Original subtitles

It was the biggest art heist

in American history.

Half a billion dollars worth of paintings

snatched from the walls of a Boston gallery.

(suspenseful music)

The haul included a rare Vermeer

and paintings by Rembrandt and Degas.

That was 16 years ago.

Since then, teams of FBI agents have worked on the case.

The robbery has entered the realms of criminal folklore.

And as the police investigation is dragged on,

there has been no shortage of rumors

and theories about where the paintings are.

The question is, who is telling the truth?

And will the Boston masterpieces ever be found?

(bright bagpipe music)

It's the biggest day of the year for Irish Americans.

The celebrations for Saint Patrick's Day

and nowhere more so than in Boston.

It is here more than anywhere else

that Irish Americans have made their home.

There's Shamus.

But Saint Patrick's Day 1990

would have an infamous place in Boston's criminal history.

We love you.

(crowd cheering)

(relaxing string music)

In a quiet part of the city

lies the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,

one of the most excentric art galleries in America.

The museum was built in the style of a Venetian villa

to house the fabulous collection assembled

by a flamboyant and wealthy socialite, Isabella Stewart.

Isabella Stewart was one

of those extraordinary Victorian women

who in her middle life really discovered

this great passion of hers in the arts.

She was an extremely powerful woman

in her own personality.

Isabella Stewart became the center

of an elite artistic circle.

She was a great entertainer.

Artisan thinkers would be coming to her house

and to the museum,

and she wanted to make this gift to the City of Boston

of this great palace, that there's nothing like it.

Isabella Stewart used money inherited

from her father to build up a priceless collection.

2,500 artworks in all,

including paintings from the Renaissance

to the Impressionists.

Among the collection, was "The Concert" by Vermeer,

one of only 32 known works by the Dutch Master;

four Rembrandts,

including "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee",

his only know seascape;

"Lady and Gentleman in Black",

and a miniature self portrait.

There was a series of Degas charcoal drawings

and a Manet called "Chez Tortoni".

These were the masterpieces that disappeared

from the walls of the museum in the 1990 heist.

The loss was irreplaceable.

Before she died, Isabella Stewart stipulated in her will

precisely how her collection was to be preserved

after her death.

Many philanthropists leave wills that define

how they wish their gift to be treated.

Hers is known for being especially kind of quirky.

What her desire was to have her work of art,

that is the museum and collection that we're in today,

to stay as it was, as she created it.

The collection is not to change.

And because none of the works

could be replaced, none of it was insured.

(gentle music)

Now married, Isabella Stewart Gardner opened her museum

to the public in 1903.

And there had never been an incident

until Saint Patrick's night 1990,

when the evening shift began much like any other.

The two guards on duty that night were music students

earning extra cash for their studies.

(clock ticking)

(ominous music)

Shortly before 1:00 a.m. on March 18th,

as the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations

were coming to an end,

the boredom of the night shift was broken.

(footsteps tapping)

(car door slams)

At about 1:20 a.m., two figures approached

the side entrance to the museum in Palace Road.

One of the guards was sitting at the security desk

near the main entrance,

watching the closed circuit TV monitors.

The other guard was on patrol around the building.

(footsteps tapping)

(intercom buzzing)

Two individuals knocked on the door

of the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum here in Boston

posing at Boston police officers.

The two men appeared

to be wearing police uniforms.

The guard didn't spot the fake mustaches.

They flashed what seemed to the guard inside

like police badges.

He spoke with them through the intercom.

No one had ever been able to gain access

by ringing the bell, but what the guards didn't know

was what their protocol was

if police officers made their way to the side door.

They claimed that they were responding to a disturbance.

The two men told the guard

there had been an incident in the museum grounds

that they needed to investigate.

The museum has gardens in the back.

And the men behind the desk thought that

there may have been a disturbance,

so he made the unfortunate judgment

of buzzing the two men in.

(intercom buzzing)

(phone banging)

At 1:24 a.m.,

the guard buzzed them in through two sets

of locked security doors.

