Gardner Museum Heist —Blog
Abs Seen
Episode 1 ‘The Belly of the Beast'
MICHELIN: It was the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, and Boston was still busy getting itself green to the gills celebrating St. Patrick's Day. Cue the Micks! [Scottish bagpipe music in the background]
On that dark and stormy evening, what we in the Athens of America call “Amateur Night,” while city denizens, finished paying their final Lucky Charms tributes to American Standard, [puking and flushing sound] these two thieves dressed as male strippers —they had police hats, badges and wax mustaches — conned this gullible burnout of a security guard into thinking that they were in fact actual Boston Police
The guard decides to let these two guys into the Glandner Museum, he now claims, okay, because, get this, they said they were responding to a disturbance. But it turned out they weren’t strippers OR cops. And that’s NOT a whole ‘nother story. It’s this one. So listen up now, to the true, true-crime story, of the greatest art heist in all of history. Masterpieces worth up to a billion dollars in today’s money, priceless works ripped from the walls, slashed from their frames, thrown to the floor and only god knows what else. "The questions remain unanswered, as the robbery devolves into a felonious orgy, as if the men have grown totteringly drunk from all the rare treasures. and shit.
Even who the thieves were still remains a mystery, to everyone to this day, heh heh heh... or almost, everyone.But leave us begin our deep dive, our very deep dive, our Wilbur Mills and Fannie Foxx into the Tidal Basin deep dive, into this great mystery, starting with the quote unquote security guard, who let them in in the first place.
“Don’t I know you?” The guard claims one of the stripper-dressed crooks said to him, before he asked him for some i.d. But while he’s doing that, okay, the other fake cop is reaching high up near the ceiling, turning the freaking security camera toward the wall.The guard claims, [Mocking stoner Voice] “You know, when the fake cop started turning the camera around like that, it did seem a bit strange, I was like, "Whoa why would he be turning the camera around like that?" But they had hats, badges, they looked like cops so I didn’t question it. Now I think maybe I should have.
[Laughing] Yea. No Shit Cher locks.
Anyway, this guard is either a. the most brain dead fucking individual on spaceship earth, that can somehow draw a breath without being hooked up to a machine or something, right? Or the fucking guy is in on the Glandner Museum robbery. Those are your two choices. Pick one. But not yet. First listen to this podcast, which just might give you a better idea about what really happened, which, spoiler alert, was totally fucked up, though it probably won't.Recently though, and when I say recently I mean in Glandner Museum Heist time, where “recently” can be like ten years, twenty years or more. The clock doesn’t start ticking until the feds get around to dribbling out some tidbit to the public through one of their pet journalists or other surrogates, for their own mysterious reasons, which the press then treat like the second coming of King Tut or some shit.
So recently, as in 18 years ago, there was a real break. The same guard who let the thieves in suddenly remembered something. That there was this seven-inch birthmark on the lower abdomen of one of the crooks. This coffee stain blotch was visible to the guard when the crook reached up to turn the security camera toward the wall. It was at that point, it seems that the crook's stripper/police-shirt came untucked, and thereby revealed a very unwholesome swath of the perpetrator's Boston crime underbelly.
The distinctive birthmark, it can now be told, looks very much like a very hairy upside down map of Florida, let’s say, except it has this dark mole at the tip of it, which I guess makes it Miami.
This is just the latest clue, which investigators, don’t stop me, even though you’ve heard it a million fucking times before, are convinced could split the Glandner heist case wide open.
[Cynical Monotone] With one of the greatest investigative teams in history working tirelessly to solve the greatest property crime in history. [End Cynical Monotone] Or at least it was until Donald J. Trump signed his 1997 federal tax return. But now it seems, just maybe, this billion-dollar museum theft mystery for the ages may now at last be solved.
The latest breakthrough, code named "the Florida Key" came as a kind of vision, the guard says, while he was in a state of fungi induced transcendence, I shit you not. He had been shrooming up in Saddleboro, Vermont, and it all came flooding back. It was that experience, he says, which led to his recollection of the birthmark clue, which, only then, did he share with investigators.
This latest break in the case is such a potential game-changer, the show's producers decided to name this podcast for it, “Abs Seen.” Nobody ever got around to asking what I think of the name, so there it is.
