The Art of the Heist
The Art of the Heist
Confessions of a Master Art Thief, Rock-and-Roller, and Prodigal Son
Myles J. Connor & Jenny Siler
To my parents, Myles and Lucy
Connor, and my children Myles
J. Connor III, Kim Connor Tierney, and
my granddaughter, Taylor. Also in loving
memory of my granddaughter, Nicole.
And to my family and friends,
especially Suzanne King.
Special acknowledgment to Martin K. Leppo, truly one of the best trial lawyers in America, and my friend for more than thirty years. Marty has contributed so much to this book that without him, it could not have been written.
—Myles J. Connor Jr.
Contents
Prologue
On March 18, 1990, shortly after 1:00 A.M., two men…
One
The feeling of being alone in an empty museum is…
Two
It was the adrenaline rush of art and theft that…
Three
As the summer of 1965 drew to a close I…
Four
The outcome of my dramatic escape from the Hancock County…
Five
Over the winter of 1965–66, working on a series of…
Six
I owe my life to the extraordinary staff at Massachusetts…
Seven
On February 27, 1967, I was transferred from the Charles…
Eight
You’ve already heard me confess that I’m not a particularly…
Nine
Not long after the rape conviction was overturned I was…
Ten
I faced a choice: still wild, or tame? I applied…
Eleven
If rock and roll was easy money, the Dedham job…
Twelve
Given the complex trajectory of my life, it’s difficult to…
Thirteen
As my profits from the bank robberies grew, collecting came…
Fourteen
Like all good businessmen, I knew the importance of diversifying…
Fifteen
In the spring of 1974 Bobby Donati came to me…
Sixteen
My first phone call from the jail was to Ralph…
Seventeen
I’ve always wondered what those old fogies on the parole…
Eighteen
Even with Santo’s sloppy mistake, it appeared as if the…
Nineteen
That two unidentified men walked into the Museum of Fine…
Twenty
Now that the Rembrandt was in my possession, I had…
Twenty-One
Much to my dismay, I soon found myself back at…
Twenty-Two
Friday, January 2, 1976, dawned bright and early at the…
Twenty-Three
On January 5, 1976, my parole was formally revoked and…
Twenty-Four
I can truthfully say that there aren’t many things in…
Twenty-Five
Because Marty Leppo represented Tommy Sperrazza and others who were…
Twenty-Six
On February 1, 1981, jury selection began in the Spinney-Webster…
Twenty-Seven
The Spinney-Webster convictions devastated me. I returned to Walpole in…
Twenty-Eight
In late August 1984 Earle Cooley came to see me…
Twenty-Nine
Throughout both murder trials, the intervening four and a half…
Epilogue
It’s difficult to put an exact value on a collection…
Acknowledgments
Searchable Terms
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
By Jenny Siler
On March 18, 1990, shortly after 1:00 A.M., two men dressed in police uniforms and wearing false mustaches knocked on a side door of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The night was typical of early spring in New England: foggy, with more than a bit of chill in the air. Around the city known for its Irish heart, St. Patrick’s Day festivities were just winding down—in fact, revelers who were leaving a nearby party would later recall having seen the two men sitting in an unmarked car near the museum’s side entrance. But for the pair waiting outside the Gardner Museum, the party was just beginning. After convincing one of the two night security guards to let them inside, the counterfeit cops quickly forced both guards down into the basement, where they duct-taped the men to support posts.
For the next hour the thieves roamed the museum unimpeded. Once in the galleries, they proceeded to unceremoniously slash priceless canvases from their frames. Though their methods were brutish, the men showed no small amount of expertise in their selection. Among the items they chose were “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” the only seascape Rembrandt is known to have painted; “The Concert,” a Vermeer masterpiece and one of only some thirty-five known paintings attributed to the Dutchman; Manet’s “Chez Tortoni”; and five Degas drawings. They also took a Shang Dynasty bronze beaker and, in a gesture that has never ceased to puzzle investigators, the bronze finial from a Napoleonic flagstaff.
By 3:00 A.M. the thieves were gone, but not before they had removed the videotape from the museum’s security cameras and ripped the computer printout from the motion detectors. The FBI, which soon took charge of the case, would call the heist the costliest of its kind in U.S. history. Estimates put the monetary value of the pieces taken that night at upward of $300 million. The cultural value of the masterworks, especially the one-of-a-kind Rembrandt seascape and the rare Vermeer, is, by all accounts, inestimable.
From the beginning the case proved dauntingly difficult to crack. The thieves may have been sloppy in their methods, but they left behind not a trace of evidence as to their identities. The theft of fine art differs from other crimes in that the passage of time can make these cases easier to solve rather than more difficult. Stolen artwork often surfaces years or even decades after the fact, as key players die, statutes of limitations expire, or pieces change hands. But after almost two decades, and despite a $5 million reward and global efforts to track down the missing Gardner Museum art, not a single item taken that night has been recovered.
