In the early hours of 18 March 1990, two men dressed as police officers rang the buzzer at the side entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Claiming to be responding to a disturbance call, they were granted entry by one of the two night guards on duty. What followed would become the largest art theft in modern history—a meticulously timed operation that stripped the museum of thirteen irreplaceable works of art worth an estimated $500 million. Over three decades later, not a single piece has been recovered, and the mystery remains unsolved.
The Museum and Its Matriarch
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is not merely an art institution—it is a monument to one woman’s aesthetic vision, social daring, and enduring legacy. Founded by Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), the museum was conceived as an immersive experience rather than a conventional gallery. Gardner was not simply collecting objects of beauty or historical importance—she was curating an entire atmosphere. Every painting, sculpture, textile, and piece of decorative art was placed with intentionality, forming part of a larger narrative that blended personal taste, European grandeur, and cultural curiosity.
When it opened to the public in 1903, the museum was already a striking departure from typical American art spaces. Housed within a building deliberately designed to resemble a 15th-century Venetian palazzo—complete with a central courtyard, arched windows, mosaic flooring, and cloistered walkways—the structure was itself a work of art. Gardner collaborated closely with architect Willard T. Sears to ensure that the building not only echoed Renaissance Venice in appearance but also felt imbued with the spirit of Old World opulence and intellectual discovery.
Inside, Gardner arranged her acquisitions to reflect both her personal journey and broader cultural ideals. Her collection included European masterworks by Titian, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Botticelli, and Raphael, alongside Asian ceramics, Islamic textiles, and rare manuscripts. Crucially, she did not organise the galleries chronologically or geographically, as most institutions did. Instead, she grouped objects based on visual harmony and thematic resonance—placing, for instance, a 13th-century Madonna near a Japanese screen or an antique Roman bust alongside a Florentine altarpiece.
Upon her death in 1924, Gardner left the museum to the public with a $3.6 million endowment (equivalent to around $66 million today), but with strict legal and philosophical conditions. Her will explicitly stated that the arrangement of the galleries should remain exactly as she had designed them. No item was to be moved, sold, or added. The museum was to be, in her words, a “perpetual exhibition” of her life’s work. This legally binding instruction, while preserving Gardner’s vision, would later pose significant challenges for her institution’s security and infrastructure.
By the late 1980s, the Gardner Museum was facing considerable operational difficulties. The once-generous endowment had not kept pace with the cost of maintaining a historic building and conserving delicate artworks. Basic maintenance was increasingly deferred. Paintings hung in rooms without climate control, vulnerable to fluctuations in humidity and temperature. Crumbling stonework and outdated wiring underscored a deeper issue: the museum was caught between the pull of modern conservation standards and the rigidity of its founder’s inviolable legacy.
Security was among the most pressing of these modern concerns. In 1982, the FBI had warned museum officials of a credible plot by local criminals to rob the collection. The museum responded by making limited upgrades to its security system. Infrared motion detectors were installed, along with four closed-circuit television cameras positioned around the building’s exterior. But internal surveillance remained conspicuously absent. The trustees, wary of violating Gardner’s will and constrained by financial realities, refused to approve the installation of security cameras inside the galleries.
The guards, tasked with protecting one of the most valuable art collections in the United States, were often students, artists, or part-time workers earning slightly above minimum wage. They received minimal training and worked in long, monotonous overnight shifts with few visitors or interruptions. One guard would patrol the galleries with a flashlight and walkie-talkie while the other remained at the front desk. Unlike many other institutions at the time, the museum had no fail-safe system—such as hourly check-ins with the police—that might trigger an alarm in the event of a security breach or missed communication.
A security audit conducted in 1988 offered a candid assessment. While the museum’s measures were broadly on par with those of similar institutions, the consultant recommended upgrades in several key areas: staff professionalism, equipment redundancy, and internal camera coverage. The head of security at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts also privately warned Gardner officials that their protocols were inadequate. However, these recommendations were largely ignored. The board of trustees, citing the restrictions imposed by Gardner’s will and the high costs of modernisation, declined to implement them. Requests for increased guard salaries and improved recruitment were similarly rejected.