Once inside the building, the two supposed policemen

ordered the guard at the desk to call the second guard

back from his rounds.

The guard radioed for his partner to come down.

Meanwhile, the thieves trick the guard

at the security desk away from the one alarm button

that went straight to the local police station.

(clock ticking) (suspenseful music)

With the guards now together at the main security desk,

they were overpowered and taken down a flight of stairs

into the basement of the museum

by the two fake policemen.

The thieves bound the guards with duct tape

and secured them separately to posts some distance apart.

It was now 1:48 a.m.

The thieves returned first to the street level

and then up a second flight of stairs

into the main gallery area.

They went first to the Dutch Room at the top of the stairs

and then to the Short Gallery

above the main entrance of the museum.

(footsteps banging)

Their movements appear to be very erratic.

They spent a lotta time inside the Dutch Room

on the second floor where the greatest art

was hung on the walls, the Rembrandts and the Vermeer.

But they didn't spend all their time there.

They were dashing around to the other galleries

on the second and first floor.

They started in the Dutch Room

and then moved through the museum,

the Short Gallery, the Long Gallery,

and methodically picked off 11 paintings,

(mysterious music)

a Chinese beaker, finial off a Napoleonic flag.

In the Dutch Room,

they took three of the four Rembrandt masterpieces

that Isabella Stewart Gardner had purchased in her lifetime.

Some of the paintings, many of them,

were broken out of their frames

and cut out of their frames.

The three Rembrandts they took were priceless.

One was "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee".

They tried to remove the fourth,

a large 1629 self portrait,

but had difficulty getting it out of the frame.

Another painting ripped out of its frame

was Vermeer's "The Concert".

(hammer pounding)

(frame cracking)

A Manet was also knocked out of its frame.

(hammer banging)

(painting ripping)

When you're talking about a three or 400 year old painting

that causes a tremendous amount of damage.

It's damage that, when these paintings are returned

and we certainly hope they will be returned,

they can be repaired.

This was not sophisticated art thieves.

These were run-of-the-mill thieves

who were taking advantage of a situation.

Cutting the paintings out of the frame

is something that would see in the movies.

(painting rustling)

They probably realized within 15 minutes

that they had free access to the museum.

They were in the museum for almost an hour and a half,

so really time wasn't of the essence.

They weren't racing through it so quickly

that they had to cut it out.

(ominous music)

In the Short Gallery,

the thieves targeted five drawings

by the French artist Degas.

It was a very eclectic collection that they took.

There was really no rhyme nor reason for it.

There were five sketches by Degas,

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Flinck,

and at the same time, they certainly knew

to take Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee",

which was his only known seascape,

and the Vermeer.

They neglected to take some other works in the museum,

which were, for dollar value, more valuable.

They took compact paintings which could be carried out.

Those paintings that they went after tells us

well maybe that there was someone out there

who had some idea as to what to take.

(suspenseful music)

At 2:28 a.m.,

after nearly an hour of plundering,

the thieves returned to the security desk

on the ground floor with their booty.

They checked the two guards in the basement

were still alive and had not suffocated

under their duct tape gags.

When they left, somehow they realized,

whether they had intelligence or not hasn't been determined,

their movements had been seen at the front there

and they removed that tape from the video machine,

and which was the only evidence that would show

who it was that had been inside.

Their movements inside the museum were caught

on a motion device that the museum had,

so you could track their movements from room to room.

They ripped off the computer printout

of the motion detector equipment,

little realizing that everything had been recorded

onto a hard disk.

At 2:41, the thieves began their escape,

making two separate trips from the museum side door

to load their waiting car.

As they drove off down the empty streets of Boston

and into the night,

no one would've believed that in the back

was the haul of the biggest art heist in American history,

half a billion dollars of it.

(slow guitar music)

At 8:00 a.m. the following morning,

the day shift of security guards started work

at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

(alarm blaring) (sirens wailing)

It was at that time that they realized

that the museum had been robbed

and immediate notifications were made

to the Boston Police and the FBI.

