Examples can be found in Murphy's statements throughout this Netflix four part series. But for now, here are some examples of the blatantly misinforming data appearing in The Boston Globe under Shelley Murphy's byline, often
in conjunction with another Boston Globe reporter, who figure prominently in
"This Is A Robbery," three-time Pulitzer prize winner Stpehen Kurkjian. These are statements taken word-for-word
from the Boston Globe, with a link to each story, ane each
contradict either official statements, official documents, or
Murphy's own past news stories.
In March of 2017, in an article co-written with Stephen Kurkjian, "Murphy reported that "The FBI has focused heavily in recent years on the theory that local criminals with mob ties were behind the heist, and said it believes that the two thieves' who entered the museum died a short time later.
The FBI has never said that the two thieves who entered the museum died a short time later. Originally the FBI did not even say the thieves were dead. On the contrary, in 2013, they said the thieves were alive and were quite involved in trying to sell the art: "The FBI believes with a high degree of confidence in the years after the theft the art was transported to Connecticut and the Philadelphia region and some of the art was taken to Philadelphia where it was offered for sale by those responsible for the theft." Only twice has the FBI stated that the thieves are dead. The first time was exactly two years after this historic press conference, on March 13, 2015, in a WCVB-TV interview did with FBI Special Agent Peter Kowenhoven."You know who took them. Why can't we solve the case?" 5 Investigates' Karen Anderson asked. "The two individuals that took them and committed this crime are currently dead," Peter Kowenhoven replied. In subsequent years we learn just how fitting the term, currently dead, turned out to be, and how helpful members of the media, like Shelley Murphy and Stephen Kurkjian, can be in instances where terms like alive and dead may have a more fluid, less consistent meaning than is generally understood. Kowenhoven reiterated this claim the day after the Gardner heist eve video was released to the public, almost five months later, on August 6, 2015. At that time, in an Associated Press interview, Kowenhoven said that: "The focus of the investigation for many years was: Who did this heist? And we have through the great investigative work identified who did this heist, and both those individuals are dead. So now the focus of the investigation is the recovery of the art," as if these two things — finding the perpetrators and finding the art — were somehow mutually exclusive. If the two missions were unrelated, determining who did it, and recovering the art, there would have been no reason for releasing a video from the day before the actual heist in the first place. Coming on the heels of the release of the video, by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, and not the FBI, it would seem this announcement at that moment, when it had already been stated five months earlier, can only have been done to dampen interest in the video. The U.S. Attorney can release the video but it is up to the FBI to deploy the video as an evidence gathering tool, which they neglected to do in a public context. The Boston Globe did not even report that the FBI was saying the thieves were dead until four months after the second announcement, and nine months after it was first announced and when they did they misreported the history. In 2015, Stephen Kurkjian, although he had been out promoting his new book since February, and had been doing interviews, presentations, and writing articles, and who attended and wrote extensively about the 2013 press conference, both in the Boston Globe at the time it occured, and in his book two years later, somehow this same Stephen Kurkjian still managed to get it wrong. He reported reporting in December of that year: "In 2013 the head of the FBI’s Boston office said at a press conference that the agency knew who had pulled off the robbery and that both men were dead," he wrote."
He would get it wrong again in another story he wrote with Murphy eighteen months later. Facts are stubborn things, but not for the FBI when changing up their narrative, with helpful reporters like Kurjian and Murphy on the case for over two decades.
