[MSN] Isabella Stewart Gardner museum heist: Meet the suspects: Myles J. Connor Jr.

[MSN]

Meet the suspects: Myles J. Connor Jr.
By Tom Mashberg and Laura Crimaldi  |   Sunday, May 11, 2008  |
http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Meet The Suspects

Notorious art thief Myles J. Connor Jr., whose outlaw life has taken him
from rock 'n' roll fame to federal prison, was nowhere near the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Musuem on the night of the legendary $300 million art heist.

But on several occasions, Connor, 65, has told the Herald that he cased the
Hub museum and believes some of his associates are behind the March 18,
1990, theft.

Connor, the son of a Milton cop, was first linked with efforts to recover
the stolen masterpieces in 1997. At the time, Connor was serving a 15-year
sentence in a Pennsylvania federal prison for interstate trafficking in
stolen antiques and drug charges.

"I know emphatically and beyond any doubt who stole the art," Connor once
told Time magazine, ABC News and other media outlets. It was a repeat of a
tale Connor had told the Herald many times as well.

In those interviews, Connor described how he and "flim-flam artist" Robert
A. "Bobby" Donati cased the Italian palazzo-turned-museum during a visit in
1974. (See "Meet the Suspects" for March 29.)

"I took a walk through the place and saw what was there," Connor said.
Connor added that Donati was intrigued by an item that was later stolen -
the golden eagle atop a Napoleonic flagstaff.

Connor joined briefly with a shady Randolph antiques dealer, William P.
Youngsworth III, in offering to help "broker the return" of the art to
baffled museum and FBI officials.

Since then, Connor severed ties with Youngworth, whom he accuses of
embezzling $2 million worth of art and antiques that Connor says he acquired
legitimately during his colorful career.

Connor's career as an art thief began in 1966 for a robbery at the Forbes
Museum in Milton. During a pursuit, he shot and wounded state police Cpl.
John J. O'Donovan.

He was paroled in 1972 but re-arrested in 1974 for stealing several artworks
by Andrew Wyeth from the Woolworth estate in Monmouth, Maine. He pleaded
guilty but avoided jail by famously arranging the return of a $1 million
Rembrandt, 'Portrait of Elizabeth Van Rijn,' which was stolen from the
Museum of Fine Arts in broad daylight.

Connor, a guitarist, stayed out of prison and found time to jam with the
rock group Sha Na Na. The regional press dubbed him the "president of rock
'n' roll." In 2003, Massachusetts-born Hollywood mogul Peter Guber bought
the rights to his life story.

In 1981, a jailed hit man, Thomas Sperrazza, turned state's evidence and
accused Connor of engineering the 1975 screwdriver killings of two
18-year-olds, Susan C. Webster and Karen Spinney - both witnesses to a
murder in Roslindale linked to a Connor associate.

Connor was convicted of ordering and directing the murders, but his verdict
was overturned on a technicality in 1984 by the Supreme Judicial Court.

Connor was then retried in the teenagers' murders in 1985, but jumped bail
hours before he was found innocent by a 12-person jury. He was quickly
caught and given a year in prison on the bail-jumping charge.

At the time, Connor's name also surfaced in connection with the 1984 theft
of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter and its beeswax seal from the
basement of the State House.

The historic artifacts disappeared from a virtually unguarded glass case in
the State House basement. The charter page was found seven months later in a
raid at the apartment of a Dorchester woman who had ties to Connor. Several
boxes of Connor's personal papers and books were reportedly seized in that
raid, which also turned up more than $200,000 worth of Oriental rugs,
antique firearms and narcotics.

The seal remained missing until July 11, 1997, when it was found during a
raid among the property of Youngsworth.

After his bail-jumping conviction, Connor enjoyed a brief taste of freedom
in the late 1980s, but was arrested yet again in 1989 in Illinois.

He pleaded guilty to stealing and trying to transport across state lines two
17th-century Dutch masterworks, both taken from the Mead Art Museum at
Amherst College in 1975, as well as a grandfather's clock taken from the
Woolworth estate. The works were valued at $500,000.

Connor also pleaded guilty to five separate drug charges, including selling
cocaine to an FBI agent in Bloomington, Ill. He was jailed until June 2000
when he was paroled after serving 11 years of a 15-year sentence.

After his release, Connor moved to Blackstone, on the Rhode Island border,
to live with his longtime girlfriend, Suzanne King.

He was arrested again in March 2005 on charges he helped King's brother,
John King of Charlestown, steal $900 in watches from the H. Brandt Jewelers
in downtown Natick.

After stealing four watches, King ran out of the store and jumped into
Connor's car. A few minutes later, Connor was pulled over for speeding and
running a stop sign.

John King pleaded guilty to unarmed robbery, assault and battery, larceny of
property worth more than $250 and the illegal possession of cocaine prior to
his trial on Nov. 1, 2005. He was sentenced to three and a half years and a
day in prison, followed by five years of probation.

Connor, however, was cleared of the charges after three days of testimony.

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Museum Security Network / Museum Security Consultancy
toncremers at museum-security.org
http://www.museum-security.org
Handboek Veiligheidszorg Erfgoedbeheerders
http://www.handboekveiligheidszorgmusea.nl/