Switch Editions? Copy Share URL. Channel: Art Hostage. X Are you the publisher? Claim or contact us about this channel. Remove ADS. Viewing all articles. Last Page. Browse latest View live. The characters steal the show, much like they steal some damn fine art in the movie itself. John the Baptist," which was stolen from the museum in February but recovered in January Two of the paintings were recovered in following a federal sting operation in Illinois, in which a notorious art thief and bank robber from Massachusetts, Myles Connor Jr.
He had offered the two paintings as collateral in a drug deal set up by undercover FBI agents. Cummings examined museum files, college archives, and old newspaper accounts, and he also talked to various art experts and other law enforcement agents.
He noted, for instance, that the bureau maintains a digital national file for looted art, on which the Lambrechts painting has been listed. The museum, she added, decided bringing the case forward again and seeking public input outweighed the embarrassment of reminding anyone that the paintings had been stolen in the first place, when museum security was not as tight as it is now. The theft was discovered in February after state police at the Northampton barracks got an anonymous tip. They contacted Amherst College police, who tracked footprints still visible in some fresh snow to a broken window at the Mead.
Inside the museum, it quickly became evident that three Dutch canvasses β all of which the museum had obtained in the previous few years β had been stripped from their frames. Both paintings were in pretty good condition, Cummings said, and were back on display in the museum that year.
In the book, co-written by crime novelist Jenny Siler, Connor claims he stole the van Vliet and Lastman paintings from the Mead on a whim after coming to the area with two partners to check out a South Hadley bank they were thinking of robbing. Connor, who enjoyed art and studied it in his spare time, stopped by the museum before heading to the bank. Connor, now 71 and according to various news reports living in Blackstone, in Worcester County near the Rhode Island border, does not say specifically when he went to the Mead.