Murphy and Kurkjian handle the FBI's ever changing story of the Gardner heist, not by pointing out the inconsistencies, but instead, by simply backdating the FBI's latest narrative so that it conforms to the previous one. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia style. The disinforming duo also refine stories by adding in and leaving out details to suit the current government line. In the Globe's 2017 heist anniversary article Murphy and Kurkjian write that one "theory, outlined by the FBI in a PowerPoint presentation a couple of years ago, is that [Carmello] Merlino's associates, George Reissfelder and Leonard DiMuzio, who both died in 1991, were involved in the theft, along with David Turner and possibly others.But two years earlier, in the original story, Murphy wrote on the FBI's PowerPoint presentation, she did not name the second man, Leonard DiMuzio, or the third man, David Turner at all. If these details were worth reporting in 2017, why were they left out of the story two years earlier? Could it be because David Turner was not mentioned in the PowerPoint, and Leonard DiMuzio, was such a weak suspect it did not seem credible? The following year, when Last Seen podcast was released, Leonard DiMuzio's name was not even mentioned, even though just three years earlier USA Today, relying soley on unnamed FBI sources, from a Breitbart article by Howie Carr, reported that DiMuzio was one of the two guys. A quarter of a century later, longtime Boston columnist Howie Carr says the FBI has tagged the perps who did the deed.
Carr, citing "multiple law enforcement sources" he doesn't name, writes in Breitbart News that the FBI has fingered ex-con George Reissfelder and a guy named Lenny DiMuzio. In the original 2015, 25th anniversary, story Murphy wrote that "the FBI is so confident it knows who stole $500 million worth of masterpieces from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, it has repeatedly touted its theory in recent months with PowerPoint presentations at libraries, colleges, and museums." That completely, utterly false claim was dropped in this second, story referencing the PowerPoint. The fact is the FBI did not ever present or make the PowerPoint available to the public at any time ever.) The 2015 story also claimed that "The story also falsely reported: "The FBI has questioned him,[the guard who let the thieves in, Rick Abath] repeatedly," although the guard has contradicted that claim in writing: "After 17 years [2007] of not hearing a word from the people charged with the task of solving the Gardner Museum Robbery, they popped up. They wanted to talk," Rick Abath wrote in a book excerpt he posted on Facebook. Another falsehood in that same 2017 story is the assertion that: "Youngworth produced a vial of paint fragments that he said were from one of the stolen Rembrandts. In December 1997, Stern and the FBI announced that the fragments were not from a Rembrandt and the deal fell apart." Twenty years after an intensively covered media event, and this is not even close to the actual history of what happened. Youngworth never claimed the paint chips were from the Rembrandt. Less than a week after federal investigators dismissed Youngworth's proof as not legitimate, the New York Times was challenging the federal investigators' account. The Times reporting how "the [Boston Herald] newspaper quoted a source ''close to the case'' as saying that ''the color and layering of the chips [did] match the Vermeer. Asked today, [December 6, 1997,] whether the chips could have come from the Vermeer, Federal authorities, the museum and The Herald all declined to comment." In 2015 Tom Mashberg of the New York Times wrote: In a recent interview, though, FBI officials told me that the chips had been re-examined in 2003 by Hubert von Sonnenburg, a Vermeer expert who was chairman of painting conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Mr. von Sonnenburg died the next year.) His tests determined the chips were an exact match for a pigment known as "red lake" that was commonly used by the 17th-century Dutch master and had been used in the stolen Vermeer ("The Concert"). The crackling pattern on the chips was similar to that found on other Vermeers, Mr. von Sonnenburg concluded, according to the authorities. But two years later, Murphy is disregarding Mashberg's somewhat recent reporting, and previous news stories, in support of the idea that Youngworth's chip evidence was legitimate. Then three years later in 2020, Murphy writes in the Globe about the possible legitimacy of Youngworth's claim, that Gardner Museum Chief Investigator Anthony "Amore said authorities can't discount the possibility that the chips are genuine." "'Either they got incredibly lucky taking chips off another painting, or they had access to our painting,'" Amore said."The 2017 story also reported falsely that "Mashberg said he now believes that whatever Youngworth showed him for a few seconds in the soft glow of a flashlight was not Rembrandt's, "The Storm" but a replica." Mashberg never said that and does not believe that. He has acknowledged it is possible he was fooled, but remains fairly convinced he saw the actual painting. His most recent public statement had been: "Eighteen years later, I still wonder whether what I saw that night was a masterpiece or a masterly effort to con an eager reporter."
