As they walked the bare grounds that surround the museum that February day, Special Agent W. Thomas Cassano told Hawley, according to notes made after the conversation: "It looks like we know who did it. One is in jail, one is dead, and one is on the street."
The FBI, Cassano said, had picked up the Gardner trail during an undercover operation targeting Dorchester crime boss Carmello Merlino. Word was that Merlino, along with three South Shore men, had been responsible for the historic heist
And so the agency went all out. One of the three Merlino confederates was dead, but they pressed the other two hard. Agents put an undercover informant in the jail cell of one, Peter Boylan of Weymouth, and later offered to drop federal charges against the other, David Turner of Braintree, if he would tell what he knew.
No dice.
The men kept their silence, and the investigation, in the end, didn't yield much. Like so many other apparent clues to what remains the largest unsolved art theft in history, this one led to an apparent cul-de-sac.
Turner and the others are in the news again, courtesy of a new book that identifies Turner as the most likely subject. But the reality is more complicated and elusive, which is ever the way with this case. If claims of proof were the same as proof, the Gardner would have had its paintings back years ago.
Still, there are aspects of the Turner-Merlino tale that remained tantalizing, even as the trail grew cold.
A member of Boylan's family told the Globe in 2006 that the FBI focus was drawn to Peter Boylan, the son of a Boston police officer, after the young man engaged in idle and baseless boasting about the theft while in a jail cell.
Turner's lawyer, Robert Goldstein of Boston, said his client has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the Gardner theft. Goldstein questioned why Turner, who is now serving a 30-year prison sentence after being convicted of armed robbery in 2001, would not cooperate with authorities and seek a reduction in sentence.
But while the several FBI agents who have been assigned the case have worked tirelessly chasing tips - the latest being searching without luck two possible stash houses in Maine and Dedham - the investigation has lacked a major commitment of manpower and coordinated strategy. The probe now rests primarily with one FBI agent who is also responsible for investigating other major thefts covered by the Bureau's Boston office.
In addition, the FBI's decision to handle the case entirely on its own, without the assistance of local and Massachusetts State Police, has undercut the probe's effectiveness, according to local and State Police officers. For example, even though State and South Shore police coordinated a drug investigation that kept Merlino, Turner, and others under surveillance during the 18 months before and after the Gardner heist, the assistance of those officers was never sought by the FBI working the Gardner case.
Had they, they might have learned that the surveillance showed that Turner's girlfriend was telling callers that he was on a "mini-vacation" in Florida during February and March 1990. While in Miami, three days before the Gardner robbery, Turner purchased $645 worth of unspecified merchandise from the Spy Shops International in Miami, a store that specialized in the sale of undercover and electronic surveillance equipment. Also viewed by the Globe was a receipt that showed Turner's American Express card was used in Fort Lauderdale on the return of a leased car on March 20, 1990, two days after the robbery. While the receipt appears to be signed by Turner, another person's Social Security card number is written on the receipt, which investigators say suggests someone other than Turner might have been using his credit card that day. Goldstein, Turner's lawyer, declined comment on the documents.
In addition, Turner was observed by police surveillance in September 1991 carrying an "Oriental vase" from his car into the Boston office of Alfred Sollitto, a lawyer with whom he had become acquainted. Among the 13 items stolen from the Gardner Museum was a vase-like, Chinese bronze beaker. Sollitto acknowledged in an interview that he was a friend of Turner's but could not recall Turner ever bringing a vase to his office.
On paper, too, the focus on Turner and his comrades made some sense.
Turner was tough, smart, and aggressive and in the months before and after the March 18, 1990 theft at the Gardner, he had pulled off two armed robberies of homes in Canton and Tewksbury. When his two associates in those crimes began cooperating with authorities, both were killed. No one has been charged in the murders, though police questioned Turner about them.
Although he grew up in middle-class Braintree, Turner, according to police, aspired to make it as a mobster. His ticket to that netherworld was provided by Merlino, a convicted drug dealer who ran an auto body shop in Dorchester, and had been aligned with organized crime figures Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and his brother John (Action Jackson) Salemme, since the early 1960s.
Through Merlino, Turner might have learned something about vulnerabilities of the Gardner from Ralph Rossetti, the patriarch of an East Boston crime family, who was friendly with Merlino and had plotted to attack the museum in 1981. FBI agents held an emergency meeting with museum officials in September 1981 and told them Rossetti and another career criminal were planning to throw smoke bombs into the museum during a Tuesday night chamber music performance and in the ensuing chaos speed through the galleries and steal priceless paintings.
Although the pair were not prosecuted for that plot, they were convicted of breaking into a Newton home a few months before the planned Gardner robbery and stealing 23 valued paintings, rare coins, and jewelry.
Ralph Rossetti died in 1998, but Merlino stayed in contact with his family members. The following year he called on Stephen Rossetti of East Boston, Ralph Rossetti's nephew, to join him in robbing the Loomis-Fargo armored car warehouse in Easton of $50 million.
Turner was the fourth member of the gang.
Turner has also been the focus of some intriguing jail house whispers about the Gardner case. Robert Beauchamp, who is serving a life sentence in MCI-Norfolk, says Turner, accompanied by an associate George Reissfelder, visited him in prison in 1991 and Reissfelder told him they had pulled off the robbery and that the Gardner paintings had been hidden in a house in Maine.
The Loomis-Fargo heist was foiled when the FBI became aware of the scheme through an undercover informant and arrested them before they could reach their target. According Martin Leppo, a Brockton lawyer who represented Merlino and Turner in the past, FBI agents approached both men after their arrests in their holding cells and told them that if they would cooperate on the museum case, the charges against them would be reduced or dropped.
Both maintained their silence then and at trial, and received long prison sentences. Merlino died at age 71 in federal prison in 2005 without providing useful information to the authorities on the Gardner theft. Turner, whom Leppo nicknamed "Hollywood" because of his boyish good looks, is not due to be released until 2032, when he will be 65 years old. "These are not men who cooperate easily," Leppo said. "Not unless they have nowhere else to turn." Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper