The World's Most Expensive Stolen Paintings

If I walked into a museum and did this to one of the Old Masters,

then understandably you would be horrified.

But if I walked into the museum,

lifted the same painting off the wall,

dodged all of the hi-tech security and spirited it away,

then perhaps, if you're being honest, a small part of you

might admire the daredevilry of the act.

Which begs a question - just what is it about art theft

that we can't resist?

Every year, hundreds of thousands of works of art are stolen -

stolen from homes and galleries in every corner of the world.

Only a fraction will be returned to their rightful owners.

Now, you might think that none of this really matters.

I mean, who cares if a few galleries or rich, old men

lose the odd painting?

After all, they're works of art, they're probably insured,

no-one's hurt.

And we can all still see these paintings at the click of a mouse.

Except I believe that's a load of baloney.

Because original masterpieces are more than paintings,

they're part of our history.

And their theft is an assault on all of us,

robbing us of our cultural heritage bit by bit.

'I'm going to visit the scenes of these audacious crimes,

'places all over the world that have lost precious objects

'that enrich our lives.'

'I want to know - who are the faceless criminals

'stealing the world's greatest works of art?

'Why are they doing it, and why does so little ever return?'

Welcome to world of international art crime,

where some of the most beautiful paintings on the planet

end up in the hands of some pretty nasty people,

where some of the most expensive paintings anywhere on Earth

seemingly disappear into thin air,

and where not everything is as it seems.

Boston, Massachusetts.

On St Patrick's Day 1990, this city was the site

of the greatest art theft in history.

Most of the city was partying, but the streets outside

the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were quiet.

The museum is the former home of a wealthy Boston socialite.

It's America's first great private art collection,

and was Isabella Stewart Gardner's gift to the people of Boston.

Her museum is packed with artistic treasures

from all corners of the globe,

including pictures by Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, and Vermeer.

But that night 23 years ago,

the integrity of this beautiful collection would be shattered.

DOG BARKS

At 1:24 in the morning,

a car approaches the employee entrance at the Gardner Museum.

Two guys get out of the car and they ring the buzzer,

and announce to the guard that they are Boston police

and they say they're responding to a disturbance.

Against protocol and policy, the guard buzzes them in.

There were only two guards in the entire museum. One was on the door,

and the other one was upstairs patrolling the galleries.

Opening up this side door proved to be a fatal mistake

because as soon as the robbers - masquerading as policemen -

were inside, they quickly took charge of the situation.

They asked the guard to step away from the desk.

Big mistake. Behind that desk was the panic button,

it was the last line of the museum's defence.

They then asked him to summon his colleague downstairs,

and as soon as he arrived, the thieves knew

they had the entire museum -

which from the outside seemed so impregnable, this stronghold - at their mercy.

The fake policemen bundled the guards down the corridor,

bound their hands and announced, "This is a robbery."

The biggest art theft in history could begin.

Among the stolen items were three Rembrandts, one Vermeer,

five works by Degas, a Manet and, weirdly,

an eagle from the top of a Napoleonic battle flag.

In total, 13 works of art, many crudely cut from their frames,

valued today at 500 million - more than £300 million.

The value of these pieces... You can't put a price tag on them.

Just because of the history of the museum,

what Mrs Gardner put in place there.

These 13 pieces are taken from a collective work of art

that she left the city.

And in a real sense, it's a hole in her collection,

and it's a hole in our hearts,

not just for the museum but for all of Boston.

A part of our heritage has been stolen from us. It's a barbaric act.

JOURNALIST: Given that these pieces are very well-known,

-who could possibly keep them?

-That's a very good question.

Only probably a person who was determined to keep them

private for the rest of their life.

So, what can we say about this extraordinary crime?

Well, the targets seem to be very particular.

Of all the thousands of works of art inside that building,

they zeroed in on 13 specific objects.

So, it seems almost perfect.

No-one has ever been arrested for the theft,

none of the art has ever been recovered. In fact, this looks like

a sophisticated, well-executed, very clever crime.

Exactly the kind of crime we associate with art theft.

Hollywood has given us a certain image of art crime.

It's a world of daring thieves, laser trip wires

and urbane, sophisticated billionaires.

ALARM SOUNDS

People like the fictional art thief, and connoisseur, Thomas Crown.

In the film, he is the classic Hollywood art thief.

The expensive clothes, the refined good looks,

and the unflappable poise under pressure.

Crown makes stealing art look stylish, sexy, and glamorous.

And he only steals the best.

In this case, an important and valuable Monet.

And back in the real world, the paintings stolen

from the Gardner were very important, and very valuable indeed.

One of the most valuable paintings stolen from the Gardner is this.

It's The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee by Rembrandt and,

traditionally, Rembrandt has been very popular amongst art thieves.

In this instance, the thieves really struck gold

because this picture, it's Rembrandt's only seascape

and it even contains a self-portrait of the artist in the midst

of the melee, holding on to his hat and staring out at the viewer.

It was painted in 1633, and it depicts a famous biblical scene

of Jesus with his disciples in a fishing boat

that's got into all sorts of trouble as it's been struck by a tempest.

To show off his talent, Rembrandt deliberately decided to depict

this moment of maximum danger, when all of those disciples

are about to lose faith, they fear that they're about to die

only, before, they're then calmed by the contrasting, very calm

and serene figure of Christ himself sitting in the boat.

It's an example of a young artist flexing the muscles

of his artistic powers.

But The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee isn't the most valuable painting

in the Gardner loot. That honour belongs to this.

It's The Concert, by the 17th century Dutch artist

and contemporary of Rembrandt, Jan Vermeer.

It's a typical Vermeer scene of well-heeled people

making music in a very refined, opulent interior.

But all isn't quite as straightforward as it seems

because this is very much a world of artifice.

It contains these paintings within paintings. Two Arcadian landscapes.

But then, there's this image, this third painting.

It presents a brothel-goer who's interested in a prostitute

who's playing a lute, whilst this old crone of a procuress

is negotiating a fee. Maybe we're meant to try and draw

some subtle comparisons between them.

But that sense of complicated open-endedness,

that sense of sexual intrigue, is the hallmark of Vermeer.

And in 1892, Isabella Stewart Gardner paid 29,000 francs,

6,000, for this picture.

Today, it's estimated to be worth 300 million,

roundabout £184 million.

This is one of just 36 paintings attributed to Vermeer

still in existence, and that rarity is right at the heart

of its stratospheric value.

Almost all the other Vermeers in the world

belong to one museum or another and none are minded to sell,

which means that no matter how much money you have,

Vermeer's work is simply unbuyable.

So in order to acquire it, you'd have to steal it.

The Gardner theft certainly seems to fit the idea

of a connoisseur art thief, but there are also puzzles.

'If you're going to steal a Vermeer,

'why not steal the equally valuable pictures nearby in the Gardner,

'like Titian's Rape Of Europa or Michelangelo's Pieta?'

And why waste time on this odd little finial?

What's the finial? I've never quite understood this.

The finial rested atop a Napoleonic flag

from his first regiment.

-So it's just a kind of ornament at the top?

-Yeah.

-And not actually worth very much money at all?

-Exactly.

The more you look at it, the more curious this robbery seems.

The varied, mismatched collection of stolen art suggests to me

that if a connoisseur was indeed behind this, then he - or she -

appears to have had very specific, even idiosyncratic tastes.

Presumably they, or the mysterious, shadowy power

that was paying them to commit the crime,

had a particular love for Rembrandt and Vermeer

as well as a keen interest, presumably, in Napoleonic history,

hence that unremarkable finial that went missing.

So, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this couldn't be

an opportunistic, random act.

It must have been a very precise and deliberate crime.

Nine years after the Gardner, another museum was hit.

And again, the robbery had all the hallmarks

of a Thomas Crown-type heist.

-NEWSREADER:

-'Police have revealed more details

'about the theft of a £3 million Cezanne painting

'from a museum in Oxford'

on New Year's Day.

They believe the landscape was stolen by professional art thieves

from the Ashmolean Museum for a private collector.

Picture the scene: Oxford, eve of the millennium.

And just like in Boston, the whole city's out partying on the streets.

Up on the rooftops, skulking about in the shadows,

a thief is going about his business.

Now, police have got a theory. They think that this thief

took advantage of scaffolding to get up onto the roof

of the Ashmolean Museum and he made his way across

till he found the skylight that he was looking for,

and he removed a section of the glass

and, using a rope ladder, then lowered himself into the museum.

The thief dropped a smoke canister which set off the fire alarm.

ALARM SOUNDS

But that meant guards couldn't enter the gallery -

fire regulations prevented it. Quick, cunning,

and with a particularly inventive use of a smoke bomb.

You can see why it reminded so many of The Thomas Crown Affair.

This was the thief's target,

The View Of Auvers Sur Oise by Paul Cezanne.

Cezanne is an exceptionally important figure in modern art.

Picasso called him "the father of us all"

because he laid the foundations for the radical developments of cubism.

He's not replicating the real world in any illusionistic fashion.

Instead, you start to see Cezanne

putting down in places these careful, parallel brushstrokes,

leaving patches of canvas bare. He's placing blocks and dabs

of colour next to each other, like a kind of patchwork.

"This is artifice," he's saying,

"this is a work of art. It isn't the real world."

And that was what he would be remembered for,

so this is why it's an important picture because

it's a transitional canvas leading towards the great art

that Cezanne produced towards the end of his life.

So, the Ashmolean theft looks like an example

of a professional art thief, stealing to order

for a Cezanne enthusiast.

One man whom I hope can shed light on this shadowy figure

is Dick Ellis, who set up the Met's Art and Antiques Squad,

and is now one of Britain's most successful art crime investigators.

In your career, have you ever come across

some nefarious billionaire who has commissioned some criminals

to steal a work of art to order

-so that he, or she, can venerate this piece at home in private?

-No.

-Never?

-Never. I think it's...you know, it's a lovely concept,

but it's not the reality.

-It's fiction?

-Complete fiction.

So the mysterious private collector, on whom this crime

was initially pinned, is about as real as Thomas Crown himself.

Life isn't like the movies.

But who, then, has been stealing art from museums

like the Gardner and the Ashmolean?

Who was stealing it? Well, these were people who had previously

been doing armed robberies.

A lot of the time, they were organised crime groups,

these were people who had made career decisions. They're at the age

when people were leaving school and thinking,

"Am I going into insurance? Am I going into...you know, whatever?"

These people made career choices that they were going into crime.

-So they're nasty sorts?

-They were professional criminals.

-Tough people.

'So, the reality is rather different and more mundane.

'We're dealing with everyday criminals,

'not billionaire connoisseurs.

'And presumably, these criminals believe they can

'sell the paintings back onto the legitimate art market.'

'One organisation has been set up specifically

'to prevent them from doing so.

'The Art Loss Register is the world's biggest database

'of stolen art. It's run by Julian Radcliffe.'

'His mission is to help return stolen paintings like this one,

'to their legitimate - and grateful - owners.'

Standard Dutch school of that sort of time.

'The register also tracks art thefts from around the world,

'in order to choke off the trade in stolen paintings.'

Every year we search about 400,000 items

looking for those that are stolen.

Those searches are what produce the actual matches

which are on that board.

If you say, "What is the overall recovery rate of stolen art?",

it is disappointing, it's probably only 15%.

-It's a very...very small fraction.

-It is.

The effect of the register is to make it difficult for stolen art

to be sold for cash on the legitimate market, so criminals

must be finding other ways to convert their thefts into money.

They realise some cash value in the underworld.

There's a criminal and he owes you a million dollars,

he only has half a million dollars, he'll give the picture and say,

"I'll get the other half a million dollars next week.

"You keep the picture in the meantime."

We know that that happens.

'This is very different to the idea of

'a billionaire aficionado stealing art for the love of it.

'It's not simply about selling art back onto the market.

'It seems that art can be used by thieves

'as a kind of underworld currency,

'greasing the wheels of the criminal economy.

'And that explains why great paintings

'have been targeted for decades.'

60 million, 61 million...

The more valuable art is,

the greater weight it carries as collateral for criminals.

As the art market has risen over the past 60 years,

it's little wonder that art thefts have also increased.

The work of some artists has shot up in value by 1,000%

since the late 1950s and since then,

the record for the most expensive painting at auction

has been broken more than ten times.

As art prices rose,

the near impossibility of selling paintings on didn't deter criminals.

Quite the opposite.

Starting in 1960, there were world records prices for Picasso,

Cezanne and Rembrandt that were announced on television.

And dutifully watching television, like the rest of us,

were members of organised crime groups

and they stole exactly what they saw on television was valuable.

MUSIC: "C'e Un Tic" by Zerosospiro

'In 1969, here in Sicily, a TV programme was broadcast

'which attracted the attention of the local criminal fraternity,

'and it featured the work of one of Europe's most celebrated

'and notorious artists,

'who, by the time he arrived here in the early 17th century,

'was on the run, wanted for murder. Caravaggio.'

He was famously arrogant, tempestuous,

forever getting into sword fights and brawls.

There's this great anecdote about how he once

threw a plate of scalding artichokes over a waiter

because he thought the waiter had disrespected him.

But he was also an unbelievably gifted artist,

a genius who was decades ahead of his time.

It's wonderful coming to Italy because elsewhere,

masterpieces, they get cordoned off in museums and galleries,

but here, some of the greatest paintings in the world

still hang in these tiny churches that commissioned them,

like this place. The Oratory of Saint Lorenzo

in the heart of Palermo.

But whilst that's a blessing, obviously, it can also be a curse,

because, one night in 1969, two men saw this church

featured in a television programme about Italy's artistic treasures.

Inside, they learned, was one of the final works of Caravaggio.

So they decided to take a closer look.

Ludovico Gippetto is a local art historian.

This is really quite an odd experience for me because usually

I'd come into a space like this to rhapsodise about a work of art.

But this isn't a real masterpiece, this, obviously is a replica

of a Caravaggio, of his Nativity which he painted for this very space

in 1609 when he was on the run in Sicily just a year before his death.

