Page 66 - All About History - Issue 16-14
P. 66
10 Daring Heists
Written by Dom Reseigh-Lincoln
G
HEISTS
LOOT TAKEN
The world's largest unsolved art theft $500 MILLION
18 March 1990
In the space of one spring t’s a crisp, breezy night on the streets of Boston, At this late hour, the museum itself is deserted
Massachusetts. However, just because the and its only inhabitants are two security guards,
night, 13 paintings worth hour’s late, it doesn’t mean the city is sleeping a pair of young men in their Twenties who
soundly. It is St Patrick’s Day after all, so the nonchalantly roam the many rooms of the
a staggering $500 million I more rambunctious Bostonians are raising museum, ever-so-slightly jealous of the alcohol-
many a glass to their varying (or, in some cases, fuelled revelry still unfolding a few blocks away.
disappear into the ether. nonexistent) Irish ancestry. One of the two watchmen, a 27-year-old whose
A few blocks away from some of the city’s livelier identity has never been revealed in the 24 years
It’s a case so infamous, it quarters lies Fenmore-Kenway – home to many of since the heist, patrols the upper floors of the
Boston’s most intellectual institutions including the museum, checking windows and doors as is
fascinates the public and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Standing four routine every hour. Unknown to them both, their
storeys tall, this almost 90-year-old mock-Venetian night is about to get a whole lot livelier.
confounds the authorities structure holds some of the world’s most celebrated A Dodge Daytona grumbles to a halt in a side
and priceless works of art, a fitting legacy to its street by the museum. Underage revellers partying
to this day… namesake, a woman whose vision had curated the on the same street notice the aging car and the
original collection 87 years prior. policemen sat inside. They notice the officers are
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