Master Thieves
The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled off the World's Greatest Art Heist
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Narrated by:
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Mike Chamberlain
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By:
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Stephen Kurkjian
About this listen
In a secret meeting in 1981, a master thief named Louis Royce gave career gangster Ralph Rossetti the tip of a lifetime. As a kid, Royce had visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and made a habit of sneaking in at night to find a good place to sleep. He knew the Museum's security was lax, and he gave this information to a boss of the Boston criminal underworld. It took years before the Museum was hit. But when it finally happened, it quickly became one of the most infamous art heists in history: 13 works of art valued at up to $500 million - including Rembrandt's "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee". The identity of the thieves was a mystery, and the paintings were never found.
What happened in those intervening years? Which Boston crew landed the big score? And why, more than 20 years later, did the FBI issue a press conference stating that they knew who had pulled off the heist and what had happened to the artwork, but provided no identities and scant details? These mysteries are the story of Stephen Kurkjian's revealing audiobook. He will take the listener deep into the Boston mob and paint the most complete and compelling picture of this story ever told.
©2015 Stephen Kurkjian (P)2015 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family. They socialized with music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, did business with New York's king of bling Jacob "The Jeweler" Arabo, and built allegiances with rap superstars Young Jeezy and Fabolous. Yet even as BMF was attracting celebrity attention, its crew members struck fear in a city.
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Good listen
- By Lamont on 04-20-20
By: Mara Shalhoup
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Cullotta
- By: Dennis N. Griffin, Frank Cullotta
- Narrated by: Michael Taylor
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, in Cullotta he admits to it - and in graphic detail. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro's gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta's was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information - lots of it - about many of the FBI's most wanted.
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Great story, silly narrator
- By Tom Mainella II on 04-20-15
By: Dennis N. Griffin, and others
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Where the Bodies Were Buried
- Whitey Bulger and the World That Made Him
- By: T. J. English
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author T. J. English, the acclaimed master chronicler of the Irish Mob in America, offers a front row seat at the trial of one of the most notorious gangsters of all - Whitey Bulger - and pulls back the veil to expose a breathtaking history of corruption and malfeasance.
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The post-trial story of the Bulger legacy
- By Hugh F on 09-28-15
By: T. J. English
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Crime Beat
- A Decade of Covering Cops and Killers
- By: Michael Connelly
- Narrated by: Len Cariou, Nancy McKeon, Carl Franklin
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Abridged
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Before he became a novelist, Michael Connelly was a crime reporter, covering the detectives who worked the homicide beat in Florida and Los Angeles. In vivid, hard-hitting articles, Connelly leads the reader past the yellow police tape as he follows the investigators, the victims, their families and friends, and, of course, the killers, to tell the real stories of murder and its aftermath.
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Disappointment
- By Traci on 11-07-11
By: Michael Connelly
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Kings of Cocaine
- Inside the Medellin Cartel - An Astonishing True Story of Murder Money and International Corruption
- By: Guy Gugliotta, Jeff Leen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas, and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s, they controlled more than 50 percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive - supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a ragtag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings.
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Almost Perfect.
- By Nick on 10-31-18
By: Guy Gugliotta, and others
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The Last Gangster
- From Cop to Wiseguy to FBI Informant: Big Ron Previte and the Fall of the American Mob
- By: George Anastasia
- Narrated by: Chris Monteiro
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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As a cop, Ron Previte was corrupt. As a mobster, he was brutal. And in his final role, as a confidential informant to the FBI, Previte was deadly. The Last Gangster is his story—the story of the last days of the Philadelphia Mob, and of the clash of generations that brought it down once and for all. Convinced that the honor of the "business" was gone, he became the FBI's secret weapon in an intense and highly personalized war on the Philadelphia mob, operating with the same guile, wit, and stone-cold bravado that had made him a force in the underworld.
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Beautifully done! Exceptional.
- By none on 12-15-23
By: George Anastasia
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Animal
- The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob's Most Feared Assassin
- By: Casey Sherman
- Narrated by: Jim Goad
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Joe Barboza knew that there were two requirements for getting inducted into the Mafia. You had to be Sicilian. And you had to commit a contract killing. The New Bedford-born mobster was a proud Portuguese, not Sicilian, but his dream to be part of La Cosa Nostra proved so strong that he thought he could create a loophole. Barboza’s legacy, buried for years thanks to the murders or deaths of its participants, is finally coming to light and being told in its unvarnished brutality by one of America’s most respected true crime writers.
