Every Bostonian knows the story of the 1990 heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A half billion dollars worth of art stolen on St. Patrick's Day. Guards were tied up. Mob ties were suspected but never proven. Not one of the paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Degas was recovered. The FBI and law enforcement continue to chase leads, however small, to bring closure to the case.
Writer B.A. Shapiro decided to use the heist as a springboard for a new novel called The Art Forger . Shapiro writes about Claire Roth, a young artist who extricates herself from a scandal by offering to forge a famous painting.
Roth discovers this famous work by Degas is tied to the Gardner heist, and that there's much more to the case than the public was led to believe.
GUEST:
Watch an ABC report on the Gardner robbery:
