Original subtitles

Nearly 30 years ago, seven paintings,

including a priceless Cezanne, were stolen from

a private collection in America.

As the years pasted Michael Bakwin,

who owned the paintings

thought he would never see his precious Cezanne again.

The police couldn't find it.

Neither could a private detective he hired.

For three decades the pursuit of the paintings

followed a trail from America to Monaco, to Russia,

to Switzerland, and eventually to London.

But most mysterious of all, was the identity of the man

who had possession of the paintings all those years.

And who was finally exposed in an English courtroom.

(intense music)

(birds chirping)

(slow jazz music)

In the 1970s, Stockbridge, Massachusetts,

100 miles west of Boston,

was the starting point of a bizarre story

of dishonesty and double dealing,

involving one of the most important paintings

in the history of art.

It's a wealthy community,

a population of 2,000 set in the Berkshire Hills.

The town has a great many well to do families,

families with old money, with art collections,

houses are spread out over a wide area,

it's mountainous and woody,

certainly not unusual not to see

your neighbors house from your own.

Stockbridge was also home to Michael Bakwin,

one of the heirs to a unique and priceless art collection.

At the time Michael Bakwin owned a restaurant and bar

in the town, the Avaloch Inn.

It's clientele included not only local people,

but also wealthy tourists vacationing in the area.

I had a little resort in Stockbridge

for 10 years in the 60s

and it was a fun area in those days.

There was a lot of young people in their late 20s

who liked music and it was fun,

and it was not so terribly expensive.

During the 1970s,

things began to change in the town.

There were new people coming in, with a lot of money,

and local tough kids taking advantage of that,

and a major crime wave beginning, drug dealing,

assaults, and then theft.

This was Bakwin's home.

Hidden away up a long drive, it was not easy to find.

Bakwin's residence is not an ostentatious place,

it's a one story and it's large, but it is secluded.

Inside this house

was one of the most important paintings

in the history of modern art.

It's by the French artist Paul Cezanne

and shows a simple still life, some fruit and a jug,

on a crumpled white tablecloth.

The Cezanne painting is one of his very typical

and quite beautiful still lives

and this is really an exercise

in new ways of looking at painting.

So he would paint the apples in a way, as sculpture,

becoming more and more abstract,

which eventually lead a few years later

to the invention of cubism

by his direct successor, Picasso.

On Memorial Day weekend in May 1978,

Mr. Bakwin, his wife and children,

went to his parents house in New York,

leaving the family home in Stockbridge empty.

(eerie music)

At some point that weekend, thieves drove up the long

pathway to the Bakwin house.

In order for anyone to have done the theft

they would of had to of known they were going there,

it's a fairly long driveway going in,

given the number of paintings and the size of them,

they would of had to load them in the car.

And there's not any really good location nearby to park

a car and hide it.

There was no security gate

to stop them at the entrance,

no security lights, no security cameras.

People claimed that I had not locked the house

when we were away so I claimed that I had.

There was no sign of a forced entry

into Bakwin's home, but there might of been a reason.

By the front door there was a small stone frog,

and underneath the frog, was the key to the house.

We didn't have any alarms, it was expensive. (laughs)

I felt I was living out in the boondocks,

I mean there are wonderful things

in New York City, Chicago,

San Francisco, why would anyone

go in the boondocks to take paintings?

And I just thought it was a very safe place to have them.

The thieves seemed to know

what they were looking for.

They went straight into the formal dining room.

Here there were seven paintings

hanging on the walls,

including Cezanne's priceless "Bouilloire et Fruits."

The thieves removed the six minor paintings

including two by Chaim Soutine,

one by Maurice de Vlaminck,

and one by Maurice Utrillo.

The Utrillo was insured and the Vlaminck was insured,

and I think only one of the Soutines, I don't know why,

but one of the Soutines was insured.

The thieves took the six minor paintings out

to the waiting car.

Michael Bakwin had not insured his priceless Cezanne.

The thieves removed the masterpiece from its frame,

and took that out to the car as well.

They simply loaded up the trunk and drove back down

the track and away.

Seven paintings in the back, and one, the Cezanne,

worth at the time around 15 million dollars.

It was like loosing a child, although not really.

