooke in a BBC documentary called The World's Most Expensive Stolen Paintings and who interviewed Kelly for that documentary, said "whether the perpetrators are now dead the FBI won't say."

In the interview, Sooke told Kelly that his claims about the state of the investigation "sounds like madness, to say things like 'we're closer than we've ever been' and 'the case is solved,' if you don't know where the paintings are now and you don't know where they've been for 12 years." To which Kelly replied: "Absolutely, but it's the ultimate whodunnit."
https://youtu.be/eLYJkCct5G8?t=3323

Also in 2013, Emily Rooney, after asking Kelly if he has "spoken to the person (one of the thieves)" and Kelly replied that "we've certainly spoken to a lot of people," can be heard laughing at his reply. (Rooney lost her job as the host of the WGBH TV interview show "Greater Boston," the following year.)

Meanwhile, Dan Lothian, who questioned Kelly for CNN in 2005 about the possibility that Richard Abath was involved and is not shown laughing in Kelly's face, when Kelly replied: "Wow! it's easy to look back and say, well, the guard shouldn't have let them in. But it is a believable way to get into a museum, by having two guys dressed up as Boston cops responding to an alarm," is now the Editor-in-Chief of WGBH News and The World. So, I don't know, draw your own conclusions about how advisable it is to laugh in the face of an FBI agent on camera when they are saying laughable things about their Gardner heist investigation.

How laughable? Twenty years later, the Globe reported on March 18 of 2025 that Kelly does think Abath was involved after all. Rick "Abath, who died in 2024, steadfastly maintained he had nothing to do with the heist." But ex-FBI Gardner heist lead investigator now retired Geoff "Kelly is convinced he did," based on information gleaned from the Museum's security system that was known to the FBI the first week. This marks another revision to the FBI narrative that was not called out.

Kelly could have avoided the awkward moment in the Emily Rooney interview, by simply stating at that time that it was not possible to speak with the thieves because they are dead, had that been the narrative the FBI was disseminating at that time. But he did not because it was not. https://youtu.be/WwnQs1BvvlU?t=135

Also, during Kelly's 2013 interview with the BBC, Sooke asked Geoff Kelly: "What's happened to them [the thieves]?"
I can't say that, Kelly answered.
But I mean they're not in jail, right?
"Uh I can't say about where they are at this time," Kelly explained, "because the statute of limitations on that actual theft expired in 1995, so if somebody were to come forward tomorrow and say that they were involved in the Gardner heist there's nothing that we could do to prosecute them."
"So they got off?"
"They did absolutely," Kelly said.

Obviously this reply, explaining about "the statute of limitations" makes no sense if the thieves are already dead.

It is little wonder then, that the FBI felt the need to change their story. For the FBI to claim that the thieves were both known, and still at large, without sharing the names was becoming an untenable public position for the FBI to take,

Far simpler, it appears to have turned out, that given the docile and accommodating local media terrain, it was more practical for the FBI to simply update their narrative, essentially change their story, but without acknowledging that they were doing so. The FBI was not about to catch themselves in a lie, and neither was the Boston Globe, nor anyone else in the Boston media.

In fact, the Globe went even further. They took the FBI's new 2015 model Gardner heist investigation narrative, and backdated it to the year 2013.

Shelley Murphy and Stephen Kurkjain have reminded readers of that false fact over a dozen times in the Boston Globe since then.

There were other modifications to the actual history of what was said at the 2013 press conference, which have been made by the Boston Globe over the past dozen years.

In ten of the fourteen stories where the Globe reported that the FBI said the thieves were dead at their 2013 press conference, they also said that the thieves were local. This too is false. In his seven minute briefing, DesLauriers said only that "we have identified the thieves, who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the mid-Atlantic states and New England. Currently 22% off all of the people in the United State reside in the area encompassed by the mid-Atlantic states and New England. The two regions also make up about 8 percent of the land area of the continental United States, far too large to describe the thieves as local based on DesLauriers' statement. None of the Boston Globe articles prior to August 7, 2015 AP thieves-are-dead story had suggested the thieves were "local" either.

The Boston Globe has also reported incorrectly eight times in the same inserted little paragraph about the FBI's 2013 press conference, that the FBI had said that there were two thieves, when in fact both Kelly and DesLauriers stated explicitly in 2013 that there were more than two. "In 2010, this investigation accelerated," WBUR quoted DesLauriers as saying. "FBI agents developed crucial pieces of evidence that confirmed the identity of those who entered the museum and others associated with theft.

"That's one of the difficult things about this crime is that more people were involved in this heist than the two who went into the museum," Kelly told the BBC in 2013. "So there were more than two, and the FBI did not only identify them at this point, they "confirmed" the thieve's identity.

But then, ten years later, the Boston Globe reports that "after scrutinizing dozens of potential scenarios involving a dizzying array of suspects, Geoff [We know who did it.] Kelly has settled on his theory."

"His theory" not the FBI's.

That is a huge come down from: "We have identified the thieves," and we have confirmed the identity of those who entered the museum," to: Geoff Kelly, now retired, "has settled on his theory."

When pressed by the New York Times on the question in 2013, Kelly said: “We vetted it out. We don’t make that kind of announcement lightly.”

"His" is the new "we."

No surprise then that no other news media picked up on the March 18, 2025 story. Most of the news media who would pick up on that kind of story had all been reporting Kelly's theory, which the FBI had been "broadly hinting" at as fact, for some time, starting ten years earlier when a then business associate of Gardner Museum Security Director Anthony Amore, Howie Carr, a MAGA talk radio host and Boston Herald columnists, reported Kelly's theory in Breitbart. The headline read: "FBI Solves Decades Old Art Heist, Suspect Had Been Represented by John Kerry."

"Multiple 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." The story was picked up by USA Today.

So after refusing to identify the thieves at their press 2013 conference announcement, the FBI leaked the information to one of the earliest and certainly the most influential Trump supporter in New England, Howie Carr, who used the story to discredit then Secretary of State John Kerry, who was the 2004 Democratic Party nominee for president and at that time was on the short list of possible presidential candidates in the 2016 election. Deep state indeed.

In the August 7, 2015 Washington Post story, FBI Boston Assistant SAIC Peter Kowenhoven said that "we have, through the great investigative work, identified who did this heist, and both those individuals are deceased." So Kowenhoven stated the there were only two in 2015, which represents another update to the narrative that the Boston Globe frequently has backdated to 2013.

A fourth false fact that appears in some of these small paragraphs referencing the FBI's 2013 Gardner heist press conference time after time was that the FBI had said the art moved "from Boston to Connecticut and Philadelphia, where the trail went cold."

While of course the art at some point had to leave Boston in order to get to Connecicut, Philadelphia or anywhere, the FBI never said at the 2013 press conference that Boston was a transit point as it (may have) been moved to Connecticut and then to Philadelphia.

The fact that they searched the home of the late Robert Guarente and his widow Elene Guarente, who went before a grand jury in 2010, who was asked about whether or not she had seen her husband give Robert Gentile, from Connecticut, any stolen Gardner art, would seem to suggest that the FBI at that time was looking at the possibility that the art was taken from Maine to Connecticut to Philadelphia, and not Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia. In any case, DesLaurier did not say anything about the art being taken from Boston to Connecticut or from anywhere else to Connecticut at the press conference.

"Two years after the press conference, in 2015, the New York Times reported that "Mr. Kelly and Mr. Amore say they are convinced that, based on the 2009 sighting and other information, some of the art made its way from Maine to Philadelphia, where it was shopped around."

This bit of false history about the stolen being in Boston prior to moving to Connecticut and then Philadelphia is part of a pattern of localizing the circumstances of the Gardner heist, despite the fact that none of these local, gang-affiliated toughs, reported about by the Boston Globe, were interviewed by the FBI in 1990, when the robbery occurred.

The FBI kicked the Boston Police off the case, while taking exclusive control of it from day one. They then proceeded to lose evidence entrusted to them by the Boston Police, and the Gardner Museum, neglected to follow up with eyewitnesses, who had been interviewed by the Boston Police, or avail themselves in any way of their expertise.