The FBI responded, along with the police at the time,

and conducted a crime scene examination.

In the hours that followed,

the FBI made a meticulous search of the museum,

but they discovered very little forensic evidence

which might identify the thieves.

There was a palm print, a semi-palm print, caught,

but the problem is these frames had been touched

by others, so you could not be certain whatever fingerprint

or palm prints you got would've come from the robbers.

The robbers seemed to have had gloves on.

There was no actual clues.

There were questions about the guards.

Agents were always puzzled as to why the guards on duty

opened the two security doors to the fake policemen.

Stephen Kurkjian tracked down one of the guards

some years later and is convinced

they had nothing to do with the theft.

This was a failure of security.

The two men were both college students.

They both had musical careers ahead of them.

They were not professional security men.

But they both had worked there for a bit of time,

one for about eight months and one for about three months,

and both had been trained pretty well

and knew the ins and outs of what they were supposed to do.

The man behind the desk,

he had been worked the night shift many times,

and he was a member of a rock and roll band,

and admits that he had

a lifetime of other interests.

There have been persistent rumors

that the guards were in the habit

of smoking dope while on duty.

He said he was on his toes and he was wide awake

and he knew what he was doing that night,

and he just made very, very unfortunate misjudgment.

(intercom buzzing)

(phone banging)

He continues to regret what he did and the mistake he made.

The art world was rocked by the ease

with which the Boston heist had been executed.

Not surprisingly, security at the museum

faced immediate criticism.

Charles Sabba is an artist.

He's also a New Jersey policeman with contacts

in the art crime underworld.

They had a terrible security team

where they paid minimum wage to these burnout

musician guards who were just students

or musicians who would smoke pot inside the place

and look at Rembrandt.

Guarding Rembrandt or being stoned looking at Rembrandt,

there's two different things there.

So security was nil, they didn't have insurance,

they couldn't afford insurance.

If you don't have insurance, you can't pay for insurance,

you better pay for a good security system.

They had internal alarms that went to the guard's desk,

but that's it.

The guard had one button that went to the police station,

and that's it.

It was a joke.

(knife slicing)

(painting ripping)

You can't blame a thief for stealing.

He's a thief, that's what he does.

A thief can't blame a cop for arresting him.

I'm a copy, I arrest people, that's what I do.

He knows I'm only doing my job.

He chose thievery as his job.

He's a thief, when he walks into an easy target,

he looks around and says, "I can do this.

"I can get in that window, I can get in that roof,

"and I can steal that Rembrandt."

You can't blame the thief for stealing the Rembrandt,

but you could blame the person who was trusted

to guard the Rembrandt and the person who's trusted

to protect this Rembrandt, and keep it safe and sound.

You can blame them for not doing their job.

And that's what you have at the Gardner,

they did not protect their artworks.

The responsibility lies on them.

(ethereal music)

The FBI did have one lead.

The thieves did not wear masks,

and the guards were able to give police

a description of the two men.

These are the drawings of the two thieves.

One was in his late 30s, about five feet nine inches,

slim, gold wire glasses, possibly with a fake mustache.

The other was in his early 30s, taller, heavier,

with chubby cheeks and, again, a fake mustache.

But these descriptions, like the fingerprints,

matched no one on the police database.

Since the robbery, some of the best minds in the FBI

have worked on the case.

At the start, there was a team of up to 50 agents

trying to track down the thieves and the paintings.

Immediately after the theft, the FBI launched

a full-scale investigation into it.

And we felt confident, as the investigation progressed,

that we were able to eliminate some people

based on interviews and investigation that we did

that they did not have any involvement in the theft.

And that's pretty much how we've done it

over the past 16 years.

We get information and we get a suspect or a tip

and we chase it down.

The museum initially put up

a reward of $1 million for information

that led to the return of the paintings.

But that failed to produce any breakthrough

in the investigation.

The museum, meanwhile, just carried on as normal,

except where there was once a priceless Rembrandt

or Vermeer, there were now just empty frames.

