The gang that preyed on America’s small museums
SCRANTON, PA. >> The first burglary was in 1999 at Keystone College in Factoryville, Pa. One in the gang, authorities said, sneaked onto the campus, smashed some glass display cases and walked off with memorabilia, including a baseball jersey once worn by Christy Mathewson, a legendary pitcher.
The Everhart Museum in Scranton was next, six years later. An Andy Warhol silkscreen print and a painting attributed to Jackson Pollock were taken. Then the pace picked up.
The Space Farms: Zoo & Museum. The Lackawanna Historical Society. Ringwood Manor. The Sterling Hill Mining Museum. The United States Golf Association Museum and Library. The list goes on.
Over the course of almost two decades, the crew showed up at 12 small, lowprofile museums that often lacked elaborate security systems, stripping them of cherished items, including treasured heirlooms from America’s sporting past, authorities say.
Just a partial list includes the 1903 Belmont Stakes trophy, taken from the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. From the International Boxing Hall of Fame, middleweight Tony Zale’s 1941 and 1948 championship belts. From the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, seven of Berra’s championship rings, his 1954 and 1955 MVP plaques, and nine of his 10 World Series rings.
The only Berra World Series ring not stolen was the one he wore on his finger.
“These kinds of artifacts tell people the story of who we are, and they connect us to the past in a way that really nothing else can,” said Eve Schaenen, executive director of the Berra museum. “And now they’re gone.”
In the fall, four men charged with taking some part in the burglaries are scheduled to go on trial in Pennsylvania, where they live. Another five people have pleaded guilty. All nine, investigators say, avoided arrest for some portion of 19 years as museum directors across five states woke up to find smashed glass and things missing.
With so many heists going unsolved for so many
Nicholas Dombek, who authorities have charged in the museum burglaries.
years, one might imagine the thieves as some sort of a world- savvy, blueprintstudying, technoliterate crew so often seen in movies. But in court records and interviews, they come across as more 7- Eleven than Ocean’s Eleven.
Prepared? Yes. Sophisticated? No.
Sometimes they just hit houses. One favorite burglary tool was an ax, according to court records. They drove cross- country to rob the Roger Maris Museum in North Dakota, rather than take a plane.
“These guys were not world- class criminals,” said Michael Wisneski, an official with the Everhart museum who described the thieves as schlubby. “They were operating out of the North Pocono School District.”
Most upsetting to many
Thomas Trotta, who is identified in court papers as the person who personally entered the museums and stole items.
people is how little care was shown for the objects that were taken. A Jasper Cropsey painting from 1871 was torched. The crew did not even try to sell some of the high- profile sports memorabilia. Instead, gold and silver items such as Berra’s rings, Maris’ MVP plaque and the Belmont Stakes trophy were melted down and hocked as raw metals, according to court papers.
One of those arrested is accused of using some of the stolen gems to make himself a scepter.
“They could have done a smash and grab at a strip mall jewelry store and come away with more gold,” said Lindsay Berra, the granddaughter of Yogi.
When the accused crew members were finally named
A handout photo shows the building housing the Lackawanna Historial Society in Scranton, Pa. The society’s museum lost a Tiffany lamp in a 2010 burglary.
in an indictment in June, federal prosecutors laid out the inventory of what had been taken. It included stolen paintings, at least five 19th- century firearms, a Tiffany lamp, and sports memorabilia that included more than 30 golf and horse- racing trophies. Prosecutors valued the lot at $ 4 million. Most of the objects have not been recovered.
“This was a group of dishonest people that saw easy marks,” said William Kroth, executive director of the Sterling Hill Mining Museum. He called them “lowlife grifters.”
Michael Wisneski of the Everhart Museum remembers the morning in 2005 when he woke up and turned on the local television news. To his surprise, the reporters were in the parking lot of
his museum, talking about a break- in.
When he arrived at the building, he found the back door smashed in, the Warhol and Pollock gone.
“It felt like somebody broke into your house,” he said. “It was a violation of trust or of security.”
According to authorities, Thomas Trotta, 48, of Moscow, Pennsylvania, had used a ladder to smash the door of the museum.
Of the nine people later arrested, Trotta had been the one relied on to venture into the museums to take things, according to court papers. But he was helped in meaningful ways, investigators say, by Nicholas Dombek, 53, who has known Trotta since they were teenagers. After Trotta was arrested, he accused Dombek of being the ringleader, according to court papers. But Dombek’s lawyer, Ernest Preate Jr., said in an interview that Trotta was the ringleader, and he described his client as a handyman, not a mastermind, who did not even operate a computer.
Trotta’s lawyer, Joseph D’andrea, declined to comment.
In an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Trotta said that he had grown up loving baseball and that part of why he stole sports memorabilia was to “touch history.” He wore Mathewson’s jersey and tried on Berra’s rings after stealing the objects, he said.
Dombek, who has pleaded not guilty, is from Thornhurst, a rural patch of Pennsylvania, where he lives on a street that carries his family name. His father and his brother were science teachers, but Dombek never graduated from high school, and in a 2019 court hearing, he testified that he was in financial straits and was two months behind on his mortgage.
Most of the targeted museums were in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. Each facility was studied before a break- in to determine access, security measures and what looked good to steal, investigators said in court papers. During one scouting trip, Dombek tested the thickness of a display case at the golf museum in New Jersey by scratching the glass with a coin, the papers said.
Trotta would sometimes wear a disguise, dressing as a firefighter when they stole from the Roger Maris museum, and as a Hasidic Jew when they went to break in to the Harvard Mineralogical & Geological Museum, the indictment said. ( The theft was called off because a particular diamond they hoped to steal was no longer on display.)
The other accomplices are accused of playing a variety of roles: sometimes as getaway drivers, sometimes as transporters of stolen materials after the burglary.
At the Berra museum, the thieves cut the glass to gain entry, and they were able to elude security cameras during one of the larger hauls, according to museum staff.
“They knew exactly where to break in,” Schaenen said. “They had a method to it.”