How unusual does it seem to you?

Uh, it seems quite unusual.

You know, when the Louvre happened, I spoke about the fact that, you know, museum heists happen regularly.

They've never really, uh, you know, spiked or, or declined.

But the last 11 months since the Louvre happened, um, i- it's just been a remarkable spike in terms of high-value art.

You know, when, when the theft happened in Messina, I think it was three weeks ago now, it was $100 million U.S. worth of paintings.

Um, that's about how much the items taken from the Louvre were.

How much is that, do you think, at fault?

He told Indira Lakshmanan this heist took place before dawn.

Well, at 5.48 a.m., two thieves used some sort of power saw or electric knife and got into the museum, grabbed four of the dozen or so Renoir paintings in the museum and fled.

This all happened in less than five minutes.

Too late for the police response, which was quick.

And their haste, probably because the frames weighed them down, they dropped two of the paintings in the garden.

but made off with two very valuable, important masterworks by Renoir.

So what are investigators doing right now before the trail goes cold?

Well, the first thing they have to do is look for forensic evidence on site.

So how does something like this happen? Are they doing backflips around motion sensors like in the second Ocean's Eleven? Yeah.

No, they certainly are not.

They used brute force in the theft at the Louvre, as you've probably seen from videos of the thieves up on the balcony breaking through the glass and then breaking through the cases with uh heavy tools uh to do so these things are happening all the time everywhere any place that valuables are stored whether it's a bank or a jewelry store or a museum no place is completely impenetrable in the case of the louvre One of the major problems is, if you haven't been there, you should go.

But it's enormous.

And the number of cameras required to cover that much real estate is huge.

And it's very difficult to have enough people paying attention 24-7 to everything the cameras are showing in order to respond.

It's a very, very difficult thing.

Why is that important?

I think the Gardner, similar to what the Barnes does in Philadelphia, has done such incredible work at, at bringing these masterpieces that we might not have otherwise seen to the public.

Yeah, you, you picked a good parallel.

You know, the Barnes, uh, um, the, uh, founder of the Barnes modeled his will after Isabella Stewart Gardner.

So when Isabella Stewart Gardner built this museum, which some people mistakenly call a house museum, it is not, she, she felt the country needed a great museum, and in 1903 opens this building that she conceived of and dreamt up and, and, uh, paid for and, um, populated with art.

It's the only place like it in the world, frankly, where, um, every single aspect of it, right down to the name, is for a woman.

And, um, when she died, her will said that nothing in the museum could be changed.

So you can't, uh, you can't move any of the paintings.

Mm

Nothing,

all here.

More than 30 museums that he can remember.

The first one is really telling because I keep talking about how he's different.

It's not for money, right? So he's 19 years old.

His dad's a cop.

and a straight arrow, loved by everyone, police officer in this town of Milton.

Well,

Yeah.

And, uh, there were two overnight guards.

One was working at the watch desk and two police officers approached the side employee entrance and rang the intercom and said, "Boston Police.

We're responding to a disturbance." And the guard at the desk buzzed them into the building.

And once he did that, that was, um, the biggest mistake in the history of, of, uh, uh, security guards.

So the two guys come in, they talk to the guard.

They say to him, um, "We're here for a disturbance.

Yep.