To catch a thief . . . crowdsourcing?

BostonHerald.com’s Blog is using “crowdsourcing” in an effort to solve the 1990 theft of 13 paintings and other artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Now, the blog reports, a “twitter.com user named GardnerTheft has been posting links to our articles and others.  Check out the info-tweets at twitter.com’s web site (search: GardnerTheft).  With just a click you’ll see frequently updated news, insights, ideas and blog posts.”

As the Boston Herald Blog explains, its effort to capture the collective effort of interested internet users was inspired by the success of an earlier online effort in connection with the case.

When medical illustrator Nicole C. Wolf produced her digital paintings to update the renderings of the two Gardner thieves, the public got the best images of the robbers ever produced.  Wolf’s work, done in anonymous collaboration with one of the Gardner guards on duty during the theft, has led to dozens of new leads for the museum’s investigator, Anthony M. Amore.

With those tips in mind, it’s time to provide more information about the two thieves’ physical descriptions. Each detail is aimed at jarring the memories of people who know the behavior patterns of many in the criminal underworld.

In 2005, the Boston Globe ran its own detailed review of what was known about the Gardner art heist, summing up the events as follows:

Museum officials say they take heart in the fact that some masterworks stolen from other museums have surfaced after many years. But like the investigators, the museum’s leaders are baffled by how little progress has been made since thieves entered the museum in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick’s Day festivities in the city wound down.

They are baffled especially because the thieves, though bold and clever, were hardly meticulous professionals. They took no great pains to avoid being seen, nor were they careful to avoid damaging the masterpieces they were stealing.

They posed as Boston police officers, and even though they flashed badges and wore insignias, their long coats were not part of any official uniform. The Globe located several passersby who remember seeing them sitting quietly in a red hatchback near the museum’s side entrance, perhaps waiting for a St. Patrick’s Day party in a nearby apartment building to break up before making their move. And their disguises left their faces uncovered, giving the guards a good look at them. 

Once inside, the thieves ripped a Vermeer, three Rembrandts — including his only seascape — five Degas drawings, and a Manet from their wall placements, smashing them out of their frames and leaving shards of glass and remnants of canvas behind. The thieves took some of the museum’s greatest treasures but left behind some even more valuable objects.

When they were done for the night, they made two trips to their car with the loot. Then they vanished.

Where the paintings were, empty frames now fill the museum’s walls.