'He can get these paintings in a half hour'

Myles Connor, the son of a cop and brother of a priest, has earned the reputation for not only being an art thief, but an art connoisseur often spotted at gallery openings and art shows.

The Rape of Europa, by Titian

"You can believe I didn't plan the thing, or 'The Rape of Europa' would have been the first to go," Connor said during a jailhouse interview with Time magazine in 1997. In a 2001 survey of museum directors conducted by the Boston Globe, the work was voted the most significant in Beantown, beating out other masterpieces showcased at larger museums in the city, such as the Museum of Fine Arts.

According to Connor, he and a former "associate," Bobby Donati, went to the Gardner in the mid-1970s and discussed how easy it would be to pull off a robbery. He even says that Donati mentioned he liked the Napoleonic flag finial, a work of relatively little value compared with the other masterpieces in the museum.

But Connor said he never followed through on robbing the Gardner. Shortly after his visit with Donati, a Rembrandt was stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts. Though Connor never admitted to that theft, he did arrange for its return in exchange for avoiding prison time for another art theft in Maine.

Connor claims Donati and another associate, David Houghton, arranged the Gardner robbery on their own. Donati was found dead the following year hog-tied and stabbed in the trunk of a car, and Houghton died in 1992.

Art investigator Harold Smith

"He said it was his plan. The implication is that these people had heard Myles Connor's plan, but instead of using art thieves they used armored car thieves," Smith says.

Connor says his now-deceased friends told him they would leave information about the paintings' whereabouts if anything happened to them.

While incarcerated, Connor told the FBI that he could find out where the art was — but that he couldn't do it from prison.

The FBI didn't release Connor, but in 1997 raised the museum's reward for the safe return of all the works from $1 million to $5 million. On Aug. 18 of that year, Youngworth, Connor's associate, called a Boston Herald reporter boasting he had the art and would take him to see it.

The reporter, Tom Mashberg, took a 40-minute drive to an unknown location and saw what looked like Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee." He was even allowed to take some paint chips with him for proof.

Rembrandt's only known seascape, Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Youngworth said that he would return the art in exchange for immunity for himself and Connor, Connor's release from prison and the $5 million reward.

The FBI responded by asking Youngworth to return one of the 13 works in a show of good faith, but received nothing.

The chips were later analyzed, and after some controversy regarding their authenticity, authorities deemed them fakes.

Youngworth, whose criminal record included more than 60 convictions in Massachusetts alone, soon found himself back behind bars for a stolen car rap. He was released from prison in 2000.

"He claims he can get these paintings in a half hour," Smith said of a lunch he once had with Youngworth in a Manhattan restaurant.

Connor was released on parole in 2000 after serving two-thirds of his 15-year sentence.

Smith seems to believe that the pair could hold the keys to recovering the art.

"If everyone connected with this case was given amnesty, it would be solved," Smith believes.

But Prouty is more skeptical of how much the two really know.

"He [Connor] has come to us on a number of occasions with different theories. In every instance," he says, "it has not been what it has been purported."