And it's better I guess than just having bare brick

and staring at an empty frame.

This is a scene, a stock religious scene,

where the Virgin Mary has given birth to Christ.

Caravaggio is injecting this brutal note of realism,

there is nothing prettified here.

Even the Virgin herself,

well, she doesn't look like she's glowing with divine inspiration,

aware of what she's just done.

Instead, she is completely exhausted.

But she's staring down, despite that exhaustion, with tenderness,

at her child who has just been plonked on the floor beneath her.

Following the theft, there were several questions.

Who were the thieves and what were their motives?

This being Sicily, one organisation quickly came under suspicion.

Italian police estimate that half a million works of art

have been stolen in Italy over the last four decades.

And this confirms what Julian Radcliffe of the Art Loss Register told me -

that stolen art works as a criminal currency.

The ordinary foot soldiers of the Mafia have been stealing paintings

to sustain their criminal activities for years.

But the theft of this Nativity was so outrageous,

it spurred the Italian state into action.

They established the world's first specialist art crime department.

One of its leaders was General Giovanni Pastore.

I start by asking him what we know for certain about this case.

For years there was silence.

Then slowly, repentant Mafia soldiers began to talk.

And what they said was alarming.

One, Gaspare Spatuzza, claimed the Nativity was used as a trophy

by Mafia bosses, and took pride of place at secret mob gatherings.

However, he also claimed that after it was damaged,

the bosses judged it worthless.

So it was doused in petrol and set alight.

But Giovanni is unconvinced by the claims of former Mafiosi.

Giovanni won't be drawn.

This is clearly a case full of cul de sacs and false leads.

You've investigated this for many years.

In your opinion, what do you think has happened to the painting?

It's been decades now since anyone laid eyes on this painting.

I get the feeling from talking to Giovanni that all the rumours

surrounding its whereabouts are just that -

rumours, stories from former Mafiosi which may or may not be true.

I can't help thinking the chances of ever seeing the painting again,

in all its glory, are slim.

The FBI have valued the lost painting at round about 20 million,

which I suspect may even be an underestimate.

But still, standing here, monetary value is totally immaterial

because instead of a brilliant picture which was designed

specifically for this space four centuries ago,

we're left with this milky approximation of the original.

It's...it's a sickly ghost of a masterpiece.

And why has this happened, for what?

So that some gangsters can show off a trophy to a bunch of other gangsters?

Or maybe use the painting as collateral to finance

some of these horrific crimes which have scarred the island?

I know Caravaggio was no stranger to criminality, but still here,

there's no doubt that his blazing, incandescent genius

has been extinguished utterly by the gloom of the Sicilian underworld.

So if the Mafia was behind the Caravaggio theft,

it makes me wonder just who was really behind the Gardner heist.

Are those paintings now circulating among Boston's criminal underworld?

I'm on my way to meet one man who might know.

He's spent decades stealing art.

And he claims he has inside knowledge of the Gardner theft.

Myles Connor is a legendary figure in the world of art theft.

A member of Mensa, and a former rock and roll singer

who once played alongside the Beach Boys and Chuck Berry.

And who became one of the most prolific art thieves in New England.

He has agreed to meet me at his attorney's office

in the Boston suburbs, and in the lobby, there are promising signs

I may have come to the right place.

Hi, hello.

Myles. Alastair! Great to meet you.

You know this guy here?

-I don't, but you must be Marty.

-Marty Leppo.

-Very good to meet you too.

-Nice meeting you.

It's kind of weird for me. Because I'm an art critic.

And you know, you're the most notorious art thief in America.

You're like the super-villain of my world.

One of Myles's most famous crimes was the theft of Rembrandt's

Girl Wearing a Gold Trimmed Coat

from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1975.

The story of how he did it is hair-raising.

I had grabbed the painting off the wall and then made my exit

out, down the stairs, out to the back.

There was a phalanx of guards that pursued me.

But there was one guard, a retired Boston police officer,

Polish, he grabbed the painting,

and he would not let go of the painting.

My friend hit the guy on the head with the barrel of the machinegun.

As the saying goes,

he could have done a lot worse. Then we took off.

Myles didn't sell this painting on the open market.

He had another way of making money,

brokering its return for a cash reward.

-You mean you got a cash reward?

-Mm-hm.

-What was it?

I think it was...ten... This is kind of a sensitive issue.

-But I think it was 10,000.

-Hang on...

-Back in the '70s.

-Crime isn't supposed to pay, Myles.

-Oh, yes.

And you look like a man who believes that it can.

Well, obviously it can.

Myles's career is proof that there is value in a stolen painting,

even if it is too famous to sell on the legitimate market.

And as his career progressed, he began to focus on another target -

The Gardner Museum.

