Reflecting on the Stolen Masterpiece

I'm Aisharasco and this is the Sunday story from Up First . Late one morning in september twenty twenty three, the famous Dutch art detective Arthur Bran, was pacing around his Amsterdam apartment , waiting for a special delivery. At then at twelve o'clock the doorbell wak. Bran looked out the window and on the stoop he saw a man who he'd been expecting holding an iconic big blue bag. So I opened the door and he was standing there with an IKEA bag. Now what Brand was expecting inside that IKEA bag a painting . Not just any painting, but a Vincent Van Gogh that had been stolen from a Dutch museum . But when he peeked into the bag, the only thing I saw was a pillow full of blood . A pillow full of blood . Today on the show , a story about an art detective, the criminal underworld, and what it took to solve one of the greatest art heists in recent history . We'll be right back . We're back with a Sunday story. I'm Aisha Rosco, and today I'm joined by NPR contributor, Rebecca Rossman , who has a stranger than fiction story about an art detective and his very unlikely partner and how together they solved one of the greatest art heists in recent history . Rebecca, welcome to the Sunday Story. Hi, Aisha. Thanks for having me. So Rebecca, you cover a lot of art and culture stories from your home in Paris and you know , Paris sounds lovely and you know it is it's a pretty lovely city. But when I think about art in Paris, of course I think of the dramatic events at the Louvre last year . Oh yes. And I covered it when it happened last October . The thieves, who broke into the Louvre over the weekend, did not make off with the Mona Lisa, but the theft of jewels described as priceless from the museum collection was bad enough. Rebecca Rossman is more from Paris. Let's start with some numbers. Four masked robbers, nine precious jewels . Seven minutes. That's how long it took to pull off the heist . I mean , it was like a scene from the Oceans eleven film. Except it was real life. A daylight robbery at one of the world's most famous museums , the police did eventually catch all the thieves by the way, but it took weeks. remind me like what happened to the stolen jewels ? Yeah, over a hundred million dollars worth of precious jewels just gone. Experts think the thieves likely disassembled the pieces, sold the jewels, and melted the gold and other precious metals for parts before they got caught. That's a huge loss. Is it just me or does it seem like there has been like an increase in these museum heist? I feel like we keep hearing about these kind of bold escapades and you gotta call it that because these are like art heists. So it's like , you know, they're just not normal break ins or it doesn't feel that way. No, you're absolutely right. You know, I felt the same way . But you know, I wondered, is this just a case of a few recent heights that have just been so unforgettable that it's created this sort of illusion of a wider trend? Or is there actually an increase? So I did some research and what I can say is that I counted over a dozen major museum heights since january twenty twenty five alone. And late last year, the International Council of Museums teamed up with Interpol to respond. So there is something happening here like, they're like museum heists are trending , so to speak . Yeah, I would say they are trending. You know, it seems so. And when priceless objects are stolen and disappear into the underworld, you know, there's very few people who know how to go and find them. But Dutch art detective Arthur Brand is one of them, and I went to visit him . And it's really it's really nice. So in February, I hopped on a train to Amsterdam, where I met with Brand at his apartment. And Aisha, I have so much I want to tell you about this experience , which I think can help shed some light on these recent heists. Well, and I have a lot of questions , right? Like what is an art detective? Great question, indeed. An art detective , that some body who helps the police track stolen art or forgeries . And it's not a real job . So just to explain what Bran means when he says that, you know, he's saying you can't go to university and say, I want to become an art detective . Brand actually studied a bunch of different things, but as it turned out, I was not that interested in, let's say, Spanish poetry from the seventieth century. So then how did he do it? How did he become an art detective . Well, Bran was like a lot of college students. He studied a lot of things history, languages, poetry . And he was also really interested in art, but for the longest time, he couldn't find a way to turn any of these things into a real job. Then he ends up getting a gig apprenticing with this art dealer who introduced him to a shadowy ecosystem of smugglers, thieves, and forgers. Eventually, Bran found his niche. He started advising art buyers. They call me and says, Arthur, we want to buy Picasso . Has it been stolen? What's the price? Is it authentic or forgery ? He says that consultation work takes up about half his time, but his real passion is the other half of his time, which is spent on mostly pro bono work, helping recover stolen paintings and other artifacts. Bran told me what kind of sealed his reputation is his integrity. I thought the only thing I have to do is to be honest , just be honest. You know, in a world of people who