Original subtitles

[ominous music playing]

[buzzing]

My name is David Nadolski,

and I was an FBI agent for 21 years.

I was in the bank robbery task force,

or Violent Crimes and Major Offenders Squad.

[sirens wailing]

Bank Robbery Task Force was bang-bang-bang-bang.

Things happening all the time, always on the move.

Armored cars, banks. Not to mention the other violent crimes.

I stabbed him in the face, in the legs, in the arms, in the chest.

It was a lot of fun.

In 1997, I believe, Anthony Romano,

a guy who's been in and out of prison a lot,

gets in touch with me and says,

"I got to meet you to talk about the Gardner case."

We set up the meeting to take place at an abandoned ball field.

It was cold, I remember that.

It was... probably November, December.

He says "I'm a mechanic.

This old prison buddy of mine,

his name is Carmello Merlino,

I'm not happy with him.

He turned my ex-wife into a drug mule, and it almost ruined her life."

He said, "I really hate the prick."

I got the funny feeling now,

he's doing a lot of talking with people

that are somehow involved with the Gardner.

He's got some connection.

One of the guys he hangs with is David Turner.

[tense music playing]

The Turner name came up during the Gardener theft

at some point in time.

I said, "Would you potentially wear

a recording device one time? Can you do it?"

And he goes, "Yeah, all right. I'll do it."

He did. And he kept doing it.

[recorder clicks]

And he did it like a pro! [laughs]

[Romano speaking]

[Romano speaking]

[Merlino speaking]

[Romano speaking]

[Merlino speaking]

Merlino also wants to rob the Loomis Fargo Vault Facility.

It's over in Easton, Mass.

[Romano speaking on tape]

[Romano] That's where they keep all the money.

The trucks come back and they unload money.

And he's been casing it.

[Merlino on tape]

[Romano on tape] Wow.

[Merlino on tape]

And he's planning, talking, scheming.

[Merlino on tape]

[Romano] All right.

[Merlino on tape]

[Romano on tape] Yeah.

[Merlino on tape]

The guys he wanted to use

were David Turner

and Stephen Rossetti.

- [man 1] You see him? Yeah. - [man 2] Yeah.

[David Turner speaking on tape]

[Stephen Rossetti speaking on tape]

[Merlino speaking on tape]

[man 3 speaking on tape] I don't care.

[Merlino speaking on tape]

[Merlino on tape]

[Turner speaking on tape]

[Merlino] Yeah. If that was...

- [Merlino speaking on tape] - [Turner laughs]

[man whistling on tape]

[Romano speaking on tape]

[Rossetti speaking on tape]

[Romano speaking on tape]

- [Romano] It's like a sally port. Uh... - [Rossetti] Yeah.

[waitress on tape]

[Turner on tape]

[Romano on tape]

[Turner] I don't...

[waitress on tape]

[Merlino on tape]

[Rossetti on tape]

[Merlino] He doesn't like when we eat bread. Not with his health.

[Romano on tape] Right.

[Rossetti on tape]

- [Rossetti] We go straight out? - [Romano] No.

[Nadolski] That tape was dynamite.

We've got a case.

What we had arranged for was the next day,

we had my squad, we had the FBI SWAT team,

the surveillance squad,

all out at TRC.

The first one to arrive was Mello.

A SWAT van pulls up...

Boom!

They take him and he's gone.

Turner and Rossetti are being followed by a plane.

David Turner gets out, opens the trunk, takes out this huge duffel bag.

The guns are in that bag.

The guy in our car

yells for the SWAT team, "Take him! Take him!"

[sirens wailing]

Anything about the Gardner you want to get off your chest?

[laughing]

[VCR clicking, whirring]

[Abath] They said "Boston Police,"

and I buzzed 'em in.

[intense string music plays]

Boston. A quiet museum. A daring robbery.

[Kurkjian] Vipers are in the grass, and they're moving towards you.

[man 1] The biggest art heist in history.

The 13 art treasures stolen are worth half a billion dollars.

Take a look at these composite drawings.

[Murphy] These were a get out of jail free card,

and everybody knew.

