Rick Abath's Story

Related:
"A Historical Examination of the Gardner Museum Heist’s Basement Crime Scene" pdf

The Many Inconsistencies in Rick Abath's Story

Most recently, in March of 2019, Abath posted a third version of the first chapter of his book on the case, which he has been sharing with the press and or posting online since 2013. Whether he has gotten past the first chapter, or ever will, remains to be seen.

In the latest version, a bit of a prequel with no new references to the Gardner heist from previous versions, Abath says that he was an art student for two semesters at the Maryland Institute of Art, in Baltimore, before heading up to Boston to attend Berklee School of Music.

Of his first impression of working at the Gardner Museum he writes that, "being surrounded by so many masterpieces was both humbling and inspiring. I'd never create a piece of art on par with the works I now guarded, but they sure made me want to try." So rockin' and rollin' and whatnot Abath, even as a musician, still considered himself something of a visual artist too. In fact he has continued his interest in the visual arts, as a form of political and self-expression, on social media, posting hundreds of his creations, mostly on political themes and issues on Facebook.

It could be taken as inconsistent or at least an odd disconnect, for someone who claims he was "handcuffed and duck (sic) taped to an electrical box in the basement for about 7 hours," as he is depicted in the above right crime scene photo, to make the creation on the above left, which he posted on Facebook in 2016.

The book cover illustration for the new first chapter of this work-in-progress is very likely a Rick Abath effort as well. The short (so far) narrative represents "The first-person account of the Gardner Museum Robbery and investigation," according to a cover prominently featuring psilocybin mushrooms in the frame of the of Vermeer's "The Concert," with an FBI badge, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and other oddities populating the English 18th century writing table in front of the now empty Vermeer frame, in the Museum Dutch Room.

Since on the night of the robbery, Abath said he showed up for work completely sober, it is hard to know how these drugs and alcohol may have contributed to the robbery, or what point he is trying to make.

Over a decade later in 2005, Abath said that one of the thieves looked like Colonel Klink from the television show Hogan's Heroes, and in 2014 he said one looked like William Merlino , an associate of David Turner and the nephew and criminal associate of Carmello Merlino.

But after working up the police sketches, shortly after the robbery Abath said to CNN 23 years later: "I remember at the time thinking, there's no way they're going to catch these people from this."

Abath himself buzzed open a second glass door, which kept the thieves or any visitors from entering directly. The small alcove, nicknamed the "the man trap," was designed specifically for the purpose of allowing security to get a good look at who was seeking entry in a controlled environment. "A visitor would come in through the first door and then would be inside a small foyer. where if you're sitting at the security desk there's a big window and you could see that person...and then you would have to buzz them in again," a former guard explained on Empty Frames Season 1 Episode 7. Abath then spoke with the thieves across a long chest-high desk in the well-lit security station for two or three minutes until, he claims, his eyes were covered with duct tape.

Abath has described the Gardner Museum robbery as "the most traumatic event of my life," but despite the trauma of the robbery, of being held captive in the basement, the questioning by Boston Police and then the FBI, Abath still managed that day to drive a hundred miles in a borrowed van, so he could attend a Grateful Dead concert for the umpteenth time, this one in Hartford, CT. It began less than 12 hours after he was discovered handcuffed and duct taped in the basement of the Gardner Museum.

And his conversation with thieves took place before he had experienced any trauma since the perpetrators did not identify themselves as robbers right away. Abath had a good long look at the thieves, in the "man trap," and inside the security station for an extended period, well before he knew about any threat to himself or the museum, according to his own version of events:

"There they stood," he wrote in 2013, "two of Boston's finest waving at me through the glass. Hats, coats, badges, they looked like cops," Abath wrote in an earlier account of the robbery, which he shared with the Boston Globe in 2013, "I buzzed them into the museum."

There is a strange, recurring pattern in Abath's explanation of how he was supposedly taken in by the fake "cops." He delivers a brief list of police uniform accessories and then declares: They looked like cops.

Yet, he has never said publicly or written: "I thought they were cops, or believed they were cops. Abath also has adopted the practice of calling the thieves cops, never thieves, or robbers. On Story Corps in 2015 he said: "But that night two cops rang the doorbell. They had hats, badges. They looked like cops, and I let them in."

To date, Abath has never referred to the thieves as fake cops or crooks or thieves in interviews or his writings, typically calling them "cops."

They were not cops, however, as everyone knows, and his account directly contradicts the statement he gave to actual police the following day. According to the Boston Police report: "The victim states that after gaining entry the suspects told the victim they were responding to a call for the kids outside the building." Boston Police report (page 2 of 3).

