Transcripts for CNN Greatest Art Heist 20130325 07:14:15 archive.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from archive.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
in tact. meanwhile, all of this time, rik abbot is waiting in the pitch dark, scared to pieces in the museum basement. as he waited for something to happen next, he suddenly realized someone was staring at him. either through sweating or struggling or both, at some point, the duct tape had slipped down. so i could see a little bit over the duct tape, kind of. and at one point, somebody did come and check on me. somebody was standing on the end looking down at me. they didn t say anything and i it spiked me up again, i was freaking out again. but trying not to, like, oh, my god, i have to pretend i can t see this person. that would definitely not be good if they realized i could see them. reporter: rick says he lost track of time and wasn t sure exactly when the thief came to check on him. that was the last he d see of them. their job was done. but remember the video camera perched outside the door where
it was st. patrick s weekend. there was a house party at the building right behind the museum. some time after midnight, a group of young men left the party and spotted a car with what looked like two bosn police officers inside. they had no idea these two men weren t really police officers. and no clue that just a short time later, these two men would pull off the greatest art heist in history. come in, clock in, there would be two guards. reporter: rick abbot was one of the night watchmen on duty the night of the crime. until now, he d never done a television interview about what happened that night. rick was 23 years old back in 1990. he had been working at the museum for about a year. the guard s shift began at 11:30 p.m. a shift that most nights was uneventful. boring. yeah, sit around, walk around,
apparent reason. so does another alarm on the fourth floor. after all that, rick returns and the gallery guard takes his turn making the rounds. the clock reads 1:24 a.m. and rick is alone at the guard desk. suddenly, the night takes a dangerous turn. he rang the doorbell. i could see him on the outside camera. i could see him walking down the street. i thought they were just clearing drunks off the street. there were a lot of drunken people in the street that particular night. but then they stopped and buzzed the buzzer. i leaned over to the intercom and i said yeah? and they said boston police, we got a report of a disturbance on the premise. so i buzzed them in. that decision to buzz them in is something rick abbot has had to live with for the past 23 years.
even rick admits the sketch they produced didn t really look like either of the two men. i remember, at the time, thinking there s no way they re going to catch these people from this. unfortunately, that s one of the frustrating aspects of this case is the descriptions that are given were very vague. very generic. jeff kelly from the fbi s boston office is the lead agent in this case. without a good description and virtually no other public information about the thieves identity, the investigators begin to focus their attention on the museum employees. these guys had a very they had a level of comfort in that museum that really points to the fact that if it wasn t an inside job, they definitely had inside information. both the fbi and the museum security director are stuck on the fact that the thieves spent 81 minutes inside the museum. anthony amore says that is eight times as long as the typical art