[McGuigan] I have the paintings with me, now what?

[Merlino] They want those motherfuckers bad.

And they'll pay.

- They're looking right here. - [Green] We're gonna get this back.

[man 3] Gardner Museum

doubling its reward up to $10 million.

[Mashberg] It can really come to obsess you.

[Green] Why not kill these people?

[Hawley] I had no idea what I was going into.

It was just horrifying.

[man 4] The empty frames are all that remain on the museum walls.

[tense music playing]

[Leppo] You gotta remember, I represented Merlino.

And I represented probably every member of his crew.

Merlino,

Davey Turner,

and Stevie Rossetti.

I find it fascinating. They all had the same lawyer, Marty Leppo.

If you were a suspect, you had to have Marty Leppo.

[Leppo] It's alleged, and they were indicted for,

conspiracy to rob the Loomis counting-house in Easton.

The unfortunate part for them was

their added member was an informant.

When the word came out that they had been arrested,

we couldn't find them.

What are they grabbed for? What are they doing?

What's the bail situation?

And nobody could find them.

But I found them in the Brookline police station,

and the informant was not there, even though he was a participant.

That's when I knew that something happened.

[Nadolski] They had a carbine assault rifle,

five semi-automatic handguns,

a live fragmentation grenade.

They had bulletproof vests, they had scanners.

They had timers, jumpsuits.

They had flex ties,

handcuffs.

They were given a chance to talk,

but they all denied any involvement

or connection or possession of anything from the Gardner Museum.

They all got around 40 years.

[Leppo] They did everything to make an arrest.

They set up that sting,

and said to them after they were arrested,

"Give up the paintings, you walk out."

[Murphy] This whole little crew of people,

they were sort of intertwined.

Some of them met through prisons, some of them met on the streets of Boston.

Carmello Merlino,

David Turner,

and there was Bobby Guarente.

There's a strong belief

that he had his hands on them.

May not have been involved in the theft,

but somehow came into possession of the paintings.

The thing about Guarente

that keeps him as a prime person of interest,

even though he's dead,

is he had connections to many of these people.

I'd always covered the courts,

and the Mafia and organized crime, those kinds of things.

Everybody knew Guarente.

He was the most popular gangster in New England, I think.

I've talked to people who told me that, at some point in time,

he considered David Turner like a son.

Guarente loved him. [as Turner] "Like my own boy."

Turner was in the can on this thing.

He's a young guy, he's got a 40 year sentence.

And Guarente wanted to do him a favor and get him out.

He was floating the idea of returning a painting.

Guarente had an appointment with the lawyer of David Turner

to talk about this.

By the time the government finds out about this,

Guarente's dead, so they can't ask him about it.

The FBI went up to check a farmhouse that Guarente had,

to see if they could find trace of the paintings.

And they went back to drop the keys off with the wife, or the widow,

and say thank you for giving us the keys,

and they try and engage her in a little bit of small talk. You know...

"I'm so-and-so, from Boston, and we're from...

This is the Gardner Museum. You ever been? We know you used to live in Massachusetts...

And she became, like, visibly agitated, and she starts going crazy,

and she says, "I know what the Gardner is, my Bobby had two of the paintings."

He was dying,

and she was constantly at him to get rid of the things.

[birds cawing]

[Mahoney] He said, "We're going to drive down to Portland.

I'm gonna meet somebody,

have lunch, and I'll give him the paintings.

They went into a restaurant, the wives and husbands.

At one point, Guarente and this other guy went out,

and transferred paintings from Guarente's car to the guy's car.

She remembers the guy likes to eat.

He's a big eater. He's a gourmet.

They used to come up and dine together.

It's this guy named Bob Gentile from Connecticut.

Then the FBI people,

all from Maine and Boston at that point, look at each other and go,

"Who the hell is Bob Gentile?"

[inquisitive orchestral music plays]

2010 or so,

Bob Gentile is a local hoodlum.

When he first came up, I call up guys that I know,

retired FBI agents who are on the organized crime squad in Connecticut.

You know, the agent said to me, "He's got nothing to do with Boston.

