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The True Story of
Separating fact from fiction in Netflix s latest true crime thriller
By Laura Martin 07/04/2021
The perfect heist is the subject of many a great movie, but one of the biggest thefts in the art world took place for real more than 30 years ago. Unlike Hollywood’s versions, which tend to wrap up with a neat how-and-why explainer (thanks, Danny Ocean), this one remains a whodunnit, with the priceless haul still AWOL.
The gripping story behind the heist is the subject of a new Netflix documentary series,
A little after 1 a.m. on March 18, night guard Rick Abath buzzed two uniformed men into the building who said they had been called about a disturbance into the museum. When they entered, they asked him to tell his partner doing rounds to return to the security desk as well, and once he did, they bound, blindfolded, and cuffed both guards in the museum’s basement. The two men dressed as Boston Police officers then spent over an hour making their way through the museum, slicing precious artworks as well as some strange choices out of their frames, and leaving a bit before 3 a.m. Authorities were alerted only once museum staff arrived in the morning to find the night guards tied up in the basement, the historic building in a state of disarray, and several works of art stolen, with the security video tape missing. In the 31 years since, no one has been arrested for the crime.
This is a Robbery, Netflix s new docuseries
, recounts the extraordinary story of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a 15th-century Venetian-style palace in Boston from which 13 pieces of art, totalling half a billion dollars, were stolen on March 18, 1990 – the day after St Patrick s Day. Netflix
A little after 1am, two white men dressed as Boston police officers entered the museum, forced the two security guards into the basement where they were handcuffed and blindfolded, and then got to work, shutting off the alarm, stealing the security footage and helping themselves to the following:
The Concert - Vermeer
Eagle Finial - Pierre-Philippe Thomire
The Patriot Ledger
A photo in the new Netflix documentary “This Is a Robbery” (now streaming) shows convicted art thief and rock ’n’ roll singer Myles Connor Jr. holding a baby leopard in his lap while a parrot perches on his fingers. In voiceover, Connor’s lawyer, Martin Leppo, recalls first meeting Connor in Boston s Mattapan Square, where his client had a “baby cougar or mountain lion on a leash.”
“Myles was the man,” Leppo says.
That’s one anecdote director Colin Barnicle uses to illustrate Connor’s larger-than-life persona in the four-part documentary that chronicles the infamous – and still unsolved – March 18, 1990, heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.