This combination of reverent preservation and institutional inertia created a uniquely vulnerable environment. In effect, the museum had become a living relic—visually stunning and culturally rich, but ill-prepared for the realities of 20th-century crime. By the eve of the theft in March 1990, the Gardner Museum remained what Isabella had intended: a personal, intimate space frozen in time. But it had also become, unwittingly, an easy target.
The Robbery
It was the early morning of Sunday 18 March 1990, just hours after St. Patrick’s Day festivities had flooded the streets of Boston with crowds and celebrations. The city was still buzzing into the small hours, and the area around the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, nestled in the Fenway-Kenmore neighbourhood, was no exception. Around 12:30 a.m., a few revellers leaving a party on Palace Road noticed something seemingly unremarkable—a small hatchback idling near the museum’s side entrance. Inside sat two men dressed as Boston police officers.
At the time, there was no reason to question their presence. St. Patrick’s Day often brought with it a degree of public disorder, and it was conceivable that the officers were there to respond to a nearby disturbance. In reality, however, this apparent patrol was the opening move in what would become the most audacious and mysterious art heist in American history.
Inside the museum, the night shift was being handled by two guards: Rick Abath, aged 23, and Randy Hestand, aged 25. Abath, a regular on the graveyard shift, was a laid-back, long-haired rock musician who had taken the job for its quiet hours and minimal responsibility. Hestand, by contrast, was new—this was his first overnight shift at the museum. The museum’s security policy dictated that one guard should remain at the front desk while the other conducted a patrol of the galleries. Just after 1 a.m., the pair swapped roles: Abath returned to the desk, while Hestand began his rounds.
At 1:24 a.m., the door buzzer rang. The two men outside, dressed in authentic-looking police uniforms, identified themselves as Boston police officers responding to a reported disturbance on the museum grounds. Speaking through the intercom, they requested to be let in. From his seat at the desk, Abath could see them on the black-and-white closed-circuit monitor. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—at least not on the surface.
Abath, who had opened the side door once already earlier that night for no documented reason, now did so again, believing the explanation about a disturbance to be plausible given the previous evening’s festivities. Once inside the vestibule, the supposed officers claimed to have a warrant for Abath’s arrest. They said he resembled someone wanted on outstanding charges. When asked to step out from behind the desk and present identification, Abath complied—unaware that he was abandoning the only reachable panic button capable of alerting the Boston Police.
The taller of the two men handcuffed Abath and ordered him to face the wall. Moments later, Hestand returned to the lobby from his patrol and was similarly subdued by the second man. Both guards were compliant and appeared not to resist. With astonishing efficiency, the thieves wrapped duct tape around their victims’ heads, mouths, and eyes, and marched them down into the museum’s basement. There, they were handcuffed to separate pipes—Abath to a steam pipe, Hestand to a nearby workbench. The thieves searched their wallets, made note of their home addresses, and warned them not to raise the alarm. If they remained quiet, they said, they would be rewarded within a year.
The entire subduing process took less than fifteen minutes. By 1:35 a.m., the thieves had complete control of the building—and would remain inside the museum for a further hour and twenty minutes, unchallenged and unhurried. What followed was a systematic, if perplexing, raid on selected parts of the museum.
Moving through the Dutch Room, the Short Gallery, and briefly the Blue Room, the intruders chose a curious array of objects to remove. Some were of extraordinary value: a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, and a Manet. Others were harder to explain: a small Chinese gu vessel and a Napoleonic finial, neither of which held significant financial worth. They also passed over several priceless paintings by Titian, Botticelli, and Raphael—works that might have fetched higher sums or greater notoriety on the black market.
Throughout the theft, the thieves operated with a strange blend of decisiveness and disorganisation. They brought rudimentary tools, smashed glass casings, cut canvases from their stretchers, and abandoned larger or awkwardly mounted works, suggesting they were either working without prior expert advice or had been given unclear instructions. They removed the museum’s CCTV tapes and motion detector printouts before leaving, but inadvertently missed the digital backups stored elsewhere.