The Cezanne particularly, I had seen that painting years

before my parents bought it, and I just loved this painting

and it was the most expensive, and the last great

painting my parents bought, I convinced my mother to really

buy it, my father, and then I finally got it. (laughs)

And I had acquired the most beautiful thing

in the whole world, and then it was taken away,

and that was extremely emotional time.

(acoustic guitar music)

I actually said to my wife,

"You take care of this, I can't face this."

The stolen paintings

were part of one of the largest

and most extravagant private art collections in America.

Actually my mother, this picture, yes.

It had been put together

by Michael Bakwin's parents.

My father came from around Utica, New York,

he was the star of his family

but he came from a very, very poor family

and they sacrificed a great deal for him.

And he became a teacher, and that's where he met my mother

who came from quite a wealthy, Chicago family.

(energetic jazz music)

Bakwin's mother Ruth,

was heir to a Midwest meat packing business,

built up by her father at the end of the 19th century.

Both Bakwin's parents became pediatricians.

And in the 1920s they left the Midwest for Europe.

They loved each other very much and they respected

each other and I think they were great together.

(upbeat music)

The couple eventually settled in Paris.

At the time the French capital was a magnet for artists

and writers from all over Europe and even America.

Ruth and Harry moved easily in the artistic world,

and soon began to amass a formidable collection

of mostly Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art.

They had paintings going from anybody,

I guess the oldest they had was an El Greco,

but mostly they were with Post-Impressionists.

And they seemed to have wonderful eye for art.

They didn't seem to compromise because they bought

always good things.

And I'm very proud of the collection

they've put together and the kinds of people they were.

(upbeat music)

My parents would take me to meet these artists

when we went to France after the Second World War,

and so I've met Picasso and I've met Matisse,

I met Utrillo and I met Vlaminck with them.

It was part of this collection,

that Michael Bakwin would, in time, inherit.

And what happened is, eventually my parents

started to give the paintings to their children.

Bakwin himself devised the system

for the share out.

My mother said to me, "Well you decide how to do this."

Well I knew which paintings which people liked

and which of my sisters and brother,

so I thought the fair way would go,

my brother's the oldest, he gets the first choice,

but I knew that my brother would've taken the Van Gogh,

my sister Pat gets the second choice,

Bobby gets the third choice, and I get the fourth choice.

But then I get the fifth choice

and it goes back the other way.

so that way I figured out I could get my favorite picture,

which was the Cezanne.

The theft of the Cezanne years later

was heartbreaking for Michael Bakwin.

I was extremely upset and angry and frustrated and sad

and everything, and also, just I had to tell my mother.

And when I called her, she said,

"Well the girls are alright aren't they?"

And you know, that really helped a lot,

that the painting was really,

the paintings were not that important,

the children were much more important.

The problem for police investigating the theft

was that it was far from clear precisely

when the paintings had been stolen,

as Michael Bakwin freely admits.

In my opinion the way it happened is,

that we came back and we went to the house

and these paintings were all in the dining room,

and we didn't go into the dining room,

we went into the rest of the house.

In fact it was two days

before it was discovered that the paintings were missing.

(clock chiming)

They could of been in and out of there,

within a relatively short period of time,

five or 10 minutes.

Just who had carried out the robbery

remained a mystery.

But in small town Stockbridge,

suspicion fell on someone with knowledge

of the Bakwin household.

He's not an ostentatious guy, he had local friends,

and for some reason the treasures

that were in his dining room

became known to the wrong people.

There are a number of people who knew, friends that I had,

that came into the house, who knew about it,

and I guess some where quite impressed with it.

There was some concern that possibly

it might of involved someone

who knew the family

or had worked at the house,

I would say, small town, people gossip and people know.

My theory, and particularity my wife's theory,

that one for my friends, just talked too much.

And that's how this all happened.

I think it was just living in that community,

gave them this false sense of security

that they were in a secluded area.

They weren't pals with rough, tough people.

They were pals with the cultured.

(slow jazz music)

(telephone ringing)

The next month, in June 1978,

there were four anonymous calls to the Bakwin house.

We don't know who the person was

but he was very, very nervous.

And really wanted to get out of this whole mess.

And I don't think he ever even asked for anything

but he did tell us that they were in a barn,

in a field not too far from Boston.

But the calls stopped,

and this glimmer of hope petered out.

Michael Bakwin soon suspected

that the theft of his paintings

might not be a priority to the police.