We've left the frames on the wall,

because in her will she did state that things

should stay as she created them.

So it just seems more appropriate that we leave them there.

It's also a bit of a reminder for people

that they're coming back,

(laughs) that we want people to come back

and see them in their frames when they return.

But if the robbery from the museum

was the biggest art heist, not only in America

but in the history of art crime,

soon it also became the most talked about.

Who had done it?

And how could a collection

of priceless masterpieces simply vanish?

The Boston robbery went down in folklore.

The names of many convicted criminals were linked to it.

Among them, William Youngworth III,

art thief Myles Connor, and Irish mobster Joe Murray.

But one name kept coming up,

one of America's most notorious gangsters,

James Whitey Bulger.

One man who questioned the professionalism of the thieves

was William Youngworth III,

a small time criminal who would later offer himself

as a go between to get the paintings back.

Youngworth said the thieves choice of paintings

and the brutal way some were ripped from their frames

suggested they were not fully aware of the priceless works

they were stealing.

They had a floor plan to go by.

And let's call it my assumption

that they thought they were taking items

that had significantly more value than what they took.

Obviously, walking by Titians and Botticellis

and Raphaels, and lifting a bunch of Degas charcoal studies,

or lower quality watercolors by Degas,

demonstrates a general lack of knowledge of art.

This seems to be something comical in the fact

that it was all within arm's reach

and apparently that ladder was a forgotten element

of the 1990 event.

So, in other words, if it was beyond a arm's reach,

it was safe.

They certainly were professional criminals,

but art theft was not their forte.

There was another curiosity to the robbery.

The motion detectors also showed that the thieves

never ventured up to the third floor of the gallery,

where Titian's "Europa",

the museum's most valuable treasure, still hangs untouched.

It was small comfort to the museum.

The robbery was a tragedy really,

not just for the museum, but really for the public,

because works of art like that

are part of the cultural patrimony,

not just of the country, but of the world.

If you can imagine not ever hearing Beethoven's 9th again

this is the kind of loss.

What's a light source that creates a shadow

or the shadows like that?

Yes, back there?

An example--

Despite its devastating loss,

the museum continued as one

of Boston's leading cultural institutions.

But there was an increasing frustration

that the paintings were still missing.

Finally, four years after the robbery

came what seemed to be a breakthrough.

(gentle guitar music)

In late April 1994, the museum received a letter

from an anonymous writer offering a deal.

The museum received a letter, typewritten letter,

sent from New York that said that if the museum

was willing to engage the letter writer,

that he would be able to affect an exchange.

What he was looking for was about $2 million, he said.

But he wanted to make sure that the museum was interested

and he wanted to make sure,

because this was still within the statute of limitations

of six years, that neither he nor the people he represented

were gonna get arrested for the theft.

The letters said the paintings

were being stored in archival conditions

and had not yet been sold.

The museum turned the letter over to the FBI.

The writer proposed a clandestine way

of responding to the demands.

He asked for a sign,

and the sign he asked for was that a letter one

be placed in a Globe column in an upcoming Sunday Edition.

The Boston Sunday Globe for May 1st, 1994

carried the hidden message and the paper got a scoop

on the biggest art heist in history.

A week later, the museum received a second message.

The letter writer wrote back a week or two later

and said he was appreciative of the museum's willingness

to go to this extent.

But he said, as he understood it,

there had been a heck of a lot

of investigative undercover work put into finding out

who he was and whom he represented,

and he feared that that was a deal breaker.

And so he stepped back from any further negotiations.

The letter writer was never heard from again.

(clock ticking) (suspenseful music)

As the years passed, the FBI kept a team of investigators

working on the Boston case

in an effort to find the thieves and recover the art.

The FBI has been working this case since day one.

We have conducted hundreds and hundreds of interviews,

and we have followed up on countless leads,

and I've received information that the paintings

never left Boston,

and we've run down leads that the paintings

have been sent abroad to Europe, Japan,

across the country.

We recently covered a lead out west

where the Vermeer was supposedly being sold

in an antique mall.