At 2:40 a.m. and again at 2:45 a.m., the museum’s side doors were opened, presumably to move the stolen works into their vehicle. By 2:46 a.m., they were gone, having spent a full 81 minutes inside the building without triggering a single external alarm or response.
The next shift of guards arrived later that morning and, when they were unable to gain access to the building or contact the night staff, became concerned. The museum’s security director was summoned, and upon entering, he found the front desk abandoned. A subsequent search led to the discovery of Abath and Hestand, still handcuffed in the basement. The Boston Police were called immediately, and the grim inventory of missing works began.
The Stolen Works
The thieves concentrated most of their activity in one gallery: the Dutch Room. Situated on the second floor of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Dutch Room housed some of the museum’s most prized possessions—works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Flinck. It was here that the most significant losses occurred, both in artistic value and historical weight.
The crown jewel of the theft was The Concert by Johannes Vermeer, a small yet profound painting created around 1664. Vermeer, a Dutch master known for his meticulous depictions of interior domestic scenes, left behind only 34 known works. The Concert, which shows three elegantly dressed figures making music in a refined parlour, had been acquired by Gardner in 1892 and was considered one of the highlights of her collection. Valuations in the years following the heist have placed its worth alone at around $250 million, making it one of the most valuable missing artworks in the world.
Flanking The Concert were two paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn. The first, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), holds a special place in the history of art as Rembrandt’s only known seascape. The dramatic composition captures a moment of chaos, with Christ and his disciples battling a violent squall on the Sea of Galilee—each figure reacting differently to the danger. The work is rich with motion, chiaroscuro, and theological symbolism. It was sliced from its frame with a blade and is now considered one of the most recognisable stolen artworks globally.
The thieves also took A Lady and Gentleman in Black, a portrait by Rembrandt depicting a solemn couple in 17th-century attire, exuding dignity and restraint. Nearby, they removed a small self-portrait etching of the artist, measuring only a few inches across. That particular piece had been stolen once before, in 1970, but was recovered within days. Its reappearance on the list of missing items only added a strange historical echo to the night’s events.
The final work taken from the Dutch Room was Landscape with Obelisk. Long attributed to Rembrandt, it was quietly reclassified in the 20th century as a painting by Govert Flinck, one of Rembrandt’s most talented pupils. The painting shows a classical pastoral scene with an obelisk in the distance—a motif that has since become iconic, not for its aesthetic merit, but for its association with the greatest art heist of modern times. Whether the thieves knew of the painting’s reattribution or took it under the mistaken belief it was a Rembrandt remains unknown.
Beyond the Dutch Room, the theft extended to other galleries. From the Blue Room on the first floor, the thieves removed Chez Tortoni by Édouard Manet. This intimate, unfinished portrait of a man at a table writing in a Parisian café was unusually located away from the museum’s French Impressionist holdings, making its selection even more curious. The museum’s motion detectors, notably, recorded no movement in the Blue Room during the time of the robbery—raising questions about whether the painting was taken earlier, or with inside knowledge of the room’s blind spots. The only footsteps logged that night in the Blue Room were those of Rick Abath during his scheduled patrol.
The Short Gallery on the second floor was also targeted. There, the thieves removed five works on paper by Edgar Degas. These included Cortege aux Environs de Florence, La Sortie de Pesage, two variations of Program for an Artistic Soirée, and Three Mounted Jockeys. All five were modest in size and executed in pencil, ink, and watercolour—less valuable in the financial sense but undeniably significant as works of one of the Impressionist movement’s leading figures. The inclusion of these drawings, which are estimated to be worth under $100,000 each, has puzzled art historians, particularly when vastly more valuable paintings by Botticelli, Raphael, and Michelangelo were left untouched in other galleries.
Perhaps the most enigmatic absences from the museum’s inventory were two objects of minimal financial worth but symbolic and historical curiosity: a 10-inch bronze Chinese ritual beaker, or gu, from the Shang Dynasty (circa 1200 BCE), and a French Imperial Eagle finial believed to have once adorned a Napoleonic battle flag. The gu, traditionally used for serving wine in ancient rituals, was one of the oldest objects in the museum. The eagle finial, which sat atop a flagpole from Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, may have appeared gilded or valuable to the untrained eye, but in truth, its material worth was relatively minor. That the thieves removed it while abandoning the flag itself suggests either a rushed, uninformed selection process or a deliberate focus on small, easily portable items.
