Unsolved

Rembrandt's "Christ in the Storm
on the Sea of Galiilee"

Who could have predicted that a mid-week NYT Arts section would contain two stories about festering mysteries. About art, of course.

One story is about the heist 36 years ago in 1990 from the Isabel Gardner Museum in Boston where 13 pieces of art were made off with: Vermeers, Rembrandts. The good stuff.

The story is touched off no doubt because the heist was perpetrated in the early morning hours after St. Patrick's Day. Thirty-six years is not a milestone anniversary, but the heist is remembered because this past Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure anyone raised a glass of Guinness on Tuesday hoping to solve the crime. If the case had a temperature, it would be considered so cold it would be measured at Absolute Zero, -460° F.

The Luckless FBI agent, Geoffrey Kelly, who handled the case has now produced a book, "Thirteen Perfect Fugitives," outlining the cases made against 13 figures. No spoiler alert here. He doesn't know who did it either, but spins the tale of all the colorful possibilities that start with a Corsican gang, Whitey Bulger and the I.R.A. and some Boston career criminals

There was recently an obituary for one of the guards who opened the door and let the two thieves in who were dressed as Boston police. He was a suspect his entire life as being the inside man, but nothing ever came of it. Just like all the suspicions about the potential suspects, many of whom are now dead.

The article closes with a quote from Kelly who challenges all the armchair detectives who think they could have found the artworks: "If you think it's so easy, you go find them." The reward is now $10 million.

But who would come forward and produce the pieces to collect $10 million who wouldn't themselves be forever a suspect in the theft? A reward is almost meaningless. 

As for myself, I like to think someone sits in our of those vaults in Amsterdam or Antwerp where rich people stow their original art while displaying good copies in their penthouses, and are enjoying themselves.

We eventually found out who Deep Throat was and a mystery was solved.

Bansky's Girl With Balloon...
Love is in the Bin

The other story involves Bansky and the Effort to Unmask His Identity.

This one to me lacks the charm of a heist. According to Reuters news service, the identity is confirmed as being someone named Robin Gunningham.

The identification is said to have been made possible by consulting a police report on a court filing associated with Bansky's arrest when he used a billboard in New York in 2000 to show off his art.

Ever since the 1990s and 2000s there have been attempts to identify the artist who has been leaving his work on public streets and buildings. The value for Bansky art has soared.

The identification of Bansky through a police report can be compared to identifying the 1977 New York City serial killer Son of Sam to be David Berkowitz, through researching a parking ticket issued to his car parked on Shore Road in Brooklyn, near his last killing and maiming.  Why was a guy from Yonkers parked in Brooklyn? The rest is history.

The summer of 1977 was consumed by trying to find this guy after it became known that a series of shootings were emerging as the work of a killer wielding a .44 caliber pistol. Mr. Berkowitz is still in jail.

Those with a good memory will remember that the Bansky painting, "Girl with a Balloon" was put up for auction in 2018 at swanky Sotheby's auction house in London. Someone paid £1.04 million for it (with fees) to then see the artwork be driven by a hidden mechanical device to slide down through the frame, pass through the teeth of an unseen shredder, to emerge now as "Love is in the Bin."

Surely someone was in on it, because how did a bulky. heavier than usual frame that contained a shredder go undetected? No matter. The "Love is in the Bin" has recently sold for £18,582.000. 

Speaking to the press after the shredding sale, Sotheby's Senior Director Alex Branczik famously commented. "It appears we just got Bansky-ed". The auction house proceeded to describe the shredded Bansky as "the first artwork in history to have been created during a live auction." Whatever. They made lemonade from a lemon.

Years ago in NYC, in the 60s, there was a precursor to what became the graffiti movement, when all over the place you could see someone had written "Taki 183."

The tag was written with a black indelible marker, with nothing else with it. I first saw it on a street light pole outside the family flower shop on 3rd Avenue and 18th Street. It was scrawled everywhere, in all 5 boroughs.

Turns out the "tag" 183 meant 183rd Street in Washington Heights where a Greek teenager named Demetrios lived. Taki was his nickname.

Mysteries remain mysteries until they are no longer mysteries. They all have a life span. A magician's trick is still a trick until you know how it was done. A secret is not a secret if two people know it.

It was 76 days before the kidnapped Lindbergh baby was found in the woods near the house. The remains were disturbed by animals. An autopsy established the baby died the night of the kidnapping.

Before the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski there was George Metesky, the Mad Bomber in NYC who went undetected for 16 years before his arrest in Waterbury, Ct. in 1957.

In the 1940s and 1950s, George had taken to leaving bombs in all sorts of public places in New York City, 33 in fact. They exploded, but did not kill anyone. He was a major nuisance. A forensic psychiatrist James A . Brussel described a man who nearly exactly matched Mr. Metesky, who was finally brought to justice after Con Edison's records were painfully researched in a cellar by Alice Kelly, who found a case of a former Con Edison worker who was disgruntled by a workplace injury..

When the police arrested Metesky in Waterbury living with his sisters they found his bomb workshop. George, who was an electrician and mechanic, even made his own screws for his devices, He was meticulous. He was incarcerated in a psychiatric prison and released in his old age. He died in 1994.

Of more recent memory is the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who went undetected for 17 years before his arrest in a cabin in Montana.

Ted's specialty were letter bombs that did kill and maim several academics that he mailed them to. Kaczynski was a mathematical genius who no one remembered in class when it became known who he was.

He was found after his brother recognized the published paper that Ted had written to the newspapers as to his motives and how technology was warping the human race.. His brother recognized the writing, and the rest is history. Kaczynski died in prison in 2023.

Of course the current elephant in the room these days is the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Savanah Guthrie, a host on NBC's Today Show who was snatched form her Tucson-area home on the evening of January 31, and reported missing on February 1.

Door bell camera footage shows the heavily masked intruder. But that still left clues which have not yet closed the case. A lot of smart people and technology has been thrown at this case, and so far it's still a dead end. Daily reports have disappeared from the news as the case gets frosty.

Is the kidnapper(s) that smart, or just lucky? Has something obvious has been overlooked? It's obvious that if something were to crack the case it's going to come from a source not yet considered or known about. Or will it be something overlooked?

Stay tuned. We might be alive when this one gets solved.

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