In Kurkjian's book Master Thieves, he quotes then Boston Mayor Ray Flynn saying that “Boston police were pretty much taken off the scene of the investigation by the feds, and we never could quite understand why that was the policy. Our robbery squad knew every wise guy in the city and had some reliable informants. They grew up and lived in Boston. Why wouldn’t they hear things during an investigation?”

Two months after the Gardner heist the Boston Globe ran a front page story called FBI Is Said To Have Suspects Worldwide In Gardner Theft. "The story reported that "the FBI's investigation into the $200 million art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has targeted about a dozen suspects scattered across the world, sources said yesterday. As details begin to emerge about the two-month probe, law enforcement sources said that the suspects' movements are under close scrutiny by federal agents, including one suspect who was under surveillance during a recent arrival at Logan Airport."

The suspect "was under close scrutiny." Was he questioned?

Three miles away from the Gardner Museum, at 69 Hancock Street, lived Brian McDevitt, who acknowledged on 60 Minutes that he had no alibi for the night of the Gardner heist, and had attempted to rob the Hyde Museum, an attempt which was carried out in a manner with "striking similarities" to the Gardner heist, the New York Times reported.

Despite the persistent efforts of the Hyde Museums director, McDevitt was not questioned until almost two years after the Gardner heist.

McDevitt, whom the FBI's former Gardner heist lead investigator, Dan Falzon, considered a prime suspect, did a television interview about his possible involvement in the case on 60 Minutes and the following year he was brought before a grand jury. As the FBI was looking worldwide, McDevitt moved to California. In 2024 Murphy referenced McDevitt, without mentioning his name as "a Hollywood screenwriter," one of "a dizzying array of suspects" in 2024, which was not true on two counts. McDevitt was not a screenwriter, and there are not "a dizzying array of suspects" as Murphy wrote in 2024 and again in 2025. There is a flood the zone with shit array of suspects, which keeps the public in the dark about what happened at the Gardner Museum in 1990, and who was responsible.

As Murphy herself said in Episode 4 of the Boston Globe's Last Seen Podcast: "It's frustrating. All these theories are frustrating. For everything that points toward these particular suspects [George Reissfelder and David Turner], there's something that points away.” The legal term for that is exculpatory evidence and if she is right then these are not suspects but suspect place holders conscripted into perpetuating what Murphy calls "a dizzying array of suspects."

McDevitt on 60 Minutes:

MORLEY SAFER: McDevitt is now 32, living in Hollywood, where he says he went [from Boston] to reinvent himself, a new clean McDevitt who would launch himself in a literary career or at least become a screenwriter.

MORLEY SAFER: Have you ever published anything anywhere?

MR. McDEVITT: Nope, haven't.

He was not a Hollywood screenwriter. He was a con man and a hardened criminal who in the attempt to rob the Hyde Museum in 1980, a crime which he orchestrated, a female FedEx driver was handcuffed, her mouth and eyes were taped, and she was knocked out by an ether-soaked rag.

So when a guy like McDevitt lived down the street the FBI was looking "worldwide," then decades after he skipped town, they serve up a theory that the thieves were local," and the stenographers posing as journalists do not question it.

It is nonetheless a strange feature of the Boston Globe's news coverage that it continues to insert a reference to the FBI's 2013 press conference, as background, in most news stories about the investigation up until the present day, despite the fact that after 12 years it is clear that the press conference did not amount to anything in terms of the FBI's stated mission of recovering the art.

There have been two Gardner heist news stories that did not include any reference to the FBI saying that the thieves were dead at the 2013 press conference. The stories concerned the release of Stephen Rossetti from prison in 2019 and another about David Turner's release a month later.

Both stories report on the investigation of Turner, who is alive, as a suspect in the Gardner heist case, years after the robbery.

In addition, a Boston Globe story by Kurkjian and Murphy in 2017 reported a "theory [of the Gardner heist robbery], outlined by the FBI in a PowerPoint presentation a couple of years ago [2015], is that Merlino’s associates, George Reissfelder and Leonard DiMuzio, who both died in 1991, were involved in theft, along with David Turner and possibly others."