Murphy and Kurkjian further write: "Why did Mashberg have a change of heart? Because the priceless seascape, before the theft, had been covered with protective coating to help preserve it, which would have made it impossible to roll up." False: Mashberg did not have a change of heart, and if he did it would not be over rolling up the painting. Rolling up Rembrandt's Storm On the Sea of Galilee, would likely cause severe damage, but it is not impossible to roll up. The Gardner Museum director and trustees pursued Youngworth about making a deal for years afterward. If it were impossible, the Museum would have dismissed Youngworth immediately as a fraud, and Mashberg would have deferred to their expertise and followed suit. But they did not and neither did he. After hearing Mashberg's story Museum officials met with Youngworth about the art, in a setting beyond the purview that the FBI has strongly established in this case, and gave him $10,000 cash. even though these activities came with some personal risk. "When the FBI and federal prosecutors learned of the museum's meeting with Youngworth, they called the two museum officials in front of a federal grand jury convened to investigate Youngworth. The back-channel dealings were over."What is perhaps Rembrandt's most famous work, The Night Watch, was rolled up during World War II and later restored.
In the 2021 Netflix documentary, This Is A Robbery Mashberg, told how Youngworth first brought him personally to see one of the stolen Gardner paintings in a warehouse in Brooklyn, then provided photographs, and then mailed paint chips to him at the Boston Herald, where he then worked, that were consistent with the Vermmer. "I think the museum people really wanted Youngworth and Connor to get a full immunity package and a guarantee of reward money. and then let's see the art returned. It kind of became a put up or shut-up monent. But at the time, the FBI and law enforcement rejected that idea. They still felt it was caving in to extortion. And there was no way there were going to shorten Myles Connor's prison term, for return of the art."The FBI never disproved Youngworth's claims, and were not willing to give Youngworth the assurance he sought. Assurances, that would in no way benefit Youngworth unless he actually came up with the art.
Here is a dirty disinforming dozen instance, in a single Boston Globe news story from June 12, 2017, where the reporting by the Boston Globe's Shelley Murphy and Stephen Kurkjian blatantly includes 12 egregious and provable false claims. "The trail had been cold for years when the FBI announced in 2010 that it had sent crime scene evidence from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to its lab for retesting, hoping advances in DNA analysis would identify the thieves who stole $500 million worth of masterpieces. Not only did the FBI not announce this, they disputed the particulars of the claim.The FBI told the Herald that a published report asserting, [by Kurkjian, which ran in the Boston Globe] that the bureau was "resubmitting" previously obtained evidence from the crime for DNA analysis "on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the theft" is not correct. "It was not submitted for the occasion of the 20th anniversary," FBI special agent and spokeswoman Gail A. Marcinkiewiczcq said of the evidence. "It was done long before that, as an investigative step that was logical to take."
"In the days after the robbery, FBI and Boston police crime scene analysts scoured the museum for clues." False: The Boston Police were taken off the case the day of the robbery the BPD did not scour anything the day after or days after the robbery." "Ray Flynn, then Boston's mayor, says he remains baffled as to why the FBI never sought the assistance of Boston police. "The Gardner art theft in Boston was devastating," Flynn recalled recently. "Boston police were pretty much taken off the scene of the investigation by the feds, and we never could quite understand why that was the policy." Master Thieves page 96. At least 5 crime scenes (3 galleries, security station, basement) and the FBI found zero physical evidence. A museum employee found six tiny screws from a frame left by the thieves on the floor of the Short Gallery, according to Kurkjian, after the FBI gave the all clear to re-open.
There is nothing to substantiate that anything was scoured for evidence since none was found, given the way other evidence was collected, not kept, not preserved, or not utilized.
"The statute of limitations on the theft expired years ago." False: The statute of limitations for larceny in Massachusetts is tolled, does not run, during any time periods that the thieves were not a "usual and public resident" of the Commonwealth. If they left, which they did, they could still be charged.