And we had agents go there and take that painting,

only to find out that it was just a very good copy.

We continue to get leads on a regular basis, which is good.

But despite this,

the FBI were no nearer finding out who did it

or where the paintings were.

But a haul as big and prestigious

as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery

has spawned its own industry of former policemen

and former criminals who want the kudos

and the cash that goes with returning

the masterpieces to Boston.

Foremost among those in the criminal world

was William Youngworth III,

a close associate of Myles Connor,

a notorious art thief well-known to the FBI.

(phone ringing)

William Youngworth was an antique dealer.

He was into rugs, the Persian rugs, the Armenian stuff.

Connors admits to having done over 30 art thefts.

He has this huge criminal record.

And he even sometimes was known to dress

as a police officer to do robberies.

He's a member of Mensa, 'cause he has a high intellect,

but something inside that twisted very intelligent mind,

he can't look at that beautiful painting

and not think, "I could steal that, I want that."

(clock ticking) (ominous music)

Both Youngworth and Connors

were prime suspects for the Boston heist.

But there was a problem for the police,

both were in prison at the time of the robbery.

That didn't stop the FBI from paying them a visit.

The first time that I was directly confronted

by any law enforcement entity behind the Gardner robbery

was approximately 72 hours after the robbery occurred,

when agents accused me of knowing something

about the robbery.

When I asked them: Why are you here asking me about this?

I mean, I'm sure you noticed those guard towers

and the men with the guns and the razor wire

and all the fences you had to pass through

to come in here and accuse me of this.

I assure you they don't give you weekend passes

to go out and rob things here.

They found that a bit amusing.

One of the agents said, "Hey, Bill, ya know what?

"There's just not a lot of people that do

"this type of thing.

"It's a short list and you're on the top of it."

(intimidating music)

In fact, according to Billy Youngworth himself

a decade earlier, in 1986,

he had thought about pulling off a heist

at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum himself.

And in '86 a very lucrative offer was made

for basically cleaning the place out.

Had the '86 event happened, the damage to the collection

would've been far more substantial.

Everything of value woulda went,

everything of value woulda went.

If you have the keys and the compliant staff

and all night to work,

why take one when you can take everything?

If some thought Billy Youngworth

an implausible mastermind behind the Boston heist,

Myles Connor was not.

(ethereal music)

Charles Moore is a private detective in Massachusetts.

As soon as he heard of the Boston heist, he got to work.

I had spoken to Myles Connors sometime after the theft

and he told me that he came up with the blueprint

in order to pull the theft off.

He had been in the Gardner Museum a number of times,

had cased it a number of times,

and thought it woulda been an easy score.

He told me that he actually set that theft up himself

but wasn't around to carry it out,

and some people that he knew are the ones

that actually pulled the theft off.

He named those people and the names have been in the paper.

Unfortunately, both of those are dead.

One was murdered and the other died of natural causes.

In my belief, those paintings are just stored someplace

together and I think they may still be in Massachusetts,

or somewhere in New England.

Myles is doing the same thing that we're doing

where he's trying to find these paintings.

He has no clue where they are.

He has a lot of speculation,

but he doesn't know where the paintings are either.

And I'm sure that Billy Youngworth

has no idea where they are.

But Billy Youngworth said he has.

In the summer of 1997, with the reward now $5 million,

he suddenly emerged into the limelight

to claim he could get the paintings back.

I stated very publicly I could facilitate

and broker the return of this artwork.

I was asking for a blanket amnesty

that I couldn't be charged

with any crimes connected to the Gardner.

So I wanted a guarantee.

They would just not give one.

So we had to sort of figure out some middle ground

to sort of force them into doing it

with this public story.

(suspenseful music)

On August 27th, 1997,

the Boston Herald ran a story headlined "We've seen it!"

The article said a reporter was taken

by some mysterious figures

to a remote warehouse in the Northeast.

He was taken up some stairs to a storage locker

where a rolled up canvas was pulled out.

He was shown, what appeared to him at least,

to be the missing Rembrandt seascape.

