Drug suspect said to offer stolen art in bid for mercy | Boston Globe May 28, 1992


A man accused of heading a $1 million-a-year illegal drug distribution ring from his Dorchester auto body shop has offered to produce a painting stolen from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Museum in Cambridge in a bid for leniency, sources said yesterday.

As a result of his arrest on drug trafficking charges last month, Carmello Merlino, 56, of Hyde Park, who is reputed to be tied to the Mafia, was sent back to the state prison in Concord for violating parole.

Merlino, sentenced to serve 25 to 40 years for armed robbery in the early 1970s, had been released on parole by 1981.

In a bid for a sentence reduction, Merlino has offered through his attorney, Martin Leppo, to have an unnamed person turn one of several paintings stolen in 1985 from the Longfellow Mureeum, sources said. Among the works stolen in that heist, valued at a total of $25,000, was a portrait of George Washington by Mary Stuart.

Merlino in his offer to law enforcement officials also spoke of other stolen pieces but made no mention of booty from a much bigger theft, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, sources said.

"The two are galaxies apart," said a law enforcement source, referring to the Longfellow and Gardner heists. "The Longfellow was a smash-and-grab kind of thing . . .and the Gardner was a $200 million job."

"It is a lot easier to market a portrait of George Washington by Mary Stuart than it is to market one of the 35 existing Vermeers," which were among the items taken from the Gardner Museum, the source said.

Assistant Attorney General Robert Sikellis and others from the attorney general's office, which is prosecuting Merlino and three codefendants in connection with the alleged drug distribution ring, repeatedly refused to comment on the stolen artwork.

Leppo could not be reached for comment.

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Gardner Museum Heist