Clock ticks down on US$10 mln art reward deadline
BOSTON: It’s the largest property crime in US history: the threedecadeold theft of Rembrandt and Vermeer masterpieces from a Boston museum by thieves disguised as police officers in the dead of night.
But as the clock ticks toward midnight on New Year’s Eve, one detective sits patiently by the telephone and computer screen: could the next call or email finally lead to their recovery and the payout of a US$ 10 million reward?
“It’s hard to be confident. I’m very hopeful,” said Anthony Amore, director of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, who worked previously for Homeland Security and likens his role to that of a private detective.
“One hundred per cent of our focus is following up on leads we have received.”
In May, the museum temporarily doubled to 10 million a longstanding reward for information leading to the recovery of all 13 works in good condition, hoping that a deadline of midnight on Dec 31, 2017 would concentrate minds.
It is, in the words of the museum, the ‘ biggest private reward ever offered’ for stolen property, and backed by the institution and its board of directors.
In the final countdown to the deadline, US press attention sparked an uptick in calls.
In perhaps the world’s biggest unsolved art theft, the thieves walked into the museum in the early hours of March 18, 1990 and stole 13 works of art in 81 minutes, after handcuffing and tying up two security guards in the basement.
The stolen art includes three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, and five sketches and watercolors by Degas, together estimated to be worth more than half a billion dollars.
Last month’s record- breaking auction of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ for US$ 450 million in New York has probably made the missing masterpieces only more valuable.
Investigators worked tirelessly, but the artwork has never been recovered. — AFP