Meanwhile, Billy Youngworth had gone to New York

where he says he met executives

from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

prepared to do a deal with him

for the recovery of the paintings.

I did, in fact, meet with these people.

They advanced me a small amount of money.

I did not ask for anything.

And we directly get into the negotiation of the reward.

This is that controversial part in where Youngworth

says he got 10 grand from one of the trustees

in the museum.

They, I think, to this day still deny that.

He got outta the heat of the press

and he went to New York City.

Shortly afterward, an envelope arrived

mysteriously from New York at the The Boston Herald offices

containing paint chippings.

At first, it was thought they were

from a Rembrandt painting,

but that idea was dismissed by experts.

Someone else tested it,

said it's missing a special varnish that Rembrandt used

on his paintings during that time period.

So it cannot be the Rembrandt.

Con man, he's a con man, no deal.

Rembrandt had a big workshop.

The materials that he used were not just unique

to his workshop either.

So a paint sample out of context could come

from any 17th century Dutch painting.

But if the chips didn't come from a Rembrandt,

could they have come from another painting

from the museum?

Youngworth certainly thinks they could.

The paint chips they got, they immediately

tested them against the wrong paintings.

When they were pointed in the right direction,

all they would come back and say was

they're completely consistent with the Vermeer.

That the color, the pigmentation,

and all of the characteristics of the chips

were consistent with that.

What they got was a genuine material.

What they chose to do with it was not address it.

(pensive music)

But within three months,

Youngworth was back in jail for an unconnected offense,

his role as a possible intermediary in ruins.

I believe that he temporarily had his hands

on those paintings.

People in the underworld, they don't have freedom of speech,

you just don't talk.

And these guys came out and said,

"We can recover these paintings."

They had to have some kind of blessing

or permission to say that.

I mean, you don't just come out and say, "We can do it."

That's a big dangerous statement to make.

You got the heat from the law enforcement,

from the bad guys, and from these crime bosses

who were, they were heavy hitters,

they weren't just some thugs on the street.

So I mean, I think he had temporarily

held onto these paintings.

With Youngworth behind bars,

the FBI continue to draw a blank in their investigations.

In the early 1990's, it was reported that an FBI agent

flew to Japan after receiving information

that the Rembrandt seascape had turned up

in the private gallery of a wealthy artist

with links to organized crime.

Then, there were more reports that FBI agents

went to Paris after a tip off that a French businessman

had bought several of the missing Rembrandts.

Again, the investigation got nowhere.

And the most important thing is to keep an open mind.

Without any real concrete information

as to where these paintings have gone

or as to who took them,

it's important not to get cynical or jaded

in an investigation of this nature.

It's easy to get a little cynical

and to think that the paintings aren't gonna be found.

(slow suspenseful music)

But maybe the FBI were looking

in the wrong place.

There is a different theory about what happened

to the paintings from the Saint Patrick's Day robbery.

This one starts in Boston,

but ends on the west coast of Ireland

via shady dealings in a Dublin hotel room.

The Irish connection may have started with this man,

Joe Murray, a leading figure

among Boston's criminal fraternity.

Murray had pleaded guilty in 1987

to smuggling guns for the IRA.

Whether he was behind the Boston museum robbery

we may never know and he's not saying.

In 1992, he was murdered by his wife.

Some claim that the Boston gangster had been the first

to get his hands on the paintings after the robbery.

Our contact was promptly made after the robbery

that these people had some severe financial pressures,

that they went to Joe Murray

and they put the paintings in Mr. Murray's possession

in exchange for $300,000.

And that's where they sat up until Mr. Murray's death.

Others believe that even if Joe Murray

had managed to get the paintings soon after the robbery,

he would've been forced to hand them over

to James Whitey Bulger.

Whitey Bulger was the most notorious

Boston Irish criminal.

Then there were a number of others.

Murray ran the gang, the Murray Hill gang,

and it could well be that he was the organizer

of the robbery of the Gardner Museum.

