Thirteen Perfect Fugitives

The true story of the world’s largest art heist, as told by the FBI agent who investigated the case.

On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art were plucked from the walls of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston by two subjects posing as police officers. They rang the night bell, claiming they were responding to a call of a disturbance. After incapacitating the guard and his partner with handcuffs and duct tape, the subjects spent the next eighty-one minutes inside the museum, leisurely removing some of the world’s most valuable pieces of artwork from the walls, including a rare Vermeer and Rembrandt’s only known seascape. The total loss associated with this robbery has been estimated at over $1 billion.

Based on meticulous investigations conducted to the standards required of an FBI special agent, Thirteen Perfect Fugitives offers author Geoffrey Kelly’s insights and theories about the infamous heist.