Meanwhile the authorities, for their part, have decided to drug test the guard every month. Because, after all, those tripping mushrooms are illegal. And the authorities are determined to find out who it was that supplied him with this controlled-substance in the first place. Another freaking tangent. And so, with their brains on drugs they have even gotten the DEA involved.
More on the guard and his story of the case in Episode Two. Here in Episode One of Abs Seen, and remember it was not my idea to name it that, we’re following Yonda Starr, our podcast producer and senior reporter into a strange place, accompanied by Glandner Museum Security Director, Augustine Toomuchi, but don't take my word for it.
AUGUSTINE (HAYSTACK) TOOMUCHI: We're in a strange place. Many people don't come up here. You might have to duck a lot. We're in the attic.
YONDA STARR: The attic. Of course. Just as I suspected. All those rickety stairs, the wooden beams overhead, the ducking and ducking and ducking, until I’m tired, tired of all the ducking. We are in-deed in the Glandner Museum attic.
Not far off, near a pile of boxed up Christmas decorations, I spy a heaving, sweating and groaning HVAC unit. It's what keeps all of the priceless treasures, and assorted gold-plated bric-a-brac below us, as cool as a proverbial cucumber, like our S[l]erpa guide to the Glandner Museum robbery investigation, Mr. Augustine (Haystack) Toomuchi himself.
The ‘Abs Seen’ podcast has been given unprecedented access, access, and more access, with hardly any strings attached at all, any to speak of really, okay maybe a few little ones, to this, the Glandner Museum attic, as well as to so much more as you will hear in our weekly episodes.
We are here on a typical sweltering 21st century October day in Boston. Not only is the heat quite stifling up here but it’s also as stuffy and dim, as many of the Glandner Museum trustees. But we are undeterred, ready to take it all in, and share it with you, our listeners.
STARR: Why the attic you ask? Because Glandner Heist lead investigator Augustine Toomuchi. the museum's head of security, has something he wants me to see.
TOOMUCHI: We’re going to go around a corner here.
STARR: Toomuchi is right. It is a corner, there’s no denying it. And a sharp corner at that. So sharp you can’t even see around it. Now we are in another part that is not a corner at all. It is what one might call a space, an attic space. And there is stuff in it, from object d’art, and tapestries, to a tiny yellow screen, the size and shape of a quarter, which is covered in a mysterious black tar. Some of it is the stuff of mystery and intrigue. But which stuff? Hold on, because we’re about to find out just that.
On our way, we pass a large bucket with the word “Fire” painted on it in bright orange-red letters. The bucket is nearly full of something called guaiacum, or holy wood, which Toomuchi tells us, was something the husband of Isabella Stewart Glandner, Mr. Jack Four Quards, stored here for safe keeping. Holy wood was one of the things Jack Glandner decided to bring back from Europe, owing to one of the other things Mr. Glandner brought back from Europe, without even deciding to, back in the long ago days before penicillin.
TOOMUCHI: We’re almost there Toomuchi says.
STARR: Was this true? Were we really all...most...there? We’re in the attic, which he has already acknowledged. We couldn’t get much higher. There is so much suspense in the asbestos tinged air, you could practically slash it very neatly with a halfway decent box cutter.
Was Toomuchi stooping down now to avoid the overhead beams we are approaching, or from the weight of the 13 albatrosses around his neck, one for each priceless work of art missing from the Museum, that he and he alone is destined to recover? The weight of being the lead investigation on the biggest, most historic robbery in the history of the known universe, and not finding jack, does at times take its toll, and a heavy one indeed.
TOOMUCHI: Hahznzfrasanfalnin
STARR: Hmm. The lead investigator of this historic crime has pointed and said something undoubtedly brilliant, but at the moment, unintelligible. Our pick of the litter sound engineers can only do so much with the fact that Toomuchi can be quite soft spoken in a way that belies his strapping six foot two inch frame.
Tall and trim, Toomuchi "dresses in tidy civilian camouflage: navy blazer, pressed khakis, tie." And at 53 years of age, he still cuts a striking figure even with his head dodging, weaving and outmaneuvering the ancient wooden beams overhead, or trying his best at least.
[THUD].
TOOMUCHI: Ouch.
From Toomuchi’s dashing and urbane manner, one would never guess that he grew up in an urban backwater, Providence, Rhode Island, where class is something folks are typically looking for an opportunity to cut.
TOOMUCHI: Hahznzfrasanfalnin hahznzfrasanfalnin hahznzfrasanfalnin.
STARR: OK. Now Toomuchi seems to be speaking in tongues. Is he channeling one of the long dead thieves? Isabella Stewart Gardner? John Singer Sargent? Or Brandon Stark from the HBO hit series Game of Thrones?
Our sound engineer is knitting his angry-brows at me. But the great investigator’s sometimes unintelligible speech lends itself to a delicate balance. The balance he is fated to strike, between granting interviews to media outlets from all over the world, and with the overarching imperative of never ever EVER revealing more than he can or wants to share with the public about this very much ongoing investigation, as he did only that one time at a Belmont Historical Society talk he gave back in 2014.
Although our sound engineer insists on mitigating what he considers a certain simpering quality in Toomuchi’s voice, with an equally unsettling Wizard Of Oz echo effect, "there remains something perfect about Toomuchi’s natural cadence, slow and clear, crumbling at the edges. It leavens the Gardner Heist story’s inherent sensationalism, brings it down to the ground, and moors it in a too true, true-crime reality."
STARR: I’m sorry. What did you say, Gus?
TOOMUCHI: My name isn’t Gus. It’s Augustine.
STARR: Oh. Yes. Augustine of course. Sorry. [Whispering] Our sound engineer assures me that back at the studio he will have no problem softening out the icy tone lurking around the edges of this last statement by Toomchi.
STARR: [continues]: But you are also sometimes called “Haystack.”
TOOMUCHI: [Chuckles, Belly laughs, Wheezes, Strikes his Head]. Ow!
STARR: Are you okay?
TOOMUCHI: Oh sure. Ahh. It’s just that one of these beams is not like the others and I… Anyway it is true some of my very close colleagues in federal law enforcement, the criminal underworld, and the media do at times, call me that, like in a game of cards, maybe, or over a pint, from time to time.
STARR: Why do they call you that?
TOOMUCHI: Some say it is because of the approach I take to the Glandner Heist case that we're trying to make this haystack smaller, in search of a needle, which is the stolen art. And every time we eliminate a piece of information we're getting closer to the art.
STARR: Really? Because I heard…
TOOMUCHI: Others says it’s because of a disguise I wore during an undercover surveillance operation we conducted, years ago, and I’m not at liberty to say much about it, but it was at a horse track in East Boston that has since closed. It was known to be frequented by, and I don’t want to name anybody or single out any one or any particular group of people but their names to tend to end in vowels, such as “i” or “o” most of the time, sometimes "a," but not always. And let’s just say it’s not only their garlic and tomato marinated calamari appetizers that are organized into tight little rings. But I cannot stress this enough. I’m not naming anybody or any group of people, Capisce?
Toomuchi can be infuriatingly adept at scuttling a reporter’s efforts to probe at times. But it’s all just part of the job of being of being the person the FBI looks to as the lead investigator, and not just some helpfully dissembling mouthpiece or anything, on this internationally watched and followed unsolved crime investigation.
TOOMUCHI: Right this way.
STARR: We step out of the low amber light into a darkness with much cooler air, where all is calm, all is quiet around us.
Is this is what Toomuchi has taken me to see? A storeroom full of sumptuous textiles used on furniture and walls throughout the Glandner Museum. Or is it this stack of old, no longer glossy, dog-eared magazines piled up here, with names like Through Detective and Anabolic Today?
No, that's not why we're here. But in the back of this room, in a space barely wide enough to accommodate us both, Toomuchi deftly pulls out his cellphone and flips on the flashlight. He then pulls a cover off something. Something big.
TOOMUCHI: We're looking at the rosewood stretcher that held “Storm On The Sea Of Galilee,” but what you're really looking at here is Rembrandt.
STARR: Or in other words a stretcher that once held a Rembrandt painting Is that right?
TOOMUCHI: Yes but it’s so much more than that. What we’re looking at here is Rembrandt.
STARR: This is what was left behind after the thieves slashed "Storm On The Sea Of Galilee" from its frame. So, in a sense, it’s Rembrandt?
TOOMUCHI: Exactly. In a literal sense, it's Rembrandt.
STARR: Wow, it's enormous.
TOMMUCHI: Yeah, you can see why they wouldn't have been able to take it with them.
STARR: No, it wouldn't have been something you could carry out, to a waiting van on the street, or to your office on the fourth floor, for instance, so visitors wouldn’t have to view it here in a dark stuffy attic. Achoo.
But there is — that is paint that Rembrandt put there. What a thing to see. Not a Rembrandt painting, but Rembrandt paint. It kind of takes the breath away. But the thieves also left a clue.
TOOMUCHI: Yes. they certainly did. If you look closely here you can see they cut into the stretcher. You see that?
STARR: Oh, yeah. So they were pressing hard, with something extremely sharp, because it's a very clean cut. So we know the thieves relied on a sharp pointy object of some type. The kind you mother told you not to run with, like scissors, or a knife, or a box cutter. But they most very likely DID run with it.
TOOMUCHI: It's an ongoing investigation, so I'm not really in a position to comment on those kind of details.
STARR: But that really narrows the possibilities of what was done here and by whom.
TOOMUCHI: Quite possibly yes. This stretcher is a crime scene, really. It's a victim.
STARR: It's like the chalk line of the body, at the murder scene.
TOOMUCHI: No, it’s a victim. It’s not the chalk line around a victim.
STARR: It is. I see. It's a victim. And I don't know why, but it makes me feel very queasy to look at it.
TOOMUCHI: It does, yeah. I get the same feeling every time I look at it. You get, like, In fact, I usually have to take seasick pills before I come up here. There's so much to it. It's Rembrandt so you're in the presence of greatness. And it’s greatness that everyone has heard of right? So you're in the presence of history, too. This is THE stretcher that held [escalating] one of the most valuable things that was ever in stolen in the WORLD. [Angels singly softly in Background] Why am I, Augustine Toomuchi, the author of more than one book about art crime, available at amazon.com and fine retailers everywhere, although this is such a personal thing to me that I don't want people to get the impression that I'm capitalizing on it in any way because it's not that, but why am I, the person, who is this close to something that Rembrandt once stretched on?
STARR: Because I am in here with you in this cramped attic room and we're doing a pod..."
TOOMUCHI: I'm from Providence, there's no Rembrandts, or stuff like this in Providence. About the closest you get to fine art in Providence is a stick in your good eye. You know, it's just this awe-inspiring thing. I gotta get it back — because this is torture. You almost feel like, why? Why me? Why did I get stuck with this? You know. Why? [pause] Why? [pause] Why? [pause] OK since you asked, I’ll tell you.
STARR: I didn’t, but go on.
TOOMUCHI: Fate. Because it's, look at it, right? You understand. I can never walk away from this.
STARR: What? This rosewood stretcher?
TOOMUCHI: No. Yes, but not only the damned rosewood stretcher, God; from all of it, this attic, this Museum. the Heist, the interviews, the book deals, the movie rights. It’s destiny.
STARR: Destiny?
TOOMUCHI: Yes. My Destiny. Getting the stolen art back. It’s gotta be, and it’s up to me.
STARR: Like the Holy Grail?
TOOMUCHI: The Holy Grail
STARR: Or in this case the Holy Gu?
TOOMUCHI: The Holy Gu and everything, all of it.
TOOMUCHI: I can see it all in my mind’s eye, in its ear nose, and throat.
[IT’S A DREAM MUSIC] ELDERLY WOMAN: [DOOR OPENING SOUND] Mr. Toomuchi, thanks for coming here on such short notice. I was cleaning out the effects of my sister’s eldest, Francis X, down in the basement and I found this steamer trunk filled with these picture paintings. And at least of them says Renbrant [sic] down at the bottom in the corner.TOOMUCHI: That’s no problem ma’am. I cannot overstate how determined the museum is to recover this stolen art. We leave no turd unstoned, heh heh, and no stone unturned. That’s our motto.
ELDERLY WOMAN: What did you say?
TOOMUCHI: Nothing. It’s just a motto. Forget it.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Hrmph. Well I don’t know much about art. I’m from Providence, Rhode Island originally and the closest you would get to a Renbrant there is…
TOOMUCHI: I know. I know. Is a stick in your good eye.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Why no. It would be a trip to Boston, Hartford Connecticut. What’s wrong with my bad eye?
TOOMUCHI: Nothing ma’am nothing. It’s just a saying. I grew up in Providence myself. Both of your eyes actually look pretty terrific.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Well, you’re not the first gentleman to say so. As good as they may look, though, they do not exactly SEE so well as they once did. Be that as it may. I know what I saw, and it said Rendrandt on these picture paintings.
TOOMUCHI: Let’s have a closer look, shall we?
[Footsteps heading down stairs]
ELDERLY WOMAN: As I was saying I don’t know much about art.
TOOMUCHI: Well you’re never too old to learn.
ELDERLY WOMAN: I’m seventy nine.
TOOMUCHI: Well, practically never too old.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Hmm. Anyway. There’s the trunk.
TOOMUCHI: May I?
ELDERLY WOMAN: That’s why I asked you here.
[Sound of trunk opening]
ELDERLY WOMAN: We Happy? [pause] Vincent?TOOMUCHI: Yeah we happy. But my name is not Vincent.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Oh. That wasn’t my late husband’s name either. We had to have his hearing checked. He passed with flying colors. It turned out he could hear but he couldn’t listen, unless it was Bill O’Reilly on cable TV of course, then he was all ears. Or if you called him Vincent. It really annoyed him, but it was the only way I could get his attention, some days.
TOOMUCHI: That's very interesting, Ma’am, but I must caution you, just having these works, assuming, they are authentic, on your property puts you in violation of several federal statutes. I have a couple of associates outside who will help me get this trunk removed from the premises, to protect you from some serious legal trouble, while our experts make a determination.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Well I don’t know. I should really see what Francis X thinks. He’s been away camping with his buddies, but he did call from the road and he should be back any time now.
TOOMUCHI: I thought you said these were his effects.
ELDERLY WOMAN: They are his effects. He’s been living in my basement for almost six months without paying me a nickel in rent. I can’t even get him to clean the gutters. Says he’s afraid of heights. I’ve been thinking of kicking him out and leaving his stuff out on the curb. I’m not even sure he is my sister’s eldest. She never told me about any Francis X, when she was alive. She never married. And I wasn’t aware she had ANY children.
TOOMUCHI: Are there any guns in the house ma’am?
ELDERLY WOMAN: Oh sure. You have to in these crazy times. Wait. Maybe not. Francis X usually takes the guns with him when he goes on his camping trips. I tell him, “please just leave me the thirty eight,” but he just won’t do it. And they’re my guns!
TOOMUCHI: There could be a reward for your assistance if these paintings are what we think they are, up to ten million dollars not to mention all of the legal complications you’re saving yourself from, by having me take these now. You could buy the whole Providence Armory for that kind of money.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Well I hope this is the right thing to do. Francis X can be a hot headed son of a seahorse sometimes. He doesn’t get it, from our side of the family. His friend Taters calls him “Vice Grip.” What kind of nickname is that for a young man. So that ten million dollar reward, can you maybe wire it to me, in Guadalajara?
TOOMUCHI: Of Course ma'am.
ELDERLY WOMAN: I think that's probably best. I'm afraid France X will take a dim view. He might think he is entitled to a share. And he wouldn’t know a Renbrant from
TOOMUCHI and ELDERLY WOMAN [in unison]: A stick in his good eye.
TOOMUCHI and ELDERLY WOMAN [in unison]: Exactly
TOOMUCHI and ELDERLY WOMAN [in unison]: Inky-dinky-pinky-winky! Flush it down the kitchen sinky!
ELDERLY WOMAN: Well. You really did grow up in Providence. [Shouting] Jinx on a Coke!
TOOMUCHI: Oh ma’am, now that was uncalled for.
ELDERLY WOMAN: Oh I’m sorry. Well you said you were from Providence.
