Stolen Stradivarius returned after 35yrs

Nina Totenberg said her father had always suspected it was stolen by an aspiring violinist named Phillip Johnson, a young man he did not know but who he had spotted loitering near his office at the time the instrument disappeared.

Owned by famed Polish violinist Roman Totenberg, the violin was stolen in 1980.

Injeian said Thursday at a news conference in Manhattan that the violin has characteristic markings on the wood grain that are “like a fingerprint”.

Its recovery was first reported earlier on Thursday on National Public Radio by Nina Totenberg, its legal affairs correspondent and a daughter of Roman Totenberg.

In July 2012, a Stradivarius was handed in to a Swiss railway lost-and-found department after an acclaimed violinist forgot it on a commuter train.

At a meeting in New York, Mr Injeian broke the good news to Johnson’s ex-wife that the violin was a rare Stradivarius and the bad – it had been stolen.

“My mother was so frustrated”, Nina Totenberg recalled, “that she famously went around Boston asking her friends if they knew anybody in the mob who would break into this guy’s apartment”.

“I remember calling my father and asking, ‘Are you OK?’ and he just said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m OK, but it’s just like losing an arm”, she said.

Between 1666 and 1737, Stradivari crafted about 400 violins which might be nonetheless in existence. “It’s like a fingerprint”, Injeian said.

En route to the hotel, McKeogh and his partner had pulled up on their cell phones photos of the Ames Stradivarius taken before it was stolen, along with its precise measurements to the millimeter. The agent said he was looking at the violin, which was in federal custody after the appraiser alerted authorities.

The violin’s value isn’t known, although a Stradivarius violin sold for more than $15 million in 2011.

The return ceremony was hosted by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office prepared court papers restoring title to the Totenbergs. “I’ll tell them not to get their hopes up” but (the agent) said, ‘You don’t have to do that.

For years, Totenberg had suspected one person in particular for the theft, and after almost four decades, his suspicions were confirmed when the FBI got a hold of the stolen violin, according to NPR. “This is a remarkable story of a quick-witted violin appraiser who recognized the long-lost Ames Stradivarius and immediately called law enforcement”. The antique instrument, which was made in 1734, was valued at $250,000 at the time, and would likely sell for millions of dollars today. He played in several European capitals before moving to the US in 1938. The sad truth is that Totenberg never saw the violin again.

“I opened the case and looked at the instrument”, and, “checked it out for over a half hour before I said anything”, he recalls.

She said it appeared that her father, who had long harboured suspicions about who had stolen his violin, had been right all along.

Two antique bows that were stolen along with the violin remain missing.