Gentile died in in September, insisting to the very end that he had nothing to do with the Gardner heist in spite of evidence to the contrary. Now, detectives outside of Boston are finding new clues in a long unsolved underworld murder that puts Gentile in the company of a group of mobsters long suspected of involvement in the crime just months after it happened and decades earlier than originally thought.
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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.