He's got nothing to do with any art heist."

And one of the things these Mob guys do

is they always have a half-assed car business on the side.

And he was closely associated with Guarente.

Guarente and Gentile had met back in the '80s.

They were in the car business.

They were both Italian guys, both heavyset.

They looked like brothers.

It became a friendship of years. Probably 25, 30 years.

[Mahoney] They shared some common interests.

Boosting stolen things.

They would hijack truckloads of clothing and they would sell that sort of thing.

So they had a lot going on.

Gentile's just a swindler and a cheater.

You know, everybody's looking to break his legs.

[upbeat jazzy music playing]

[Mahoney] Bob at this point

has muscled his way into taking over this used car lot, G&M Auto.

And this guy has actually converted one of the grease pits

into a gourmet kitchen.

And he cleaned out the equipment, and put in a stove,

and a table, chairs, a refrigerator, and a sink.

He goes down at ten o'clock in the morning and starts cooking.

He's cooking big things with sauce, spaghetti, everything.

Bobby's got the apron on with the big stomach.

He's got all these old-time, broken-down gangsters from the area that come down.

All 60, 70 years old, 80 years old, and he's feeding them down there.

And he's holding court, blah, blah, blah. They drink wine and eat spaghetti all day,

and talk about when they stole this, when they stole that,

when they'd knocked over this guy and that guy.

[glasses clink]

The FBI inserts an informer into this group.

He's trying to get Gentile to talk about the art,

talk about the museum, talk about the paintings.

They start working on Bobby.

I mean, non-stop every day.

Gentile's winking and nodding. "Oh, yeah, I can't talk about that."

The next thing is, "Can you get me drugs?

Can you get Oxycontin, can you get this, that?"

[McGuigan] The informant sees a bottle that my client had on his desk.

And he picked it up,

and it was his own prescription for Dilaudid.

And then he says, "How much do you want for this?"

Says, "I'll give you $300 for the bottle."

Client said, "Okay." And there you go. There's a felony.

David Turner's name came up in court in Connecticut.

I went looking at the Bureau of Prisons website

and saw his release date, and suddenly it's 2025,

and it's like, "What's the reason?"

[man] David Turner's original release date was 2032.

And then it gets put to 2025, sometime around the same time that your...

[McGuigan] My client is being prosecuted. Yeah.

[man] Did you get any indication why that sentence was cut?

No. But I... It's not a coincidence.

In law enforcement and criminal law, we don't believe in coincidences.

Turner's working with the FBI.

And so that's why I believe that it was this cooperation

that gets him seven years shaved off his sentence.

[Murphy] We know that it was kept secret,

but if it was for some reason like sentencing guidelines changed

or there was something that didn't need to be secret,

it'd be part of the public court file.

[tense music playing]

[Kelly] I don't know what's publicly revealed

in the proceedings against him,

but typically, when a search warrant is executed

it's based upon information law enforcement has

from other sources, witnesses,

who say, "We know so-and-so is involved in a crime

and we know the fruits of that crime are at his location."

[Murphy] Clearly David Turner got some sort of a deal for information.

[McGuigan] I got a phone call, and they said,

"Do you know there's about 100 FBI agents outside of your client's house?"

I said, "No, I wasn't aware."

You can get a nice zoomer there. They're bagging and tagging, baby.

Okay.

Federal agents searching a reputed mobster's home in Manchester,

and it may be connected to the largest art heist in history.

Federal authorities got a search warrant for his property,

and the thought was that there were a couple paintings on his property.

[McGuigan] There were cars everywhere.

There were three massive black trucks,

tactical vehicles, tents they had erected.

A few Bloodhounds. They got a ferret back there.

They had, I'm not kidding, two helicopters flying in the air.

It was something out of a movie.

[Mcguigan] Ground-penetrating radar.

They're lookin' for paintings. They're lookin' for 'em right here.

[reporter] Remind people what was taken from the Gardner years ago.

It was amazing. Thirteen paintings, Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, Vermeer.

He's a crook, you know, he's just a crook.

Crooks do those things. I wish he didn't live here.