I had targeted the Gardner,

for a while, cased it up.

Beside the Gardner, there's trees

and many a night I stayed up in the trees,

getting an outline and looking in the windows at night,

to see what kind of rounds the guards made at night.

I was going to take down the museum,

with two of my friends,

and then I got grabbed by the Feds.

Myles ended up in jail for a crime unrelated to the Gardner

but this didn't stop the museum being robbed...

..he claims, by two of his associates.

It was done by my friends,

and they did it because I had planned it along with them.

-Are those friends still alive?

-No, one died from a heart attack.

The other fellow was found decapitated in the trunk of his car.

'I'm getting a real sense now of the true nature of art crime.

'It's dangerous and squalid, murky, not at all like the movies.'

I wouldn't call it a glamorous crime,

but it's a little above the more mundane crimes.

And do you think of yourself as some sort of connoisseur?

I had a large collection of Japanese art. And, er...

-Legitimately.

-So in that respect, I am a connoisseur.

I don't think it's quite what you're selling it as.

It's... For me, it's that moment of your accomplice

shoving the machinegun butt into a legitimate guard's face,

as you are running away with a Rembrandt

depriving that from the walls of the museum.

-That's just indefensible.

-It was...

-sheer stupidity on his part.

-On the guard's part?

-Yes.

-This is madness! This is madness.

No, it's not madness, it's reality.

Do you feel penitent?

No, I don't feel penitent

because in most of the cases,

what I took was returned.

The sad thing here is that the paintings were stolen, possibly

according to your plan, Myles, and they have essentially been lost.

It's just not right, I mean, I feel kind of confused, actually.

Myles has helped me to understand the world an art thief inhabits.

It's a brutal, transactional business,

in which the fate of stolen paintings can never be guaranteed.

There's one thing that's clear - he is adamant it was his plan

to heist the Gardner that was followed.

And that his accomplices did it,

and in a sense if he hadn't been in jail that time,

then he would have been the man carrying out that theft

and the funny thing is, perhaps they would have been recovered by now.

Is that the real lesson from Myles?

If there is a reward on offer, paintings can be returned.

Some criminals are up for making a deal.

And for one tantalising moment,

it seemed like that might just happen in Boston.

It's now been 23 years since those paintings were stolen

from the Gardner Museum, and during all that time,

there's only one man outside the criminal fraternity

who claims to have actually set eyes on them.

His name is Tom Mashberg and back then

he was an investigative reporter for the Boston Herald

and he's the man I'm on my way to meet now.

Tom's involvement in the case came five years after the heist,

when the Gardner, desperate for any leads at all,

upped their reward for information to 5 million.

Tom knew that sort of money might flush out the thieves.

And not long afterwards, his phone rang.

One night when I was working late at The Herald -

it was a Saturday evening and I was working on my notes on this case -

I got a call and, basically, I was told that if I appeared

outside the newspaper's front door around midnight,

I could get a ride to see something interesting.

Frankly, I felt a little bit like it was a little silly, almost,

as if I couldn't really take it that seriously.

It was sort of like a midnight drive.

People always ask if I was blindfolded, which I wasn't,

but that sort of gives you a sense of how odd it seemed.

We wound up at a location... I mean, it's somewhat similar to this,

it's sort of an industrial area.

We're basically led up to the front entrance of this very dark warehouse.

With a flashlight, we went up three flights of stairs.

I remember counting the flights of stairs.

And we walked down towards a specific locker.

The only thing in there was this trolley in which there were

various boxes and packages and three or four large tubes, cardboard tubes.

-So your heart's beating a little faster?

-Yeah, I'm thinking

-this is a little more interesting.

-A career-defining moment!

-Right!

The person I'm with goes in and opens the top off one of the tubes,

and sort of, you know, lets out the item,

he has to sort of pull back so that it slides out

and he holds it up and he kinda unfurls it, like this.

So he just sort of holds it open, and it kind of rolls open before my eyes

and there is the painting - The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee.

While he's holding, he's got the flashlight in his hand

and he's beaming the flashlight around so I can look at it.

That was sort of the ta-dah moment.

Here's the painting, there we go, this is the stolen Rembrandt.

Did you say anything?

Well, I-I... I wanted to touch it or I wanted to take...

But I was sort of getting a lot of body language,

like, don't get too close.

You go into this dark warehouse and someone, just for a minute,

shows you a painting with a couple of splashes of light,

if they're really wanted you to know it was the painting,

turn on the light, here's the painting, inspect it front and back,

you can look for some key hallmarks and then you can report that back.

No question.

Everything always had to be done in a more shadowy, more secretive way

than would really seem logical.

On the 27th of August, 1997,

Tom's late night encounter in the warehouse became front page news.

But the Gardner Museum was sceptical

and Tom's contact never invited him to see the paintings again.

