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False Facts In The Gardner Museum Audio Walk Link to (Part One)  Text taken directly from the Gardner Museum Audio Walk appears in blue. Amore: Thank you for joining me [Gardner Museum Security Direct Anthony Amore] as we retrace the thieves’ steps—and find out what really happened—on March 18th, 1990.
Gardner Museum "Heist" Ad August 20, 2025 This museum audio description of the Gardner heist does not describe "what really happened." There are numerous false facts, and unsubstantiated claims presented as facts, which showcases the museum's willingness to the FBI's disinforming false narrative about the Gardner heist, which seeks to explain the Gardner heist case as "the handiwork of a bumbling confederation of Boston gangsters and out-of-state Mafia middlemen, many now long dead," while protecting Abath so long as he kept his mouth quiet, which was formerly had been a top priority for the FBI, until Abath died in 2024. The museum audio also glosses over the utter lack of any tangible basis for concluding there had ever been any investigation of the Gardner heist, or anything other than the blocking of an investigation into what actually happened, by the FBI. Let's begin. There was no equipment in the Gardner Museum in 1990 that could retrace the thieves' steps. There were electric eyes in the door jambs of the galleries, which recorded when someone entered or exited some of the galleries and other spaces in the museum. This could be chalked up to a metaphorical description, but it has been repeated so many times over 15 years that it gives an added measure of knowledge, and authority to what is known and being shared with the public. Most people who have spent time learning about the case are surprised to learn that there was no equipment literally tracking the steps of the thieves. At no time has anyone involved in the investigation made any reference to the electric eyes in the door jambs, in speaking publicly about the case. In 2009 the Boston Herald reported, "The thieves shut off a printer that spit out line-by-line data on any alarms that would be triggered by movements in the museum. But the computer hard drive still recorded their footsteps in the galleries." No equipment recorded footsteps. Amore: Two security guards were on overnight duty, as was typical. They’re stationed at a security area downstairs.In this case where the security guards were "stationed," and where they were in fact located were two distinctly different things, when the thieves entered the building. One of the guards was indeed located in the security station. He alone made the decision to let the thieves into the building. At some point later, that guard called the other guard on a walkie talkie, and asked him to return to the security station, he says, as he had been instructed to do by one of the thieves. "Inside the Venetian-palace-style building, two young watchmen were on duty. One of the security men was seated at a guard’s desk in an office next to a door facing the Palace Road side entry. The second guard was doing lengthy rounds within the compound," the Boston Herald reported in 2009. The guard was only ten seconds away on the stairs near the security station, when he was called by the guard inside the security station, Rick Abath. Amore: The thieves had presented themselves at the locked outside door to that security area at 1:24 am - dressed as Boston police officers. We have only Rick Abath's word that the thieves came to the door at 1:24 a.m. The door was also opened at 1:04 a.m., when Rick Abath was alone in the security station. Abath claims he was checking to make sure the door was securely locked, when he opened it at 1:04 a.m. but one of his supervisors J.P. Kroger, told me that the guard were equipped with an electronic wand, which the guards could use to ascertain if the door was securely locked without the need to open it. A review of Abath's activity on other nights did not record him opening the door to test the door, like he "always did," as he claimed. Abath is lying about the circumstances surrounding his opening the door, at least once and therefore he is not credible for either time that he opened the door.The thieves were not dressed as Boston Police officers. The overcoats they wore were not part of the Boston Police uniform. One witness had said that at least one of the thieves had a Boston Police shoulder patch on his coat. On the day of the robbery Boston Police spokesman, Captain David Walsh, said that "a couple of individuals dressed in security guard or police uniforms not in the uniform of the Boston Police, ostensibly identified themselves as Boston Police officers investigating a disturbance around the building." Somewhere along the way, the ostensibly part of the heist narrative introduced by Captain Walsh was dropped, while the information implicating Abath continued to grow. Amore: Over the intercom from outside, the thieves say that they’re responding to a report of a disturbance. It seemed plausible. After all, it was the night of St. Patrick’s Day. Revelers are still out on the streets. Against protocol, the thieves disguised as police are buzzed in. "It seemed plausible." Amore uses the past tense here. He is taking Abath's part in describing Abath's thinking. Eye witnesses said it was quiet on Palace Rd. Most of the property in the area is educational institutions. The nearest bar was a half mile away on the other side of Huntington Avenue. The big city-wide observation of Saint Patrick's Day was not until the next day, the day of the South Boston St. Patrick's Day breakfast. Most of the state's leading elected office holders and candidates would attend and this was followed by the South Boston St. Patrick's Day parade.As stated previously, Abath was initially interviewed by the Boston Police, and in their official report, it states that Abath told them that the two thieves said they were responding to the kids in the street after they were permitted inside the building. Amore: Against protocol, the thieves disguised as police are buzzed in. The passive voice here, "the thieves...are buzzed in," despersonalizes a key act in the commission of the Gardner heist." "Amore has referred to it as the biggest mistake in the history of property protection." Who made this mistake? "I'm the guy who opened up the door. They're obviously going to be looking at me." Rick Abath said in 2013, when he was interviewed by CNN. And according to the FBI's retired lead investigator, on the case for over two decades, Geoff Kelly, that decision was more than just against protocol, it was a willful, criminal act. Amore: Once inside, they immediately overtake the security guards... They did not immediately overtake the guards. One of the guards was not even present. "Within two minutes, the thieves had placed the inexperienced guards 'under arrest,'" the Boston Herald reported in 2009, which also stated that "a timeline of the crooks’ movements was provided to the Herald by museum Security Director Anthony M. Amore."Rick Abath told CNN that: "One of them came right over to my desk. And one of them kind of stood in the alcove right there, just looking around, which didn't seem particularly odd to me. And he came up to me, the one guy, and they asked me -- he asked me if I was alone. And I said that, no, my partner was off doing a round. He said, get him down here. So, I called him on the radio." Amore: Cover their eyes and mouths with duct tape... Abath's eyes were not completely covered. The tape was wrapped around Abath's head, under his eyebrows, and under his ears. One of Abath's eyes, uncovered, is plainly visible in a crime scene photo shown in the 2021 Netflix documentary, This Is a Robbery. In addition, Abath said in 2013 on CNN that "I could see a little bit over the duct tape, kind of. And at one point, somebody did come and check on me," Also, Abath's mouth was not covered with duct tape.
 Gardner Museum "Heist" Ad June 22, 2025 Without scrolling, the only thing displayed on the ad's landing page, which you arrive at if you click on the ad, is a large photograph of the Gardner Museum Dutch Room. Then, further down is some dodgy history about the theft, and finally, some pictures of the stolen art at the bottom of the page. The ad itself has some false information in it, too. The headline includes: "See The 13 Stolen Works." Apparently, the Gardner Museum assumes that everyone knows that none of the art has been recovered, and that you can't see any of it. All you can see are photographs of the stolen items on this webpage, which is not the same thing. There is nothing special about the photographs. These same images can be found in a lot of places. The ad also invites visitors to retrace the steps of the thieves. This, too, is false. There was no equipment in the Gardner Museum at that time that recorded the steps of the thieves, or movement of any kind, most importantly within any gallery. Further down on the webpage, the Museum asserts that "the facts are these: In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men in police uniforms rang the Museum intercom and stated they were responding to a disturbance. This is not a fact. This is an uncorroborated and updated account of what happened, taken from Rick Abath, the security guard who let the two thieves in. There are no witnesses to what Abath claims were the words exchanged between him and the thieves he allowed in, except for the thieves themselves, and The Boston Globe reported in March of 2025 that the Gardner heist's own lead investigator for the previous 22 years, Geoff Kelly, is "convinced" that Abath was one of the Gardner heist thieves. Abath is hardly someone whose statements can be accepted as "the facts." In addition, Abath was initially interviewed by the Boston Police, and in their official report, it states that Abath told them that the two fake cops said they were responding to the kids in the street after they were permitted inside the building. He did not claim that the cops said they were responding to a disturbance until years later. Next, the Museum says that "the guard on duty broke protocol and allowed them through the employee entrance." Saying that he broke protocol suggests that breaking protocol was all Abath had done. If he was one of the thieves, which Kelly now says he is convinced is the case, then he didn't just break protocol; he broke the law, and all this discussion of whether he was trained not to let anyone in, even cops, is moot. "At the thieves’ direction, he stepped away from the security desk," the Gardner reports, but again, this is the uncorroborated account of someone who is considered one of the perpetrators. There is no electronic footprint of Abath's and the other thieves' actions and interactions. "He and a second security guard were led to the basement of the Museum where they were restrained." More specifically, he and the other guard were led to the basement after Abath called the other guard on a radio and asked him to return to the security station, without telling him the reason. This second guard was handcuffed and blindfolded with duct tape before being brought down to the basement, but we have only Abath's questionable word that he too was led to the basement and restrained, since the other guard was unable to see. They cut Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black from their frames. These two Rembrandt works were not cut from their frames. They were cut from their stretchers, which preserves more of the painting intact and explains why they broke the frames. Thomas Cassano, when he was the FBI's Supervisory Special Agent for the Gardner case, said that "the first two paintings stolen were damaged. Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” and “A Lady and Gentleman in Black” were both taken from the wall, their frames smashed, and the canvases cut from their stretchers," Antiques and the Arts reported in November of 2000. Ten years later, Anthony Amore, security director for the Gardner Museum, said that "they took a very sharp instrument we can tell by the grooves left in the stretchers," Amore in an interview in 2010. If the paintings were cut from their frames, there would be deep grooves left by the thieves in the frames, not in the stretchers. The fact that the thieves took the extra step, in the heat of a robbery, to cut the paintings from their stretchers instead of the frames suggests, "How they went about removing the paintings – slicing them from their frames – that's indicative of a rank amateur when it comes to art theft," Kelly said in 2013. But that fits the profile of the kind of individual the FBI was interested in pinning the robbery on, while not what actually happened in fact. Double Speak
Double Think
Double Plus Ungood For You
 By Kerry Joyce July 2, 2025 With Soviet era servility the Boston Globe began their front-page coverage of the story by reporting that: "Federal investigators, in an unprecedented display of confidence that the most infamous art theft in history will soon be solved, said Monday that they know who is behind the Gardner Museum heist 23 years ago and that some of the priceless artwork was offered for sale on Philadelphia’s black market as recently as a decade ago."Eight days later, however, the Boston Globe, in an unsigned editorial, contradicted the Boston Globe's own characterization of the press conference in their reporting. "Whether this is an expression of confidence or desperation is anyone's guess," they wrote. Twelve years and over a hundred Boston Globe newspaper articles later, in addition to a ten-episode Boston Globe podcast, Last Seen and a four-episode Boston Globe Netflix documentary (This Is A Robbery), and absolutely nothing to show for it in terms of progress in the FBI's investigation, what can we conclude? Was this FBI announcement, an act of desperation or of confidence? There were definite signs of desperation by the FBI at the press conference. Their progress report's most recent and definitive date concerned the possibly sighting of some stolen Gardner art "about ten years ago." Why the ten-year wait? Subsequent stories said the information had been brought to the FBI's attention three years earlier. OK then, why the three-year wait? And anyway, the Boston Globe had already done a front-page story about how the "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," while the FBI and the Gardner Museum could not even be bothered to say anything about it.  "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," the Globe reported. Desperate too was the bureau's claim of knowing the identity of the thieves, but refusing to name them. DesLauriers said that knowing the identity of thieves was "opening other doors" Wouldn't sharing that information with the public open even more additional doors? The utter lack of any tangible progress in the twelve years since the 2013 press conference, would seem to indicate that the event had not been a prelude to an anticipated dramatic break in the case, at least one from the government or investigative side of things. DesLauriers did say that "with today's announcement we begin the final chapter..." But that was twelve years ago in a case that is 35 years old. As of today, the final chapter spans over one third of the time that the FBI has been investigating it, and with little promise of it being resolved any time soon. In terms of recovering the art, far from being something the FBI was desperate about, the FBI has shown time and again, that it is not something they are desperate about all. Consistently, the FBI had demonstrated they had other priorities concerning the case than apprehending the criminals certainly, or even recovering the art.In the 2005 Gardner heist documentary, Stolen, William Youngworth complained: "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." adding, "They give people passes for 19 murders, you know, we're only talking about some pictures here." Youngworth may have a point. There have been at least three known attempts by individuals to strike a deal for the major pieces of the Gardner art, and in all three cases, the FBI has been credibly accused of interfering with a return. One involved a ransom note the museum received in 1994. Another was the case of the French criminals who offered to broker a deal for some of the stolen Gardner art, which they claimed was held by Corsican gangsters, and a third was when William Youngworth offered to return the art but on advice of counsel, demanded that he be given immunity from prosecution for anything related to the Gardner heist, a condition the feds refused to accept, for Youngworth, while then extending a similar offer to Myles Connor twelve years later: "For years convicted art thief Myles J. Connor Jr. boasted that he knew who committed the brazen art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and could help recover the masterpieces," the Boston Globe reported March 15, 2010. "Last summer, federal prosecutors decided to find out if he actually knew anything." "They gave Connor and a longtime friend, Edward J. Libby, letters of immunity that promised to shield them from criminal charges if they helped recover the 13 stolen paintings and artwork, according to Connor, Libby, and Robert A. George, a Boston criminal defense