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In the early hours of March 18, 1990, 13 works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Security guards admitted two men posing as policemen responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves bound the guards and looted the museum over the next hour. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum offers a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution. The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and were intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection. Among them was The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by Johannes Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world. Other paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Govert Flinck were stolen, along with a relatively valueless eagle finial and Chinese gu. Experts were puzzled by the choice of artwork, as more valuable works were left untouched. The FBI believes that the robbery was planned by a criminal gang. The case lacks strong physical evidence, and the FBI has largely depended on interrogations, undercover informants, and sting operations to collect information. One theory holds that gangster Bobby Donati organized the heist to negotiate for his caporegime's release from prison; Donati was murdered one year after the robbery. Other accounts suggest that the paintings were stolen by a gang in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, although these suspects deny involvement despite the fact that a sting operation resulted in several prison sentences. All have denied any knowledge or have provided leads that proved fruitless, despite the offer of reward money and reduced or canceled prison sentences if they had disclosed information leading to recovery of the artworks.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was constructed under the guidance of art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) to house her personal art collection. The museum opened to the public in 1903, and Gardner continued to expand the collection and arrange it until she died in 1924. She left the museum with a $3.6 million endowment (equivalent to about $68 million today), and her will stipulated that the arrangement of the artwork should not be altered and that no items were to be sold from or purchased into the collection. The security director at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston also suggested security upgrades to the museum.

In 2015, the FBI released a security video from the museum on the night before the theft showing Abath admitting an unidentified man into the museum to converse at the security desk.

In 1982, when undercover FBI agents were investigating Royce and his associates for an unrelated art theft, they learned of their interest in robbing the Gardner Museum and warned the museum of the gang's plan.

When the FBI brought Turner in for questioning, they told him they had information that he participated in the Gardner robbery, and that if he returned the paintings they would let him go.

His involvement in the Gardner theft was suspected after the New England art thief Myles J. Connor had worked with Donati in past art heists and claimed the two cased the Gardner Museum where Donati took interest in the finial. One night in August 1997, Youngworth called Mashberg and told him he had proof he could return the Gardner paintings under the right conditions. In 2014, investigative reporter Stephen Kurkjian wrote to gangster Vincent Ferrara, Donati's superior during the gang war, inquiring if he had information about the Gardner theft. Three months later, Ferrara heard news about the Gardner theft, after which Donati visited him again and confirmed to Ferrara that he was involved in the robbery.

Quick Facts

• The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was constructed under the guidance of art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) to house her personal art collection.
• The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and were intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection.
• In 1982, when undercover FBI agents were investigating Royce and his associates for an unrelated art theft, they learned of their interest in robbing the Gardner Museum and warned the museum of the gang's plan.
• Security guards admitted two men posing as policemen responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves bound the guards and looted the museum over the next hour.
• In 2015, the FBI released a security video from the museum on the night before the theft showing Abath admitting an unidentified man into the museum to converse at the security desk.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.