I think that they're gonna find nothing but a bunch of worms

for their fishing expedition.

At that point I said to myself, "They must know something that I don't."

In the face of all of the money that is being spent right now,

I have to be wrong. I couldn't possibly be right."

Okay five, four, three, two, one.

I can't believe they're letting the attorney for this... suspect

hang out right there with the feds, but I guess he has a right to.

I mean... it makes no sense to me.

Word came in. We're going to get this stuff back.

We prepared for our press conference.

Poster boards were made for the pieces.

The words "recovered" were over them, the item was in the center of it.

We were very excited. I had been on many, many searches.

We'd get leads for different people, different places,

and we would go and we would search their homes.

We would come up dry at each one of them.

We were really salivating at the opportunity

to see all the things that we were looking for.

[Mahoney] They really took it apart. I mean...

They were looking inside walls and things.

I think they went in there three times,

and every time they found hiding places that they hadn't known about before.

The FBI looked at the shed, and they found a hole in the floor.

And underneath the hole, was another hole in the dirt,

with some kind of big Tupperware thing in it,

which presumably you could hide something in.

They bring me out to the hold,

and they show me a cut in the floor that they had made.

It looked very dramatic.

And there was a giant piece of equipment they had to move out of the shed,

and underneath that equipment was a trap door.

And then they open the trap door,

and someone said, "There's a big container down here."

They pull out the big container,

and it's essentially empty except for a handgun and some weed.

I looked and said, "It's an empty hole. What do you want from me?"

They said, "We think your client might have put the paintings in here."

I said, "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee is five by four.

It's not gonna fit in there. What are you talking about?"

"Well, the small Rembrandt could have."

I said, "Yeah, but are you really looking for the small Rembrandt?"

Clearly didn't get what they wanted, which is certainly not firearms,

it's certainly paintings from the Gardner.

[Green] I was disappointed about that,

and I said, "If you ever find this stuff,

ring me up. I want to see it all."

[McGuigan] They spend the better part of eight hours in the house,

and they then told me that they had found a number of guns.

Uh, they had found a newspaper article.

It was the Boston Herald.

And it was all about the museum being robbed.

Within that was a yellow, lined piece of paper

with every single piece of art that had been stolen from the museum

on a left-hand column,

and on the right-hand column, there was a corresponding number

with a value of what the art would've been valued on the street.

That doesn't look good.

Corroborated law enforcement's sense

that the search warrant was appropriately issued,

and they were hopeful that he'd give them information.

They're telling him,

"You're gonna die in jail unless you give us information,"

and he has no information for them.

That set off all kinds of red flags.

I went and I asked him about it, and I said, "What is this?"

The thing is, Bob Gentile wouldn't know the truth if he tripped over it.

He's incapable of telling the truth.

I asked for a meeting with the assistant U.S. attorney on the case.

I figured I'd be walking into a normal meeting

with an FBI agent and U.S. attorney.

This is a big meeting. This is a big deal.

They were asking about, of course, the piece of paper.

And they said, "For God's sake, Bob, you have the piece of paper.

It has a list of all the paintings and values, for God's sake.

Stop denying it."

There are probably 12 FBI agents,

three U.S. attorneys,

and then a polygraph guy from the FBI.

This polygraph had about 35 people in the room,

milling around, having coffee,

slamming doors, babies crying.

You name it, it had it.

They had put a picture

of every single one of the pieces of art that had been stolen,

and they put them on the wall,

and he went down through each and every one of the pieces of art.

"Have you ever seen that one?

Have you seen that one?

Have you seen that one?"

They then were having side conversations with one another and my client,

explaining what kind of picture it was,

who painted the picture, what was the size of the picture.

So he was getting a tutorial while he was taking this "polygraph,"

right there in the U.S. attorney's office.

In the middle of the polygraph, he just out of the blue states,

"You know what? I think I did see that little one.

I saw it in Maine. I went to a party at Bobby Guarante's house

and his wife, when we got to the party...

His wife was there,

and she came downstairs

and she pulled the little picture there out of her bra, like that,

and she showed it to me and she put it back in her bra."