betray each other, who backstab each other, if you're honest, you have value, you know . Soon he was recovering missing art, and over his twenty year career, Bran says he's helped recover more than one hundred and fifty artifacts. That includes a picasso he tracked down for a chic, a gold ring that belonged to Oscar Wilde, and a Salvador Dali painting. His reputation has grown to the point where he's now a trusted household name in the Netherlands and he even has his own documentary TV show. Maeste spectacular moga is from Maestim called The Art Detective. Collective from Narcycles? I mean , so then he's kind of a star in certain places. He is. Then Ayisha, in march twenty twenty, Bran got a call from the police. He didn't know it yet, but this would become one of the biggest cases of his career. A van Gogh had been stolen from the Singer Lauren Museum just outside of Amsterdam. The painting is called The Parsonage Garden at Noonan in Spring . But Bran quickly realized this wasn't a case he was going to be able to solve alone . He needed someone who already had experience with stolen van Goes. My name is Octo Durham. I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I'm fifty three years old . I'm known for robbing the Feng Museum in two thousand two. I stole two paintings. Just as brand is the Netherlands's most famous art detective, Octave or O cc Dupuryham, is perhaps the country's most famous art thief . When we come back, Octav Durham and why Arthur Bran needed him to solve the case of the missing van Go . We're back with the Sunday story and MPR's Rebecca Rossman. We've heard from art detective Arthur Brand , a kind of folk hero in the Netherlands for his ability to track missing masterpieces . But when another van Gogh is stolen from the Singer Lauren Museum near Amsterdam , B ran knows he needs help . The man he turns to is an unlikely choice , art robber Octav Durham. I mean fifteen big heists in the Netherlands. I'm involved with eight , at least. Okay , so you seem a little proud of that too, Rebecca. He's he's basically saying that he's a career art thief . That's right . Beyond art, Durham has also admitted to and spent time in prison for other crimes like bank robberies and financial fraud. I have to say Durham is fascinating. When we met in Amsterdam in February, he was wearing a black baseball cap and these designer looking sneakers looking as calm, cool and collected as you'd probably expect. He says he grew up in a neighborhood in Amsterdam where petty crime was kind of the norm . And I figured out that hey, I'm quite good at these things. You have born soccer players, born teachers, born policemen, I'm a born burglar and I cannot explain. I don't know. I'm very good at it. How does someone become very good at being a burg lar . You know, I asked her that exact question. It's not only the capability of doing it, but you have to have the guts . You have to figure it out the way you do it, the infrastructure of it all. It's a combination of a lot of things. AFTB relaxed. You know, I don't like violence. I never used violence. Durham says he was always calm under pressure, not scared of cops, not scared of prison. And he took the work seriously. He started small, stealing bikes when he was a teenager, then moving on to robbing banks as a young adult. And eventually, he sets his sights on the place that would make him famous , the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam . Well, you know, go hard or go home, right? Like, you know that sounds like that was his approach , but that still takes a lot of guts, right? A lot of gut s and a lot of planning . The idea to rob the museum happened by chance actually. You know, one day back in two thousand two, when Durham was in his late twenties, he was walking by the Van Gogh Museum , and he noticed the walls of the building were really just floor to ceiling windows . So he walks up to a window and taps it. I hit the glass and I'm like, Oh my god, this is glass. It's not even bulletproof or something, you know? So he starts to think it through. First Durham recruited a friend to help him pull it off. This is what they did. Together, they went to the museum early in the morning, climbed a ladder to access the roof , and then smashed a glass window with a hammer. So now they're in, right? They grabbed two of Vango's lesser known paintings, view of the sea at Schevening and Congregation leaving the Reformed church in Noonan, then they made their escape by shimmy down a rope and running. He says the whole thing took less than four minutes. I mean, that's wild . And you know, it reminds me of the Louvre break in , which was pretty much just smash and grab . I know, exactly. And so did Durham say why they chose the paintings they took? Did they pay attention or did they grab just what was close? You know, I was curious about that too. Like maybe he was a big fan of Van Gogh. What did you think of the paintings themselves? Do you have any attachment to these paintings? No, I thought they were ugly. I didn't like them. My friends told me the next time you still want to take a rembrand. I said, Okay . So the truth, Aesha is what you've already caught on to , he knew any Van Gogh would be valuable . So he and his partner just grabbed the first two that they saw. Eventually, Durham found a buyer for the paintings, a mob boss in Italy. Durham says he bought them for three hundred