New lead on infamous 1990 Boston art heist

A former District Attorney for Norfolk County said one of his former clients may be able to identify a person seen in surveillance video the day before the 1990 art heist at Boston’s Isabella Steward Gardner Museum.

Burke, now a lawyer in Quincy, told the Patriot Ledger that a client of his believes the person shown in recently-released surveillance footage is an acquaintance who handled antiques in the past.

Last week the Justice Department, along with the FBI released video of a man entering the museum, against security protocol, the night before the theft.

Boston U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a statement Thursday that the Gardner thieves took the museum surveillance film recorded the evening of the robbery, but overlooked footage from the night before.

One tip included the identity of a man seen leaving the museum the night before it was robbed.

Investigators have kept an eye on him and his bank accounts for the simple reason that, according to F.B.I. statistics, most art heists involve someone on the inside.

“I would appeal to the bad guys in their realm to say, you know, we all have a chance of redemption, and our chance of redemption is our children and our grandchildren”, Kurkjian said. The misplaced works are valued at $500 million.

Among the stolen artwork were Vermeer’s “The Concert”, three Rembrandt paintings, Manet’s “Chez Tortoni,” five drawings by Degas, an ancient Chinese vase dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), and a golden eagle from a Napoleonic flag.

Authorities have said that on March 18, 1990, two men dressed in Boston police uniforms gained entrance to the museum by telling the security guard at the watch desk that they were responding to a report of a disturbance.

“We will take all our leads seriously, ” said Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristen Setera, who declined to comment on Burke’s tip.

The video shows a man exiting the automobile and then being allowed inside the museum, against museum policy, by a security guard. Abath lives in Vermont and has written his own book about the crime. He also let the unidentified man into the museum the night before, according to several people familiar with the investigation. But he has long denied any role in the heist.

Most of the FBI’s early suspects within the case – most concerned in organized crime within the Boston space – at the moment are lifeless.

“By releasing this video, we hope to generate meaningful leads and ultimately recover the stolen artwork”.

“I’d love to see that this may be the key to breaking that case and finding all those wonderful paintings that were stolen”, Burke said.