Master Thieves

by Kurkjian, Stephen

  “I was exploring the idea that Youngworth had found some of the Gardner loot among Myles’s possessions.”

  Mashberg met Youngworth while Youngworth was out on bail awaiting charges related to illegal firearms police had found during the raid on his house. The firearms were in fact three antique pistols with no firing mechanisms, and it seemed clear to Mashberg that law enforcement officials wanted to squeeze Youngworth for information on the Gardner paintings. He wrote several articles in July and early August about Youngworth, Connor, and the new Gardner lead the FBI was pursuing.

  In mid-August 1997, Mashberg received a call at his desk at the Herald. It was Youngworth. Mashberg was startled when Youngworth came right out and said what he’d been hinting at for some time: that he had proof that, if certain conditions were met, he could facilitate the return of the Gardner paintings to the museum.

  “What are you doing tonight?” Youngworth asked him.

  “Putting out the paper. They called me in on my day off because the other guy is on vacation,” Mashberg responded, reminding Youngworth that as Sunday editor he was usually off Sundays and Mondays.

  “Forget that,” Youngworth scoffed. “I’ll be there at midnight. Let’s take a ride.”

  That night, Youngworth pulled up in front of the Herald driving a late-model Ford Crown Victoria. They began driving south. Mashberg had met with Youngworth a few times that month already and knew that the crook liked calling the shots, and would stonewall if Mashberg tried to cajole him into giving up information he didn’t want to make known—or at least wasn’t ready to just yet.

  Like many ne’er-do-wells, Youngworth had unpredictable moods. That night he was alternately sullen and violently angry, spewing venom about gun possession charges that had been filed against him earlier in the month. To Mashberg, he also seemed to be strung out on drugs, in bad need of a fix.

  Youngworth ranted that he wasn’t going to play into the FBI’s hands and give up the Gardner paintings without getting something in return. He wanted concessions, including immunity from prosecution for any crimes related to the Gardner heist, before he would agree to turn anything over. There was also the matter of a stolen van that had been found in the driveway of Youngworth’s home in Randolph. Inside it authorities had found the remnants of a joint. If the gun charges fizzled, the authorities could always use the stolen vehicle charge to pressure Youngworth into cooperating.

  “They know I had nothing to do with that van, or the roach,” Youngworth shouted. “They’ve just figured out that I’m telling the truth about the paintings and they’re trying to squeeze me.”

  It took Youngworth a while to get around to telling Mashberg where they were headed, and as the turnpike signs flashed past, the journalist got more and more anxious. Finally Youngworth told him: They were bound for Brooklyn.

  “What’s in Brooklyn?” Mashberg asked.

  “You’ll see for yourself,” Youngworth shot back. “You want something to prove I’m for real? Well, I’m going to show you I’m for real.”

  Mashberg had noticed they were being tailed by another car and he also, finally, got Youngworth to acknowledge that the second car was being driven by his wife, Judy.

  Mashberg knew Youngworth couldn’t go much longer without a heroin fix and, regardless of what else they were going to do in Brooklyn, he also knew that Youngworth would stop somewhere to buy drugs.

  What have I gotten myself into? he wondered to himself. How do I explain this if the police pull us over, and he’s high on drugs or has something stashed away in here?

  It was still dark when Youngworth pulled the Crown Victoria into the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and parked outside a housing project. Mashberg sat and waited for what seemed like an eternity, but after about half an hour Youngworth emerged, seeming calmer and even refreshed.

  He’s gotten himself a fix, Mashberg thought.

  A storage unit in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood was the site in August 1997 where antiques dealer William Youngworth showed Boston Herald reporter Tom Mashberg a painting purported to be the stolen Rembrandt seascape. Authorities later claimed it was a fake.

  Within minutes, they’d pulled into the nearby parking lot of a giant warehouse on Clinton Street, directly behind the Red Hook Post Office. It was dark, and with a flashlight guiding their way they climbed the three flights of stairs to a storage unit midway down one of the corridors. Youngworth opened the door with a second key and directed Mashberg to stand by the doorway.