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Well done. 5 stars.
- By robert price on 03-03-19
By: Casey Sherman
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Revolution’s End
- The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
- By: Brad Schreiber
- Narrated by: Brad Schreiber
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Revolution's End fully explains the most famous kidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst's relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, the head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned, she didn't know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.
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Interesting spin
- By jay rollins on 08-29-20
By: Brad Schreiber
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Operation Family Secrets
- How a Mobster's Son and the FBI Brought Down Chicago's Murderous Crime Family
- By: Frank Calabrese Jr., Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman, and others
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Calabrese family of Chicago is a close-knit, middle-class, multi-generational Italian-Irish-American clan. They operate family businesses. They work day and night striving for the American Dream. All three sons forge a bond with their controlling father, Frank Sr., and their soft-spoken favorite uncle, Nick. As a boy, the oldest son, Frank Jr., realizes that his father and uncle are also "made" members of another close-knit family: the outfit.
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Riveting Listen!
- By ahippieadventure on 02-06-13
By: Frank Calabrese Jr., and others
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The Brothers Bulger
- How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century
- By: Howie Carr
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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This fresh account of Massachusetts' infamous Bulger brothers unveils a stunning criminal alliance, and with its dual biography format, goes deeper than the New York Times best-selling Black Mass. For the first time, journalist Howie Carr reveals the real story behind the infamous Bulgers, two brothers from South Boston who grew up to control a state.
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ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz
- By Tory on 11-18-06
By: Howie Carr
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Gangsters of Harlem
- The Gritty Underworld of New York City's Most Famous Neighborhood
- By: Ron Chepesiuk
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Ron Chepesiuk chronicles the little known history of organized crime in Harlem.
African American organized crime has had as significant an impact on its constituent community as Italian, Jewish, and Irish organized crime has had on theirs. Gangsters are every bit as colorful, intriguing, and powerful as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano, and have a fascinating history in gambling, prostitution, and drug dealing. In the late 1800s, Harlem became a highly fashionable neighborhood.
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weak --reader is terrible!
- By Meyer Rosenbloom on 10-18-13
By: Ron Chepesiuk
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L.A. Noir
- The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City
- By: John Buntin
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Midcentury Los Angeles: A city sold to the world as "the white spot of America", a land of sunshine and orange groves, Midwestern values, and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of "pleasure girls" and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city.
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A good (but a little corny) history of LA
- By Jimmy on 10-23-12
By: John Buntin
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Undisclosed Files of the Police
- Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the Present
- By: Bernard Whalen, Philip Messing, Robert Mladinich
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through an insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter. From atrocities that occurred before the establishment of New York's police force in 1845 through the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 to the present day, this audio is an insider's look at more than 80 real-life crimes that shocked the nation, from arson to gangland murders, robberies, serial killers, bombings, and kidnappings.
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Good History of Crime in NYC
- By Bob Shinders on 03-10-17
By: Bernard Whalen, and others
What listeners say about Master Thieves
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- johnny
- 05-15-24
The story is great.
Expertly written. I couldn’t stop listening until it was done. It was very compelling and at times I forgot that this was nonfiction.
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- S. Gusmini
- 12-14-21
Great Overview of Boston's Greatest Unsolved Crime
Great in every way at describing the details of Boston's Greatest Unsolved Crime that is connected to various criminals, Mafia factions, art thieves, and uncooperative FBI members. The unwritten reason that no progress had been made to solve this crime is that the FBI in Boston hasn't helped or cooperated in any type of advanced investigation including the unsolved death of THE major suspect while that criminal was supposedly under 24 hour FBI observation. The details are fascinating and this book is awesome at drawing possible conclusions and following up on every lead.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-04-18
Amazing Story
A story that should be shared with all, in hopes of recovering those treasures and our humanity.
