Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist
    Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist
    Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist
    Audiobook7 hours

    Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist

    Written by Stephen Kurkjian

    Narrated by Mike Chamberlain

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a secret meeting in 1981, a master thief named Louis Royce gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime. As a kid, Royce had visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made a habit of sneaking in at night to find a good place to sleep. He knew the Museum's security was lax, and he gave this information to a boss of the Boston criminal underworld.


    It took years before the Museum was hit. But when it finally happened, it quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history: thirteen works of art valued at up to $500 million-including Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee." The identity of the thieves was a mystery, and the paintings were never found.


    What happened in those intervening years? Which Boston crew landed the big score? And why, more than twenty years later, did the FBI issue a press conference stating that they knew who had pulled off the heist and what had happened to the artwork, but provided no identities and scant details?
    These mysteries are the story of Stephen Kurkjian's revealing book. He will take the listener deep into the Boston mob and paint the most complete and compelling picture of this story ever told.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 17, 2015
    ISBN9781494580841
    Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World's Greatest Art Heist

    Related to Master Thieves

    Related audiobooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      This Is A Robbery: The True Story Behind Netflix’s Documentary On The World’s Biggest Art Heist

      Apr 7, 2021

      Perhaps the Italian mafia have the stolen art. Maybe it’s the Irish mob, or somebody with links to the IRA. Some reckon it could all be behind a wall in a house in Dublin. It could quite possibly still be in Boston. Or Connecticut. Or Philadelphia. S

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Guggenheim’s Scapegoat

      Oct 3, 2022

      The Guggenheim’s Scapegoat
      25 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Mar 1, 2022

      Must See, Must Read
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Legacy Of A Lynching

      May 3, 2018

      Nearly a century after three men were lynched in northern Minnesota, a delegation embarks on a pilgrimage to a new memorial in Alabama.

      6 min read

    • Article

      An Aneurism of Axe Murders: On ‘The Man from the Train’

      Oct 9, 2017

      You can’t help but read these murders as a parable of alienation. The lone drifter stalking the country by train, itself a mode of transport from a bygone era, to literally smash apart families with an instrument that evoked America’s timbered fronti

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Troublemakers

      Dec 6, 2022

      The Troublemakers
      7 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Sep 20, 2019

      Reviews
      6 min read

    • Article

      Devil’s Advocate

      Jan 26, 2023

      Devil’s Advocate
      9 min read

    • Article

      Mr Jones

      Jan 30, 2020

      Mr Jones
      2 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Jul 23, 2019

      Reviews
      8 min read

    • Article

      Historical Markers Are Everywhere In America. Some Get History Wrong

      Apr 21, 2024

      The sound of the party filters across the mansion's lawn long before you see it: Dozens of guests spill out onto the front porch of the stately Fendall Hall in Eufaula, Alabama. It's an engagement party, and past the people drinking white wine in the

      20 min read

    • Article

      Secrets Of The lake

      Oct 16, 2022

      Secrets Of The lake
      2 min read

    • Article

      True Crime Can Be An Unedifying Business, So Why Am I Drawn To Writing About It? | Francisco Garcia

      May 23, 2023

      In a 1996 essay for Granta, the late Gordon Burn set down his experience covering the trial of Rose West. “There was nothing much to see and it was always much the same,” he wrote. “But the heavy media presence was in itself justification for having

      4 min read

    • Article

      International Books

      Jan 13, 2020

      Imagining the world in the first century AD (not yet called that), it’s difficult to envision Christianity (not yet called that) when it was considered a “blasphemous cult”. It’s 35AD in Jerusalem and Saul, a Jew, is hunting down Christians for execu

      5 min read

    • Article

      “Getting Thrilled, Titillated Or Angry At Celebrities Can Change How We Think”

      Mar 19, 2020

      Ellie Cawthorne: You argue in the book that celebrity is a slippery concept. How do you define it? Greg Jenner: When I began writing, I made the foolish assumption that there would be a clear-cut definition of celebrity. But a year-and-a-half later

      7 min read

    • Article

      Gangster Bedtime Stories

      Jun 5, 2019

      Gangster Bedtime Stories
      6 min read

    • Article

      Family Ties

      Jul 30, 2022

      Family Ties
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Master Thieves

    3.5/5

    28 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Growing up in Boston, this was big news. It’s really a tragedy that these paintings probably will never be recovered. The saying “ follow the money” rings true here. I think that paintings were put away until the heat died down and were sold to a private collector or were put away and both thieves were killed as victims of Boston’s gang wars. The mob guys were flipping like pancakes to avoid jail and the paintings surely would’ve turned up as a stay out of federal prison for life collateral. Mob guys have no honor and have big mouths, so if paintings were sold and people who did it would’ve been spending the money like fools and nobody ever did. There’s nobody alive who can help recover these paintings, they are probably buried somewhere never to be found. As for the book, it was okay. Much was regurgitated knowledge and the writer hit on some good theories, but he was dealing with men with no honor, lying and murderous lowlife scum who’d sell their mothers’s to the highest bidder to save their own as*es. As to the museum and the arrogance of not strengthening their security when warned to do so, almost makes me think they deserved it, but alas, I don’t. One thing which really bothers me to the point of wondering was it an inside job was that the crook snuck in and slept in the museum for so long and was never caught? I find that hard to believe.
    • 4/5
      Yet another book-length examination of the Gardner Museum heist, this one concentrating on the men of Boston's underworld who may have had a hand in the planning or execution of the theft. A bit repetitive at times, but Kurkjian does bring in some different characters than other books have done, and he is quite critical of how the FBI has handled the investigation (he takes particular exception to their apparent unwillingness to involve local and state law enforcement officials, which does seem like it would have been a useful thing to do). From this book, given the various scenarios Kurkjian lays out, it seems to me that one danger as more and more time passes is that those who knew at some point where the stolen art was stored have died or soon will ... could these priceless artworks be languishing somewhere, their precise location unknown to anyone alive? Scary thought indeed, and given the great amounts of money being offered for their return (and the fact that the statute of limitations has long passed on the theft), a scenario that seems perhaps more plausible than one would like.I do agree with Kurkjian that a greater public push for information (as in the successful attempt to nab Whitey Bulger) could prove useful, and I hope that Kurkjian and his fellow reporters will keep following up leads.
    • 3/5
      The audio for this was good but I kept getting a little confused keeping the different people, gang members, FBI, police, Gardener employees completely straight in my mind as to who was who! I kept feeling that Kurkjiam kept circling back over the same material again and again with only slight alterations from a little different point of view and I was saying in my mind, "you told me that already...." Because I have been to the museum long before the theft it seems very sad that after 25 years the 13 pieces have still not been found. Has everyone died who knows what happened to them? A continuing mystery that just might never be solved.
    • 4/5
      Master Thieves is a riveting read about the unsolved 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner art heist. Stephen Kurkjian, a Boston Globe reporter who has been covering this mystery for 20 years, does a step by step investigation of almost all of the major and minor players of this true-crime story. The author lays out the connections between the different factions of the Boston Mob, the risks that Anne Hawley, the director of the museum, took to try to recover the art and the role of the FBI and their missteps and territoriality. Over time he is led to conclusions based on his hard-nosed and dogged search for answers and shares his hypothesis in this compelling book. Time will tell if makes an impact.