But that once it happened, I mean, within a short time,

Bulger then would've exerted his influence

over Murray and become involved.

For years Bulger was the head

of the Irish Mafia in Boston.

Not surprisingly, he ended up on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

The Gardner art went from the original thieves

into the hands of Whitey Bulger,

who was actually lord and master of Boston

for about 30 years.

Well, obviously we want an update.

We wanna know where we stand now.

But I don't think it's something that really

we should be actually talking on the phone about.

Paul Turbo Hendry was a career criminal

dealing in art and antiques.

For years, he's been on the trail of the booty

from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

He's convinced that Whitey Bulger is the key

to solving the Boston heist.

When Whitey Bulger obtains possession of the Gardner art,

he then sent some of it to Ireland.

The paintings arrived between 1990 and 1995.

Whitey Bulger made his way to Ireland on a false passport.

He was actually staying with the leader

of an Irish Republican paramilitary group

other than the IRA, not the IRA,

and he gave the Gardner paintings to this gentleman

to hold for safekeeping.

They're kept relatively safe at the moment,

but they're in the hands of people

you would be very reluctant enough to approach.

And they are paramilitaries obviously.

So Bulger was now in hiding in Ireland,

hoping that if he was ever caught,

possession of the paintings might give him

some leverage with the authorities.

But Bulger's past was catching up with him,

He soon became a liability to the Irish Republicans

who were protecting him.

Unfortunately, in 1995,

when Whitey Bulger was indicted on 19 murders,

his presence in Ireland was felt to be detrimental

to the Irish Republican cause.

Sinn Fein and the IRA demanded that Whitey Bulger

leave Ireland immediately, which he did do.

He left behind the paintings.

Since then, no one knows precisely

where Bulger went.

The last evidence of his trail was in fact

in a Barclays Bank in Piccadilly Circus.

He's reputed to have been both here in London

and also posing as a retired doctor in the west of Ireland

with a particular family.

That would make sense because he's on some heart medication

tablets that he probably found easier to get hold of

if he were thought to be a retired doctor.

But I was also told that the people

he was living with sent him away,

and it was all to do with the Gardner pictures.

(suspenseful music)

But in 2002 there was a dramatic breakthrough

in the search for the paintings.

Another former member of Britain's Art and Antique squad

had joined the hunt.

Once again, the trail led back to Ireland.

I think there's a good feeling now for,

shall we say, who controls the paintings today.

The mystery I think now is really exactly

where the paintings are,

whether they're still together.

Certainly there is a good indication

as to where some of the paintings could be.

Dick Ellis' involvement,

along with Paul Hendry, led to a sighting in Dublin

of perhaps the most valuable painting

from the museum robbery, the Vermeer.

In the summer of 2002, Dick Ellis and I attended

the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London

where we met up with an FBI agent.

I said to him that the best way that he could

have a viewing of the Vermeer would be

to contact an informant who goes by the name of Colin.

The mysterious informant known only as Colin

would act as a go between,

setting up a meeting between the FBI

and a member of the gang now suspected

of holding the paintings in Ireland.

(passersby chatting)

The FBI agent traveled to Dublin,

met Colin, the informant, in a hotel room.

Dick Ellis chooses his words carefully

to describe what apparently took place

in the Dublin hotel.

But he's convinced that the FBI agent saw the real thing

and that Ireland is the key to finding the stolen art.

The Vermeer was seen in Dublin.

Not with other paintings,

but certainly the Vermeer was seen,

which would suggest that Irish influences

control the paintings.

The circumstances of the sighting of the Vermeer

in 2002 are still a mystery

and only really the FBI agent

and Colin the informant know them.

It may have been impossible for the FBI agent

to have recovered it.

There may have been guns used.

But I am certain that if procedures had been followed,

the Vermeer could and should have been recovered.

Any suggestion that they could've been recovered

at that point, I think, probably are exaggerated.

They were not in a position to run any sort of operation

in Ireland to recover them.

And, frankly, by the time they were,

the opportunity had gone.