TOOMUCHI: Yes ma’am. Yes I did. And don’t worry ma’am. We will be in touch. [DOOR CLOSING SOUND, TOUCH PAD TAPPING SOUND, SENDER RINGTONE SOUND]
VOICE MAIL RECORDING: You unintelligible ah Shilly uh Muffly unintelligible Globe unintelligible aw unintelligiblethe tone. Beep.TOOMUCHI: Shilly, it’s Augustine. Have I got a story for you. Code red lake! [ENGINE REVVING SOUND]
[AWAKENING OUT OF A DREAM MUSIC]
STARR: No one knows more about what happened the night of the robbery than Augustine Toomuchi, and more importantly what is most likely to happen next. Toomuchi took the job as security director at the Glandner Museum 15 years after the heist and today he is the beating heart of the investigation. Organized, meticulous, dogged.
STET SIEVEMAN: Don’t forget smaht and indefatigable.
STARR: Oh I wouldn’t. BUT you might even also say haunted.
SIEVEMAN OVER THE TOP BOSTON ACCENT: He’s not alone. But there should be many maw. There must be many maw who are haunted, if we are going to solve this thing and return ah paintings to their propeh place in the Fahquad Museum.
When nine Impressionist paintings were stolen from the Mahmottan Museum in Paris in 1985, the loss of the paintings evoked a sense of personal loss for the whole city. Detective Pierre Tabel, who investigates art crime in France said of the thefts: [Bad French/Boston accent mashup] "It was like a pall of gloom had fallen oveh zee city. Every Pahrisian felt it.” And that deep collective sense of loss motivated so many — from legislatehs to the peasantry — to maintain a commitment to solving the crime.
Five years lateh Paris got they-ya aht back. We need the people of Boston to be haunted, about the Glandner robbery, in the same way that the missyurs and madam-oizles of Paree were. We have to haunt them, or inspire the people of Boston in some way.
STARR: That’s our consulting producer Stet Sieveman discussing his views on what it will take to get the stolen Glandner art back. His reporting on the Glandner Heist spans decades.
SIEVEMAN: “There is nothing we know here in this case.”
STARR: Armed only with a mobile phone, a fax machine, and a cassette recorder Sieveman "by necessity dives deep into the underbelly of Boston’s crime syndicates." His motto:
"The most important thing is to keep [your] eye on the narrative," has guided him through his butter knife investigation coverage.
Brash, punctual, and literate, he’s had all of his shots and administered a few of his own. The Washington Post said of his book, Grasper Straws, about the history of the Glandner Museum heist case [serious tone] ahem: Sieveman "has gathered so much information that explaining the smallest bit of it leads to a spate of cross-references, qualifications and digressions."
That’s the kind of dedicated devotee Sieveman is to the investigation and the kind of expert he has become.
STARR: Growing up in the Dorchester section of Boston Sieveman's street cred was earned the old fashioned way, though at a safe distance, from the kind of non-Armenians in his neighborhood he says are holding back on what they know about the Gardner heist.
But secrets that could lead to the whereabouts of the artwork remain hidden among associates, family members and friends of the thieves, and it's these individuals who must be convinced to break their traditional code of silence. I would try this approach: have two individuals who are respected by all segments of Boston society, both haves and have-nots, such as Boston Mayor Walsh, a recovered alcoholic," by that I mean, there are people around town who could tell you stories, but only from years ago. And maybe David Ortiz, who spoke so eloquently for us all after the Marathon bombing. Have them make a public appeal for the artworks safe return, while standing in front of the empty frames, in the Glandner Museum Filch Room.STARR: But lead investigator Augustine Toomuchi isn’t waiting for some down on his luck brother-in-law or embittered ex-wife from among Greater Boston’s sprawling proletariat to finally do the right thing.
TOOMUCHI: “I’m still wildly obsessed, more than ever. “I constantly think about those paintings.”
Like so many other private investigators on high profile cases, working on behalf of tax exempt nonprofits, Toomuchi has complete access to government FBI files on the Glandner heist case. He also talks to the Boston FBI's lead agent, who considers himself equally obsessed about the investigation, every day.
With their shared interests in Broadway musicals, like “Hamilton,” and soap operas, like the New York Yankees, the two investigators co-heading up this historic heist investigation effort, enjoy exchanging everything from funny memes about current events and political figures, to article links to the work of serious thought leaders, like Kevin D. Williamson, of the National Review, in addition to getting into the hard business of the latest developments in the 30 year old case.
