This Is A Robbery: The Real-Life Suspects in the Gardner Heist

The Gardner art heist shown in the Netflix documentary This Is A Robbery is still unsolved after more than 30 years, but it’s not for lack of suspects. Multiple persons of interest ranging from professional thieves and con men to members of organized crime have been investigated for the $500 million art theft. Despite decades of investigation, the art has never been recovered, and the museum offers a $10 million reward for information leading to the safe return of the art.

In 1990, two men dressed as Boston police offers claimed to be investigating a call at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, so the security guard let them in through the locked doors. They handcuffed both security guards in the building under the pretense of arresting them, then announced it was a robbery and tied up and the guards in the basement. They spent 81 minutes in the museum, taking 13 artworks, and pulling off the most successful art heist in the world.

Composite sketches of the thieves were made from the security guards’ account of the robbery, but no strong physical evidence tied the theft back to anyone. The FBI pursued many leads and persons of interest, but so far, it has brought them no closer to recovering the art. Over the years, there have been many theories of who committed the robbery and who masterminded the crime. In 2013, the FBI announced they knew the thieves’ identities and that they were dead, but refused to release those identities, and determining the identity of the thieves did not lead to the recovery of the art. The investigation is still ongoing with numerous new and old theories about the suspects.

Whitey Bulger

James “Whitey” Bulger was both a powerful organized crime boss and an informant for the FBI, and he was an early suspect in the heist. Bulger, an Irish mobster, was involved with the Irish Republican Army. The IRA had been implicated in a number of art thefts to finance their paramilitary efforts in Northern Ireland, as even stolen paintings could be turned into collateral in underworld business deals. One theory speculated that Bulger used his ties with the Boston Police to pull off the daring heist to help the IRA, obtaining real police uniforms for the thieves. No clear evidence tied Bulger to the theft, but some investigators believe the art is now in Ireland after Bulger turned it over to the IRA.

The Merlino Gang

As the investigation progressed, the FBI turned their attention to the Merlino gang, a Boston Mafia crime family full of a number of the most likely suspects. Undisclosed sources in the investigation believed that the thieves the FBI identified were George Reissfelder and Leonard DiMuzio, both involved in the Merlino gang and both deceased shortly after the robbery in 1991. DiMuzio was murdered, and Reissfelder died of a cocaine overdose.

Merlino associates Robert Guarente and Robert Gentile were also implicated as being involved in the robbery and possibly had possession of the paintings at some point. Guarante’s widow told the FBI that her husband had owned the paintings and gave them to Gentile. Gentile’s house was searched to no avail, and he never revealed any information about the paintings. 

Carmello Merlino himself was arrested for attempting to rob an armored car depot in 1999, but did not produce the artwork despite offers of leniency in his sentencing for its safe return. He died in prison in 2005.

David Turner

David Turner, another Merlino associate, has a complicated web of potential involvement with the heist and the string of murders that followed it. Two witnesses indicated that Turner most closely resembled one of the thieves they saw that night. He was also questioned or suspected in the murders of other suspects in the Gardner heist, like Leonard DiMuzio and Bobby Donati. Turner was arrested in 1999 and sentenced to a long stint in prison. Revealing the locations of the artwork might have reduced his sentence, but he revealed nothing.

Bobby Donati

Bobby Donati was a Boston Mafia associate who worked with known art thief Myles Connor. Connor was in jail at the time of the heist, but he had returned stolen art in order to reduce his prison sentences before. Investigators believed Donati may have taken a cue from Connor and masterminded the Gardner theft to barter for mobster Vincent Ferrara’s release. However, Donati was abducted and murdered in 1991, and the murder case is still unsolved.

Security Guard Rick Abath

Rick Abath was the security guard at the Gardner museum who let the thieves in the locked doors to steal their valuable treasures, and he fell under suspicion for his possible role in the robbery. He opened one of the outside doors prior to the theft, which some investigators thought might be a signal to the thieves.

Most of the artwork was stolen from the Dutch Room and the Short Gallery on the second floor, but Manet’s Chez Tortoni was the sole painting taken from the Blue Room on the first floor. The museum’s motion detectors did not show the thieves entering that room during the robbery, and the last movement detected in the Blue Room was Abath making his rounds. No clear evidence implicated him, but there were enough questions to suspect an inside job.

Conman Brian McDevitt

Conman and screenwriter Brian McDevitt was suspected of the heist because of his involvement in similar crimes. In 1981, he made a failed attempt at robbing the Hyde Collection of a Rembrandt while dressed as a FedEx driver. The parallels were enough to flag the FBI, but McDevitt denied involvement. This Is A Robbery has no shortage of suspects to explore, but the Gardner art heist remains unsolved, and the $500 million score is likely still hidden away somewhere in the world.

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