The opportunity to get them back, if that's what it was, had passed.

The reward remained uncollected.

I can only say that,

given the context of everything I was going through at the time,

of all of the people I was talking to,

of how the FBI itself was pursuing the same characters I was pursuing,

suggests to me that that was the closest opportunity the museum had

to actually recover the objects.

Tom's story is so good, you really want to believe that it's true,

but, ultimately, it's unprovable.

Over the years, there have been so many different theories

about who might have stolen or might have received these paintings.

Leafing through them all, thinking about them,

it's like reading this kind of rogues gallery.

Investigators have chased down leads in Connecticut,

in New York, in Japan, in Ireland.

They've had all these different prime suspects.

People like James Whitey Bulger, the criminal kingpin of south Boston,

even the IRA, who, surprisingly,

have been no strangers to art theft in their time.

But every single one of these leads has ultimately gone cold,

or proved to be a complete dead end.

Who knows whether the Gardner thieves are dead or alive,

or whether Tom Mashberg was shown the real Rembrandt?

One thing we can say about this robbery,

and all the others I've looked into,

is that the whereabouts of the loot remains a mystery.

But here in Amsterdam, there is an example of another kind of heist

in which the thieves were quickly apprehended.

Where the loot may well resurface.

And where it may transpire that crime can pay,

to the tune of millions of dollars.

Thieves have stolen two paintings by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh.

A spokeswoman for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

said they were snatched early this morning after the thieves got in through the roof.

It's funny coming to the museum

because, of course, it feels remarkably solid -

it's a big building and it feels impregnable.

It brings home quite how daring you would have to be

to come in here and actually nick one of these paintings off the walls

and it's that chutzpah, that dare-devilry, that partially accounts

for why thefts like the one that took place here in 2002

have this remarkable hold over the public imagination.

In December 2003, a year after the break in,

police investigators arrested two men

who were well known in Amsterdam's petty crime scene.

Henk Bieslyn and his accomplice Octave Durham,

who was nicknamed The Monkey because of his ability to evade capture.

But despite their arrest, there was no sign of the stolen Van Goghs.

These were the paintings they stole -

The View Of The Sea At Sheveningen

and Congregation Leaving The Reformed Church At Nuenen.

This is a period known as his dark years

because his paintings were still dominated by these autumn colours -

russets, browns, potato-like creams, ochres.

This seascape was fashioned from these really thick gobs of paint,

some of which still contain

these little flecks and grains of sand from the beach that's depicted.

And this picture commemorates the main church at Nuenen

where his father served as a pastor

and it means that it has quite a personal significance.

Van Gogh is one of the most valuable artists in the world

and, together, they're valued at around 30 million, or £20 million.

These paintings are certainly expensive, to me and you at least.

But in this museum,

they are not the most valuable paintings on the walls.

Of course, it's slightly strange that if you were the thief

and you made it in here,

you wouldn't go for this, the most famous painting in the building?

So why did the thieves,

en route to stealing two relatively unknown Van Goghs, not grab this,

or this, or maybe even this?

As an art critic,

I don't often interview people who want to remain anonymous

but because of his past as an undercover detective,

the museum's head of security insisted upon it.

Why did they take the two paintings that they did?

Because they seem like surprising choices.

The thing was they were the first two paintings in the catalogue

from that time as the 100 masterpieces and they were

-the first two in there.

-What, so it's almost the case

that the thieves got the book...

-First two.

-"I'll just take those"?

Well, we don't know that for sure, but that's the only link we see.

In 2004, the men behind the theft were found guilty

and each sentenced to less than five years in jail.

Throughout the trial and even today as free men,

they have refused to divulge any information

about the whereabouts of the paintings.

No, the case is totally dead. The thieves are sentenced and free again

and nobody knows where the paintings are. We still...

The case is dead?

The case, yes. For the police, it's a solved case.

With the exception that the goods are not found back yet. That's it.

That's it for the police, but maybe not for the thieves.

Because there is a bizarre, little-known loophole in Dutch law.

A loophole that could see them

become the rightful owners of the paintings they stole.

There's no ransom involved. No dodgy deals with criminal associates.

All they have to do is nothing.

There is another hypothesis here, isn't there?

Because there's a strange quirk, a loophole in Dutch law

which says that if you own a stolen object,

if you own it for 30 years, then legally, you then do own it for real.

So there is a theory, as I understand it,

that these two petty thieves who stole the paintings

and haven't said a word,

did it, aware of that loophole in the law,

served their time which was, you know, four years,

but, in the big scheme of things,

if they can keep those paintings in their possession hidden,

they suddenly are owners of paintings worth a huge amount of money?

Yeah, that could be a possibility

and a thought of those two perpetrators.

