The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist Blog
The 30th Anniversary of this heist is coming up in a few months. A smarter man would wait until then to write this blog. But you don’t have a smarter man, you’re stuck with me. So too bad. Ever hear of reposting, my good bitch? That’s what I thought. I’m writing this today because I went to the Gardner Museum yesterday. With the Patriots out of the playoffs and the Celtics not on until later in the evening, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. So I figured I’d head on down to the Gardner, a spot I used to frequent with my father once a year, typically in February, and just clear my head for an hour or so.
I always forget about this heist until I see the blank spots on the wall. I’ve never fully looked into it until today, either. I don’t know why. It’s the largest heist in the history of museums. Like, actually, that’s not me in my typical hyperbolic ways. $500 million out the front door under the cover of night. March 18, 1990. Watch the videos up above and listen to the way everyone speaks of this night. It’s no wonder they’ve never caught anyone, they’re treating it like someone took a Snickers from 7-Eleven. It’s honestly infuriating. “It couldn’t have been real criminals, look at how comfortable they were doing this massive heist! No real criminal would have left the most expensive Rembrandt hanging on the wall. Clearly this was luck! No money has changed hands since these were stolen.”
Either the police and everyone involved with talking about this is on the same page, reading from the same scripts, and they’re playing insanely dumb as a cover. OR… they’re insanely dumb and it’s no wonder they’ve never come close to recovering these paintings. The curator herself talks about the rarity of the pieces taken. The thieves didn’t need to take the single *most* valuable paintings in order to make this the richest lot ever plundered from a museum. To think these were too dope fiends from Revere who happened upon a lucky night is the single dumbest shit I’ve ever heard. And I’ve talked to dope fiends from Revere, they don’t say shit as dumb as that. You know what would have happened if dumb people were at the forefront of this heist? They’d try to sell them at a pawn shop in Lowell and be caught by March 20, 1990. They’d brag and boast and get caught almost immediately. This was 1990, not 1812, they would have been seen, left fingerprints, something. But that didn’t happen. Probably because this wasn’t the work of amateurs. This wasn’t luck.
The elite, and I mean the elite of the elite, the 1% of the 1%, go fucking crazy for artwork. You put a blue dot on a blank canvas and could make generational wealth if the right one of these rich assholes is trying to one up one of his rich asshole pals. To think that these stolen pieces are tucked away in some attic in the Southie projects is absurd. To say so brazenly that NO MONEY has changed hands in exchange for these pieces is perhaps the most preposterous statement uttered throughout all of this. I understand these are all people who have done countless hours, hundreds of hours, more research on the topic than I have. Which is why I feel so confident in what I’m saying. They’re too close to it all. They’re so deep in the rabbit hole they’re not even thinking logically about this anymore.
$10 million dollars for a tip in the right direction is the reward right now. People aren’t this tight-lipped. People aren’t that loyal. If the type of people they’re describing actually possessed these items, or had a clue as to where they were, they’d be recovered tomorrow. But they don’t know, mostly because they had to, and I mean HAD TO have been sold 30 years ago. Those things haven’t been within Massachusetts since they were taken off the walls. This remains one of the great mysteries, one of the longest games of cat and mouse in the world and I’m routing for the mouse so goddamn hard. Unless the mouse gets too close to me and I can walk assbackwards into $10 mil, then I’m #TeamCat so goddamn fast you wouldn’t believe it. But that won’t happen. Mostly because they were sold ages ago and will only be found by accident. Like a guy’s house gets ransacked after he’s been identified as a war criminal and it’s like, “Hey that Manet sure looks familiar.” But until then? It might as well be on Pluto.
PS – what do you mean you can swipe $500 million worth of art and as long as you don’t get caught within five years you’ll skate? How is that even remotely possible? That’s the weakest statute of limitations I’ve ever heard in my life. This is another reason why I think it’s all long gone. Just for the simple fact that the consequences have been removed and no one’s written a book that lead to a movie to further cash in on this. None of it makes any sense which is what makes it all so fascinating. $500 million seemingly deleted from history, never to be seen or heard from again.