THE HEIST AND THE HUNT

By Romesh Ratnesar

From the start, the heist has riveted and dumbfounded the art world, with fresh chapters unfolding as if the perps had serialized the tale. Last week came the most tantalizing clues so far in the 1990 theft of $300 million in artwork--including three Rembrandts, five Degas and a Vermeer--from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On Friday the Boston Herald published several black-and-white photographs that purported to show some of the stolen paintings. And the Herald said that in collaboration with ABC News, it had near certain proof that the Rembrandts in the photos were authentic. The paper pointed to some minute but telltale signs--a stretcher mark here, a frayed edge there--that bolstered its stunning claim.

But there were also some holes in the Herald's report. All the "art experts" who testified to the photographs' reliability refused to be identified. The paper said that along with the photos, it had obtained a pile of tiny chips of paint, but acknowledged it could not authenticate "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that the chips came from the stolen works. Furthermore, its source for the photos was one William P. Youngworth III, a 38-year-old ex-con and antiques dealer who is on his way to jail again on a car-theft conviction. Officials from the Gardner asked to see the photos for themselves and demanded that the Herald and ABC News drop their request for exclusive rights to report on the museum's analysis. At week's end the drama had degenerated to a squabble among lawyers for all parties.

The theft took place in the dead of night on March 18, 1990, when two men dressed as police broke into the Gardner, tied up two museum guards and dismantled the security system. They left with 13 objects, including two certified masterworks--Vermeer's The Concert and Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee. Strangely, the robbers chose not to lift the museum's most prized piece, Titian's Rape of Europa.

The thieves' improbable connoisseurship set off speculation that the heist was a botched assignment ordered up by a wealthy collector. But no leads panned out. Then, in August, Herald reporter Tom Mashberg claimed he had been escorted to a dark warehouse and shown by flashlight Rembrandt's signature on Storm on the Sea of Galilee. The assignation was brokered by Youngworth, who then told ABC's Nightline he could deliver the stolen works in exchange for the museum's $5 million reward and the release of his pal Myles J. Connor Jr., a thief who was in prison for selling cocaine and transporting stolen art.

Youngworth says he and Connor had nothing to do with the original crime, and he has a pretty good alibi: both were in prison at the time. Youngworth now faces up to 15 years in prison on the auto-theft conviction. Last month he met privately with Gardner directors and reportedly extracted a $10,000 down payment on a reward for promising to produce some of the stolen goods. He will probably try to negotiate down his sentence in exchange for more details. All things considered, that may be a small price to pay for figuring out who pulled off the biggest art heist in American history.

--By Romesh Ratnesar. Reported by Rod Paul/Boston

With reporting by ROD PAUL/BOSTON