BOSTON (WHDH) - The lead investigator in the 1990 art heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum spoke about the twists and turns of the mystery.
Former FBI Agent Geoffrey Kelley has a new tell-all book, “Thirteen Perfect Fugitives.”
“They took the Rembrandts – that’s the well-known artist when you go into a room like the Dutch Room, that’s filled with these old-world masters,” Kelley said.
The book details the lead investigators followed over the past 30 years. It happened when two men dressed as policemen convinced museum security guards to let them in.
They handcuffed the guards in the basement, took the security videotapes, and stole 13 artworks worth half a billion dollars. The FBI said their identities were discovered in 2013, but they could not be named due to definitive proof.
Kelley said the info came primarily from outside informants.
“One of them was an informant that we opened up down in Connecticut, who, his name was Meatball, and he really resembled a meatball,” Kelley said. “And he was a three-time killer who escaped the death penalty down in Florida and managed to come back to Connecticut and ended up working with us on this case.”
The two men have since died, along with others believed to be tied to the hesit. Kelley said he interviewed one suspect’s brother, who broke down when he recalled helping his late sibling hang up a stolen piece.
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