Since publicity ramped up earlier this year with the 25th anniversary of the infamous Gardner Heist , security director Anthony Amore says he’s been on the case virtually 24/7.
“You’re trying to deal with leads as they come in and also you’re dealing with media,” he says. “So it takes up a lot of man-hours in the course of a day. I’d say it’s probably a 12-hour a day operation.”
Last week the Justice Department, along with the FBI released video of a man entering the museum, against security protocol, the night before the theft. Amore says the decision to release it came after their exhaustive efforts to ID the individual yielded no results .
“It was almost exactly 24 hours before the heist.” says Amore. “You cannot just look at this video and say, “oh it could be anybody.” He also says that it raises a lot of questions about what the guard might have been doing that night or his thought process. “Of course it leads us to believe who was this person,”Amore says.
Once again attention turns to the guard who allowed access both the night before and night of the theft. That’s when two men posing as Boston police officers gained entrance to the museum and stole 13 works now valued at at least 500-million dollars. Richard Abath, one of the guards on duty, has long denied any wrongdoing. But Amore says there are red flags.
“I’d be disingenuous with you if I didn’t say, ‘you have to look at that person,’ in any crime. I’m not picking on him in particular.” Amore says it’s the person who let the bad guys in that you have to really hone in on. “So I can’t say that he was involved in the crime,” concedes Amore. But— he adds, “I can say that the activities the night before the heist clearly warrant a lot of scrutiny.”
Amore says investigators have made progress in recent months but he’s not certain how close they are to finding the missing artwork. “I can sincerely say to you that if tomorrow we announce we found something it wouldn’t be surprising to me. But if it wasn’t for another year, it wouldn’t surprise me either.”
