Gardner Museum Heist —Blog
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Gardner Heist Aftermath Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part One)
Gardner Heist Aftermath
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Gardner Heist Aftermath Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Three)
Gardner Heist Aftermath
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Post-Truth Makes Camp in the Athens of America (Part Three)
In 1989, five years after Connor was released from prison (again) and moved to Kentucky, he was arrested in yet another FBI sting, this time in Bloomington, IL, over a thousand miles from Boston. He was charged with selling yet another item from the Woolworth Estate burglary, an enormous 18th century Simon Willard grandfather clock, (if that clock could tell more than time...) as well as two of the three paintings stolen from the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College in Massachusetts, two months before the Rembrandt robbery at the Boston MFA, in 1975.
While Anthony Amore, decades later, in the Introduction of his book, The Art of the Con, suggested that the art of art theft is in the selling of the art, not the thievery of it, here was Myles Connor, the criminal he would later dub "the Greatest art thief in the history of the world," once again collared by an undercover FBI agent, this one posing as an Italian mobster, "Tony Graziano," with a passion for Simon Willard grandfather clocks.
By the time of the Gardner heist, Connor had been in jail, since March 10, 1989, over a year. He had pled guilty to charges of being in possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, and interstate transportation of stolen property. By the time of the Gardner heist he had been awaiting sentencing for four months. It would seem to be an ideal time to make a deal, but despite his stolen art pedigree, extensively summarized in news stories and charge-sheets spanning decades, and despite delay after delay in his sentencing, Connor offered nothing.Connor claimed in his 2010 book, The Art of the Steal, that "in March of 1990," and "days" after the Gardner heist, federal agents had interviewed him in his cell in the Sangamon County jail, contradicting news reports from the time of the robbery. In fact, the Boston Globe did a short article, largely about how Myles Connor had not been interviewed.
"Dozens of prison inmates have called the FBI with tips about the Gardner Museum art heist," the Boston Globe reported but one-time art thief Myles J. Connor Jr. isn't one of them," a Globe story began, on May 13, 2020. "Information has poured in from far-flung spots around the world, including South America. "Fortunately, we have agents who speak those languages," said Quinn. "Many clues have come to the agency from closer to home, particularly after the FBI published composite pictures of the two thieves." Where did the FBI "publish" these composite pictures? Not in the Boston Globe, or any other publication within a hundred miles of Boston. And "'We've made no attempt to talk to Myles Connor,' said FBI supervisory special agent Edward M. Quinn. Adds Connor's defense attorney, Greg Collins: 'He has not been requested to meet with the FBI, and I am pretty sure he has not been in contact with them.'"But Connor's book deal with Harper Publishing hinged on his link to the Gardner heist case, according to his own co-author, Jenny Siler, which may explain his claim.
"My agent told me a bit about him," Siler said on the podcast Empty Frames in 2018. "Of course the hook for getting me involved and sort of getting everyone involved was his [Myles Connor's claimed] connection to the Gardner heist, my introduction came through that."Connor has no corroboration for his claim that Houghton confessed to having committed the Gardner heist to him, or of his even having come to visit him in prison. "That's one of the things that only, you know Myles [Connor], says," Siler acknowledged. But everything linking Myles Connor to robbery fits in that category.
Not only does Connor, have only his own uncorroborated claims of a connection to the Gardner heist, he has been unable to keep some of the fundamental details of his story straight.In Last Seen podcast, Connor claimed that, "how I'm 100 percent sure that they [Houghton and Donati] did it was because David Houghton, who was longtime friend of mine, flew all the way from Logan Airport to California just to tell me: 'We did it. And we got a bunch paintings, and we're gonna use a couple of these paintings to bargain you into a reduced sentence,'" But in Connor's book he stated that it was not until "the fall of 1990" that he was "transferred to federal penitentiary in Lompoc, CA," several [at least six] months after the Gardner heist, and in his book he said that Houghton came to visit him several weeks after the robbery, and "David's visit was the last time I heard from either man [David Houghton or Robert Donati]." So that means Connor's visit with Donati could only have been in Illinois.
Decades before Connor's book, two decades before Last Seen Podcast, in September of 1997, during the height of the negotiations with Youngworth, Connor's cellmate in Lompoc, CA, Rocco Ellis, told the Boston Globe that it was his understanding from Connor, that the visit Houghton made to Connor took place, in Illinois, and that it occurred "three months before the Gardner heist, where Houghton sought his [Connor's] advice." The same story quotes Connor's attorney Martin Leppo, saying that "Rocco Ellis plays an important part in the Gardner matter." Since Ellis had been talking about Houghton's alleged role in the case for five years, and had been in the Lompoc, CA federal facility with Connor, he would likely know what Connor was claiming about where the meeting took place, (and when) and whether it was where they had been cell mates, or whether it was in another facility thousands of miles away. "'It's very easy to lay this crime off on a dead man,' said a personal injury lawyer who had represented Houghton and remained friends with him. 'But I don't think David [Houghton] could find his way to the Gardner museum,'" the Boston Globe reported in a different news story, which also reported that "the FBI says it has no evidence linking either Houghton or Donati to the crime," or that the two men even knew each other. But despite the utter lack of evidence supporting Connor's claims, his demonstrated willingness to lie, his strong longstanding motivation and incentive to link himself somehow to the Gardner case, and the complete lack of proof or corroboration of his claim, Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore, in an article about his media normalized "bromance" with Connor said that: “I believe Myles that David Houghton visited him in Lompoc federal prison and told him that he and Bobby Donati had committed the heist to get him out of jail. I 100 percent believe Myles that that happened.”The question is why does Amore believe it? Why does he want the public to believe it? What is behind Amore's constant and unequivocal public endorsement of Myles Connor after calling him a huckster, and a real bad guy?