It wasn't a very important thing to them,

their concept in my opinion was, this was some rich person

who lost some possessions and let's go on and find

the drug dealers and so on.

Eventually the whole thing just sort of petered out

and from them on, the private detective took over.

As the frustration mounted,

Michael Bakwin eventually turned to this man, Charlie Moore.

Charlie Moore is a private detective living in Plymouth.

For years he's specialized in art crime,

tracking down and retrieving stolen works of art.

I was contacted by Mr. Bakwin in December of '78

at the suggestion of federal authorities

out in the Springfield area.

I met with Mr. Bakwin and agreed to investigate

the theft of his paintings, aimed at trying to recover

the ones that were stolen.

When I hired Charlie Moore, and I think Charlie did

a lot of work on this thing.

I did give him a contract that he would get a percentage

if he found the paintings.

Once Charlie Moore

started working on the case

some key facts became clear.

They had a housekeeper keeping an eye

on the house, four people came to that house

during that weekend, allegedly to check the mail

for Mr. Bakwin and they found that the front door

was unlocked, and they were suspects right away as to,

maybe having knowledge of the theft.

Bakwin never gave any authorization for these people

come to the house or to check the mail.

I believe that the two people that stole the paintings,

got information from people

who had been in the house prior

and I also believe that the reason for taking

those paintings was to ransom them back, for money,

either to pay for a lawyer or to negotiate

a pending criminal charge.

(tense music)

Meanwhile police had a lucky break

that put a small time local crook in the frame.

His name was David Colvin.

Colvin had approached someone in early June,

several days after the theft and had said to this person,

"I have access to stolen paintings

"and I have access to guns."

The man whom he approached happened to be

a federal undercover agent.

The agent, from the Alcohol, Tobacco,

and Firearms unit, identified David Colvin as the man

trying to sell him the guns and the paintings.

Colvin did a deal with him and for that deal,

Colvin was indicted on that gun charge, there was no real

interest in pressing him, what he might have done

with the stolen paintings.

Colvin was 32

and a well known crook and gambler.

He came from Pitsfield, less than 20 miles

from the Bakwin house.

He was married, living out in the Pitsfield area,

he had a brother out there, he was raised out there,

his parents lived there as well.

Colvin was fairly we known by the authorities,

he had had some scrapes with the law, he had had some

drug deals, smaller stuff, not major cases.

More than that, Colvin and Bakwin

had actually met.

I'd met him a few times and,

when I was in the inn business there,

I knew almost everybody I had,

big fish in a small pond, you get to know lots of people

and they came down to my place and I would see them,

I didn't know him that well but I had met him

a couple of times.

Colvin knew a lot of people, from growing up there.

You meet some people who are not very nice,

some people who are maybe a little bit outside the law

and I talked to a few of them, and they wouldn't say a word

even though I think they knew something.

I knew they were frightened.

And I had asked around and, there was some, I think,

fairly powerful crooks involved in this thing.

And Colvin being one of them,

somebody who they should really investigate.

Colvin was already in deep trouble

on gun charges.

He found himself a lawyer, Robert Mardirosian.

He was a steady lawyer

that kept busy doing criminal cases

you know, representing defendants.

I think the reason why he was approached is because

Colvin was under firearm charges,

so I think he was trying

to work his way out of those charges,

and that's why he was contacted.

(easy jazz music)

The criminal and his lawyer,

met at Mardirosian's offices in Watertown, near Boston.

Colvin was facing two major cases.

He's got the grand jury going on in Boston,

regarding the theft from the Bakwin home,

and he's got this federal case

hanging over his head over the gun case.

Somehow he learns that Bob Mardirosian

would be an individual

who could represent him.

In July 1978 he visits Mardirosian

at Mardirosian's office,

in Watertown, it's the first time

that the two men have met.

When the meeting was over, Robert Mardirosian

offered to put his client up for the night,

in the attic of another office he had across town.

Colvin spent the night at Mardirosian's law office

because the next morning

he was going in for an arraignment

on the gun trafficking case.

Bob Mardirosian said he had no place to stay

and he didn't have the money to put himself up.

So Bob offered his attic and Colvin took advantage of it.

(acoustic guitar music)

In July 1978, David Colvin was sentenced

in Boston for the firearms offenses.

He got a year's probation.

It was a different story

when Colvin came before a grand jury,

investigating the theft for Michael Bakwin.

David Colvin he didn't say much.

He pleaded the Fifth Amendment

and said nothing.

Anybody who was called the grand jury said nothing

so that didn't do any good.

Others who knew the comings and goings of the Bakwin's

did testify and they could not not come up

with a strong enough lead to indict anybody.

For the moment at least, Colvin was a free man

but if the police thought felt they'd find the robber,

they soon had a problem.

Colvin's gambling finally got him into serious trouble

with the criminal underworld in which he moved.

He owed money to a couple of guys who'd from

gambling debt in Boston, and they came out to collect.

In February 1979,

two Boston men drove to Colvin's home in Pitsfield.

They needed to call in a gambling debt, just $1,500.

He refused to pay, a fight ensued,

allegedly he reached for his gun.

There was a scuffle

and as the killer later claimed in court,

fearing for his life, he drew his 38 revolver

and shot Colvin dead.

(gun firing)

(acoustic guitar music)

One of the men was let go.

He was cleared on a self-defense charge.

The other man who actually shot him

went to jail for 10 years, for manslaughter.

I felt happy and sad.

I was glad that, and I thought maybe this would scare people

into saying something, but I think it just made them

even more nervous.

Colvin's death stops the investigation

as far as who stole it, that was the end of the trail.

The police now had a problem.

With the prime suspect dead, they were further than ever

from finding Michael Bakwin's precious Cezanne.

Private detective Charlie Moore

wasn't doing much better.

Gotten a few phone calls, and one in particular thought

they saw the Cezanne painting, the bowl of fruits hanging

on the way in a condo in Boston.

We'd started an investigation against that man,

we tried to get into his condo unit a couple of times,

legitimately, we couldn't get in there and when we finally

did that painting was not in there.

Charlie did a lot of work on this thing.

We also had another suspect that moved from

Massachusets to Florida, we put surveillance on it

but that proved to be negative but it took quite a bit

of time before we figured that out.

He thinks he found the paintings being moved

from one place to another.

We thought the paintings may of been traded for drugs.

That didn't work out that well.

He sort of lost them in the Florida area.

There were some pretty bad people so we decided

to back off of that.

But he continued to work on it.

We tired to locate the other person

we thought was involved in the theft.

We had information that he had moved out to the west coast.

We tried to locate him out there

but we never did find him.

We kind of let that end go.

So these are the kind of operations

we were taking after Mr. Colvin was murdered.

You know, we pursued that right up until '99, 2000.

(upbeat jazz music)

In the search for the stolen art,

the focus shifted to London.

And to this man, Julian Radcliffe.

Radcliffe runs the Art Loss Register,

an international business that finds stolen works of art.

The idea is simple, and designed to stop thieves

ever being able to sell

a stolen picture on the open market.

The Art Loss Register database

logs descriptions of stolen art and antiques

which can be easily searched

for a suspect piece.

We take the details of the pictures

and photographs of them,

and place it on a searchable database,

and then search 300,000 items which are sold during

an average year against those items to try and find them.

The descriptions

of Bakwin's treasured Cezanne and the six other paintings

were lodged with the Art Loss Register.

Bakwin sold his house in Massachusets

soon after the robbery and moved to Virginia.

As the years passed, the Art Loss Register

became his best hope of getting the paintings back.

I'll tell you a very funny thing.

I'd never heard of Art Loss Register.

I called Sotheby's and Christie's and other places.

And they had heard of them

and they knew what they were so,

but it still seemed a little bit strange.

Julian is a strange guy. (laughs)

But they're very good.

Radcliffe was confident

that one day the power of the Art Loss Register

would finally retrieve Michael Bakwin's paintings.

(peaceful piano music)

The breakthrough finally came

when insurance underwriters Lloyd's of London

was asked to insure a Cezanne painting

for transportation to England.

They checked the painting on the Art Loss Register.

It was Michael Bakwin's.

The request to Lloyd's had come from an Englishman,

working in the construction business in Russia.

He was approached by some Russians

and they said, "Can you help us sell some pictures?"

And he quite innocently said, "I don't know anything

"about pictures but I'll see what I can do to help."

Julian Radcliffe set up a meeting

at the offices of Lloyd's in the city of London.

I said, "Put those people who contacted you

"in touch with me if you don't want to stay in the picture."

Initially he said, "I don't think I do want to stay

"in the picture.

"This sounds as though this could be the Russian mafia."

They wanted 15 million dollars for the pictures.

We said, "We're not gonna give you any money,

"unless you tell us how you got them and who you are."

The negotiations went on

inconclusively for months.

It was not even clear

whether the Cezanne was in Russia at all.

Back in America, Michael Bakwin at last thought

he was getting closer to seeing

his beloved Cezanne again.

That was kind of exciting then, and of course the other

amazing thing was, we knew then, they had told us

that all seven paintings were still together.

That amazed me.

It would just of thought that they would of tried

to get rid of some of them.

The people holding the paintings

turned out to be a mysterious organization

called Erie International Trading Company,

registered in Panama.

The company employed a Swiss lawyer

named Dr. Bernhard Vischer to negotiate on their behalf.

Radcliffe never knew, nor did Vischer ever say

who was behind Erie International.

All he was dealing with was a lawyer.

Julian Radcliffe flew to Switzerland

during the summer of 1999 for numerous meetings.

He seemed to be getting nowhere.

During July and August these negotiations carried on

and eventually in September I said, having cleared this

with the FBI, that we might be prepared,

since we were making no progress,

to take the Cezanne and sign over to them,

the other six pictures.

It was a deal with the devil,

Radcliffe believed that these people

who had the paintings at the time

had gotten them knowing that the paintings were stolen.

The other six pictures at that time were worth say,

half a million dollars,

the Cezanne we knew, was worth at least 15.

In order to get back a very important picture,

the police agreed

that this would be a reasonable thing to do.

But there was a catch,

Radcliffe wanted certain guarantees from Dr. Vischer

about the people behind the mysterious Erie International.

I said that he would have to make a declaration,

which he would have to sign,

saying he knew it was true,

about how his client got the pictures, who his client was,

and answering a whole list of other questions

and that envelope would be lodged

with a neutral lawyer in London.

Vischer's client signed the declaration as well

and the envelope was put into a safe

at the officers of London solicitors, Herbert Smith.

Though Michael Bakwin was desperate

to see the return of his missing paintings,

he only consented reluctantly to Julian Radcliffe's plan.

In my opinion this is kidnapping,

this is a ransom you're paying.

I actually said, "No I'm not really interested in that

"but Julian if you think

"that's a good way to do it, do it."

And you will find that my signature's never

been on that document that actually gave

those paintings to them.

(tense music)

Julian Radcliffe flew to Geneva

to clinch the deal.

Radcliffe and his lawyer were joined

by the head of Sotheby's

Impressionist and Modern Art Department,

Michel Strauss.

It was a real thrill, asked to go along and,

you didn't know what was going to happen.

Was nothing going to happen?

Was the painting going to be produced?

How was it going to be produced?

It was just after lunch, about two o'clock

that we went to this lawyer's office

in one of the streets

in the center of Geneva.

The crucial meeting with Bernhard Vischer

was to be at the offices

of Julian Radcliffe's Swiss lawyer.

(footsteps clicking on pavement)

It didn't get off to a very good start.

Julian and I were shown upstairs

into a large waiting room.

(telephone ringing)

Vischer started ringing up

saying he was going to be late,

like two hours late, three hours late,

and everybody started thinking that,

this thing might never come off, it might all be a scam.

(telephone ringing)

I didn't know what was going on

between Julian and the lawyer.

The Sotheby's personnel and a number of other people

were thinking the whole of this was not worth doing.

I just had to wait, and wait, and wait.

And nothing for about an hour and a half.

It was quite tense because, according to Picasso

this was one of the greatest ever pictures

and it was the foundation of cubism.

So this was an extraordinarily important picture.

I kept on being told, just another five minutes,

he'd suddenly appear, his head around the door,

said we're almost there.

Just as the waiting became unbearable,

Dr. Vischer walked in with a briefcase bulging with papers.

Eventually he turns up, looking harassed,

wet, and sweaty. (laughs)

And he says, "Well I'm sorry

"I haven't got all the documents

"but I've got enough documents to hand over the Cezanne."

And there were about six documents to be signed,

he had three or four of them, but not all of them,

and I said, "That's fine, I'll sign these,

"you hand over the Cezanne."