This erratic choice of stolen works continues to confound experts. Why did the thieves bypass Titian’s The Rape of Europa, widely considered one of the most important Renaissance paintings in the United States? Why leave Botticelli’s The Story of Lucretia, an object of profound historical and artistic significance? The apparent randomness of the thieves’ selection has led many to believe they were not acting on commission from a collector or connoisseur, but rather were common criminals unaware of what they were stealing—perhaps motivated by hearsay or informal appraisals rather than scholarly knowledge.
The thieves also showed little regard for conservation. Glass panels were smashed. Canvases were cut directly from their frames with utility knives—an act that guarantees damage and dramatically reduces a painting’s value. Large oil-on-panel pieces, like Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, were left behind, perhaps because they were too heavy or fragile to move quickly. Those taken were likely rolled up without protective coverings or climate control, exposing them to further deterioration.
In keeping with Isabella Stewart Gardner’s strict instructions that her collection never be changed or rearranged, the museum has kept the empty frames on the wall—most notably in the Dutch Room. These hollow frames now act as a mournful reminder of what once was. They also serve a practical purpose: placeholders for a potential future in which the stolen works might yet return.
The Investigation and Rick Abath’s Role
From the beginning, the FBI treated the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist as a top-tier investigation. The possibility that the stolen works might be quickly moved across state or international borders placed the crime within the Bureau’s remit. The fact that masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Degas had vanished overnight from a high-profile institution triggered swift federal involvement. Yet, despite the magnitude of the theft and the immediate allocation of resources, investigators were left with little to build upon.
There was a striking lack of physical evidence. No usable fingerprints were recovered. The few that were found—on doors, railings, and frames—could not definitively be linked to the perpetrators and were indistinguishable from those left by museum staff or past visitors. Even more frustrating for investigators was the absence of internal CCTV footage. The museum had invested in perimeter surveillance but, owing to budget constraints and resistance from trustees adhering to Isabella Gardner’s original wishes, had never installed security cameras inside the galleries. This meant there was no video documentation of the thieves’ movements within the building.
Infrared motion detectors, installed after an earlier attempted robbery in 1982, offered some clues. The devices recorded the thieves’ progression through the galleries—albeit with notable gaps. In some rooms, particularly the Blue Room from which Édouard Manet’s Chez Tortoni was taken, the detectors registered no activity at all. This detail would later become a critical point of contention. If the thieves had truly entered that room, why were their movements not logged? And more importantly, why were the only recorded footsteps in the Blue Room that night those of security guard Rick Abath during his patrol?
Rick Abath’s actions on the night of 17–18 March 1990 quickly drew the attention of investigators. Then 23 years old, Abath was a regular night-shift guard—an aspiring musician with a casual attitude towards the job. The other guard on duty, Randy Hestand, was new and unfamiliar with the museum’s routines. During his shift, Abath opened the museum’s side entrance door at approximately 12:30 a.m.—roughly an hour before the thieves arrived. He later claimed this was part of his usual checks to ensure the door was locked, though this explanation struck some as insufficient. No incident or disturbance prompted the action, and it remained the only such door opening logged that night prior to the arrival of the disguised thieves.
This behaviour, coupled with his decision to admit the supposed police officers without first confirming their identities or alerting authorities, made Abath a person of interest. He was interrogated extensively and even underwent polygraph testing, though the results were never made public. While some FBI agents and independent investigators have speculated that Abath may have been complicit—perhaps coerced or bribed—others believe he was simply naïve, poorly trained, and caught off guard.
The mystery deepened in 2015 when the FBI released a security video recorded the night before the heist. The footage showed Abath allowing an unidentified man into the museum’s lobby and engaging in a short conversation. Neither the museum nor the FBI had previously disclosed the video’s existence, and its sudden release triggered renewed speculation about the guard’s involvement. Abath told investigators he could not recall the interaction or identify the visitor. Some former staff later claimed the man was a senior member of the museum’s security team, but the ambiguity fuelled long-standing doubts.