For those keeping score, that is a total of at least three thieves.

While only two months later, Murphy reported: "Four years ago, [2015] the FBI announced that it was confident it had identified the thieves – two local criminals who have since died," as Kurkjian and Murphy had reported the previous year that "in 2013, the FBI announced it was confident it had identified the two thieves, both now deceased, but declined to name them."

But as Kurkjian said in an interview in 2015, "The most important thing is to keep [your] eye on the narrative," and the FBI saying that the thieves were dead, did not fit the narrative of these two stories, since both stories discussed the dubious possibility of Turner's involvement, and he is quite alive.

Turner is discussed extensively as a suspect in Ulich Boser's book, The Gardner Heist. The Gardner Heist. Kurkjian made passing reference that book in the Boston Globe in an article unironically called Untangling the Gardner art heist, writing: "Turner and the others are in the news again, courtesy of a new [unnamed] book that identifies Turner as the most likely subject. But the reality is more complicated and elusive, which is ever the way with this case." It "is ever the way with this case" because, "complicated and elusive" is the whole point. "No comment," is so last century. It is kept "complicated and elusive" without consequence, by the enabling efforts of the Boston Globe, which provides a safe space for the FBI's bad faith engagement with the public. in exchange for a couple of the key ingredients needed for whipping up another sensationalized, "tantalizing," click-bait news story, often by way of Anthony Amore, the director of security at the Gardner Museum who Kelly partnered with on the "investigation"," the Globe reported on March 18, 2025.

One example notable for its cheesiness was a Boston Globe story in 2024, stating that about 20 tips reported to the museum over the past year were from people who thought they saw one or the other of the two most recognizable stolen paintings, 'The Storm' or Vermeer’s 'The Concert,' in homes across the country that were staged for sale and featured on Zillow real estate listings."

All of these Boston Globe news articles. which falsely report that the FBI said that the thieves were dead in 2013, were written by either Shelly Murphy, Stephen Kurkjian, or in some instances both, with the two sharing a byline in the articles with this false information in them.

It is not a case of these reporters carelessly cutting incorrect information in the article from past articles, since:

The wording is slightly different on all of them.

An article where Murphy and Kurkjian share a byline in 2016, actually reported the history accurately. They wrote: "In 2013, the FBI announced it was confident it had identified the thieves, but declined to name them, citing the ongoing investigation. Authorities said they believed some of the artwork changed hands through organized crime circles, and moved from Boston to Connecticut and then to Philadelphia, where the trail went cold. Later, the FBI said it believed the two thieves were dead.

Murphy in the Netflix Gardner heist documentary This Is A Robbery, episode 4 in April of 2021, and Kurkjian in Season 8 Episode 5 of CNN's true crime show How It Really Happened in May of 2024 both repeated the big lie that DesLauriers had said at the 2013 press conference that the thieves were dead.

This is not a case pattern of carelessness or negligence by Kurkjian and Murphy but one of deliberate deceit.

There remains one part of the FBI's 2013 announcment that remains not updated, not backdated, not modifed, not changed, and not true.

"Really we are past the point of statute of limitations on this case," DesLauriers said.

"So we are not particularly interested in at this point pursuing criminal charges against those who are responsible for the theft."

In fact, however, "the Statute of Limitations for Larceny in Massachusetts is 6 years from the date of the offense. The 6 year period begins to run on the date of the alleged crime; the 6 year period is tolled (i.e. does not run) during any time periods that the accused not a 'usual and public resident' of Massachusetts." So if the thieves left the state, then the statute of limitations has not expired.

Even the FBI's W. Thomas Cassano, who had been the Supervisory Special Agent for the Gardner case since the theft said in 2000 that "the statute of limitations is a complex legal concept, and not as simple as something that expires in five years."

And the FBI was "not particularly interested" at all, ever, at that "point" or at any "point" "in pursuing criminal charges against those who are responsible for the theft."

If they were already dead FBI Boston Special Agent In Charge, Richard DesLauriers would have said those who were responsible for the theft, not those who are responsible for the theft.

 

 

 

 

By Kerry Joyce Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved     kerry@gardnerheist.com