(clock ticking)

And he then said, "Well excuse me,"

and he went out of the building.

Then Vischer made a call from his cell phone

and everyone went down to the courtyard.

We were standing underneath the trees

and he went down the street.

(cars honking)

And a car came along,

and handed the Cezanne out in a black plastic bin liner,

out of the window to him,

and he came scuttling back into the building.

The group then returned to the office.

The door opened, this lawyer appeared,

carrying a black plastic bin bag,

in the shape of a rectangular object

and he just pushed it at me and said, "Here it is."

So I was a bit surprised and,

the first idea was to kneel down on the floor

with the painting and I opened a corner with my finger,

I opened a corner of the black plastic.

He looked at it,

because I told him to say nothing at the time.

Then there was some white,

sort of padding underneath that,

which I also pulled aside,

because I was too impatient to unwrap the whole thing.

And as soon as I saw a small part,

I suppose a two inch square section of the painting,

I knew immediately from the colors, and the brush strokes,

that that was a Cezanne.

(tense music) (clock chiming)

And he said to me, "I only need look at one brush stroke,

"I know it's Cezanne."

Because I was so familiar with his work,

I mean, 40 years I've been looking and studying,

and selling his paintings, and that was it.

We had the real thing.

I went into another room with him,

he told me that it was

the right picture and I could be confident

in signing for it.

It's a real thrill, being asked to go along

and it was one of the most exciting things I've done.

I took all the packaging off

and lent the painting against the wall, surrounded by,

it's packing materials, and photographed it,

for my own, for a record of what I'd just seen,

what had just happened.

(inspiring music)

Radcliffe had pulled off

the biggest art recovery in modern art heist history.

But in his heart, he knew this was only half the story.

I interviewed Mr. Radcliffe soon after he struck that deal

and he said to me at the time that he didn't believe that

agreement that he signed really had much legal value.

He thought because the paintings had been stolen,

the agreement had been quote coerced unquote out of him.

(tense music)

Radcliffe was convinced

that whoever had held the Cezanne all those years,

knew more about the original robbery

than they were letting on.

Indeed their lawyer Dr. Vischer

had inadvertently divulged crucial information.

Vischer let slip one or two facts which I didn't know,

I had not given to him,

and could only have come from somebody

concerned with the theft or with the family.

He knew that the key was kept

under the frog by the front door.

We know that's how they got in.

There were a number of little things

like the frog and the key

which indicated to me that Vischer's clients knew a lot,

but I couldn't work out who they were.

(easy jazz music)

Meanwhile, the Cezanne

went on show in New York.

Michael Bakwin now had the painting back,

but he'd already decided

that there was no way he could provide

the right security for such a masterpiece.

Came to New York and they were very nice.

They let me spend a little time with it.

And still a tear comes to my eye

when I think about that beautiful painting.

It was a very, very emotional thing.

I'm still sad that I could not of ever afford

to keep it again but,

(peaceful piano music)

The Cezanne went up for auction

at Sotheby's in London.

The estimate was nine to 12 million,

that was the range that we thought it could fetch.

I remember the bidding

was rather slow to begin with.

The bidding started at about, six million pounds.

It crept over the low estimate.

It kept on going up and up, 100s of 1,000s, 500,000s.

They crept up to a high estimate.

Probably 12, 13 million pounds,

there were I think just two people in it.

Then quite briskly moved up to 18 million pounds.

Everyone was thrilled with excitement,

but we certainly never expected

to see a price like that.

Which I think was largely due to the quality of the painting

and it's rarity.

I remember the Art Loss Register person

who was on my right said, "Oh thank god,

"there might be a bonus

"and I can afford the new boiler." (laughs)

Bakwin's treasured Cezanne

was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder.

It's just like there's your old friend you're saying

goodbye to again, and that's very sad.

And I don't know how I'd feel

if I ever see it in a museum again. (laughs)

But I think it would be okay.

And I'm glad that it has a nice home.

I know where it is, and I'm very happy, so.

But Bakwin had to wait another five years

for any more news about his six missing paintings.

(tense music)

In early 2005, four of the six remaining paintings

suddenly turned up for sale at Sotheby's in London.

The two Soutines, the de Vlaminck, and the Utrillo.

