#41: The Gardner Museum Robbery

It isn’t every day that a museum heist is successful, but on March 18th of, 1980, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was robbed blind in the middle of the night. This particular heist has gone down in history as one of the greatest art thefts in modern times. That night, two men disguised as Boston policemen claimed to have received a disturbance call. Considering St. Patrick’s parties were happening all over the city, the inexperienced security guards believed the policeman. The guards gave these two fake policemen access to the museum’s employee entrance before they arrested both guards before they could do anything.

That night, these two fake policemen stole 13 artworks valued at $500 million. To uncover some truth about that evening, the museum set a $10 million reward for any information that leads to recovering the stolen artworks. The perpetrators are yet to have been caught, and the whereabouts of the artworks remain unknown to this day. Empty frames now decorate the places where the 13 famous artworks used to sit in remembrance. The likes of Rembrandt and Vermeer were among the artists whose work was stolen that night.