  Inside, in the dim light, Mashberg could make out a large bin about ten feet away containing several big cylinder tubes. Youngworth walked over and pulled one out, took off its large plastic top, and removed a large painting from inside it. He unfurled it, rolling it out so it hit the floor. Then he held it up higher so Mashberg could see the whole thing.

  “Let me show you something,” Youngworth said, breaking the eerie silence. From five feet away, with Youngworth directing his flashlight over the enormous canvas, Mashberg saw the instantly recognizable features: the sail, the waves, the figures. He couldn’t make out brushstrokes, but there was cracking along the canvas throughout. The edges weren’t frayed but cleanly cut.

  Among the few disclosures the museum made following the theft was that the two large Rembrandts had been cut cleanly from their stretchers and frames, with only a few frayed edges.

  “See the signature,” Youngworth said, pointing the flashlight.

  Amazed by what he was seeing, and believing it was Rembrandt’s masterpiece, the seascape that had been missing for more than seven years, Mashberg edged forward to where Youngworth was standing, holding the painting above his shoulders.

  “Don’t get any closer,” Youngworth warned him, and with that he shut off the flashlight and rolled the painting up and back into its tube.

  In all, Mashberg saw the painting for about two minutes. Nine days later he broke his story on the front page of the Boston Herald: “WE’VE SEEN IT: Informant Shows Reporter Apparent Stolen Masterpiece.”

  It read, in part: “The vivid oil-on-canvas masterwork—Rembrandt’s only seascape—was rolled up carefully and stored in an oversized heavy-duty poster tube with two airtight end caps at a hiding place in a barren and forsaken Northeast warehouse district.

  “Under the soft glow of a flashlight, the painting was delicately pulled out and unfurled by the informant and shown to a reporter during the predawn hours of Aug. 18.

  “The furtive viewing was offered to the Herald as proof that the paintings, stolen on March 18, 1990, from the Gardner Museum in Boston, are here in the United States—ransomable for reward money and immunity from prosecution.

  “This reporter was unable to verify that the painting was the original. But the work, which was flaking slightly and somewhat frayed at the edges where it would have been cut from its frame during the Gardner heist, bore the Dutch master’s signature on the ship’s rudder.”

  Quoting his “informant” (presumably Youngworth), Mashberg’s Herald article stated that the robbery had been pulled off by five men, only two of whom were identified: Robert A. (Bobby) Donati, who was one of the two robbers who entered the museum, and David A. Houghton, who was responsible for moving the stolen art to a safe house. Both Donati and Houghton were dead when the article was published, and none of the other three men were identified.

  A few days later, Mashberg was summoned to meet with museum director Anne Hawley and other museum officials.

  “What do you feel the likelihood is that you saw the real thing, the stolen Rembrandt?” Hawley asked point-blank. Mashberg didn’t hesitate.

  “On a scale of one to ten, I’d say close to a ten,” Mashberg responded. Later that day, the museum put out a statement saying that what Mashberg saw could be “either the original or a close replica.”

  In the near quarter-century since the theft, Mashberg’s viewing, wh
ich he walked me through in a three-hour, on-the-record interview, remains the most authoritative statement by a credible source that any of the thirteen stolen paintings had been seen. Yet the account has been subsequently tarnished: Federal authorities tested paint chips Youngworth supplied to Mashberg to verify his story, and found them to be clearly dated from Rembrandt’s era (seventeenth century) but not a match to The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. The museum’s security director argued that the heavily varnished Rembrandt painting could not have been unfurled in the way Mashberg described. Even Mashberg now doubts that what he saw was in fact The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps it was just a very good replica.

  “My doubt comes from [the fact that] nothing ever came of it,” Mashberg said in a recent interview. “Here was the painting literally seeming like it was inches away from being recovered, then, poof, it’s gone and the whole potential scenario is wiped out, and everybody off on other trails. I know what I saw but if I am getting dubious responses, then I have to own to the possibility that I was wrong.”

