On March 18, 1990, $500 million in paintings and other works were stolen from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in what has become history's richest art heist. Here's a look back at the Hartford Courant's coverage of the heist and Robert "The Cook" Gentile, the once-obscure gangster from Hartford, who was placed at the center of the mystery.
12 Facts About the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Art Heist mentalfloss.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mentalfloss.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(Welcome to
The Quarantine Stream, a series where the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The Series:
Where You Can Stream It: Netflix
The Pitch: A docuseries that covers the still-unsolved 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
Why It’s Essential Quarantine Viewing: There are a
lot of true crime docuseries around these days, especially on Netflix. And
This Is a Robbery doesn’t exactly break the mold. Indeed, it has many of the problems that plague so many other modern true crime docuseries. And yet, the subject matter is so fascinating that you’ll likely be willing to overlook some flaws.
An FBI photograph of the crime scene after the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery show empty frames laying on the floor Courtesy of Netflix
In the movies, the ruling maxim is “print the legend”. After 30 years of investigations of the theft of 13 works valued at more than $500m from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the legend is still all there is to print.
So we see in
This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, a four-part documentary series on the Gardner theft now streaming on Netflix. The hyperbolic subtitle, like the oft-used adjective “legendary”, is now part of Gardner lore. The series still makes for a head-scratching unsolved mystery for the vast Netflix audience that is new to the cold case. An for the general public, it helps that this true crime tale devolves into yet another Boston mob saga.