In 2005, we're contacted by Sotheby's,

so I said to Sotheby's, "First of all,

"find out who is selling them."

Once again

it was Erie International Trading Company.

Julian Radcliffe became more convinced than ever

that the people he was dealing with had some link

to the original robbery.

I knew from that, that the people behind Erie

were almost definitely criminals

but we had to prove it

and we could then say, "We want to open the envelope

"in order to see who it is behind Erie."

Radcliffe's legal team now needed to convince

the court that he had entered into the original agreement

to retrieve the Cezanne under duress.

Our approach was to say, "Well the arbitration agreement

"was forced upon by Mr. Bakwin by duress,

"he had no choice if he wanted to recover

"one or more paintings, he had to sign that agreement."

The information in the envelope

was critical to the finding of duress.

The judge at the high court agreed,

and ordered that the envelope be opened.

The judge said, "By six o'clock, Herbert Smith

"were to make that envelope available to us."

That evening I went along to Herbert Smith,

the lawyers who'd held the envelope for six years.

We were shown to a room, very much like this one,

by the solicitor who disappeared.

Then came back with, it wasn't really an envelope,

it was like a pack.

In fact, Radcliffe thought

he knew from his own research

who was behind Erie International.

But would he be proved right?

It was quite dramatic.

We had no idea what was in this envelope,

I mean, possibly there was nothing.

I had made a joke,

I hope the rats hadn't eaten the contents.

Or there could just be a piece of paper saying

Mickey Mouse or something, stupid like that.

Quite a possibility that when you open the envelope

you find a note in it saying, "Take a running jump,"

(laughs) or something of that sort.

So we proceeded to open this envelope

and it was really covered

in various layers of plastic sheets,

until we reached some sort of, there were two postcards,

basically stuck to one another.

I think they were from Australia.

And we looked inside the two postcards,

which were sort of, stuck together with tape,

and we couldn't see anything inside,

so we thought, "That was it, that's it.

"There's nothing in there, it was a con."

Eventually we found that stuck to one of the postcards,

was yet another piece of paper and behind that

another piece of paper and until at the very end we found

the actual declaration.

I already had the signature in my left hand

and as we opened the document...

It was the same signature.

There was the same signature on my right hand.

Someone called Robert Mardirosian.

(clock chiming)

I thought QED. (laughs)

You can take a seat please.

So Robert Mardirosian,

the defense lawyer nearly 30 years earlier

for the prime suspect, David Colvin

had the paintings all along.

How could that of happened?

In Boston, it wasn't long before the media tracked down

Robert Mardirosian to get his side of the story.

Made a phone call 8:30 in the morning

and Bob was asleep,

his wife answers the phone and I heard her whisper,

"Bob it's Steve Kurkjein from The Boston Globe."

And I said, "Hi Steve how you doing?

"Fine, Bob your name came up in court as you probably know.

"I know what's going to happen today Steve."

And I said to him,

"Bob, this is bad, this really bad Bob."

And he said, "What can I do Steve?"

And I said, "You can tell me,

"how you got possession of the paintings,

"what happened here?"

[Robert Voiceover] Well I was representing a fellow--

Robert Mardirosian

began to tell Steve Kurkjein

his version of how he came by the paintings

and why he'd hung onto them for so long.

It went for about an hour and that's when he told me

exactly how he'd gotten possession of the paintings,

how David Colvin had walked into his office,

probably less than two months after the theft.

(easy jazz music)

The theft in millions of dollars

in artwork form a Stockbridge man,

Michael Bakwin, 28 years ago--

As well as talking to The Boston Globe,

Mardirosian also went on local radio.

Joining us on the line right now,

is Robert Mardirosian, good morning Mr. Mardirosian,

and thanks very much for speaking with us.

That's okay.

Tell us how you came into

possession of the pictures.

Well I was representing a fellow

named Colvin who apparently took these paintings

but I was representing him on another case

in the federal court, came into my office to talk with me

about the case we were going in on the next morning.

Mardirosian said Colvin

was carrying a large bag.

In my mind, it's a black plastic bag that's,

Bob Mardirosian says, no idea what's in the plastic bag.

By the time he came in he had this bag

full of paintings.

And he asked Colvin what's in the plastic bag,

Colvin says, "Oh I got a bunch of stolen paintings,

"I'm bringing them down to Miami,

"and I'm gonna fence 'em."

