An FBI photograph of the crime scene after the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery show empty frames laying on the floor Courtesy of Netflix
In the movies, the ruling maxim is “print the legend”. After 30 years of investigations of the theft of 13 works valued at more than $500m from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the legend is still all there is to print.
So we see in
This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, a four-part documentary series on the Gardner theft now streaming on Netflix. The hyperbolic subtitle, like the oft-used adjective “legendary”, is now part of Gardner lore. The series still makes for a head-scratching unsolved mystery for the vast Netflix audience that is new to the cold case. An for the general public, it helps that this true crime tale devolves into yet another Boston mob saga.