  Mashberg’s bombshell article, which strongly implied that Youngworth had arranged the viewing, touched off a mad scramble by FBI agents and federal prosecutors. They tried to convince Youngworth to explain to them how he had arranged the viewing, how he might have gotten his hands on the painting, and if nothing else, where the viewing had taken place. But Youngworth held firm: He would cooperate only if all of his demands for immunity—dropping of the charges against him and releasing his friend, the master art thief Myles Connor, who was serving time in federal prison on drug-related charges—were granted.

  But while numerous other lowlifes like Youngworth had sought money from the museum on the pledge that they could produce the missing paintings, this junkie-criminal now had something none of them did: credibility.

  Youngworth met with Hawley, museum trustee Arnold Hiatt, and several other museum officials, and traded on that credibility. He asked for $10,000 so he could continue his pursuit of the artwork. Hiatt gave him the money as a loan. It was never repaid, and for his generosity Hiatt was subpoenaed to testify along with Hawley before a federal grand jury on whether Youngworth had coerced the money out of him.

  Meanwhile, Youngworth refused to give investigators, museum officials, or Mashberg any details about how he got his hands on the stolen Rembrandt. He cryptically suggested to Mashberg in a note that his connections inside Boston’s underworld, specifically his ties to the Rossetti gang in East Boston, had played a role, not to mention that Youngworth’s sister had dated a member of the gang.

  The note was confusingly worded and has long been scrutinized for information. It stated in part: “You have to remember the Salemme’s visitation power had to be endorsed by NY. Had it not been, NY would have taken the whole as they are now going to and so I don’t know power. . . . But Bobby D. was about a centimeter away from being made. And they clipped him. They were all rough. Not one of them were made. Richie D. recruited that crew in Walpole, with exception of Ritchie Gillis and he is first cousin to the Rossettis. And that’s how he got in.”

  Here’s one way of interpreting what the note said: The New York underworld had given Frank Salemme, whom the Rossetti gang reported to, approval for Youngworth to be allowed to take Mashberg to see the painting. Those New York mobsters were now going to take possession of the paintings. Donati had been killed just before he was to be inducted as a made member of the mafia. The crew, presumably who pulled off the Gardner heist, had been put together by Richard Devlin, another member of the Rossetti crew, while serving time in Walpole prison. Richard Gillis, a cousin to the Rossettis, had been an original member of either the Rossetti gang or those who had pulled off the robbery.

  But Youngworth went on in the note to stress that Mashberg needed to be extra careful in dealing with anyone in the Rossetti gang. He told of his involvement with the heist of a truckload of oriental rugs in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1981, which had ended with Rossetti gang members shooting two of the truck drivers. Youngworth told Massachusetts state police that hours after that shooting he and his best friend had been summoned to meet with several involved in the robbery. While riding together with his friend Jeffrey White and Youngworth, Rossetti gang member John J. Jozapaitis pulled out a gun and shot White in the head, killing him. White’s sin—that he knew too much about the Manchester truck robbery, had to die because he was weak and that this was a good opportunity to do it.

  Although that murder had taken place nine years before, it left Youngworth scared and suspicious of both those in the criminal world and those in law enforcement.

  So, ever cantankerous, Youngworth balked at telling the FBI what he knew about the Gardner heist, saying he wouldn’t trust the investigators until they demonstrated they were willing to grant him his list of demands.

  Still, the FBI discovered the location of the Brooklyn warehouse where the viewing of the purported Rembrandt masterpiece had taken place and raided it several months later. They found nothing in the unit Mashberg described, nor anywhere else in the storage facility.