And they were all excited about that.

He knew that they were excited about it.

They leave the room to take a break.

He looks at me and he said, "Boy, I got 'em with that one, didn't I?"

I said, "Did you make that up?" He said, "Yes."

I put my head down and I said, "Please, God, don't do that anymore."

[Mahoney] The polygraphy result was a tenth of a percent chance

he was telling the truth.

It was less than one percent, I think.

It was just, you know... I mean, almost certain.

He was questioned. "Did you know anything about the heist before it happened?"

He flunks that part of it.

"Do you know the whereabouts of the paintings today?"

He flunks that when he denies it.

With a guy like him, what're you gonna do? He's never told the truth in his life.

If you asked him what his name was, he would give you a fake name.

It's just the way he is.

[McGuigan] Not only did they imprison him,

they prosecuted him to the full extent that they could.

He was looking at a death in prison.

Where was I?

I think I was on the golf course.

I get a phone call from a U.S. Marshal.

He says, "Do you know what's going on with your client?"

I said, "No." He said, "I think you have to call him.

It's his health, he's bad. He's asking for you."

So I frantically call the office. I find where he is.

He's at the hospital. Not going to live through the night.

If there's ever a chance of a deathbed confession, this is it.

By the time I got to the hospital, it was twelve o'clock.

I had thought, "I'm going to show up, he's dead. I know it. It's just my luck."

Showed up...

talked to the doctor.

I said, "How's my client?" He said, "He's not gonna make it."

So I went and sat down with him and I spent the night with him.

I woke up the next morning about nine o'clock.

I hear a gasp and... "What the F are you doing here?"

[chuckling]

I said, "Good to see you too, Bobby."

And he said, "What's gonna happen to me?"

I said, "You're probably gonna die...

If I'm honest with you."

He kept moving his legs. He was in a lot of discomfort.

And he kept moaning he can't die here. "I can't die here, I can't die here."

I approached him, I got in his face, and I said,

"The only way that you don't die here...

is that you give me something.

I guarantee you, if you give me anything on the paintings,

that I could have you medevac'd out of here tonight,

and you can be in your bed with your wife this evening,

and you could die at home."

And then real tears coming down his face,

because he genuinely loves his wife.

He looked at me, defeated, and he said,

"But there ain't no paintings."

It was at that point that I knew

that I would never ask him about paintings again.

[atmospheric music playing]

[man] When was the last time you talked to him?

He got out of prison on the 17th, which I think was a Saturday.

I had lunch with him.

- How was the lunch? - I paid.

He bought two lunches.

Took one home with him.

He's 80 now. I mean, 81, 82, I can't remember.

He's overweight. He's got a heart condition.

He's got arthritis. He's got a bad back.

He's livin' in this half-ruined house by himself.

Well, the feds have spent a lot of time announcing

that the paintings went from Bobby Guarente

to this great friend of his, Bobby Gentile.

Myself included, everyone has knocked on Gentile's door

and talked to his lawyer, and he denies, denies, denies.

[Kurkjian on tape] Good. So, this is Monday at Bob's house.

What do you think about the possibility that Guarente did have them?

[Gentile] I don't think so.

If he had them, he would've gotten Turner out of jail.

Him and Merlino and all... He wants to get them out of jail.

Those were his friends. If he had them, he'd have gave them up.

- [Kurkjian] He's that kind of guy? - A good guy.

He was a bad guy, bank robber, but a good-hearted guy.

He was a teddy bear, he was a nice guy.

What do I care what somebody else did 20 years ago?

I know nothing about the paintings.

[birds cawing]

[McGuigan] The FBI,

they believe Erlene Guarante, Guarante's wife.

They're interested in their theory of the case

that the paintings went from Boston to Maine,

Maine to Connecticut, Connecticut to Philadelphia.

That's the story that they're sticking to.

[Nadolski] Gentile is the link.

He actually was inducted into and joined

the Philadelphia Mafia family

and became a member.

In one of the stories, there was a loud argument

between Gentile and Guarente

about "delivering a painting"

to one of the bosses in Philadelphia as "tribute."