And he's telling me

he's already sold them or fenced them, in Florida.

I told him David, "If you get caught

"with stolen paintings,

"it's gonna make my defense of you on this

"gun charge that much more difficult."

And I said to him,

"You've got this case going here, that we're involved in."

If you get caught

it's really gonna hurt your case

that I'm defending you on.

You know you might get caught,

it's gonna basically telling him,

you know, you shouldn't be doing that.

And that's his only conversation

that he has with Colvin about the paintings.

And then he didn't have a place

to sleep that night.

So I had another office in another building.

And there was an attic in the building.

And there was a little room up there.

And so he went up there.

Colvin brought the bag with him, and that was the last

he saw of the bag, that's the last he saw of the paintings.

Next day we went in.

We had our court thing.

Maybe six months after I saw him, he'd been shot.

(gun firing)

And he's dead? He's dead okay.

About a year later

I go up into this attic

because there were some pigeons and stuff up there,

then I see this bag of paintings.

He said, "I knew right away

"without even opening it

"that's Colvin's plastic bag.

"He had left them here."

And opened it up, and sure enough, there were the paintings.

Well the first thought that comes to me is

you know I can return these paintings

and get a reward for it.

That's very common.

That's very normal and there's no problem with that.

He didn't know if the paintings had been insured,

and whether or not Mr. Bakwin had recovered

the insurance money and if in fact the paintings belonged

to the insurance company.

(upbeat jazz music)

So Mardirosian decided to move the paintings

around the world, supposedly for safe keeping.

He said he hoped to find a way of returning them

to Michael Bakwin for a finder's fee,

say 10% of their value.

First of all, he shipped the paintings out of America

to Europe by container.

The haul of paintings,

probably arrived first in the Mediterranean,

possibly Monaco, famously called,

"A sunny place for shady people."

They probably stayed here in southern Europe

until they were moved onto their final resting place,

over the Alps into Switzerland and into a bank vault.

They never went near Russia.

The whole Russian negotiating tactic

was to make it difficult for us to trace

and maybe we'd be too frightened,

to try and trace in Russia which was then a cowboy country,

to try and trace

who the people really were behind this.

Difficult questions now arose

for Robert Mardirosian.

Mr. Mardirosian,

why didn't you just return the paintings

instead of trying to profit from it?

I mean, these were stolen artworks.

Well first of all,

I didn't know who had ownership of them

and I wanted to get a reward for them.

Isn't that extortion?

No, no I don't think it is.

Well look if that's the story, that's what it is.

Those things could of been sold or fenced, a 100 times--

Do you regret taking all this time?

Obviously there are

a lot of things I should of done,

I didn't do.

But the main thing is where did it go, where did it end up?

They were on their way to Florida some place,

if it were not for me, Bob Mardirosian,

Bakwin would not of had that particular painting back

and he would be out 30 million dollars.

(upbeat jazz music)

The irony is, that Robert Mardirosian

gave up the law years ago, to become a painter and sculptor.

He's now working under the name Romard

and thought to be living in the south of France.

The FBI are still interested in his role

in the disappearance of the paintings,

nearly 30 years ago.

And Michael Bakwin and his advisors,

still have some scores to settle.

He is to pay me my expenses,

which have been quite substantial,

and three million dollars.

Julian is again, very confidently

that we will get quite

a bit of this, I am not.

(clock ticking)

The lesson that will go out to everybody is,

it doesn't matter whether you steal on pictures

for 10 years or 30 years,

if you try and sell stolen pictures,

you will be caught,

and therefore it's not worth stealing pictures.

In the summer of 2006,

four of Michael Bakwin's paintings

were still being held by Sotheby's in London

awaiting a court order to release them

to the rightful owner.

And two, are still missing.

According to Michael Bakwin who as young man,

dreamed of owning a very particular painting by Cezanne,

there is a moral to this 30 year long tale.

I no longer am that much interested in possessions,

I know my second youngest daughter always used to think

that she liked the best about me is that

I could afford a Mercedes but never had one.

I didn't care about that kind of thing very much.

Unless I thought it was

the most beautiful thing in the world to have

flew around with.

And didn't care that much but they're too damn expensive,

just like these paintings are too damn expensive.

(suspenseful music)