  With the heat getting more intense, Youngworth hired veteran criminal lawyer Martin Leppo to handle the negotiations with federal officials. But every time Leppo gained a concession, Youngworth would balk and instead rail that he was being set up. Finally, out of frustration with Youngworth, US attorney Donald Stern announced that he wouldn’t engage in further talks with Youngworth, or anyone else for that matter, unless they brought forward hard evidence of access to the paintings.

  “We have not yet been provided the kind of concrete and credible evidence one looks for in this case,” Stern told reporters. “With all due respect, it’s not credible and concrete just because I read it in the newspaper.” Nonetheless, at one point in the fall of 1997, federal officials flew Connor to Massachusetts so he could meet with Youngworth in a room separated by a glass partition. Under law, Youngworth could not visit Connor in prison because Youngworth was also a convicted felon.

  “There have been no negotiations—and there won’t be—about what law enforcement might or might not be willing to do until there’s some showing that we know what we’re dealing with,” Stern went on. “We want to have some confidence that what we’re dealing with are priceless works of art—not the work of a bull artist.”

  Challenged to step up, Youngworth soon gave Mashberg a vial containing numerous small paint chips for delivery to the FBI. Youngworth contended that the chips came from The Storm on the Sea of Galilee. He also delivered twenty-five color photographs purportedly of the painting and the second Rembrandt stolen in the heist, Lady and Gentleman in Black. The verdict came less than a month later in separate public statements from the museum and federal investigators. The chips had not come from either of the two Rembrandts, and the photographs were not what Youngworth claimed they were, read a statement from Stern and Barry Mawn, head of the FBI’s Boston office.

  “We have conclusively determined that the paint chips were not authentic,” the museum said.

  However, neither statement mentioned another interesting finding of these tests: that the pigmentation and layering of the chips indicated that they had come from a seventeenth-century painting, the time period during which Rembrandt had worked. These tests were confirmed again recently by leading experts who said they could not rule out the possibility that the chips came from the stolen Vermeer, a contemporary of Rembrandt.

  Of course, considering that he had operated an antiques store in Allston, Massachusetts, it could have been relatively easy for Youngworth to get his hands on paint chips of the right vintage. What’s less clear is how he would have been able to get ahold of such a good replica of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee that it could have led a veteran reporter such as Mashberg to believe it was the real thing, if in fact it wasn’t. Replicas of paintings can be obtained, but considering that the two men had met just a few weeks before the viewing, it is difficult to imagine that Youngwo
rth could have arranged to have such a replica produced in such a short time.

  But Anthony Amore, the Gardner’s director of security, believes what Mashberg saw was a fake.

  “Based on what I’ve learned about the structure of The Storm, and its well-varnished canvas, however, I lean toward it’s not being the Gardner’s painting,” Amore wrote in the introduction to a book he co-authored with Mashberg about stolen Rembrandts.

  The canvas of The Storm had been coated with varnish and lacquer often during its existence, so the idea that it could have been rolled up in any way, much less placed into a cylindrical tube and then removed from the storage unit as Mashberg reported, seemed almost impossible to him.

  Mashberg, now a freelance journalist for the New York Times and other publications, has a mixed response. “Given how much I respect Anthony’s opinion, I have to think now that it was a replica. But given the tests showing that the chips did come from Rembrandt’s era, and the fact that I was on the same trail as the FBI seventeen years ago, I still think that the stolen paintings were in play in 1997.”

  As for Youngworth, while it is difficult to have sympathy for anyone who exaggerates and dissembles as much as he did, he too can be seen as a victim in this story. After his repeated attempts to persuade the authorities that he had the paintings failed, and left without anything to bargain away with the prosecution, he stood trial and was convicted of possessing a stolen vehicle. During his subsequent yearlong prison sentence, his wife, Judith, died of a drug overdose.

  Still, Youngworth, who now lives modestly with his son in western Massachusetts, knows all too well the financial lure of the recovery of the stolen Gardner masterpieces. In 2001, he worked with his brother-in-law to produce copies of the stamp-size, self-portrait sketch of Rembrandt that had been among the pieces stolen from the museum.