It seems to me, as a layman, utterly bizarre

that there is this position in law at all.

I agree, er, to own stolen goods, that should not be possible.

So by playing a 30-year game, have Mr Monkey and his accomplice

actually carried out the perfect art crime?

As it is, there's no reward on offer from the museum,

there's no insurance company eager to get these paintings back,

so they're just lost in this sordid criminal underworld. Who knows

how they're going to be recovered in the end? Perhaps, after all, Mr Monkey and his friend,

they're suddenly going to produce the paintings when,

strange as it may sound, it's so perverse,

they might legally actually own them.

The desirability of a painting

has not always been defined by its financial worth.

Historically, the largest art thefts have been carried out

not by individuals, but by armies.

And when they steal, it's not about the money.

It's about ownership and status,

and claiming the art of a vanquished nation.

Here in Belgium, there is a work of art

that some consider to be the most important painting ever.

Perhaps that's why it is also the most stolen painting in history.

Today it sits, heavily protected behind bulletproof glass,

in St Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent.

I'm bowled over by the scale of this thing.

I didn't quite realise how big the Ghent Altarpiece was going to be.

That initial impact, nothing can quite prepare you for that,

even if you've seen it in reproduction.

Even with two panels away being restored,

it's still an overwhelming display of exquisite technique and detail.

It was begun in the 1420s, probably,

by a little unknown artist called Hubert Van Eyck,

completed after Hubert's death in 1426

by his much more famous brother, Jan Van Eyck, and it's considered

not just one of the splendours of the northern renaissance,

it's considered one of the real splendours of the entire tradition of western painting,

in part, because it sits at this joint, if you like, it's on the cusp

between medieval painting and then the new Renaissance style.

And that's why ever since it was painted,

it's been one of the most famous and also, as a result,

one of the most coveted paintings in the world.

In the 600 years since it was painted,

the Ghent Altarpiece has been stolen, in whole or in part, seven times.

Napoleon nicked it, and Hitler got his hands on it, too.

Each wanted to own a unique piece of European history.

But for eight decades,

part of this magnificent work of art has been missing.

One of its panels is a reproduction.

And the panel in question, is this one down here.

It's known as the Righteous Judges.

80 years ago, it was stolen

in a plot to hold the church authorities in Ghent to ransom.

It was a plot which went terribly wrong.

The story of its theft and the investigation into its recovery,

is so far fetched, it feels like a piece of fiction, a thriller.

On the evening of the 10th of April 1934,

passers-by witnessed something suspicious at St Bavo's Cathedral.

Art historian Noah Charney has pieced together what happened that night.

Someone saw a light on.

Shortly after that, someone else spotted two men dressed all in black

carrying something that looked like a panel

wrapped in black cloth into a waiting car

and it drove off into the night.

Despite eyewitness accounts,

the police appeared to have no real leads

until the Bishop of Ghent received a ransom note a couple of days later.

The ransom demand was one million Belgian francs -

more than £600,000 today.

But with the official line that no ransom be paid,

the case ground to a halt

until a few months later when there was a bizarre turn of events.

After suffering a massive heart attack,

a stockbroker called Arsene Goedertier insisted on speaking alone to his lawyer.

With his last breath, Arsene Goedertier whispered,

"I'm the last man on Earth to know the location of the Judges panel."

His last words were, "Armoire. Key."

He died before he could reveal anything further.

Arsene Goedertier's wardrobe was searched by his lawyer,

who found a key which unlocked a drawer.

And he found carbon copies of all of the ransom notes,

plus a final unsent ransom note that had a line in it to the effect

that no-one, not even I, can recover the Judges panel

without attracting public attention.

So what does that tell us?

Well, it tells us that, circa 1934,

the panel was hidden somewhere in plain sight,

or in the midst of a public space.

But the investigation was interrupted by war when the Germans invaded Belgium in 1940.

They plundered Europe's art.

Hitler coveted the Ghent Altarpiece, despite its missing panel.

The Nazis stole Van Eyck's masterpiece,

storing it alongside thousands of looted treasures.

'The 101st Airborne Division uncovers Hermann Goering's personal art collection... '

Following the Nazi defeat, the altarpiece was returned to Ghent

where the investigation could continue.

The case remains unsolved to this day

and all new leads are considered.

One recent tip-off led investigators to this church -

St Gertrude's, just outside Ghent.

The long-dead suspect, Arsene Goedertier, used to play the organ here.

It was down to Detective Jan De Kesel to investigate.

Jan, this is all a little bit surreal.

Why have you brought me here?

Well, we are here at the back of the altar.

You see here a space and opening

and it's the same size of the missing panel, er, the Judges.

What, so there's a theory that the Righteous Judges once was hidden here in this cavity?

It's possible because Arsene Goedertier,

he lived here, 200 metres from here.

