The Art of the Heist

Nineteen

That two unidentified men walked into the Museum of Fine Arts on April 14, 1975, and walked out with a priceless Rembrandt is a matter of record. Such was the brazen nature of the heist that newspapers all over the world carried reports of it. But how exactly the thieves managed to slip away with the painting without getting caught has been a mystery for over three decades. Until now.

Here’s exactly how we did it.

Around midmorning on Monday, April 14, my crew gathered at Ralph’s car wash in Brockton. The forecast the night before had mentioned a possibility of rain. But fortunately, the weather had chosen to cooperate. It was a breezy spring morning, the sky a cloudless robin’s-egg blue. The temperature had dropped close to freezing during the night and there was a lingering chill in the air, coupled with the promise of a slightly warmer afternoon.

Billy Irish and Ralph were there, along with Ozzy DePriest, who would be meeting us at Bromley-Heath with a switch car. Also in attendance were three drivers Billy had recruited: an ex-boxer named Billy Hogan, an Irish kid from Dorchester named Mickey Finn, and one of Billy’s fellow Black Shamrocks named Bobby Fromm. All of us were armed, Billy with a.45, Ralph with an M-16 assault rifle. As usual, I was carrying my Walther. Already on his way to the museum was an eighth member of our party, another of Billy’s friends who had been recruited to stand lookout on Huntington Avenue.

Since Billy and I would be the ones going inside, we were both wearing disguises. Billy had on a knee-length tan car coat and a long blond wig. I was wearing a short jacket, a leather chauffeur’s cap, and a brown wig that covered my red hair.

“That’s a nice look for you,” I told Billy as we gathered to run through the details of the plan one last time. “You ever spend time at the Spahn Ranch?” I joked, referring to the Manson Family’s notorious California home.

“Yeah,” Billy replied, flashing me a roguish smile. “And I’m gonna go helter-skelter on you if you don’t lay off.”

Any heist is a performance. Robbing the MFA is the equivalent of playing to a packed house at Carnegie Hall. Not surprisingly, we were all suffering from preshow jitters. I tried my best to put everyone at ease. Tension can make people trigger-happy, and the last thing I wanted was for someone to get killed.

“These guards are just a bunch of old micks doing their jobs,” I reminded everyone. “No one fires a shot unless it’s absolutely necessary. And in that case, it’s just a warning.” I looked at Ralph to emphasize my point. “Got it?”

“Got it,” he answered, but I wasn’t entirely convinced.

As much as I loved Ralph, I knew he could be a loose cannon. I would have to keep an eye on him.

As usual, Ralph had provided the transportation for the job: a van for making our getaway with the painting and the two crash cars, a black and gold Torino and a black Monte Carlo. All three vehicles were stolen. All bore Ralph’s Walpole plates, making them absolutely untraceable.

We left the car wash just before noon. Mickey drove the van, while Billy, Ralph, and I rode in the back. Hogan was in front of us in the Torino. Fromm followed behind in the Monte Carlo.

From Brockton it was a straight shot north to Huntington Avenue, then a few short blocks east to the museum. As we turned off Huntington and onto Museum Road, which ran along the southwest side of the MFA grounds, I glanced out and saw the lookout in place. His job was simple: he was to stand at the corner of Forsyth and Huntington, on the far side of the museum. We’d be coming that way after the robbery; if there were cops on Huntington, all he had to do was wave a red handkerchief and we would know to continue east on the Fenway instead of crossing the avenue as planned.

After turning off Huntington, we continued along Museum Road, then turned right onto the Fenway.

I glanced at Billy. “You ready to do this?”

He grinned. “Let’s rock and roll.”

Hogan pulled the Torino into the semicircular drive that led to the Fenway entrance. We followed behind, trailed by the Monte Carlo. All three cars pulled to a stop, with the van directly in front of the wide granite staircase. Billy, Ralph, and I jumped out and made our way into the outer foyer, where Ralph was to wait while Billy and I went inside.

I don’t remember exactly how much it cost us to get into the museum. My best recollection is that the two tickets together came to something in the neighborhood of five dollars. Whatever the price, it was a bargain. Smiling politely to the elderly volunteer who handed us our tickets, Billy and I pushed through the turnstile and started up the grand staircase that led to the second floor galleries.

We reached the upper landing and immediately turned right, passing through the long seventeenth-and eighteenth-century European gallery on our way to the Dutch and Flemish room. Weekdays were typically quiet at the museum, and that Monday was no exception. There were no more than a handful of patrons in the Evans wing, perhaps two or three of them in the Dutch room, a space large enough to accommodate a decent-sized crowd. A white-haired security guard stood in the doorway between the two galleries, fighting to keep his eyes open. Wasting no time, Billy and I crossed the Dutch room, bypassing a number of masterpieces, including Rembrandt’s “Artist in His Studio” and Jacob Van Ruisdael’s dramatic “Rough Sea,” and stopped in front of the Rembrandt portrait.