Abs Seen podcast was granted a font encrypted glimpse at Toomuchi’s elaborate spreadsheets. They cross-reference details about potential suspects, crimes, associates, and tipsters. The 15 year veteran of this 30 year old mystery, responds to every single tip. Even the patently cuckoo ones, 'cause you never know.
He then saves every bit and byte of it, utilizing the latest in spreadsheet technology, including proprietary spreadsheet algorithms known as Excel macros. Toomuchi’s spreadsheet definitely scissors that of our own Stet Seiveman, whose spreadsheet includes a column dedicated to the approximate location of yellow sticky notes containing case-leads and his thoughts on various aspects of the case, in his bathroom mirror, the dashboard of his car, sometimes even his pets.
Code named “the mother of all spreadsheets dot C-S-V,” Toomuchi’s database contains over 30,000 facts, factoids and other digital flotsam and jetsam grifted into to the case, which is all securely safeguarded by way of a secret multi-character alpha numeric password, which includes more than one special character.
TOOMUCHI: There are a lot of special characters in Boston so we have to keep this database secure,
STARR: He even claims to have committed the password to memory.
TOOMUCHI: And we never throw hardly anything away, except what we call, fourth group data. [spitting sound].
STARR: Do they make YOU scared?
TOOMUCHI: No, you can’t scare easy in this type of job. but maybe if you’re mission is disseminating pet theories [spitting sound], you should be.
Anyway, I have a conceal carry permit, because of the dangerous nature of this business, my business, which I mind, just as other people should mind their business.
STARR: Do you think you will ever need it?
TOOMUCHI: I am so inundated with emails and phone messages, sometimes I think that one of these days I just might have to shoot my way out, or maybe just stop printing everything. We go through ink-toner around here, like the typical American family of ten, twelve or fourteen goes through gallons of milk.
So it is not scary for me personally. But it is scary in a big picture kind of way. Just the idea, that there are people out there, people who may appear normal in every respect, who you might see on the train, or hailing a cab, these very same people might be going home and writing their Congressmen, emailing J. Edgar Hoover, or calling someone on the Glandner Museum board of trustees. Over what? Their stupid, hairbrained theory [spitting sound]. that they happen to be fixated on, and can’t let go of. It’s at the very least, goddamned annoying. It gives one pause.
STARR: Indeed. The Heist has fueled a cottage industry of authors, documentary makers, bloggers and self-appointed sleuths who believe they’ve done what the FBI could not. Or at least want to make some money claiming they have. But why after decades of investigating with the best investigative teams has the result been nada, zilch, bupkis? And where are the paintings now?
STARR: I’m Yonda Starr
MARK ROLODECO: And I’m Mark Rolodeco
STARR: And from W-Brie-ew-ah and the Tossed In Globe, this is Abs Seen.
ROLODECO: The thieves who pulled off the greatest art heist in history had a pretty simple plan: Dress up like police officers bring walkie talkies, and a police scanner, speak in code numbers. Bring along boxcutters, mace, duct tape, handcuffs, and fake moustaches. Then just ring the bell of the museum side entrance in the middle of the night and hope you can sweet-talk whatever schmuck happens to be manning the security desk into letting you in, while being absolutely certain, that you can lure this lousy random bastard away from the silent alarm connected to the police station.
Simple.STARR: But who were these audacious simpletons? Where are they now? And more importantly where is the billion dollars in priceless art the thieves took with them?
MICHELIN: Ha ha. Ya gotta pay to play, my friend.
ROLODECO: In upcoming episodes, which will drop once a week, Abs Seen podcast will take an Abs Seenly, deep throated dive inside the tantalizing mysteries of the Glandner Museum Heist. It’s a tale of two shitties; of cops and robbers, hangers on and wannabes, of finders, and grinders, sausage stuffers, and lovable rogues, of con men and conned women, and most of all, it's the story of a relentlessly single-minded private investigator, with more side deals than a parking lot attendant on the Las Vegas strip.
STARR: I’m Yonda Starr
STET SIEVEMAN: I'm Stet Sieveman.
MICHELIN: I’m late for dinner.
ROLODECO: And I’m Mark Rolodeco
EVERYONE EXCEPT MICHELIN: And this is Abs Seen
See you next week for Episode 2 of Abs Seen, “Mark Spots the Pects.”
Kerry Joyce