Despite years of scrutiny, no definitive evidence ever emerged linking Abath directly to the robbery. He maintained his innocence throughout his life, insisting that he had been duped by the thieves just like everyone else. “They said they were the police,” he once remarked. “What was I supposed to do—slam the door in their faces?” His detractors pointed to his laid-back demeanour, lack of alarm activation, and the unexplained door opening as signs of at least passive complicity. Supporters viewed him as an underpaid, unprepared employee left to safeguard half a billion dollars’ worth of artwork with minimal training and outdated procedures.
Abath passed away in 2024 at the age of 57, still publicly denying any role in the crime. The FBI, meanwhile, has never cleared him completely—but neither has it charged him with wrongdoing. As of today, Abath remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the Gardner Museum mystery: the man who opened the door, and perhaps the last person to see the paintings before they vanished into the shadows.
Organised Crime and Theories
From the moment the scope of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist became clear, federal investigators turned their attention to Boston’s criminal underworld. At the time of the theft in 1990, the city’s underbelly was a volatile landscape—riven by internal conflicts within mafia families, gangland assassinations, and a steady stream of illicit activity that blurred the lines between low-level criminals and high-ranking enforcers. The FBI’s longstanding hypothesis has centred around the idea that the robbery was not the work of art connoisseurs or international smugglers, but rather the handiwork of local organised crime syndicates—particularly figures operating in and around Boston’s North End and Dorchester neighbourhoods.
One of the most persistent theories involves Bobby Donati, a reputed enforcer for the Patriarca crime family. Donati was a familiar name to federal authorities and a man with a reputation for both violent tendencies and involvement in high-level art thefts. He was also closely associated with Vincent Ferrara, a senior Patriarca figure who, by 1990, was incarcerated and awaiting trial on racketeering and murder charges. According to retired art thief Myles J. Connor Jr.—a colourful and often contradictory figure who claimed insider knowledge—Donati orchestrated the Gardner heist in a calculated bid to use the paintings as leverage to negotiate Ferrara’s release.
Connor, who was in prison at the time of the robbery, later told authorities that he had previously discussed robbing the Gardner Museum with Donati, even accompanying him on a reconnaissance visit. Donati, Connor claimed, had taken a particular interest in the museum’s French Imperial Eagle finial, which was later stolen during the heist. The implication was that Donati used lower-tier operatives—possibly men with no formal art training—to carry out the robbery itself, knowing the stolen works would have value only on the black market or as bargaining chips.
If Donati was indeed the mastermind, he never got the chance to use the paintings for negotiation. In 1991, just a year after the theft, he was found murdered—brutally stabbed and dumped in the boot of a car, a victim of the internecine gang war then engulfing Boston’s Italian-American underworld. His death shifted the trail cold, but some believe that before he was killed, Donati entrusted the artworks to a fellow mobster: Robert Guarente.
Guarente, an associate of the Patriarca crime family and known to operate between Massachusetts and Maine, had a reputation for discretion. He died in 2004 from cancer, but his widow, Elene Guarente, later told the FBI that her husband had once possessed some of the stolen Gardner works. She claimed that, sensing his own mortality, Guarente had transferred them to Robert Gentile, a mob-connected antiques dealer based in Manchester, Connecticut.
Gentile’s name soon became central to the investigation. In 2012, federal authorities raided his property and discovered a hidden compartment beneath a backyard shed, although nothing was found inside. In the basement, agents uncovered a Boston Herald newspaper from March 1990 reporting the Gardner theft and a handwritten note listing black market prices for several of the stolen works. Despite these clues, Gentile maintained his innocence, insisting he had never seen the paintings. A polygraph test administered by the FBI showed that Gentile was deceptive when he denied knowledge of the theft—but a follow-up test, in which he claimed he had once seen the Rembrandt self-portrait, suggested he was telling the truth. The ambiguity of these results only deepened the mystery.