and fifty thousand euros . So I mean, was this mob boss like a big van Gogh fan Well, I haven't spoken to the mob boss, so I couldn't tell you whether he was a van Gogh fan. But that's not really why criminals want paintings like these. Famous stolen art is almost impossible to sell on the open market. But in the underworld, art can become leverage. It's a bargaining chip, which is exactly what made Durham's stolen Vengos useful, not as art, but as leverage. Now what do you mean by leverage? What does that mean ? Well, let me explain what happened after Durham sold them. So in twenty sixteen, this Naples mob boss was charged with drug trafficking. He was facing a long sentence, potentially twenty years . So he wanted to make a deal. He sent a letter to prosecut telling them he knew where they could find a couple of missing van Gogh's. A worldwide search for two Vincent Van Gogh paintings has come to an end. So authorities discovered the paintings inside a kitchen wall at the mobster's mom's country home in southern Italy. And in return , the sentence he was facing was reduced from twenty to only eight years . Oh , okay. I mean that, is f ascinating. Like that's definitely leverage, basically holding these paintings hostage . What about Durham? Well, he got caught about a year after the heist. Authorities had been able to identify him using the museum's security cameras , and he was a little bit sloppy. He left a baseball cap at the scene, which was traced to his DNA . He served three and a half years in jail and was given a three hundred fifty thousand euro fine . Durham told me though he had trouble paying the fine, so he went back to jail to serve another nine months . And Aisha, here's where things take a strange turn in his life. So just to explain real quick, in the Netherlands , prison sentences aren't as stiff as they are, say, in the US, and for non violent crimes, some prisoners can get leave. It's called open cum. You can go every weekend you go home and during the day you work outside. So one weekend, Durham's on leave, walking through the streets of Amsterdam near the Van Gogh Museum, in fact . And he walks by this restaurant. All of a sudden somebody tapped me on the back and it comes in front of me. It's Arthur Brand. Bran says to Durham, OK, do you know who I am? He said, Of course, I know you are the art detective. Just to give you some context here. Durham's Voan R Gobberghy in two thousand two happened the year before Brand really launched his career. And like I mentioned earlier, and Brand reiterates, it was one of the biggest cases of its time. Of course, I was interested in that case. Everybody was always talking about, are these two vangors? I saw him as my arch enemy, you know, he's one of the most famous art thieves in the world and I'm the art protective. But Bran couldn't help also being intrigued . He kind of wanted to know Durham better . I gave him my telephone number , but Durham wasn't interested. I threw the number away. But then, shortly after that meeting, Durham's weekend furlough is over. He's back in jail watching TV, and he comes across Brand's documentary series. And I found out how he works and he works clean, you know, people don't get arrested. It's all about getting the stolen artifacts back. I liked it. He liked how trustworthy Brand seemed, and to be honest, he was also curious about the guy . So he finds his number on the internet and gives him a call. And a call of an out of out of a jail cell and I said , Hey , art dude, how are you? And he was quiet for about ten seconds . He was a shock . They agree that when Durham gets out of jail, they'll meet up. And when that happened , both men say they immediately hit it off. It's not such a big surprise if you think about it. In a way, although they're on these opposite paths, both love the thrill of the hunt , and they speak the same language . So they strike up this unusual friendship. Bran says he could tell Durham things he couldn't tell anyone else . Like the time he'd recovered what he told me was a fifty million euro picasso. And for one night, it was in his house before being handed over to the police . And then at night, I needed to tell somebody. So I thought, Who will understand the feeling that I have right now sitting here alone , watching one of the most beautiful picasso, so I called Rocky . By this point, Durham says he's sworn off crime. All he wants to do now is relax into retirement. So fast forward to march twenty twenty , Bran gets that call from the police . And they told me, Arthur a new Fangoch has been stolen from the Singer Museum in Lauren. And I said, Oh my god, not again. So I mean this is sounding just like a movie. I mean, somebody has to be writing a script right now. They have to if they do, they have to credit the Sunday story . Absolutely. They must credit the Sunday story copyright . But you're absolutely right. It really is just like in a movie. The first question the police ask brand. They said, Where's Oki? Luckily for Durham, he had an alibi , but the idea that he may be unjustly accused of the theft infuriates him. Bran says what irritates Durham even more is the theft itself. He said, Because I am the Fengthief, you know, I might be retired now, but I am the Fengthief. Who do these guys think they are? Like, yeah, it's like they're coming for his jersey, you know? They're coming for his record like a kind