The goal of getting inside the mind of an experienced art criminal is how Gardner Museum security director Anthony Amore justified his years long close association with Myles Connor, an association he himself initiated, decades after the Gardner heist, and a decade after he became involved in the investigation.Amore did claim that "I like behind around him [Myles Connor]" too, but in the same 2017 interview said: "Guys that hunt serial killers talk to serial killers, well I hunt art thieves so I talk to art thieves."
Certainly no one would have faulted the FBI for engaging with Connor, just to see if the career criminal, at the age 47, having spent most of his adult life in prison, would be willing to share his views on the case, with the people who would help decide his fate, in federal court. As it was, the Judge gave Connor twenty years, double the recommended sentence under federal sentencing guidelines of the time.But interviewing Connor in his cell, never mind going to a Bruce Springsteen concert with him as Amore would do decades later, that was not deemed the way to approach the Gardner heist mission, whatever that mission was, in the early days after the heist.
Or even in the somewhat later days. By 1992, two years after the heist, from his prison cell in Lompoc, CA, Connor was actively working to parlay his reputation as a stolen art trafficker, someone in the know, to help out his cellmate, Rocco Ellis.
With Connor's help, Ellis sought to use the two names given to him by Connor, Bobby Donati and David Houghton as leverage with federal officials in Boston. The two former associates of Connor, were the men responsible for the Gardner Heist, according to Connor, authorities were told by Ellis. "By that time both men were dead, Donati in an unsolved gangland slaying and the 350 pounds Houghton of natural causes." But why was Connor sharing this information through someone else, instead of going directly to authorities with it, to help himself? Was there an embargo on speaking with Connor about the Gardner heist, as seemed to be the case with an attempted robber of the Hyde Museum. Brian McDevittA resident of Boston's Beacon hill, only a three miles from the Gardner Museum, McDevitt was not interviewed by the FBI until two years after the heist, although he says he spent the night alone at home, at 69 Hancock Street.
Whitey Bulger too, was an FBI informant at the time of the heist, who was not questioned by his FBI handler, John Connolly, until after he had retired from the FBI. "The informant tips coming into the Boston field office regarding the Gardner theft were no doubt being finely screened. It may also explain why a legitimate source may not have even bothered calling," FBI special agent Thomas McShane wrote in his book, 'Loot: Inside the World of Stolen Art.' "Finely screened," like through a stone wall, and not much had changed when, in 1997, when William P. Youngworth III made what seemed to be, and still seems to have been a legitimate offer to return the stolen Gardner art. But he too, like Connor's friend Rocco Ellis, made the not credible suggestion that it was Bobby Donati and David Houghton, who were behind the Gardner art heist. "Youngworth has gone public with much the same tale as Rocco Ellis. That's no coincidence, because the two long-time criminals are funneling information from the same fount; the notorious art thief Myles Connor," according to the Boston Globe.When Houghton died, Youngworth had been entrusted with Connor's horde of art and antiques. Five years into this arrangement was when Youngworth came forward to negotiate a return of the stolen Gardner Museum art, and with one of his demands being that in addition to the reward, that Myles Connor be released from prison, with two and a half years left on his sentence, the spotlight he never achieved in his music career, was once again on Myles Connor.
It seems likely, therefore that Youngworth's backstory for the stolen Gardner art, originated with Myles Connor as well. So here now were three things that connected Myles Connor to the Gardner heist, or at least the yet to be recovered stolen art: Youngworth was serving as custodian of Connor's belongings at the time he made what still seems like a credible offer to return some of the art.Part of the deal Youngworth proposed called for Connor's release as part of his offer for returning the paintings to the museum.
And Youngworth's backstory, of who had stolen the Gardner art was the same one as Connor's cellmate, Rocco Ellis. And all this brought with it a fourth link, for a marketing savvy former rock 'n roller, like Myles Connor, publicity. The value was in being linked to this historic crime in the eyes of the public. "After his conviction was overturned for the murders of Susan Webster and Karen Spinney in a second trial, in 1985, Connor was convinced his reputation was in tatters. "Boston the city that had once embraced me as its prodigal son, that had seen in me its own restless image, no longer wanted anything to do with me." Connor's success as a rock 'n roll musician is quite overblown. He never earned enough to make a living, he acknowledged his book, and the only press he ever garnered about his being musician, aside from display ads for weeknight gigs at The Surf, in Hull, MA, were passing references in news stories after one of his arrests. If not for his criminal career, nobody outside of a dive bar in Revere, and a venue or two on the South Shore would have ever heard of Myles Connor and the Wild Ones. But Connor's abiding faith in his own legend had reached its limit: "The bank robberies and art thefts had been one thing; if anything my outlaw reputation had only added to my allure as a rock and roller. But the murders were another matter."
The Gardner heist, however, was big enough and glamorous and mysterious enough that Connor's link to it, intangible as it was, began to fade away some of his criminal past away, at least for the newspapers, if not family member of people victimized by Connor and his crew during their mid-1970's crime spree.
The Boston Globe: Rocco Ellis "is not an art thief but he considers himself lucky to know the best in the business: Connor." Maybe not the best, and certainly not a business, but in the business of making newspaper headlines, Connor was demonstrating he had a real knack.
by Kerry Joyce
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