Programs put cuffs on art bandits

Thanks to such films as “Ocean’s Twelve,” “Entrapment” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the crime of art theft conjures images of catlike thieves staging elaborate, suspenseful heists.

These archcriminals are rarer than Hollywood would admit, but art theft still is very real. Combating it is the mission of the FBI’s Art Theft Program, based in the District.

“I’ve never run across [a thief] who looked like Pierce Brosnan,” says Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, manager of the FBI’s Art Theft Program. “They’re pretty ordinary.”

Contrary to popular belief, she says, U.S. art thieves are “usually breaking-and-entering burglars,” stealing more from warehouses and private homes than museums and art galleries.

The latter, explains Kathleen Kennedy, senior underwriter at AXA Art Insurance Chicago, are protected by “pressure pads, motion detectors, break-glass sensors and sound sensors.”

According to Mrs. Magness-Gardiner, the Art Theft Program is composed of the National Stolen Art File and the Art Crime Team.

The Stolen Art File, which was created in 1979 and uploaded electronically in 1997, helps compile stolen art and pieces of cultural value. “[Art] doesn’t have a serial number,” says Mrs. Magness-Gardiner, who is an archaeologist by training. “So it couldn’t be put into any other database.”

Because very few easily recognizable works are stolen from U.S. collections, the Stolen Art File also helps officials identify whether a found piece in question is the stolen work of art.

The Art Crime Team — the operative arm of the program — was created in 2004. The unit recovered more than 100 items worth more than $50 million in its first year alone, including Rembrandt’s self-portrait, which had been stolen at gunpoint in Sweden, and more than 100 paintings worth more than $3 million that had been stolen from a Florida warehouse.

Other recent cases solved by the Art Crime Team include last month’s recovery of Teddy Roosevelt’s San Juan Hill pistol and eight cylindrical seals looted from Iraqi archaeological sites, which were recovered and returned in February 2005.

“Each agent is given a specific territory. … There’s a West Coast, Upper Midwest, East Coast,” Mrs. Magness-Gardiner says. “Each agent heads the investigation for art crimes. … He’s a resource for other agents who are trying to investigate art theft and fraud.”

One of those agents is special agent James P. Wynne, who has worked with the Major Theft Squad in New York City since 1987. According to Mr. Wynne, “It’s more likely … that thefts come from people on the inside.”

One of Mr. Wynne’s favorite cases involved “a diary in Malcolm X’s pocket when he was killed [that] was being sold in California” by Manhattan Supreme Court clerk Douglas Henderson in 1999.

“It was supposed to be in the Supreme Court’s evidence vault,” Mr. Wynne recalls of the attempted auction of the diary. “The first thing I had heard about it was in the New York Times.”

Mr. Wynne also helped crack the 1991 case of Daniel Cevallos-Tovar, who stole more than 280 rare alchemy books while researching at Yale and Harvard.

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