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- MMcQ
- 08-06-18
Great telling of a unsolved mystery
In 1990 2 gangsters dressed up like policemen pulled off what might be the most famous art heist in history--they stole 13 works of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Amongst the stolen items were Rembrandts, Vermeers, Degas' and a Manet. They were valued at a total of 500 million dollars. And then they seemed to disappear. The FBI, the reporters, the museum, and even some of the crime families have been working to solve this mystery for the past 28 years.
This book gave me exactly what I wanted--all of the details about the case, all of the guesses, and information on all of the parties involved. Kurkjian is well suited as the author of this book--he wrote stories about the heist for the Boston Globe for many years, so he has an emotional connection as well as knowledge and research ties to the case. Kurkjian's law degree also allows him access to court documents that a regular author wouldn't be able to get to. He even interviewed crime bosses to make sure he was capturing the dynamics of this crime Lord's demise and the uprising of the new crime families.
I wish I had kept track of all of the players on a spreadsheet. There were so many people and so many names to keep on top of--especially tricky with an audio book.
My best guess is that the art work was accidentally destroyed when it was stored under a shed and the ground water rose, filling the hiding spot. I don't think that "Bobby the Cook" Gentile will ever admit to this; it's too shameful. But I just don't think we're ever getting the artwork back. I definitely don't think it's hanging on some rich person's wall somewhere. And if anyone did know the location of the stolen artwork--then between the 5 million reward and the promise for immunity from jail they would have come forward by now.
I also think that one of the night watchmen (Abath) that let the fake policemen in that night was in on it. There are so many holes to his story that just don't add up.
I followed up the reading of this book with a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum--which is lovely. They still hang the empty frames of the stolen artwork, as a reminder of what is missing.
Additional things I found out through this book:
1) The Boston branch of the FBI are doofuses
2) The FBI cut deals with the crime families all of the time. Some number of the crimes the big families commit are to have leverage to get their own family members out of prison. The FBI also sets up these criminals through an undercover sting for something like drug dealing or a stolen vehicle to put them in a position where they can avoid jail time if they give the FBI information about other crimes.
3) There is a "code of honor or ethics" amongst thieves. If you come up with the idea for a heist and someone else carries it out before you get to, then they owe you 15% of the spoils.
4) In Italy there are 80 members of their "FBI" that are over art recovery. In the U.S. the FBI has the following number of agents specifically assigned to art cases--ZERO.
I enjoy local stories and this is a good one. Some small amount of swearing.
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- meg poe
- 03-19-19
Waste of money
Boring. Buy something else or take the book out of the library of you're afraid of missing something.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jonathan
- 12-20-16
No answers, no conclusions, no point
The Gardener heist is one of the most intriguing mysteries of the past 50 years. Unfortunately this was book provides no good leads or even solid speculation on the identities of the thieves or whereabouts of the paintings.
The author appears to have spent many years chasing whispers and pulling on threads seemingly at random and wrote this book as a means to recoup some money on a failed investigation. He fails to turn up anything of value on the theft and in turn swindles the reader out of time and money.
Even if the book had shed any light on the crime the book does not flow well. Any interest is lost in the jumble of narratives he tries unsuccessfully to weave into a substantial text. He does not succeed. I will be attempting to get a refund from Audible for this purchase.
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- laura engstrand
- 06-03-18
Meh
The dry and mostly fact based subject matter was not enhanced by the flat affect of the narrator.
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- Jay Breda
- 03-24-15
25 years of waiting.. And a bit of a letdown.
I live in Boston, work in East Boston in the shadows of many places mentioned. I remember the heist, and the roller coaster decades of false reports of a breakthrough in the case. I had hoped that a Boston Globe reporter could bring some insight into the story. Unfortunately it is a book of rehashed newspaper stories told in clipped and tacit prose. Hard to follow the non linear tangents and filler stories.
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2 people found this helpful
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- B Hart
- 04-21-15
Boring!
There's no end in sight to this. Too many details without any meat. Don't bother.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Matthew Craig Dodge
- 03-28-15
Swamp People screen writers could do better
If this author is an "Investigative Reporter" than I've missed my calling. No depth, little to no research and certainly no "investigating". I love how he compares the theft tragedy to the Boston Marathon Bombing. Then, it slowly and gradually goes torturously down hill from there. Author should refund my money for this waste of time.
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2 people found this helpful