In all that time, one name has surfaced again and again in connection with the robbery: Myles Connor.
A hometown art thief with a genius IQ and a flair for the dramatic, Connor was the man authorities immediately suspected when they were called to the Gardner Museum on the morning of March 18. When it came to museum robberies, Connor had a resume a mile long, including the 1975 theft of a Rembrandt from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts nearby. Almost every aspect of the Gardner heist carried Connor’s fingerprints: the brazenness with which the theft had been carried out; the sophistication shown in the pieces chosen; even the police uniforms, which were a form of disguise Connor and his associates had used in the past.
There was only one problem with this theory: at the time of the Gardner heist, Connor was in federal custody in Illinois. Still, so strong was the FBI’s suspicion that Connor was somehow involved that one of the first actions they took was to place a call to the superintendent of the jail where Connor was being held, asking him to confirm that Connor, who had a history of daring prison escapes, was still in his cell. He was.
When questioned about his involvement in the theft, Connor’s reply was impudent. “You’d have known if it was me. I would have taken the Titian,” he said, referring to one of the centerpieces of the Gardner Museum’s collection, a large oil painting depicting the rape of Europa.
Despite his airtight
alibi, Connor was and remains a prime suspect in the Gardner theft. The FBI and others claim he masterminded the heist from his prison cell, hoping to use some of the artwork as a bargaining chip to reduce his federal sentence. As with so much else in the murky world of art and antiquities theft, the truth about Connor’s involvement in the events of that March evening is much more complicated than anyone might have guessed.
This account will not neatly resolve this particular case. It will show how the son of an honest cop grew up to become the country’s most notorious art thief, one who is still a prime suspect in the Gardner theft. But there is more to Connor’s story than the unraveling of that particular mystery. Over the course of a long career in crime, Myles Connor’s passion for fine art slowly merged with his love of misadventure. He grew from a petty thief to a gun-and drug-runner, violent outlaw, and eventually art thief.
Like any true story, it is not always a pretty one. Yet Connor’s charm is evident. He is a rogue at heart, a man who inspires fierce loyalty and even love in those who know him well—not through intimidation, but through the sheer force of his personality.
As incredible as it may seem, this is a work of fact, not fiction. With the exception of a small handful of incidents, to which Myles himself is the only living witness, the events described in this book have been painstakingly researched and carefully corroborated using newspaper accounts, eyewitness testimony, court records, and various other original documents. For obvious reasons, most names have been changed to protect the innocent—or guilty, as that may be. Other than that, the account you are about to read is true.
One
The feeling of being alone in an empty museum is always the same. There’s a rush to it, an elevation of the senses that’s not unlike the pleasant high of cocaine. You’re not hyper, just mildly elated, drunk on the notion of having the run of the place, on the idea that all these treasures are yours to take. It’s a sweet feeling, one I’ve never gotten tired of, not on my twentieth heist, nor my fiftieth, nor my hundredth.
I love fine art and objects of cultural significance. Over the years, I’ve found many ways to obtain them, some legal, some not. I’m a collector, specializing in Asian art and weaponry, especially Japanese swords. I find handcrafted pieces to be exquisite, especially those made by highly skilled craftsmen. Despite what my record might lead one to believe, I’m not particularly fond of European art. Given the option, I’d choose a Ming vase or a fourteenth-century katana over a Rembrandt any day. I’ve purchased much of my collection legitimately, at auctions or estate sales or from reputable dealers. But I’ve also obtained many fine works by, shall we say, less legitimate means. I’ve used fraud, breaking and entering, and brute force.
To be successful at not just one of these methods but all requires a certain combination of love of adventure and plain recklessness. It’s what landed me in jail for the first time in my life, in 1965, and it’s also what got me out.
You know the story about the guy who breaks out of jail using a fake gun? You’ve heard it: some con whittles a pistol out of a block of wood or a bar of soap, then blackens it with shoe polish and uses it to muscle his way past the guards. They say that’s how John Dillinger broke out of Indiana’s “escape-proof” Crown Point jail in 1934.
I know what you’re thinking: it’s a great story, but there’s no way it’s true. If anything, it’s one of those urban legends that get more outrageous with time. For starters, no one in their right mind would have the guts to pull such a stunt. Even if someone was crazy enough to try, they sure as hell wouldn’t get away with it. Maybe something like that could happen in the movies, or on TV. But in real life? No way.
Well, that’s where you’re wrong.
How can he be so sure? you’re wondering. It’s easy. See, I am that guy. In the summer of 1965 I broke out of the Hancock County jail in Ellsworth, Maine, using nothing more than a bar of soap, a razor blade, and some boot polish. It wasn’t as difficult as you might think. These things never are. All you need is a plan. A plan and the balls to go through with it.
