MYSTERY OF LATE IT’S MILLIONAIRE’S TREASURE TROVE
Masterpiece ‘hidden inside a Maserati’ was among priceless heirlooms that vanished from Irish mansion
BY THE lawyer in charge of the estate of the late American heiress Anne Bullitt has revealed how he was once told a missing Picasso from her Irish stately home was hidden in the back of a Maserati car.
US attorney Robert M Pennoyer, the personal representative of the eccentric racing breeder, revealed his efforts to retrieve her hugely valuable personal effects after she sold her estate, Palmerstown House, to Jim Mansfield in the late 1990s.
The contents of the Kildare estate had included two Picasso paintings and a pair of 18th century pistols once owned by George Washington.
His long-running legal wrangle to access her belongings as her health failed in a nearby nursing home is documented in the new book, Cocaine Cowboys, by Nicola Tallant.
It catalogues the deadly rise of Ireland’s drug lords and some of the more dramatic episodes among the hugely wealthy cartels.
The saga which went through the Irish courts in the 2000s captures the heady, hedonistic days of sports cars and Picasso prints of property tycoon Jim Mansfield and his son, Jimmy Junior, before their empire fell apart.
Mansfield Jnr walked free from Portlaoise prison in March after serving 13 months of an 18-month sentence for perverting the course of justice.
The Special Criminal Court acquitted Mansfield Jnr of conspiring with others to have the Citywest hotel’s former head of security Martin Byrne kidnapped by a criminal gang on June 19, 2015, but convicted him of directing that footage be destroyed.
The book recalls how it was 2009 before the High Court finally heard that the case over the estate had been settled and representatives of the William C Bullitt Foundation could finally inspect the mansion.
Mr Pennoyer made his way to Palmerstown House, now home to the Mansfield clan, and spent 11 hours trying to identify his client’s possessions but nobody could find the Head of a Young Man or White Clown by Picasso.
One had been given to William Bullitt by the artist himself after Bullitt complained that he didn’t like his Cubist paintings.
The book detailed how a member of the Bullitt committee was told that the Picasso had been placed in the boot of a Maserati car and hidden during one visit.
Pennoyer said: “I remember we went down to the house and Mansfield Snr was there. He was a thug.
It took so long to get in that we had no idea what should have been there
“His son had a Maserati car parked outside. It had taken so long to get in we had no idea what should have been there or what was once there.
“But we never found the Picassos or the George Washington guns.
“They were the most important and valuable things ever in the collection but they never showed up.
“I think the politicians were afraid of him and the police were afraid of him. Everyone seemed to be afraid of him.” As an only child, the heiress was the sole beneficiary of the vast fortune of her father, the late William C Bullitt Jnr, America’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union. In the book, Pennoyer recalls 64-year-old Anne Bullitt arriving in his New York office in 1988 to write her will. “She wasn’t talking to any of her family at that point and seemed to have no
We never found the Picassos or the George Washington guns
friends,” he said in Cocaine Cowboys.
“She asked me to write the will and to be the executor. I explained to her that it was normal to name a member of the family but she was insistent that she wanted me to take on the role.
“She was living in Ireland and she would come back to New York every few years.”
A love of horses had brought the heiress and her father to Ireland with Palmerstown House purchased by him for €58,000 so she could pursue a career as a breeder and trainer.
After decades of producing champion thoroughbreds, she relinquished her licences in the 1990s and became
reclusive. As her health deteriorated, her lawyers agreed a deal for the sale of the property for over €8million but were blindsided when she did her own deal to sell the property to the millionaire businessman Jim Mansfield Snr in 1998 for €10m.
The book, which tells the story of Ireland’s love affair with cocaine, reveals how Mansfield and his son Jimmy Jnr had befriended Anne and were among the very few visitors she invited into her home.
It was eventually ruled that she was incapable of managing her affairs and she was made a ward of court in February 2000 with the sale of the property and its contents put on ice.
Pennoyer had repeatedly asked Anne to have an inventory of the contents drawn up but she’d refused, while Mansfield Snr insisted that his purchase included everything in it.
Palmerstown House was described as a treasure trove of Anne and her father’s incredible globe-trotting lifestyle, which had brought them into the orbit of famous artists, historical figures and collectors.
Pennoyer knew that the belongings of the high society heiress were likely worth at least the sale price again.
While the estate contained boxes of diplomatic paper, antique furniture, collections of couture clothes and expensive jewellery, her legal team were most concerned with locating the two Picassos.
More of historical interest were the 18th century guns given by George Washington to the Marquis de Lafayette for his services after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.
In an interview given by William Bullitt before his death, he had remarked the pistols were on display on a mantelpiece in his daughter’s bedroom at Palmerstown House.
The book recalls how Mansfield Snr relinquished some of the contents of the house, in particular the papers stored in the basement. Negotiations continued about the furniture, the paintings and other items in the house, while Jimmy Jnr continued to live in the estate and Anne Bullitt’s health continued to fail.
Pennoyer remarked: “There was no way of knowing what was there and what might have been taken or sold as all that was going on.”