THIRTY-four years have passed since two thieves disguised as police officers stole more than $500 million worth of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in a brazen heist that remains unsolved.
But a former girlfriend of one of the lead suspects, Brian McDevitt, claimed to The U.S. Sun that the serial conman confessed to masterminding the scheme before he fled the country and even asked her to lie to the FBI for him.
The Gardner Museum heist unfolded in the early hours of March 18, 1990, following a day of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the heart of Boston.
Two thieves dressed as local cops talked their way into the museum at 1:20 am after knocking on a side door and informing an overnight security guard that there had been a report of a disturbance inside.
Against the museum’s strict policies, the guard, Rick Abath, let the two men inside without obtaining permission from a supervisor first.
The thieves approached his desk and asked him to summon anyone else present inside the museum at once.
Abath confirmed that another security guard, Randy Hestand, was also on duty and called him to the security desk as instructed.
Abath and Hestand were both quickly handcuffed and blindfolded with duct tape before being escorted to separate areas in the museum’s basement.
The two thieves moved swiftly through the museum and were first captured on motion sensors in the Dutch Room at 1:48 am.
One of the men smashed a bleeping device installed to warn tourists that they were too close to the art and then they began ripping paintings from the wall.
Two of Rembrandt’s renowned paintings were taken first: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee – his only seascape – and A Lady and Gentlemen in Black.
The priceless works were thrown down on the marble floor and their canvases haphazardly cut out of their frames with a blade.
The thieves also removed a large Rembrandt self-portrait from the wall, however, that painting would mysteriously be left behind, still in its frame and leaning against a cabinet.
Instead, two of Rembrandt’s postage stamp-sized etchings were taken, along with Landscape With an Obelisk by Govert Flinck, and The Concert by Johannes Vermeer.
The Concert – one of only 36 known works of Vermeer – is valued at over $250 million and remains the most valuable object ever stolen.
In total, the heist would last 81 minutes.
Before leaving, the men checked on the two guards to ensure they were alright and broke into the security director’s office to steal all the surveillance footage.
By 2:45 am, the men had exited the museum through the same side door they entered and were seen fleeing the area in a hatchback.
MILLION-DOLLAR BURGLARY
Thirteen pieces were stolen from the museum in total.
Among the other stolen items were five works of the French impressionist Edgar Degas, Chez Tortoni by Edouard Manet, a relatively valueless eagle flag topper, and an equally valueless Chinese Gu.
The estimated value of the missing artwork was first believed to be in the region of $200 million.
However, in the late 2000s, various art dealers suggested the haul was actually likely more worth somewhere in the region of $500 to $600 million, possibly even more today.
The only way that you can get those paintings for your collection is that you pay somebody to go in and steal them. I mean, that’s what, that’s what I used to do.
Brian McDevitt
The eclectic mix of artwork snatched by the thieves has long puzzled investigators.
While some of the art is incredibly valuable, the thieves also passed up on other far more valuable works, including those by Raphael, Botticelli, and Michelangelo.
The thieves also never entered the museum’s third floor where Titan’s The Rape of Europa hung, which is considered one of the most influential Renaissance paintings and one of the country’s most precious works.
The odd choices made by the thieves and the ruthless way in which they cut the pieces from their frames led police to believe the men were amateur opportunists, rather than experts who had been commissioned to steal specific pieces.
BRIAN MCDEVITT: A COMPELLING SUSPECT
The Gardner Museum heist was and is the largest art theft in history.
A huge, multi-agency investigation spawned in the wake of the robbery, and an extensive list of suspects – from petty thieves to career burglars and infamous mobsters– was compiled by detectives.
One name high on the list was Brian McDevitt, a college dropout conman who masqueraded as a Hollywood hotshot and had attempted an incredibly similar caper to the Gardner case in New York a decade earlier.
The museum at the center of McDevitt’s foiled scheme was The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, which modeled itself on the Gardner Museum.
Established by paper fortune heiress Charlotte Pruyn Hyde in 1952, the museum houses its creators’ collection of Old Masters, including works by Sandro Botticelli, Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
McDevitt and an accomplice, Michael B. Morey, put together a plan to rob the museum on Christmas Eve 1980.
The two men hijacked a Federal Express van, knocked out the driver with ether, and donned the courier company’s uniforms.
They carried handcuffs and duct tape to bind the guards and tools to cut the paintings from their frames.
McDevitt and Morey were planning on emptying the museum and fencing the art in southern Florida, before leaving the country to retire young and rich.
However, one thing the two men failed to account for was holiday rush-hour traffic.
They became stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic and failed to arrive at the museum before it closed at 8 pm.
The driver of the FedEx truck eventually came to and later identified McDevitt as one of the would-be art thieves.
He was convicted of attempted robbery and sentenced to time behind bars.
Glaring similarities between McDevitt’s foiled scheme and the Gardner heist landed him high on the list of promising suspects.
Almost immediately after the Gardner Museum was robbed, McDevitt moved to California where he tried to pass himself off as an award-winning freelance screenwriter and secured a position in the Writers Guild, before being thrown out when his credentials were questioned.
Dating him at the time was Stéphanie Rabinowitz, who was then in her early 20s and trying to forge a career in the world of animation.
The pair met eight months before the heist, in July 1989, with McDevitt wooing Rabinowitz at a local comedy club, introducing himself as a writer on The Wonder Years and for Paramount and Columbia.
“He was very believable and charming,” Stéphanie told The U.S. Sun.
“Not for the longest time [did I suspect something was off]. We went on regular dates, we did a lot of activities together, he took me to Jamaica […] it just seemed like a normal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship and I had no reason to doubt him.
“The way he spoke was very clever. So I didn’t think anything out of it, I didn’t think anything was wrong or weird about him.”
‘I NEED AN ALIBI’
Stéphanie kept a detailed diary at the time of her relationship with McDevitt, excerpts from which she shared with The U.S. Sun.
In the days before the Gardner Heist, Stéphanie wrote that she and McDevitt were experiencing difficulties in their relationship, describing him as hostile, mean, and a little aggressive – otherwise not his usual charming self.
On March 15, McDevitt informed Stéphanie that he had to go to New York for a few days to attend the Writers Guild of America Awards.
She wouldn’t hear from him again until late on March 18 – hours after the Gardner heist, and by then she said he was calmer and appeared to be himself again.
Within a few months, McDevitt suddenly announced to Stéphanie that he was going to Los Angeles and wanted her to come with him.
She declined but the pair stayed in touch.
McDevitt hastily packed up his apartment, rented a U-Haul, and drove himself from Boston to Los Angeles, setting off in the middle of the night.
Upon arriving in Tinsel Town, McDevitt touted himself as a well-to-do television and film writer and quickly struck up a friendship with a writer named Ben Pollack.
But within six months of meeting McDevitt, Pollack sensed something amiss with the larger-than-life character and hired a private detective to dig into his past.
Pollack soon discovered that nothing McDevitt had told him was true. After Pollack confronted him, McDevitt commenced a campaign of harassment that lasted weeks, calling him several times a day — sometimes a hundred times or more – just to hang up whenever he answered.
By the summer of 1992, McDevitt was facing criminal charges for his harassment of Pollack and was on the verge of being dismissed from the Writers Guild.
Then he was named in a report in The New York Times as one of the prime suspects in the Gardner case.
In the article, dated June 2, 2002, it was revealed McDevitt had been questioned by the FBI, photographed, and asked to submit fingerprints “some months ago.”
He denied any involvement in the crime to the Times and doubled down on his claims of innocence on national TV when quizzed by a reporter the following year.
“This was clearly an operation that somebody paid for,” McDevitt told CBS’ 60 Minutes in 1993.
“The only way that you can get those paintings for your collection is that you pay somebody to go in and steal them. I mean, that’s what, that’s what I used to do.”
[He asked me] If I would tell the FBI that he was with me, or, actually, the first thing he said to me was, there’s a good chance the FBI may be contacting you.
Stéphanie Rabinowitz
But there was a problem: He didn’t have a concrete alibi for the day of the heist to help better articulate his claims of innocence.
Around the time the Times’ article was published, Stéphanie, who had also recently relocated to California, claims McDevitt asked her to provide investigators with a false alibi on his behalf.
“He asked me on two different occasions if I would be his alibi for that evening that the Gardner heist happened,” she claimed.
“[He asked me] if I would tell the FBI that he was with me, or, actually, the first thing he said to me was, ‘There’s a good chance the FBI may be contacting you.’
“And I thought that was weird, why would the FBI contact me?
“But he asked me twice to be his alibi and he got really mad when I said I wouldn’t do it.
“You could tell he was fuming […] But I wasn’t going to lie to the FBI.”
A STARTLING ‘CONFESSION’
The last time Stéphanie saw McDevitt was at a wrap party for a show she was working on in Los Angeles on July 25, 1992.
She wasn’t expecting McDevitt to be at the party and had no idea who invited him.
Stéphanie recounted walking up a staircase to see McDevitt clutching a gin and tonic.
The pair reacquainted themselves before McDevitt allegedly made a stunning confession: He had been paid $300,000 to rob the Gardner Museum in 1990 and he needed to leave the country immediately because the feds were breathing down his neck.
“He told me he’d been paid by this man – and I’m pretty sure he blurted the man’s name out like I should’ve known who he was – and he said the man paid him $300,000 to rob the museum and that he’d managed to do it,” claimed Stéphanie.
“He told me, ‘I’ve got the money, and I’m going to move to South America. And I would love you to come with me. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.’
“It sounded tempting […] but I didn’t go,” she continued.
“My gut instinct told me he was involved in this, because why else would he confess something like that?
“Why would somebody who is innocent make up all this crazy stuff and tell me the FBI is coming to see me?”
Stéphanie was interviewed twice by the FBI: once in 1992 and again 12 years later, in 2004, when she shared excerpts from her diary with investigators for the first time.
The FBI questioned McDevitt twice and he also testified before a grand jury in August 1993.
The following year, his attorney, Thomas E. Beatrice, reiterated his client’s claims of innocence but revealed he’d declined to take a polygraph test.
“The decision was made because what we know about the investigation, it was an unnecessary risk to take,” Beatrice told the Times.
“There was a slight chance of error.”
He added he was unsure whether McDevitt remained under scrutiny, but conceded that “since the book is not closed on the theft, the book is not closed on Brian.”
He said that the last he knew, McDevitt was in California working on two screenplays, one about a jewel theft, the other on an art theft from a private collection.
CRIME-SYNDICATE LINKS?
Shortly after testifying in front of the grand jury, McDevitt fled south of the border, first moving to Brazil.
He reportedly died in 2004 from kidney failure, but many who knew him, including Stéphanie, have previously stated their belief he may’ve faked his death.
Regardless of his fate, Stéphanie is convinced he masterminded the Gardner Museum heist.
Sharing her assertions is independent investigator Eric Ulis, who believes McDevitt carried out the infamous robbery with the help of a close associate, Steve Donahue, who has also long since died.
Ulis believes the two men carried out the heist in association with a Jamaica-based crime syndicate that masterminded a similar heist in October 1987 at the Bettona Museum, near Perugia, Italy, where 28 paintings were stolen.
The works were recovered on April 26, 1990, when cops raided a villa in St. Catherine.
The Italian police claimed at the time to know who carried out the theft but were unable to pursue charges against the suspects because they had since fled the country and were believed to be in South America.
The Italian works were seized mere weeks after the Gardner heist, and Ulis believes the unnamed suspects in that case may have been McDevitt’s prospective buyers for the Gardner art.
He explained, “In December 1989, Brian took Stéphanie to Jamaica, and it’s in Jamaica where she was first introduced to some of his friends, including Steve Donahue.
