Thieves’ loot: a Warhol, a Pollock, and 9 of Bera’s World Series rings

An alarm at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, NY, went off at about 2 a.m. on a fall morning in 2015, prompting the director to drive to the building and learn that perpetrators had broken in and six championship belts from the ’40s and ’50s.

“Who could put this on a hall of fame museum?” Edward Brophy asked police officers. Blood from one of the thieves appeared to be dripping from the shattered glass of a window through which they had broken in. Mr. Brophy remembered thinking at the time, maybe that will help investigators find the culprits.

Almost a decade later it happened.

Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that nine people had been charged in connection with a two-decade-long operation in which the group broke into museums and businesses to steal an array of treasured artwork, jewelry and sports memorabilia – from a light green silkscreen by Andy Warhol to nine of the 10 World Series rings of revered New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra.

The group of nine people — who are Pennsylvania residents in their 40s and 50s and whose charges include conspiracy to commit theft of major works of art and interstate transportation of stolen property — had long eluded local law enforcement and evaded arrest. in quick robberies primarily targeting small museums from 1999 to 2019 in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and North Dakota, prosecutors said.

One of the suspects, Nicholas Dombek, 53, of Thornhurst, Pa., remains at large and is considered a fugitive, Gerard M. Karam, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, said at a news conference Thursday.

Forensic evidence from several police departments, including DNA preserved from the Canastota crime scene at the boxing museum, ultimately helped investigators connect several of the thefts. A museum director said officials told him a suspect was helping investigators identify the other perpetrators.

For the directors of the organizations affected by the raids, the arrests offered a semblance of justice, but old wounds resurfaced.

“It’s like losing a child 18 years ago,” says Charles Barber, the director of the Everhart Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Andy Warhol’s “Le Grande Passion” and Jackson Pollock’s “Springs Winter” were stolen in 2005. “There is pain of loss. But now that they have identified the nine suspects in this case, there is some sort of closure.”

Mr Brophy, who runs the International Boxing Hall of Fame, said he was “delighted” to hear charges had been filed.

Janet Terhune, the director of the Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame, from which 14 trophies were stolen that were likely melted, said that while it was good to know the suspects had been charged, it still felt like a “consolation prize”.

“We would love to get our stuff back,” she said, adding that when the museum in Goshen, NY was broken into in 2012, the break-in appeared to have lasted about three minutes.

Prosecutors said 20 museums were affected by the group’s thefts.

The rings, plaques and belts the thieves stole were melted down into metal discs or bars, which sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars in the New York City area, prosecutors said. Officials believe Mr. Berra’s rings may have melted.

Among the stolen items was a solid gold belt studded with diamonds and precious stones; three antique firearms from a New Jersey history museum worth a combined $1 million; and five trophies worth more than $400,000 that were on display at the National Racing Museum & Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, NY

What the suspects did with the stolen art is more uncertain. Mr Dombek burned Jasper Cropsey’s “Upper Hudson” painting, which is valued at $500,000, to prevent investigators from recovering it, according to an indictment. The whereabouts of many of the other stolen paintings and stolen items are unknown, prosecutors said.

Mr Barber said he hoped paintings stolen from the Everhart Museum would be recovered.

“We would very much like to hold an exhibition entitled ‘Once stolen, but now returned art’,” said Mr. Barber.

Officials noted during the press conference the conspicuous disdain the suspects had for such culturally significant memorabilia, given that the melted down pieces were selling for a fraction of what the actual items were actually worth. But their tactics seemed to indicate that the suspects fully understood the shadowy plan they were working on and favored easy money grabs over underground transactions that put them at greater risk of getting caught, the indictment shows.

After stealing Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock’s pieces in 2005, one of the suspects called a reward hotline set up by the owner, the indictment says, but that call never came to fruition.

Among the sports figures most affected by the thefts was Mr. Berra, who won a record 10 World Series and died in 2015, a year after the infamous theft. In addition to his World Series rings, seven other championship rings and two MVP plaques worth more than $1 million were stolen from the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, Little Falls, NJ

Upon learning that his rings had been taken, Mr. Berra replied with his kind of unpretentious wisdom, “Well, I know I won them.”

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris quoted Mr. Berra as discussing how the thefts were finally solved.

“You can observe a lot,” he said, “just by looking.”