In Abath's 1990 telling, he was not told about a disturbance until after the robbers were already inside and that the disturbance was on the street, not on the premises.

Abath "knew he wasn't supposed to let anybody in, but he thought that maybe some kids might have jumped over the back iron fence and gotten into the yard and there is a nursery back there for Mrs. Gardner's plants and he was worried about that," Master Thieves author Steve Kurkjian exlained in an interview on WATD in Marshefield, on April 1, 2016.

A former guard on the Empty Frames podcast wondered how the police would know about a disturbance in the museum courtyard manned by two guards, before either of the two guards knew about it themselves. The courtyard is only ten yards away from the security desk and if there was disturbance, the guard at the security desk would have heard it. "The only way they would have heard about a disturbance in the courtyard would have been if a security guard had called them, or one of they had pushed this alarm button," he said.

Kroger, who personally trained Abath also challenges Abath's explanation for why he opened the door to the museum twenty minutes before the thieves sought entry. "I don’t recall when I did it but it was something I did regular. To test the alarm. We’d pop the door open, you know, and let it close," Abath explained.

But"I don't care what he says — there's no way, Kroger said on Last Seen Podcast "It makes no sense that you would allow yourself to — why in the world would you open that up? There's a camera outside that shows Palace Road. There's no reason in the world why you would ever open that door. Any door!

In a telephone conversation I had with him on May 2, 2022 2012 the former Gardner security supervisor, J. P. Kroger, who trained Gardner heist guard Abath, told me the door Abath opened to make sure it was locked, was indeed supposed to be checked, but he said that the guards were equipped with an electronic "wand" to ensure the door's deadbolt lock was properly secure.

Dan Falzon, who was the FBI's chief investigator, on the Gardner robbery investigation, beginning said that "Abath scored an inconclusive," on his polygraph test accoring to Ulrich Boser in The Gardner Heist.

Former FBI Gardner heist investigator Thomas McShane said there was a Gardner museum employee whose behavior was highly suspicious, who quite his job and who failed a polygraph. though not mentioning Abath by name, Abath did quit, whose behavior was highly suspicious, and who was one of the very few employees who were administered a polygraph.

"An investigator familiar with Abath’s tests would not comment for this book, but shook his head no when asked whether Abath was describing the results of his polygraph correctly," in his 2015 book on the case, Master Thieves.

A novel by a former federal prosecutor, James J. McGovern, who worked on the Gardner heist investigation, Artful Deception, features a night security guard who lets thieves into the museum to pay off a cocaine debt.

Further evidence pointing to the possibility that cocaine may have played a role as a motive for some of those involved in the robbery was made public in 2015.

On the night before the Gardner heist, in a surveillance video, Abath's head is visible on tape as the visitor he allowed in three minutes earlier can be seen doing something. And whatever that something is, the portioning out of a small amount of cocaine cannot be eliminated as a possibility, while doing almost anything else can be.

But six hours later there was no sign of struggle or of sweat on Abath, when the Boston Police took crime scene photos of him in the basement of the Gardner Museum. The duct tape is consistently smooth and it is hard. In what way Abath's appearance after seven hours would have been different than how he would have looked after seven minutes.

Somehow thieves, who "acted like men who knew their way about a crime scene investigation lab," according to FBI Gardner heist investigator Thomas McShane, were somehow pretty clueless and careless about duct tape. The way the duct wraps under his right ear and in a straight horizontal line beneath his forehead does not indicate a strong effort to ensure that Abath would not be able to see.

Ulrich Boser in the Gardner Heist that the thieves "trussed Abell [Abath] to a steam pipe," Amore said that Abath was handcuffed to another one of these pipes over here. The fact that after 19, 20, and now 30 years, there is still no consistent account on this point, makes it seem very possible that Abath was not handcuffed to anything, as it appears in the crime scene photos.

What is somone who has "researched the crime, more thoroughly than a lot of people in the press have," as Abath writes he has done, supposed to think?

Abath may be giving away, that he knows more than he lets on, when he writes how "it's easy for a reporter to get hooked on to one train of thought and ride it to its logical conclusion; even if it was a fantasy from the beginning," or why a potential deal with a 1994 ransom note writer "evaporated."

Could this be the year that Rick Abath takes a new direction with the public about what he knows, concerning the Gardner robbery?

The time has come. He declares from his profile image on Facebook.

But unfortunately, the Walrus is Rick, and after 30 years of jabbewocky, it is it foolish to hope or expect anything else but more of the same from Rick Abath.