Further complicating matters was the involvement of the Merlino gang, a Dorchester-based outfit with close ties to the Boston Mafia. Headed by Carmine “Carmello” Merlino, the group had a history of theft, drug trafficking, and violent crime. Among their ranks was David Turner, a figure long suspected by the FBI of having participated in the Gardner heist, and George Reissfelder, who died in 1991 under circumstances not linked to the case but whose physical resemblance to one of the police sketches drew scrutiny.
Merlino himself was arrested in the mid-1990s and allegedly offered to broker the return of the Gardner paintings in exchange for leniency. Turner, meanwhile, was caught up in a failed attempt to rob an armoured truck depot in 1999, during which the FBI directly confronted him about his supposed involvement in the museum theft. They offered him freedom if he could return the paintings—he refused, insisting he knew nothing. Nevertheless, Turner served a prison sentence and was released in 2019.
Evidence tying these individuals to the theft has remained circumstantial. Reissfelder’s siblings recalled seeing a painting resembling Chez Tortoni in his bedroom, but no artwork was ever recovered. The FBI believes the men may have used their connections to hide or move the stolen art between locations in Boston, Connecticut, and possibly Philadelphia. In 2013, agents declared they were confident they had identified the thieves—now deceased—but declined to name them publicly.
In 1994, a new thread emerged. Museum director Anne Hawley received a letter from an anonymous individual claiming to be a negotiator, acting on behalf of people in possession of the stolen works. The author suggested the heist had been conducted to reduce a prison sentence and that the art was now being stored in a “non-common law” country under proper conservation conditions. They demanded full immunity and $2.6 million wired to an offshore account in exchange for the return of the paintings.
To demonstrate their seriousness, the writer included details only known to the FBI and the museum. The museum responded by printing a coded message in The Boston Globe as requested. A follow-up letter soon arrived, but the writer, alarmed by what they perceived to be increased law enforcement activity, ceased all communication.
Further intrigue came in the late 1990s through journalist Tom Mashberg, who was led by antiques dealer William P. Youngworth to a warehouse in Brooklyn. There, by flashlight, Mashberg claimed to have viewed what he believed was The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, complete with cracked varnish and cut edges consistent with reports from the museum. Youngworth supplied paint chips for analysis, but testing failed to confirm a match. The FBI raided the warehouse but found it empty. Like so many other leads, it came tantalisingly close to resolution, only to evaporate.
Youngworth later insisted he had access to several of the stolen paintings, but negotiations broke down when he and Myles Connor—still incarcerated—demanded Connor’s release and full immunity for all parties. The authorities refused, citing insufficient evidence of authenticity or access. Even later efforts, such as supplying photographs of the artworks, failed to convince investigators that Youngworth had genuine access.
Over time, competing theories have multiplied, ranging from the calculated use of the paintings as mafia collateral to their unwitting sale on the black market. Others speculate they may have been destroyed to conceal the crime. A few believe they are hidden in safehouses in New England, or possibly overseas, perhaps in Ireland, given alleged links between Boston crime syndicates and the IRA.
Despite countless investigations, sting operations, and appeals for information—including a $10 million reward—the case remains unresolved. The FBI has expressed confidence that some individuals alive today still know the whereabouts of the stolen art. But in the absence of new evidence or a credible whistleblower, the trail continues to grow colder.
Legacy of Loss
The Isabella Stewart Gardner heist remains an enduring mystery, with no prosecutions, no conclusive leads, and not a single painting recovered. It is, quite simply, the greatest unsolved art crime in modern history.
Today, the museum continues to offer a $10 million reward for information leading directly to the return of the stolen artworks in good condition—by far the largest reward ever offered by a private institution. Because the statute of limitations expired in 1995, the thieves, were they to come forward, could not be prosecuted.
In the meantime, the empty frames in the Dutch Room and beyond stand as quiet sentinels—fragments of a story still unfinished. For curators, investigators, and the public alike, the question endures: where are the Gardner paintings, and will they ever find their way home?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0z13XINFZw
Sources:
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FBI: www.fbi.gov
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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: www.gardnermuseum.org
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Kurkjian, Stephen. Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist. PublicAffairs, 2015.
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Mashberg, Tom. Boston Herald archives
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U.S. Department of Justice
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The Boston Globe archives
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