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Dear Reader,
For the past twenty years, I have been investigating, researching, teaching, and writing about art theft. To gain a deeper understanding of those who steal highly valuable art, I set out years ago to interview as many of these individuals as possible. Along the way, I encountered Myles J. Connor.
Meeting Connor made sense: he is the best art thief who has ever lived. Moreover, he hails from Milton, Massachusetts, which is a stone’s throw away from where I work at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
I had been on the trail of the thirteen works taken from the Gardner Museum for 10 years before reaching out to Connor. There was a good reason for this delay. First, for many of those years, he was incarcerated in a federal penitentiary (on an art-related charge, naturally). I had also learned a lot about him during those years from the countless people who called me offering information about him, certain that he was behind the Gardner heist.
He was not. Instead, he was serving a federal prison sentence in Illinois. Still, upon his release, it was essential that I finally talk with him. It proved to be the start of a friendship that has lasted over a decade, born of a strange kinship at the intersection of art thievery and art protection.
My friendship with Myles Connor meant years of unfettered access, including long interviews about not just his crimes but, more interestingly, his motives. It turns out that his heists were based not on money—as is the case with almost every other art theft in history—but in other motives connected to his unique code of honor. And what money he ultimately did make from heists (both from banks and museums) was used to feed his insatiable appetite for Asian antiquities—primarily, samurai swords.
Connor’s heists are the stuff of legend. But it was his biggest score—the 1975 theft of a Rembrandt from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston—that was the most stunning, in terms of his reasons and the breathtaking return of the painting accomplished by his longtime best friend, Al Dotoli.
Dotoli’s life is a legendary story unto itself, growing a small-town concert sound business into a worldwide endeavor supporting the major musical acts of his time. But it was his undying loyalty to his best friend, Connor, that led this legitimate businessman to risk it all and return the stolen Rembrandt to win his friend’s freedom.
The Rembrandt Heist is more than just a book about theft. It’s a story of fidelity, true friendship, and a curious sense of honor that will force you to keep reminding yourself that it’s all true!
Thank you,
Anthony Amore
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