In this church, he was the organist,

he knew the existence of this room.

If the panel was here once, it clearly isn't any more.

I can't help feeling the Belgian police have not made much progress in the last eight decades.

Do you feel in your gut that you're going to get it back?

Well, deep in my heart, I hope one day we find it back.

Well, hope is a very different thing.

I mean, do you have the conviction that you will get it back?

You don't sound like you're very close to it.

Well, in those ten years,

we had so many leads and so many disappointments,

but I hope, one day...

We have to... We only have to have one lead,

one big lead, the right one.

Talking to Jan, it appears that

the investigation has very little to go on indeed.

As things stand,

it seems unlikely that this panel will ever be seen again.

And yet art missing for decades can turn up,

as a case in Munich proved recently.

'In one of the largest hauls of its kind, 1,500 paintings,

'including works by Picasso and Matisse,

'have been discovered in a small apartment in Munich.

'Investigators think the art could be worth nearly £850 million... '

It will be years before the Munich case is fully untangled

and the fate of those paintings is settled.

Nonetheless, the news raised the hopes of art lovers everywhere.

And today, in Boston, there is also hope.

Earlier this year, the FBI announced to the world

that they had made a significant breakthrough in the Gardner case.

Geoff Kelly is the agent in charge of the investigation.

We came forward and announced that the case is solved.

We know who did it. We know where some of those paintings were.

We knew that it was going to cause the inevitable question from the press, which is, "Who did it?"

Well, sorry, the inevitable question from me would be,

if you've solved the case, where the hell are the paintings?

Exactly. Right. And that's one of the other reasons we came forward -

some of those paintings were seen as recently as late-'90s/early-2000s,

and then they disappeared again.

So we've kind of been able to track it for a period of time,

but then the trail's gone cold.

The FBI now believe

they know who broke into the Gardner that night in 1990.

But there are no immediate plans to arrest their suspects.

-What's happened to them?

-I can't say that.

I mean, they're not in jail, right?

I can't say about where they are at this time.

The Statute of Limitations on that actual theft expired in 1995

so, if somebody were to come forward tomorrow

and say they were involved in the Gardner heist,

-there's nothing we could do to prosecute them.

-So they got off?

They did. Absolutely.

There's a famous art thief in the area, a man you are very familiar with, called Myles Connor.

It's fairly accepted, basically public knowledge here in Boston,

apparently, that the FBI's working theory is

that it was Myles Connor's plan that was implemented in the heist.

Well, it's quite possible. He might have planned it himself

and when he got locked up, he let somebody else do it.

I mean, there's no question...

That's one of the difficult things about this crime -

more people were involved in this heist

than the two that went into the museum.

Whether, as art thief Myles Connor claims, the perpetrators are now dead, the FBI won't say.

In fact, their position seems to me to be very odd.

They know who did it, but won't say who.

In the 11 years that I've been working this case,

we've never been closer on the trail than we are right now.

But to say things like, "We're closer than we've ever been and the case is solved,"

sounds like a madness if you don't know where the paintings are now

-and you don't know where they've been for 12 years.

-Absolutely, it's the ultimate whodunnit.

Well, not least because it's the ultimate whodunnit,

but, according to you, you know who did it, but it's still not solved?

Well, whodunnit sounds better than where-is-it?!

The Gardner theft remains the biggest single art crime in history.

For many in Boston,

the seemingly endless search for the paintings has become all-consuming.

The case...I can't even describe the level of obsession.

I have them up in my apartment,

they're things that I have become obsessed with.

-You've got replicas of all the works there?

-Yeah. And they're things

that I have to see back at the Gardner.

Isabella Stewart Gardner specified that her collection

should remain unaltered.

That's why, today, empty frames mark the spots

where the Rembrandts and the Vermeer once hung.

I see these empty frames every day, I go to look at them every day.

It honestly is everything to me - I want these things back so badly.

It bothers me that these great masterpieces -

the representations of the best that mankind can achieve -

are things that my own daughters can't enjoy

because of some selfish, ridiculous, stupid act that somebody did 23 years ago.

Since they were stolen in 1990,

the value of the Gardner paintings continues to rise.

They're now worth two or even three times what they were

when they vanished.

The thieves may have thought they'd hit the jackpot, but did they?

They will never be able to sell their loot on the legitimate market,

and the world has been robbed of paintings worth more than just money.

For me, that's what makes art crime so frustrating. It's futile.

And it's miles away from the image of art theft

we seem to find so seductive.

It turns out that art thieves aren't suave billionaires,

they are not sophisticated connoisseurs.

I think it's time we ditched the Hollywood myths,

toughened up and got real.

The truth about stolen paintings is anything but glamorous.

Art crime is a brutal business, with repercussions for us all

and that is why it matters.