Artful Crimes

That seemed like a painless ending for both the gallery and Thomson, who was so relieved when police returned his ivories that he placed them lovingly on his bed. “They meant so much to me,” said Thomson at the time. “People wouldn’t understand unless they were collectors themselves and had a very special affinity with something that they possessed that virtually became part of them.” But did the thieves actually receive the reward money as ransom, allowing them to escape justice and rob again? It wouldn’t surprise those who understand the sophistication of art thieves, and the almost compulsive desire of galleries and collectors to secure the safe return of their prized possessions.

Chad Wolfond remembers the morning of September 11, 2001, not only for the attack on the World Trade Center, but also for the robbery at his Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto. Waking up early that morning, he skipped breakfast and left on his usual ten-minute walk to work. Once at his desk, Wolfond tapped the keyboard of his computer, expecting it to power up. When it didn’t, he glanced down to discover it was gone. Then he noticed a paper trail across the gallery floor leading to filing cabinets where his vintage pinhole photography collection was stored. As he rifled through the drawers, his heart sank—the best works he owned, including those by leading French photographer Ilan Wolff, were missing. “I felt simultaneously pissed off and mildly flattered,” recalls Wolfond. “The thief had left photos that I also thought were inferior.”

Shaken, Wolfond phoned police, and by noon they were dusting for fingerprints. Before leaving, one of the officers told him that a detective would be in touch, but added, “Chances are slim that you will ever see these photographs again.” A month later, the thief returned and took almost $35,000 worth of art, including photo-based works by Toronto artist Lori Newdick. Although some of the work has been recovered, Wolfond lost photographs valued at over $250,000, all told.

Some of the colleagues he contacted after the robberies advised him not to alert the media. News of the robbery, they argued, would only damage his gallery’s reputation as a secure place to show and sell. Some hinted that they too had been robbed, but had mourned in private. One suggested Wolfond call Czegledi. Contrary to received opinion, Czegledi counselled Wolfond to go to the media, believing that publicizing the theft would make the works impossible to sell. “Do everything you can to promote these stolen pictures,” she told Wolfond, who took her advice. “Contact Interpol. Talk to the media. Get listed on the Art Loss Register in New York City.”

On this particular day, Tarah Aylward, director of Toronto’s Ingram Gallery, has dropped by Czegledi’s office for legal advice. In October 2002, as part of the Toronto International Art Fair, a group of Yorkville galleries organized a lecture at Hazelton Lanes, an upscale shopping mall, to celebrate several Canadian artists. Staff at the mall volunteered to install sculptures in its courtyard by some of the artists Aylward represents, including Toronto figurative sculptor Joe Rosenthal. Aylward was told not to worry about security, but the Saturday before the lecture she received a phone call: two of Rosenthal’s bronzes had vanished.

Other galleries in the area were also hit during the 2002 art fair; in 2003, during the same period, a figurative painting by French artist Camille Cabaillot-Lassalle worth $28,000 disappeared from the Odon Wagner Gallery. The Toronto fair might be a magnet for criminals, but art theft is hardly a Toronto phenomenon. “I get emails from galleries across the country saying they have been robbed,” complains Aylward. “The thieves who do this work are not street criminals. They are sophisticated, polished. Certainly, they are successful.”

The largest art heist in Canadian history took place in 1972, when thieves broke into the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and stole paintings by eighteen European masters, including Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, worth a combined $2 million. Only one of the paintings has been recovered. Since that historic theft, the problem has only worsened in Quebec. The Sûreté du Québec now has two full-time detectives, Sergeant Alain Lacoursière and his partner, Sergeant Jean François Talbot, tasked with bringing art thieves to justice. Lacoursière says that each year in Quebec alone there are 150 new cases in which $20 million worth of art is stolen. The only help he has outside his own force is from Interpol, which has one Ottawa-based employee compiling brochures about stolen objects, which are then distributed to police forces across the country. According to Lacoursière, the process is slow, and there is little communication between agencies. “I get phone calls from Toronto once in a while,” he says, “but I have no idea what’s happening in Vancouver. It’s a blank spot.”

The absence of hard information troubles Lacoursière, who knows just how quickly thieves can move a painting out of the country. He tells the story of a 1995 theft in which a robber stole a huge abstract painting by Quebec artist Jean-Paul Riopelle from a house in Montreal’s Westmount neighbourhood. Before he took it, the robber showed a picture of the painting to a prestigious auction house in Paris, which indicated interest. By the time the family arrived home from a weekend at their cottage, the Riopelle and the thief were already on a plane for Paris. The painting was quickly auctioned off for $200,000, just as Montreal police were getting around to filing a report. There was a further delay before other police forces were alerted by Interpol. “If I call Interpol to tell them a Riopelle was stolen in Montreal,” says Lacoursière, “that information won’t be delivered to the world for six months,” refering to the discs of stolen works circulated by Interpol. By then, paintings like the Riopelle have slipped undetected into a private collection.

Art-savvy criminals love practising their craft in Canada. “There are twenty-five full-time art thieves working in this country that I know of,” says Lacoursière. “I arrested a guy last week. He’s been in prison in seven different countries, but he told me, ‘I like Canada. If I get caught here, you have the nicest prisons.’”

Lacoursière knows his beat well, and keeps the email addresses and cellphone numbers of several thieves on hand. When the $150,000 reward was offered for Ken Thomson’s ivories, the detective quickly fingered two of his regulars as the likely culprits. He called them. One was in Toronto at the time, and Lacoursière told him, “Listen, you can’t sell them; they’re too well-publicized. And there’s a big reward being offered.” Whether Lacoursière’s man was the thief or not is unknown, but a couple of days later a lawyer came forward with the sculptures.