took six pieces, the three rembrandts, the flinck and the vermeer, and the chinese vessel. and that s where, in terms of dollar value, that s where the lion s share of the theft occurred. unltz are. these three rembrandts, the vermeer, flinck all had to be taken down from the walls in the dutch room. the real work had begun for the thieves. but as they get ready to remove rembrandt s storm on the sea of galilee, his only seascape, a high-pitched alarm sounds. steven kurkjian has investigated this case for the boston globe for decades. he first interviewed rick abbot about the night of the crime for the globe, and abbot told him this alarm was designed to keep visitors from getting too close to the rembrandt. that seascape, even if you look at prints of it now, images of it now, you will see a vision, an etching, of rembrandt himself.
that could be dodged and one security camera outside. did the thieves have help from inside? would they have been able to pull it off without inside information? suspicion still surrounds the men on guard that night. night watchman rick abbot said while he doesn t know of anyone in the museum who would have knowingly tipped the criminals to the lax security set-up, he admits it was a topic he and other guards spoke about often. we talked about in terms if the place got robbed or when it would get robbed. the security was very much a concern. we knew there were no alarms on the paintings. there was no alarms that went outside the place other than the panic button. it was definitely a concern. a concern that he and others would speak about in public. if you re worried about vulnerability in the security system, you can sell that. you and that s what i think
guy seemed surprised and screamed out, whoa, we ve got another one. and i was just like, cut me off this box, because my hands had fallen asleep a long time ago. rick was relieved to be found and to be alive. but he knew almost immediately that he was a suspect. i knew i was. i mean, i opened up the door, you know. i mean, once i sat down with the fbi, i think the first thing i said was, what dyou want to know? because i knew. i mean, well, i m the guy who opened up the door, they re obviously going to be looking at ne. the fbi certainly was looking at him. was it an inside job? how else could the thieves have pulled this off? and who else did the fbi suspected?
the oil painting was taken from the blue room on the first floor. it hung right below manet s portrait of his mother. it was about 8 by 10 and it was in a gold gilded frame and it was here. even though motion detectors picked up the thieves trail by the entrance on the first floor and all throughout the second floor, there are no records of anyone entering the blue room. rick abbot says in the time he worked at the museum, the motion detectors never failed. but he also says it wasn t impossible to avoid the detectors. in fact, he knew exactly how to do that. it was a game he used to play at night to help pass the time on his rounds. you would walk all kinds of crazy ways. some places, you d have to go around the perimeter of the room or you d have to go right through the center, you d have to duck down or you d have to kind of squat and waddle and do all of these different stuff.
the desk. but it was a fairly long desk and the computer was all the way over to the left and it was almost all the way over to the right. so it wasn t just within arm s reach. reporter: still, rick abbot never found any reason to use that panic button. that is until the night of march 18th. that night was unusual from the moment rick arrived at work. he learned his usual partner had called in sick. they couldn t find anyone else, so they paired him with a daytime gallery guard. when i got there, you know, my partner was there well, i knew him. i didn t know him very well. i knew him from just around the locker room and he was the only person they could get. so i figured i d take the first round. that first round takes longer than usual. the fire alarm goes off for no