of like an athlete . Exactly. You know, there's only one Jordan and there's only one Octave Durham Exactly . So to brand, all of this anger that Durham has, he sees it as an opportunity. So he seizes the moment . I said, Okie, what if you and I together will try to find this Fango . Durham thinks about it and after making it clear he will never snitch on another thief, he starts asking around in the criminal underworld, asking if anyone knows anything about this missing Bango. Meanwhile, Brand is hitting up his own sources. Time goes by , then one day, about six months after the painting had been stolen, a photo shows up on the dark web. You know, when you steal a painting, you cannot, if you want to try to find a buyer, you cannot put it on eBay. You know, what they do is they make a picture of the painting with a newspaper or fresh newspaper next week as proof I am the owner now and they send it around kind of like a proof of life photo . Yes, exactly. And to Durham and Brand, this post is very good news. It means the painting is out there . Maybe it's even recoverable. So they keep hunting. The police do too, and then a year later, the police have a breakthrough. They arrest the thief, but they didn't find the painting. A few more years go by. And then finally , in the late summer of twenty twenty three, Brand gets this text out of the blue. Which says, mister Brand , do you have the code of silence? And I said, No, I'm not a priest, but if I give my word, I will keep my word. And then he said , I know where the French is, where it is hidden. This man says, Look, I was not involved in this heist. I don't want to get arrest ed. I just want to get rid of this thing . Because while stealing a painting may be easy for some people , it can quickly become a huge liability. Bran sends him a message back saying, Okay, you know, I get it. You're not involved . How can I help get this painting back? But the message doesn't go through. Maybe this guy has blocked Brand. I thought, Oh my God, he doesn't trust me. But then Bran quickly thinks of someone this informant will trust, someone from his own world , Octave Durham . So Bran asks Durham if he will send this informant a message on his behalf. He does . And this time, it goes through. And I said, I don't know who you are. I found out did you talk to Arthur. The only thing I can say, I guarantee you don't get into trouble if you talk to him, cops won't come. Nothing is just to recover whatever you are. Have you know worry. So here's the Netherlands' most famous art thief backing up the art detective. It's quite the endorsement, Aisha. . And that guy knew me. He said, I am no oki. He said, If you didn't give me this recording, I want to do it because the guy was terrified. He was afraid of hell. You know, he thought he was set up. A few days go by after that though, and Brand hasn't heard anything . Then it's Saturday, and Brand and Durham are invited to this birthday party of a famous Dutch TV presenter. They're in the garden when Brand gets a text from the informant and he says, I see you. And I looked around and he said, Behind that tree. So Brand walks behind the tree. The informant says, Look, I'm sorry to scare you like this. I just had to make sure there wouldn't be any police here. And Bran says, Okay, okay. And he says, Auto, I didn't trust you, but when you sent this clip from Okie and I thought, well, if Okie stands in for him, it must be okay. So I'm going to bring it back. They make this agreement. The informant says he will come to Brant's house to drop off the painting. Then the big day comes and Brand is obviously nervous pacing around his apartment. And then at twelve o'clock the doorbell rang and I went downstairs and I looked to the window and I saw the guy smiling. And that takes us back to where we started, the blue IKEA bag and the pillowcase covered in blood . So I opened the door and it was standing there with an IKEA bag . And I didn't see the painting there yet big, the only thing I saw was a pillow full of blood . And I said, What the heck? Human blood . Okay, well, I got to try to understand like, what is the deal with this blood filled pillowcase Well I can only tell you what the informant told Brand, which is that he cut his finger while he was packing the painting up and that blood got all over the pillow and when Brand moved the pillowcase , there it was, the painting he had been after. I unpacked the Feng and one of the most beautiful moments of my life. The informant leaves. Bran says he knows why the informant decided to return the painting, but isn't at liberty to explain the motivation . Still, with the painting now in his possession, the first thing Bran does is call the police who had been waiting at a cafe nearby, along with the museum director. They come over. It was so emotional, you know, they have been searching with tens of people it was, you know, it was such a big case stone vangorg and there was a lot of pressure nationally and internationally . And then we were standing here with the Vangorgh . So I asked them, can I have it one night on my wall? And they also said other no way . And what about Durham? Was he there ? You know, he wasn't. I think given his past and tension with the police , they decided that probably wasn't the best idea. But there's no denying Durham's role in this recovery. How do you feel that you played such an active role in