(airplane roaring overhead)

(soft piano music)

But back in America,

Billy Youngworth discounts the theories

about the Irish connection,

and especially the involvement of Whitey Bulger.

The theory that Whitey Bulger went to Ireland

with these paintings, these are only theories

that these armchair quote unquote art recovery experts

have offered to the world.

(western guitar music)

And as a matter of fact,

as to one certain representation made

about a certain painting being seen in Ireland,

I know that's just not possible,

that that's just impossible,

that that could no way bear any resemble to the truth,

and I am positive of that.

Two years after the failed attempt

to recover the Vermeer in a Dublin hotel room,

Youngworth emerged again to the Boston limelight.

By 2004, Youngworth still claimed he could do a deal,

provided the issue of immunity from prosecution was settled.

If you're asking me publicly on the record

if I had committed a crime

and I was in possession of some stolen property,

I'm going to tell you of course I wasn't.

But I will tell you on the same token

that when I said I coulda facilitated and brokered

the return of the art, that I could have,

and I had absolutely nothing to gain

by saying I could if I couldn't.

But there was another problem for Youngworth.

Could the museum ever come up

with the $5 million reward money?

(geese honking)

Gardner, she had no provisions in her endowment

to take $5 million and go pay criminals a reward

to return her property.

(suspenseful music)

Meanwhile, in England,

Paul Turbo Hendry believes he is on the brink

of putting together an elaborate deal

involving Irish paramilitaries, Irish American politicians,

the Irish government, Sinn Fein,

and a clan in Limerick in the west of Ireland.

I believe that with a political will

there is a real opportunity to finally put this to bed.

The Sinn Fein can use the Irish Republican Bank

to pay the clan in Limerick.

This will allow the Gardner paintings in Ireland

to surface via a confessional box,

because of the symbolism of absolution.

Senator Edward Kennedy, Peter King, and George Mitchell

will lobby on behalf of Sinn Fein

to allow Sinn Fein to be able to fundraise

in the United States of America again.

The Irish government, allowing certain Irish Republican

paramilitaries to be released,

who still languish in Portlaoise Jail.

Also, the paintings still being held around the Boston area

can be allowed to surface.

It means that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

doesn't have to go out and raise the $5 million reward

and no reward money is paid directly to those

who may have been involved in the theft

or the subsequent handling of the Gardner art.

Initially, when I came up with this analysis

and this plan, people laughed at me.

But then people laughed at Einstein,

people laughed at the Wright brothers,

and they laughed at me.

But they're not laughing anymore,

because it's not only plausible,

this is the only effective way to see the return

of the Gardner art to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

in Boston without financially rewarding those responsible.

(people chattering)

It may seem bizarre,

but it's perhaps no less implausible

than any other theory that surfaced over the years

since the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was raided.

Certainly the FBI appear no closer

to finding out who did it.

(upbeat suspenseful music)

I mean, you're talking about one of the most costly

investigations in the history of the FBI.

And what do they have to show for it so far?

16 years later, here we all are,

still pointing fingers at each other.

Not surprisingly, the FBI now seem

less interested in catching the thieves

than in recovering the paintings.

Our primary focus is to get the paintings back.

This whole theft has played out like a Hollywood movie,

and so certainly to make it a good movies,

we wanna have a happy ending.

(hammer banging)

This is not "Ocean's Eleven".

This is not "The Thomas Crown Affair".

This is real life.

It has mutated over the years because of the participants

into the Holy Grail of art thefts.

I think you will see the paintings back as a group.

Circumstances dictate when that will be.

I'm optimistic that those paintings

will go back to the Gardner Museum at some point,

and I would hope in the not too distance future.

We're very optimistic that they'll be returned.

I hope it happens soon.

But it's gonna be great when they come back, isn't it?

We'll have a wonderful welcome back party.

Unfortunately, I think they're going to pay

a terrible price for it.

And ultimately, at the end of the day,

nobody will ever see a penny of that reward.

There is no reward.

It's nothing but a trunk of fool's gold

and only a fool will chase it.