As far as lockups go, the Hancock County jail was no better or worse than similar facilities I would encounter over the years. The building, constructed in the late nineteenth century, was a large brick structure situated just back from Ellsworth’s Main Street, between the courthouse and the town library, on a high embankment overlooking the Union River. The front portion of the building served as the sheriff’s house. At the time of my incarceration, the sheriff’s entire family, including his wife and teenage stepson, lived there. As was often the case in these small-town facilities, our meals were cooked by the sheriff’s wife. The rear of the building housed the sheriff’s offices, with the jail itself, a warren of damp, low-ceilinged cells, in the basement directly below.
Maine in 1965 was not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. For the previous several years I’d been making my living singing and playing guitar in rock-and-roll clubs around the Boston area, mainly in the suburb of Revere Beach. Revere was traditionally an Italian neighborhood, and many of my acquaintances were real bad guys, mobsters who made my fellow inmates at the Hancock County jail look like kindergartners. The Ellsworth group was a motley collection of downeasters, local hicks who’d been brought in for relatively minor offenses like drunk driving or vagrancy. The worst of the bunch were there on charges of domestic assault.
I was twenty-two at the time. Though by no means a seasoned criminal, I already had two museum heists under my belt. Compared to these, the crime that landed me in the Hancock County jail was unimpressive. I’d been caught robbing a house in Sullivan, Maine, something that would have been a relatively minor offense had I not shot at the arresting officer and fled the scene. This act of brazenness had made me a celebrity among my jailmates.
As much as I enjoyed my star status, I was desperate to get home. There wasn’t much to do at the little jail except play cards and read pulp paperbacks, diversions I’ve never really enjoyed. More important, all my possessions, including an extensive collection of art and antiques—some of which I’d procured by unconventional means—were back at my apartment in Revere. Among them were a number of Japanese swords, several Chinese vases and Japanese bronzes, some Asian watercolors, Paul Revere silver, and a particularly valuable Frederic Remington bronze statue of a cowboy on horseback that had belonged to my grandfather. These valuables represented my bank account—one I’d have to tap into if I was going to make bail and beat my current rap—and I wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of leaving them unattended, especially considering the lax attitudes of many of my Revere acquaintances when it came to the issue of ownership. In short, I needed to get out, and fast.
I’d been formulating a plan for doing so almost from the beginning, paying close attention to the jailhouse rhythms, looking for an opportunity to make my escape. By my fifth day there I was pretty sure I’d found one.
Small-town lockups inevitably rely on trustees to do many of the facility’s more menial tasks. Trustees are inmates, usually harmless repeat offenders, town drunks and vagrants, who tend to prefer the routine of life in lockup to the stress of fending for themselves on the street. Many of the men who become trustees are not bad people, just incapable, for whatever reason, of getting along like the rest of us. They see the jail as a kind of home and the jailers as family. The tasks they are assigned—cleaning, delivering meals—give them a much-needed sense of purpose.
Some trustees, however, enjoy what they do a little bit too much. These men generally have just enough smarts to understand power and enjoy its perks but not enough to acquire authority in the outside world. Most of them have been bullied and pushed around their whole lives and, given even the smallest amount of power, are eager to push back. The trustee in Ellsworth was such a man.
He was small of build, no taller than five foot six, somewhere in his early forties, with dark stringy hair and the clothes of a tramp. I never learned his real name, but everyone at the jail called him Bowwow, and this
is what he answered to. One of his main tasks, and the one he most obviously enjoyed, was locking us into our cells in the evening. During the day we were allowed to congregate outside our cells. But at eight o’clock every night we’d hear a jangling of keys as the deputy sheriff came down the steps with Bowwow behind him.
“Okay, Bowwow,” the deputy sheriff would then announce, handing the trustee his keys, “lock ’em in the cells.”
And Bowwow, gleefully accepting his privilege, would lock every cell, looking us each in the eye and smiling as he did it.
My plan was not a complicated one. I’d heard the Dillinger story myself, and I figured if he could make it work, so could I. The last thing I wanted was to be involved in assaulting another peace officer, and I was banking on the fact that a fake gun would provide sufficient distraction for me to break out without causing serious physical harm to anyone.
I was not at all unfamiliar with firearms. My father and grandfather were both avid gun collectors, and I myself had been collecting firearms since I was a boy, saving my pennies to buy antique derringers instead of candy or comic books. The derringer was the gun I chose for my model, mainly because it was small enough to be realistically sculpted from a bar of soap, the only material available to me at the time.
During the afternoon of the day of my planned escape, I set to work fabricating my soap pistol. Given the crude tools and materials I had to work with, no one could have expected genius. Nonetheless, I managed to produce a reasonable facsimile of a derringer using my jail-issue razor blade. With the addition of a coat of boot polish, lent to me by a fellow prisoner, the gun looked surprisingly real.
That evening, just before the eight o’clock lockdown, I turned to my jailmates, who were gathered in the common area playing cards.
“Listen,” I announced, “in about one minute I’m gonna open the door and walk out of this place. Anyone want to come along?”
The men stared at me with a mixture of awe and disbelief.