lawyer who engineered the agreement." "But once again Connor came up empty-handed."The immunity was extended to Connor in 2009, the same year Connor signed a deal with Harper Perennial (A division of Harper Collins) to write a book about his lifetime of criminal exploits. Called The Art Of The Heist, it was published in 2010. It seems that the feds were desperate, but not for anything related recovering the stolen Gardner Museum, but as always for control of their false Gardner heist narrative. What about confident? Was the FBI's press conference "an unprecedented display of confidence," the case would soon be solved? The FBI did show a tremendous amount of confidence. Not that "a recovery was imminent," however, but that DesLauriers, the SAIC of the FBI's Boston office, could safely step outside of the FBI's official and false Gardner heist narrative, like an astronaut leaving his spaceship to make needed repairs to the outside of his craft, and deliver a real world message to the Gardner heist thieves, and the public, and then go right back to business as usual that very same day with their old pre-press conference narrative, confident in their power to switch narratives as effortlessly as shifting gears in a Maserati, without any grinding push back from the news media. While DesLauriers was making his announcement, that day, the Gardner heist lead investigator, Geoff Kelly, mingled with favored reporters gathered there that same day and continued to promote and perpetuate the official story the FBI had been developing, revising and perfecting over the previous dozen or so years. At the time of the 25th anniversary in 2015, Anthony Amore Stealing Rembrandts co-author Tom Mashberg wrote that "Two years ago, at a news conference in Boston aimed at drumming up leads in the case, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Amore outlined this theory, that it was the handiwork of a bumbling confederation of Boston gangsters and out-of-state Mafia middlemen, many now long dead."So, while FBI Boston's SAIC said one thing at from the podium, while at the same press conference, the Gardner heist lead investigator, Geoff Kelly was working the room, and disseminating a "theory" that contradicted what DesLauriers had just said. "From my reading of this [Fox News] article, retired Norfolk County prosecutor Matt Connolly wrote in the Patriot Ledger," "the FBI is still wandering around in the dark looking for a candle. [More like keeping people in the dark with something they're calling a candle.] FBI Agent Geoffrey Kelly said that because the paintings were sliced out of the frames 'that’s indicative of a rank amateur when it comes to art theft.' How does that square with knowing the identity of the thieves?" Connolly wrote. [The Fox News article quoted DesLauriers as saying that "we have identified the thieves who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the mid-Atlantic states and New England." "If you know who the thieves are, you know whether they are amateurs or not," he continued."Kelly also said about two of the thieves. 'They were clever in how they got into the museum, but the working profile points to inexperienced art thieves.' It seems to me if you know who they are you don’t have a 'working profile.' You know what their experience is." "I’m cynical not so much because the FBI, like the gangsters, treats truth like an overcoat to be used only when necessary," Connolly added. "It’s because as Joe Friday would say, 'the facts don’t add up.'"What was the precipitating event, which caused DesLauriers to step outside of the FBI's own alternate reality, and make this announcement, one that was significantly at odds with had been the official narrative of the case in recent years, continued to be the official narrative for Geoff Kelly in speaking with Fox News and with Tom Mashberg of the New York Times that day, and remains the official narrative to this day? History's Worst Draft
By Kerry Joyce June 23, 2025 The Big Lie The Boston Globe won't stop telling about a key historical fact of the FBI's Gardner heist investigation.
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.
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved kerry@gardnerheist.com
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"Public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity." — Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics
"Sensationalism can override the truth of a news story." —Rick Abath 2015
"We’re really looking for what we describe as 13 perfect fugitives."
—Geoff Kelly, FBI Gardner heist lead investigator (now retired) and now author, and
a partner at Argus Cultural Property Consultants, from the podcast Inside the FBI June 23, 2023
Gardner Heist Aftermath | Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part One)
+2."I can't tell you specifics about the [Gardner Heist] thieves and what I know from them. All I can say about them is that they cannot lead us to the paintings today."
Anthony Amore Gardner Museum Security Director November 12, 2014
+3. The two individuals that took them and committed this crime are currently dead." Peter Kowenhoven FBI Boston Assistant SAIC March 18, 2015
Quote of the Day
"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...
I can tell you that the guards are no longer considered suspects at this point."
—Geoff Kelly, FBI Gardner heist lead investigator (now retired) March 18, 2005
"While it may not point to a conspiracy, I remain intrigued as to how the FBI
could have muffed the investigation at several key points.
Why not focus on [museum guard] Abath more widely and intensively at the probe’s outset?"
Over 150 exhibits stolen by Russia from Kherson Regional Art Museum identified - OGP
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