By this point in my life, having stolen and handled numerous masterworks, I was not easily awed. But in those last few seconds before Billy and I took the canvas off the wall, my heart was stuttering like a jackhammer. I could tell Billy’s was too. As he moved to flank the painting on the left, I glanced down and saw that his hands were shaking.

“Easy does it,” I whispered to myself as well as to him.

Together we grabbed the frame and lifted the painting off the hooks that held it to the wall. Adrenaline surged through my body, cold and immediate, like the shock of injected Novocain.

I hadn’t expected the Rembrandt to be especially heavy. The canvas was relatively small, around 24 by 16 inches. And old frames are never as heavy as you expect them to be-the wood, desiccated by age, becomes as light as kindling. Even knowing this, I was surprised by how insubstantial the portrait felt in my hands.

But there was no time to process any of these sensations. The guard was awake now. As we headed for the doorway he stepped forward to block our way.

“What are you trying to do with the painting?” he asked with a thick Italian accent.

Leaving the Rembrandt to me, Billy pulled out his.45 and aimed it at the guard. “Shut up or I’ll kill you,” he said.

The man froze, his face ashen with terror. Then, moving quickly, he took a step backward, ducking behind the gallery wall.

As I ran out of the Dutch room with the painting under my arm, I heard the sound of the guard’s whistle.

Billy sprinted after me through the adjoining gallery, and together we plunged down the winding marble stairs and across the first floor foyer, toward the Fenway entrance. As I slipped through the turnstile, I felt the mechanism catch, trapping me between the metal bars. Had we triggered some kind of automatic security lock? I wondered.

I turned back and looked to Billy for help, but he already had his hands full. The guard from the Dutch room and a second guard were coming down the stairs, right on his heels.

“Go!” Billy yelled, clearly bewildered by the fact that I wasn’t out the door yet.

Suddenly, three shots rang out, the bullets passing over my head and catching the stairs at the guard’s feet. I turned to see Ralph firing from the outer foyer. The guard from the Dutch room stopped where he was, but his colleague, a trim man in his midsixties, kept right on coming.

In desperation, I threw all my weight against the turnstile and, hearing the sickening sound of wood splintering as I did so, realized the frame was wedged between the bars. I was stuck.

Realizing what the problem was, Billy rushed forward and added his weight to mine, pushing as hard as he could against the jammed stile. There was a loud crack as the corner of the frame broke away. The turnstile spun free, spitting me and the painting out the other side. Billy was right behind me.

We careened through the doors at the Fenway behind Ralph, who was already sprinting for the van. Undeterred by the sight of so many guns, the second guard, who I would later learn was a retired cop, raced down the steps, right behind us. Billy jumped into the van and I handed him the Rembrandt. But as I did so, the guard, who had caught up with us, grabbed a corner of the Rembrandt’s frame.

“It’s not worth it, pal!” a voice of reason-most likely the first guard-yelled out from the top of the stairs, but the guy wasn’t listening. He had a good grip on the frame and he wasn’t letting go. As hard as Billy pulled, he couldn’t get the painting away from the guard.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mickey, who was still in the driver’s seat, turn and point his gun at the guard. Shit, I thought, this idiot is going to get himself killed.

“Don’t shoot,” I yelled to Mickey as Billy and I struggled to get the painting away from the guard.

No doubt sensing a catastrophe in the making, Billy loosed his grip on the painting and smacked the guard in the head with his pistol. The blow caught the man hard and he buckled immediately, releasing his grip on the Rembrandt. Quickly Billy hauled the painting into the van. I jumped in after it and we pulled the door closed.

Seeing that we were all safely in the van, Hogan floored the Torino and pulled out onto the Fenway. As our van followed it, I turned back to see the Monte Carlo do the same. Seeing no red flag from our lookout, we turned down Forsyth. As we crossed Huntington Avenue I glanced out the van’s back window and saw the lookout ambling away toward the Northeastern University campus, just as we had planned. For the moment, at least, there wasn’t a cop in sight.

Almost home free, I thought as we angled southward onto Parker Street, still safely sandwiched between the Torino and the Monte Carlo. From the corner of Parker and Huntington it was a straight shot south to Bromley-Heath. I hated to disappoint Hogan and Fromm, but the way things were going it looked like we wouldn’t need to use the crash cars after all.

But as we careened down Parker, past the Wentworth Institute of Technology, a Coca-Cola delivery truck loomed ahead of us. It was parked crossways on Parker, blocking the narrow street.