“I believe it’s during this trip that the idea popped into Brian’s head to attempt to steal some art again. Stéphanie said the trip was primarily for pleasure but she remembers some business aspects to it as well.
“There was an international drug ring based out of Jamaica at that time who had dealings with South America […] and it’s my understanding the ring would use high-dollar art as collateral in deals.
“So I believe Brian had this idea in his mind that he was going to steal this art from the museum and sell it to this drug ring to use as collateral and make some money.”
Fast forward to March 1990, and Stéphanie’s journal entries describe McDevitt as elusive, with her complaining that he’s no longer contacting her as often as he once did.
However, on March 5, an entry in her diary suggests she met up with McDevitt and Donahue, who was in town visiting, placing the pair together in Boston just 13 days before the heist.
Ulis believes the two men carried out the Gardner heist on March 18 without a hitch, but hit a snag weeks later when the Jamaica-based crime syndicate was snared.
“Brian’s prospective customer, just 39 days after the heist took place, was no longer in business,” he said.
Around this time, Stéphanie also wrote in her journal that McDevitt was experiencing “problems at work” and his mood had grown irritable once again.
“So Brian had a very big problem,” theorized Ulis.
“Not only was the art he had taken too hot to handle, he also couldn’t sell it immediately because his customer no longer existed.
“And what I believe happened is that Brian panicked.”
‘MCDEVITT DID IT’
Ulis believes McDevitt smuggled the stolen art to California when he left his Boston apartment in the middle of the night.
Knowing the FBI was breathing down his neck, Ulis says it’s likely that McDevitt decided to burn the art and dispose of the flag topper and Chinese vase.
Ulis theorized that McDevitt burned the art in a large fireplace at his rented home in the Hollywood Hills.
He recently visited the property with Stéphanie and collected samples from an ash pit that’s not believed to have been cleaned since McDevitt moved out.
Early tests of the sample have proved inconclusive but Ulis plans to conduct more forensic tests soon.
Ulis said had the artwork not been destroyed, it would’ve almost certainly turned up by now.
There is still a $10 million no-questions-asked reward out for the collection’s safe return and the statute of limitations for theft in the heist has long since passed.
“I think Brian was in over his head,” said Ulis.
“The fact that nothing has ever come back indicates to me that [the art] just isn’t around anymore.
“Brian and Steve are dead and gone and have been gone for a long time, so whatever happened they took that to the grave.
“But that’s not entirely accurate, because Brian literally confessed to Stéphanie.
“I think he gave her a partially bulls**t version of the story because he wasn’t paid by anyone, but I think it’s accurate that he stole the art.”
To further evidence his theory, Ulis pointed to a podcast interview one of the guards at the Gardner Museum, Randy Hestand, gave to WBUR’s Last Seen in 2018, in which he said he was 90-95% sure McDevitt was one of the culprits.
The FBI has been contacted for comment.
THE $10M QUESTION
The Gardner Museum heist is still subject to an active and ongoing investigation.
Anthony Amore, the museum’s security director, has been working with the bureau to crack the case for the last 18 years.
During that time, he said he and the FBI have received numerous tips from members of the public with potential sightings of the two most famous stolen paintings, The Concert and The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
But investigators are hoping to draw the public’s attention to some of the lesser-known works, which might hold the keys to finally cracking the case.
“We’re asking the public to refamiliarize themselves with all 13 stolen artworks, not just the most iconic ones,” said Kristen Setera, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Boston office in a statement to the Boston Globe.
“The FBI remains committed to following all viable leads in an effort to return these pieces to the museum.”
In 2013, the FBI said it believed it knew who was behind the theft but did not reveal any names.
The only information shared was that the two men were local to Boston and had both since died.
Authorities said they believed some of the artwork changed hands through organized crime circles while moving from Boston to Connecticut to Philadelphia, where the trail went cold around 2003.
In his statement to the Globe on the heist’s anniversary, Amore took the opportunity to remind the public of the huge reward on offer and urged anyone with information about the heist to come forward.
“We have a $10 million check we’re dying to write,” Amore said.