this? Left myself And I was really like, yeah , because all the people say hey Staltooth paintings and fang did and fang that now bring one back, shut up . So I mean, this kind of reminds me , of course, of catch me if you can with Leonardo DiCaprio, where it's like the main character goes from being chased by the authorities to working alongside them . Yeah, and I have to say, you know, for Durham, he loves this new role now. I have something to do. I'm still involved in crime . The good side because you must imagine you get in contact with people and you do it for a good cause . So he's still in the underworld in a way , just on the other side of it. Bran tells this funny story. The other day we walked here in a neighborhood and a woman was coming out of a home and she said, Ah, I know you. You are the guy who brought back the Picasso talking about me. And I said, Yeah, that's correct. And I said, You know who's standing next to me? That was okay of course. I said, He's the guy who stole the two vancos. And she looked, she became pill and you went inside the home . I mean, that's definitely an odd couple. They are quite the odd couple and I can promise you they both know it too . These things are more crazier than fiction, you know? You don't see this stuff in movies. Yeah, well maybe it's time for them to kind of make their debut , you know, maybe . And I think it's fair to say both Brand and Durham are not camerasy at all. But Aeisha what stayed with me most wasn't just how cinematic their story is. It's how unlikely their trust is. You know, Brand doesn't pretend Durham didn't steal those paintings. Durham doesn't pretend Brand isn't close to the police, but somehow they found a way to use that tension and that history to get something stolen back where it belonged. And that's what brought us here. So we have lockers here . Two and a half hours north of Amsterdam in the city of Groening is the Grooninger Art Museum . Earlier this month I traveled to the museum with Arthur Brand. I wanted to see him take in the van go that he and Durham had recovered, the parsonage garden at Noonan in spring. It's home now, mounted on its own wall in one of the galleries. When I see this, for me, it's first of all, I think the joy, you know, the joy I experience. The painting was done early in Vengo's career and still has these classical lines. It shows the garden, a church in the distance , and a woman dra,ped in a black coat and wearing a matching black hat. Brand has a story for her. I always think I hoped that it was Macho Beijmann, he's the girl next door. He wanted to marry . p Thearents didn't allow them. The girl tried suicide, Frankoch saved her. So in my imagination, this is the love of his life, Mahal Bergman. Octav wasn't with us on this tour. You can probably imagine why this museum or really most likely any art museum in the Netherlands wouldn't be ready to welcome him with open arms . But we were joined by the former director Andreas Bloom. He'd been in the role when the Parsonage Garden at Noonan in spring was stolen. And it turns out he'd also been the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam , back in two thousand two when Durham stole the two Van Gogh's there . So I had to ask Bloom how he felt about Durham now , especially since he'd helped get this painting back. I'm grateful but I'm a little bit I'm not a friend of I mean, I mean it's like yeah , I have mixed feelings . But as he said to him, you know, it's two one now. You know, I toast all two. I recovered one . I maybe I feel better when he is even when he recovers another one . And who knows, maybe Durham will do just that, but for now, it was only Bran's reaction I could get . And I couldn't help but notice his smile as he was looking at the painting . Because beyond interpretations about the art itself , he sees this whole other thing. The best thing about this painting is it always gives me hope because I'm searching out for many other paintings and other stuff , like it's possible, you know, we find it back, never give up . And maybe that's the thing about art. The object matters, of course, but it's the story that makes us lean in. People like art of course, of course, without a doubt, but when there's a story attached to it, it gives this extra layer . And now the parsonage garden at Nunan and Spring has its own story too , about an art detective, an art thief, and a stolen van Go they somehow brought back home . So Rebecca, what's next for Brand and Durham? Durham is teaming up with Brand on a new case, this one involving a stolen picasso they believe is hidden somewhere in North America. Meanwhile, Brand is pursuing a separate case, a statue stolen in the Netherlands with help from two unlikely partners , Chicago Area Sisters, Evie and Bevi Lustig, ages six and nine . Well, Rebecca, thank you so much for that fascinating journey through the world of art thievery and recovery . Now you got to make that movie. I'm on it. You're welcome and thanks for having me. This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Jenny Schmidt, production help from Ben Raport and Cina Lafredo , fact checking by Jane Gilvin. The engineer for this episode was Quacy Lee. The Sunday story team also includes Justine Yan and Leanna Simstrom. Irene Nagucci is our executive producer. I'm Maya Shirasco. Up first, we'll be back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.