And Gentile typically and characteristically was...

"You out of your mind? That's worth too much money.

Give away that? Forget about it."

I think he has valuable information that, for whatever reason,

because he's stubborn or stupid or whatever, he's not sharing.

[crowd murmring indistinctly]

[beeping]

[man] Good afternoon, everybody. Great to have each of you here today.

My name is Rick DesLauriers,

special agent in charge of the Boston division.

[Murphy] It was really stunning.

The FBI announces on the anniversary that they are very confident

that they know who committed the robbery,

and the thieves are dead.

[DesLauriers] With today's announcement, we begin the final chapter.

Twenty-three years ago today,

two men posing as Boston police bluffed their way into the museum

by telling the night guards they were investigating a disturbance.

Some described the theft

as one of the the most significant art heists in American history.

We agree.

We are pleased to announce

the FBI has made significant investigative progress

in the search for the stolen art from the Gardner Art Museum.

We are continuing our relentless investigation

with the same tenacity that brought us to this point.

It quickly led to confirming the identity of those involved in the robbery

and brought us to the point where we are today.

[Murphy] It's very tantalizing,

because they're essentially saying, "We figured it out."

Many people would say, "No, you didn't, because you don't have the paintings."

However, we do not know where the art is currently located,

and we are again asking for tips from the public.

It's likely over the years that someone, a friend, neighbor, or relative,

has seen the art hanging on a wall, above a mantle, or stored in an attic.

We want that person to call us. We also want...

[Kelly] I think that's an unfortunate interview to give.

Because, unless you got the items, I mean...

I think it's better left unsaid what you do and do not have.

[reporter] Why don't you name them?

If you believe that you know who stole the paintings,

how does it help not to identify the crew you're looking for?

Because that's an ongoing investigation right now.

We're not going to compromise ongoing investigative activity.

[Murphy] But they don't release the names.

However, through court filings,

they identify people of interest.

Some of the prime suspects.

It comes back to this crew

who hung out at this garage in Dorchester.

One of the names is George Reissfelder.

The other one was Lenny Dimuzio.

[Whelan] Lenny's life was cut short.

An informant told me that when he was at David Turner's house,

David shot him in his backyard, or the garage area,

threw him in the trunk.

That car was driven to east Boston

and was parked under, I believe, an off-ramp to Route 1.

And it was parked there for several months.

The only time someone really noticed the car was there that long

was because it was completely white from birds sitting on it.

They checked out the car, the plates,

they opened the trunk, and Lenny was in the trunk... melted.

He was there for quite a while.

[Sikellis] It was in the parking lot of Santrapio's Pizza, in East Boston.

There was a lot of speculation as is,

but, uh... nothing beyond speculation.

[Whelan] Charlie Pappas was arrested, 1992, '93, with quite a bit of cocaine.

And we turned Charlie Pappas to become an informant.

[Sikellis] He agreed to testify against David Turner on a home invasion.

Although he was a friend of David Turner's since childhood,

he said, "I don't want to go to jail. I'm givin' this guy up."

And it was the night before Thanksgiving,

and two people jumped out of the bushes

- and shot him several times. - [gunfire]

[man] Pappas was scheduled to testify

in a 1990 home invasion case against David Turner, who lives in this house

several blocks away from the murder scene.

The last shot was in the mouth,

which meant, "You're talking." [chuckles]

[dramatic music playing]

[McGuigan] There's a lot of mysterious...

deaths around the theft.

Everybody who apparently did the robbery is whacked.

Or dies of natural causes,

or some might say unnatural causes.

At that point, Guarante's dead.

Merlino's dead.

Everyone had died.

Except for Turner.

[Kurkjian] You ever see those guys before? Or since?

[Abath] Not to my knowledge, no.

[Kurkjian] Anybody close to them?

[Abath] The only guy who came close, when I saw his picture, was Turner.

[Murphy] Turner got a break.

David Turner had seven years shaved off his prison sentence,

and we know that.

And we know that it was kept secret.

[Murphy] It is November 13th, 2019.

David Turner's back here today for resentencing.