"Four years ago, the FBI announced it was confident it had identified the thieves - local criminals who have since died." The FBI did not say the thieves were dead until 2015, two years after this story ran, not four, when the historic 2013 press conference occurred. And they did not say the thieves were "local criminals." They said: We have identified the thieves, who are members of a criminal organization with a base in the Mid-Atlantic states and New England."
"Mid-Atlantic states and New England" does not correspond in anyway to "local." And they didn't say the thieves were from this area. They said the criminal organization was based there. They did not say Mafia, so it could any kind of criminal organization. The FBI has not been shy about using the term "Mafia," since The Apalachin meeting in 1957.
The thieves left them [the two guards] handcuffed in the museum's basement as they spent 81 minutes slashing and pulling masterpieces from their frames.
Abath was not handcuffed. Even early photos of Abath show no evidence of his being handcuffed although his wrists are only partially visible. Police photos made public through the "This Is A Robbery" documentary clearly show that Abath is not handcuffed. In the Netflix Documentary, This Is A Robbery, John Green said: "The day of the robbery was the first and last time I was ever at the Gardner Museum. I was a forensic photographer, and I was also an image analyst for the FBI. I may have gotten there about 9:15 or so. Those shots there were taken by BPD. They photographed Rick. Randy was in the other shot. But they seemed to concentrate on Rick and how he was taped up. He was duct taped. His head and his hair in a roundabout fashion. And then his hands were bound. Which I thought was kind of odd. They had a little pad."
Also, the thieves did not spend Eighty-one minutes stealing art. They were in the museum 24 four minutes before they entered any gallery, and perhaps remained in the museum for 18 minutes after having left a gallery for the last time. And they may have left sooner, or possibly even later than eighty-one minutes later. Thomas Cassano, the FBI's Supervisory Special Agent for the Gardner heist case for over ten years said in 2016: "We are not sure how many (suspects) there were. We know there were at least two. These two guards were put down in the basement so nobody kept track of what was happening. We know how they came in, but we don't know how they got out."
Also the definition of slash is to cut with a swinging motion. You can't slash and have a very clean, precise cut. . In his book "Priceless," Robert Wittman, co-founders of the FBI's art theft squad wrote that the Gardner heist paintings "very neatly." In addition, the two paintings were not cut from the frames, they were cut from their stretchers, which does less damage than cutting from the frame, according to the FBI Gardner heist Supervisor at that time, Thomas Cassano, in 2000.
"Gentile offered to sell some of the stolen paintings to an undercover FBI agent in 2015." False: Gentile was offered money for the paintings in an FBI sting, from a man posing as a marijuana dealer. But instead, Gentile demanded a piece of the marijuana action and threatened the undercover agent when he refused, according to a disclosure in court by federal prosecutors."
"The thieves wrapped duct tape around the hands, eyes, and mouths of the two guards on duty." There is no tape around guard Rick Abath's mouth in the crime scene photos, nothing to keep him from yelling out, which he never did. After an hour in the Museum Boston Police discovered him in the basement. The crime scene photos do that there is duct tape on Rick Abath's wrist, but not his hands. Abath said he could see before the thieves left. The duct tape covering his eyes is wound under his right ear and below his forehead. This does not appear to be a serious attempt to keep him from seeing. He does not appear to have been seven plus hours in the basement by the boiler, and we have only Abath's word that he was tied up in the basement by the thieves. There is nothing about the way he is taped that would be impossible for him to have done to himself. "The FBI, which collected the crime scene evidence, lost the duct tape and handcuffs." Later in the same story: "police officers who removed the tape." So the FBI did not "collect" the duct tape, they took control of the duct tape from the BPD, who collected it. They took custody of evidence from another law enforcement agency, kicked that agency off the case, lost the evidence entrusted to them by that agency and collected zero evidence themselves, except fingerprints which never matched anyone.More bull from Murphy in other "Gardner heist" news stories in the Boston Globe
