HARTFORD — Hartford mobster Robert Gentile was secretly recorded telling an undercover FBI agent that he had access to two of the paintings stolen a quarter century ago from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and that he would be willing to sell them each for $500,000, a federal prosecutor said in court Monday.
The prosecutor, John Durham, said the 79-year old Gentile, who also was recorded boasting that he is a sworn mafia soldier, made the offer to an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a participant in a large scale marijuana selling operation.
Gentile was in federal court for a hearing to decide whether he would be released on bail after his arrest last week on allegations that he sold a loaded revolver to a convicted killer who was cooperating with the FBI. Magistrate Judge Thomas Smith denied bail.
The Gardner heist became part of the bail discussion — just as it has become part of the discussion during all of Gentile’s appearances in court over the past four years.
Gentile, overweight and suffering from back pain, was pushed into court in a wheelchair. Asked how he was, he said: “Not too good. Got a cold. Flu. Sneezing.”
The FBI describes Gentile as a person of interest in the museum theft and believes he might have information, through criminal associates in Boston and Philadelphia, that could help unravel one of the most baffling art mysteries ever.
He denies knowing anything about the theft or the location of the stolen art. His lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, said Gentile volunteered to help the Gardner investigators three years ago and has been under continuous criminal investigation since by agents who believe he is holding out on them.
McGuigan said he is unable to explain why someone with no knowledge of the stolen art could be recorded offering to sell it.
“Everyone thinks [Gentile] knows where the Holy Grail is,” McGuigan said, “But I don’t think he does.”
Two men dressed as police officers bluffed their way into the Gardner museum in 1990 and made off with 13 priceless masterworks. Among the stolen pieces are three Rembrandts — including his only known seascape, “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” — a Vermeer, a Manet and five drawings by Degas.
The trail left by the thieves had been cold until several years ago when the widow of a Boston gangster told the FBI that her dead husband might have passed two of the paintings to Gentile in the parking lot of a Portland, Maine, hotel. In an interview with The Courant, Gentile admitted he attended the Portland meeting but denied taking paintings.
The widow’s allegation made Gentile an FBI target. The resulting investigation showed that someone known as a knock-around Hartford hoodlum had been living a secret life in Boston, where he had been inducted into the New England branch of a Philadelphia mafia family.
Two years ago, the FBI said it knows the identities of the Gardner thieves but will not name them. The bureau said it believes at least some of the art moved from Boston to Hartford and eventually to Philadelphia. A source said at the time that Gentile had become the best lead in the case in years.
Durham said in court Monday that on the recordings, Gentile was recorded discussing the paintings with an undercover FBI agent who was posing a marijuana seller. At one point in the conversation, the undercover agent pressed Gentile about why he was willing to sell the paintings rather collect the $5 million reward, Durham said.
“The answer, based on Mr. Gentile’s own words, was he felt that the feds were going to come after him anyway, even if he was going to turn in the paintings for the $5 million reward,” Durham said.
During the same conversation, Durham said, Gentile became “furious” when the undercover agent would not give Gentile a piece of the marijuana action.
“Mr. Gentile asked, ‘Do you know who I am?’ and stated that he can have people killed and make them disappear,” Durham said.
“Mr. Gentile has made no bones about the fact that he is a made member of La Cosa Nostra,” Durham said.
At various times during conversations with the undercover agent or with FBI informants, Gentile reminded them that, as a member of the mafia, he deserved respect and that he could arrange the deaths of those who didn’t show it, the prosecutor said.
Durham would not say when Gentile and the undercover agent discussed the paintings. But McGuigan said the FBI began investigating Gentile a year ago, when he was released from a 30-month prison sentence after being convicted on weapons and drug charges.
McGuigan argued that the FBI is using informants and undercover operative to induce Gentile to commit crimes that can be used to pressure him for information about the Gardner heist — information McGuigan said Gentile does not possess.
“They are not investigating criminal activity,” McGuigan said. “They are creating criminal activity. They are obsessed with the idea that my client has knowledge of the whereabouts of the Gardner Museum paintings.”
