Crimes of the art

In reality, such intricate feats are unnecessary. Actual criminals know that storming into a museum brandishing firearms is the simplest way to take illegal possession of something as untouchable as a Rembrandt. Museum-rich Massachusetts holds a dark distinction in this regard. In May 1972, in Worcester, thieves created a grim precedent – the first known use of a gun to rob an art museum.

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IT WAS AN OVERCAST Wednesday afternoon when two very small-time criminals handpicked by Florian “Al” Monday stepped into the Worcester Art Museum. One was armed with a .22-caliber revolver bearing a single round. In theory, the men were well drilled on what to do to get in and out without expending that round.

Monday, a career criminal, had come of age not far from the target and felt almost proprietary about the museum. He had cased it often, gone inside, as he put it, “many times on trial runs, touching and fiddling” and making note of window alarms, panic buttons, and security routines. Monday knew its blind spots and back stairways. Its location in an unraveling textile town in the central part of the state made it an attraction far off the beaten track, accustomed to light foot traffic, decorum, even inviolability. It was an easy score.

Although the museum has many riches – silver by Paul Revere, Greek and Egyptian antiquities, paintings by Whistler, Cezanne, and van Gogh – its sole Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew (1632), was its star attraction. Or, as Monday puts it, the “no-brainer” on his theft list.