"The government secretly reduced the prison term of a longtime suspect in the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum several years ago, raising questions about whether he agreed to help authorities recover the $500 million worth of stolen masterworks." There is no proof that David Turner received a sentence reduction, secret or otherwise. The only source for the story is the BOP.GOV website. And release dates shown on the Bureau of Prisons website do not indicate or suggest a reduced sentence, as the story claims. The website clearly states that: “the projected release date displayed reflects the inmate's statutory release date (expiration full term minus good conduct time)” and not the full sentence the person received from the judge.” If Robert Gentile, for example served his full sentence he would have freed in 2020, not 2019, but the BOP.gov website very closely matched Gentile’s actual release date, not the sentence he received from a judge. Even if Turner had received a sentence reduction there is no evidence, or indication that it could have been in any way related to the Gardner Heist. In a story about Stephen Rossetti's release from prison, Murphy reported: After his arrest, [for conspiring to rob the Loomis-Fargo armored car depot in 1999] "Turner claimed they suspected he and Merlino were involved in the Gardner theft and offered to let him “walk” if he helped retrieve the stolen artwork." Six weeks later, when he was released from prison, Murphy instead reported that Agents told Turner he was a suspect in the infamous 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and could receive leniency if he returned the stolen masterpieces, according to court records.Those alleged statements in unspecified, unquoted court records would have to go back to Turner's appeal in 2006. And it certainly would not have come from the prosecution since the basis of Turner's appeal was that he "Turner asserted that the FBI agents induced him to participate in the crime so that they could pressure him to provide information regarding the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, about which they thought he had knowledge." Turner didn't even claim that they thought he did it or that he was ever questioned about the actual heist, only that he had knowledge about it.
In article in Boston Magazine about the Loomis car robbery sting in 2006, around the time that Turner was appealing his arrest and conviction in that case, had that “They think that I was the person who committed the robbery, which is false,” says Turner in a letter written from Plymouth County Correctional Facility." Kurkjian has this same quote in his book, Master Thieves, on page 170. But Turner did not write what the FBI told him; he wrote what the FBI thinks. This becomes for Murphy, that the FBI told him that directly. He never claimed that, and then the following month this information purportedly exists somewhere in court records, but following the historical thread back, there is no basis in fact for these claims. In the article about Rossetti's release from prision Murphy wrote: "Efforts to recover the [stolen Gardner Museum] artwork were unsuccessful, but the agents foiled a plot by Merlino and his crew to rob an Easton, MA armored car depot in 1999.The plot was not foiled. It was the FBI's plot. It was a sting.
It started with the claim by an informant, Anthony Romano, that "[Carmello] Merlino had asked him if he knew anyone “clean” who might be willing to get a job at an armored car drop-off. "The day after Thanksgiving the following year, 1998, after the FBI had persuadef Romano to wear a wire, Romano told Merlino that a “gambling fucking degenerate” he knew had gotten a job as a guard at the Loomis/Fargo armored car depot and would let them past the door. Over the next few weeks, Romano insisted the robbery would be a breeze. The vault was always open, he told Merlino, and there were few alarms." But there was no guard on the inside, and the other claims that the vault was always open and there were few alarms, were just fabricated details Romano fed to Merlino to make the robbery plot more enticing. When Turner and company began to execute a plan based on the false information provided by Romano two FBI agents were watching Turner and Rossetti from a surveillance plane before they had even arrived in Dorchester to pick up the other people involved in the planned robbery. So the FBI didn't foil the plot because the actual plot was their own, a trap. In Last Seen Podcast, Murphy says: "You know, it’s frustrating. All these theories are frustrating. For everything that points toward these particular suspects [George Reissfelder and David Turner] there’s something that points away. Yes, it is frustrating when the FBI is "broadly hinting" about particular suspects, when there is so much exculpatory evidence for the people they are hinting about.But the solution for a journalist is not to exaggerate FBI crime fighting exploits, cover up the inconsistencies in their accounts with misinformation, and to dirty up show-trial suspects with false and unsubstantiated claims.
By Kerry Joyce
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