We're standing out

in front of the federal court in Boston.

Well, I can tell you I was here a couple of decades ago

when he was first convicted

in this attempted robbery of an armored car depot.

You don't realize when the years go by, it's been 21 years,

and I recall him as a young man with dark, jet black hair,

and now he's a 52-year-old man.

He's got a little gray to his hair.

[man] Okay, he gets out, they just let him walk right out the front door?

[woman] Yeah.

[man] He's not going back... He's not going back to jail?

[woman] No, he's gonna walk free. Just got to do processing.

[man] All right.

[Murphy] There are very few persons of interest

left alive in the Gardner heist investigation.

[shutter snapping]

[man] Hey, David, how's it feel to be out?

- Wonderful. Goin' to Disneyland. - Yeah?

[Murphy] He walked out a free man.

Do you have any knowledge of the Gardner heist?

Please get away from me.

Any idea where those paintings are?

[Murphy] There are some authorities who are concerned,

some of the investigators that I've spoken to,

who were dogging him back in the day,

that he was someone that was a suspect in several murders.

So there's concern.

[man] Suspect number 2 is described as a white...

[Murphy] On one hand, people say,

"Look, this guy's been in prison for 21 years.

If he really knew where they were, he wouldn't be sitting in prison."

But on the other hand,

there's a $10 million reward, and he's walking out of prison.

I'd think there's an incentive, if he does know anything,

to try to find it.

[suspenseful music playing]

[man] Hey, you plan on trying to collect the reward?

[somber music playing]

[Leppo] Everybody talks about the Gardner.

This is it.

Where's the last page, "...and we apprehended"?

Unbelievable.

I literally have spent almost 25 years on this case. Uh...

And in the first few years, I had what I call "Gardner sickness,"

which is just this intense desire

to solve the case, no matter how you can.

Follow every lead.

Look at every clue twice, three times.

You go back to the night of the crime,

and you're gonna... you recreate every step that took place.

You look at the first police reports.

It can really come to obsess you.

There's gotta be a way to figure out where these went,

because it's so bizarre that they just disappeared.

[Vigderman] To have them come back,

it's like somebody coming back from the grave.

[Hawley] When I see those frames,

I feel that they are waiting for the work to come back.

It's three o'clock in the morning. I have the paintings with me. Now what?

The feds, in their account,

believe that the paintings most likely

went through these hands of Donati, to Guarente, to the outside world.

[Mahoney] There are some people who think when Gentile dies,

it might shake something loose.

His death will trigger something.

Someone will say, "Now he's dead, I'm gonna come forward."

You can't write off anything until you have the evidence that says

100% that this didn't happen.

Maybe it did.

There's stories about stuff being buried, being thrown away.

And I wouldn't be surprised if this stuff was gotten rid of.

There was just so much heat on this thing.

I know this organized crime guy in New York,

takes stuff and sends them overseas to Saudi Arabia.

He said that's where they are. I know that's where they went.

Bobby had connections with some people

in Canada that they were looking at.

We have had verbal accounts.

A source who was extremely reliable

says he thinks he saw the Vermeer in Dublin.

Nonsense.

We started getting calls from South America.

[Hawley] We had this lead that came from Japan.

[Kurkjian] There was a tip that said

the paintings had been stolen by a group and they had wound up in France.

[Leppo] They've traveled to Jamaica,

churches in South Boston.

They've gone all over and they haven't found a thing.

We're coming up to 30 years now,

30 years that these masterpieces have been missing.

It needs a break.

[Murphy] They're out there.

Somebody stashed them.

Sometimes it's the next generation.

"Grandpa's dead, look what we got." [chuckles] You know? It's like...

[Fisher] You could potentially get immunity,

potentially get $10 million.

That's why this case is so confounding.

They could be in Australia. They could be in the Middle East.

Could be in Europe. Who knows?

You wanna keep in the public eye.

Why don't we get our evidence on one of the anniversaries,

put it out on the table, the tapes, and just show the stuff?

Until you have the paintings...

it's all still just a theory.

[dramatic choral music plays]

[intricate string music playing]