“Fuck!” Mickey swore, slamming on the brakes, screeching to a stop behind the Torino.

Ralph, who was in the passenger seat of the van, climbed out, brandishing his M-16. “Move!” he screamed at the driver of the delivery truck.

The man froze.

“There’s no time!” I yelled at Ralph. I could hear sirens behind us, what sounded like a good number of cruisers on Huntington Avenue.

But Ralph wasn’t listening. “Move your goddamn truck!” he bellowed.

“The sidewalk!” Billy yelled out the window, loud enough for Hogan to hear him up ahead in the Torino. “I think you can get around him on the sidewalk.”

Taking Billy’s advice, Hogan gunned the engine and the Torino leaped forward, lurching onto the curb, squeezing through the narrow opening between the truck’s bumper and the brick wall of the Wentworth Institute. Ralph leaped back into the van.

“Go!” I yelled to Mickey. “Go!”

Following the Torino’s lead, Mickey eased the van up onto the curb and around the truck, scraping the wall as we went. We were through.

With Fromm following in the Monte Carlo, we shot forward down Parker, the sirens fading behind us, then across Tremont, around Parker Hill and into the safety of the projects.

As promised, Ozzy was waiting for us at Bromley-Heath with a switch car, a stolen LTD from Ralph’s stables. Working quickly, we ditched the van, stripping the plates off, and transferred the painting to the trunk of the LTD. With the van disposed of, it was time to go our separate ways. Taking the Torino, Ralph and Billy drove to nearby Dudley station, where they abandoned the getaway car and hopped on a train back to Dorchester. Where the others went, I neither knew nor wanted to know.

Elizabeth came with me.

The question of where to take the Rembrandt was one to which I had given plenty of thought. All the usual places-my mother’s house on Oak Road, Martha’s parents’ home in Northampton, Al Dotoli’s house in Quincy-were out of the question. Even if the cops couldn’t pin the robbery on me, my reputation would make me the prime suspect, which meant that until the painting was recovered all my friends and associates would be under intense scrutiny. Leaving the portrait in some random storage locker didn’t seem like a particularly good idea, either.

I needed to find a home for Elizabeth with someone I could trust absolutely, someone whom the police would never suspect of helping me. Fortunately, I knew just such an individual.

For obvious reasons, I am not at liberty to identify this person, even decades after the fact. Suffice it to say that Charlie, as I will call him, was an old friend of mine, a legitimate guy who had absolutely nothing to do with the criminal side of my life. When I left Bromley-Heath that Monday I drove straight to his house in Boston’s southern suburbs.

I can only imagine what must have gone through Charlie’s mind when I showed up on his doorstep unannounced, with a freshly stolen Rembrandt on my hands. He knew I was in trouble and facing considerable jail time because of the stolen Wyeths. And he must have suspected I was planning something. But he certainly could not have expected to be called upon to play a vital role in one of the most notorious art thefts in history.

As shocked as he must have been, he agreed to help me without hesitation.

At the time, Charlie’s mother-in-law was living with him. Though she didn’t know it, she was about to get a new roommate, and a famous one at that. For the next eight and a half months the portrait of Elizabeth van Rijn, one of the most sought-after pieces of art in the world, remained hidden beneath the old woman’s bed. It was truly the last place anyone would have thought to look.

In terms of publicity, we couldn’t have timed things better. The heist went down early enough that it made the front page of the evening edition of that day’s Boston Globe. “$1m Rembrandt Taken from Boston Museum,” the headline, flanked by a picture of the stolen painting, screamed. By the next morning every reporter in the city was wondering what the Boston Police Department was doing to get the Rembrandt back.

For their part, the police were playing it extremely cool. Two days after the theft they told the Globe that they expected a break in the case to come “at any moment.”

“It’s just a waiting game right now,” Deputy Superintendent Leroy Chase told a Globe reporter. Describing us as “rank amateurs,” Chase went on to say that the police “have had some tips.” But despite Chase’s display of confidence, it was obvious to me that the eleven Boston PD detectives and twelve FBI agents who’d been assigned to the case had next to nothing to go on. In fact, the authorities didn’t even have enough evidence to bring me in for questioning.

They’d found the Torino outside Roxbury Station. But thanks to Ralph, there was no way they could link the car to us. The official descriptions of me, Ralph, and Billy were so vague as to be laughable, identifying us only as “white males, about twenty years of age.” The only other clue investigators had to go on was a rubber glove I’d dropped on my way out of the museum, and I knew it wasn’t talking.

All in all, I thought, we’d done pretty well for rank amateurs. It was going to be a long wait for Chase and his detectives.