[danno3150]

The story of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft is one of the most bizarre true crime stories of all time. The cast of characters sounds like something out of and Elmore Leonard novel. There was the rock singer, who was also a double murder, his drug addled buddies, incompetent cops, implicated cops, the museum with few security systems and no insurance, the IRA, and now the French media mogul. Court TV has a nice synopsis of the case, if you're interested.

[Redbob]

But an Elmore Leonard novel would have included at least one street-wise white guy from the Detroit area, maybe St. Clair Shores or East Detroit, a guy who used to hustle stolen cars but who's moved up to art theft because you're less likely to get caught, or to get sent to Jackson or Milan if you do.

[Cicero]

A good friend of mine has worked as curator of the museum. It's a wonderful institution founded by a beautifully eccentric Boston lady.

Curiously, the Protestant Boston Brahmins of the nineteenth century had a Romantic love affair with Catholic Renaissance Florence, as you may see from reading Nathaniel Hawthorne and others of the time.

I hope they can track down the stolen paintings. It's an abomination when thieves do this kind of thing, usually cutting the canvas and damaging the paint in the process.