Robert Gentile shrugs off Gardner Museum heist speculation

Robert Gentile, a Connecticut man long suspected by federal authorities of having organized crime involvement, appears to shrug off his speculated role in the famed Isabella Gardner Museum heist in a recent television interview.

In the interview with WTNH’s Dennis House at his Manchester home, Gentile said, “They can say what they want. I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.”

Gentile, now in his 80s, has denied any involvement with the $500 million theft that has vexed the FBI since 1990, according to numerous media reports.

While facing gun charges in 2016, federal prosecutors said that Gentile, a Manchester resident with a decadesold criminal history, told an undercover federal agent that he had access to two of the paintings and could see them for $500,000 a piece, the Associated Press reported.

Federal prosecutors told a judge that Gentile had spoke of the paintings while being held in a federal prison in Rhode Island while he was held without bail awaiting trial, according to the Associated Press report.

At the time, Gentile’s lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, sought to have the charges dismissed, claiming that the federal authorities sought to entrap Gentile with a gun sale to get Gentile to cooperate with the FBI’s investigation into the Gardner Museum heist, the Associated Press reported.

Gentile eventually accepted a deal with the government, plead guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 3 1⁄2 years in federal prison. He was released in 2019, according to the Associated Press.

The brazen Gardner Museum theft in March 1990, in which two robbers dressed as Boston police officers tied up security before cutting the 13 paintings from their frames, garnered widespread attention, but the yearslong search for the precious art, including works from Rembrant, Vermeer, Degas and Manet, has yet to recover the works.

The museum, still hanging the empty frames, has offered a $10 million reward for the return of the art.

In a separate 2013 case against Gentile for gun and drug charges, federal prosecutors reportedly told a judge that they found a handwritten note with the names of all the paintings while searching Gentile’s longtime Manchester home, the Associated Press reported.

Focus shifted to Connecticut in 2013 when the FBI publicly announced that they had evidence that some of the paintings had moved through the state at some point, possibly decades ago.

“The FBI believes with a high degree of confidence that in the years after the theft, the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region, and some of the art was taken to Philadelphia, where it was offered for sale by those responsible for the theft,” said Richard DesLauriers, then the head of the FBI’s Boston office. “With that same confidence, we have identified the thieves, who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the Mid-Atlantic states and New England.”

Though the FBI said a sale took place, they had limited knowledge of the destination of the paintings.

Despite claiming to know the identity of the thieves, the FBI never publicly released any names.