Brazen Baltimore museum heists and thieves who thought they could get away with them

Baltimore has been at the center of several high-profile scandals involving art theft, similar to the brazen theft of precious crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren looked into how authorities cracked these fascinating cases and spoke to the former director of the Walters Art Museum. 

All eyes on the Louvre

In just minutes, thieves disguised as workers used a lift to scale the famed Louvre, access the gilded Apollo gallery, and take off with jewel-encrusted treasures. They have yet to be recovered. 

"It's all about the perimeter of the building. Once they're inside, you're screwed," said Gary Vikan, who spent years running the Walters Art Museum and its prestigious galleries in Baltimore. 

Vikan recently returned from a trip to Paris. 

"I've been in that gallery," he said. "I know exactly what it looks like once you're standing there. What separates you from that hundred million dollars are two glass surfaces. It was the audacity and the precision with which the event took place, and I'm running this through in my mind because, as museum director, there are things that keep you up at night — and it isn't balancing the budget." 

Vikan is the author of "Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director," where he writes about several notorious art heists in Maryland.

"When you have a theft in the museum, it is devastating for a couple of reasons. First of all, the FBI swoops in. Everybody is a suspect, so you don't know who you can trust," Vikan said. "Secondarily, the things that you work with—and maybe this is overstating it, but not so much—they are like children, and somebody's been kidnapped. You're responsible. You failed no matter what. You can't make up any excuse. You have failed, and it just is devastating for morale."

Inside job at The Walters in 1988

He was working at The Walters in 1988 when a security supervisor took 145 items from the Asian art collection in a case that made national headlines. 

"We had a security guard who was very clever and was almost addicted to Asian decorative arts—especially Chinese jades," Vikan recalled. "He was alone in the gallery in the dark of night, and he decided to take the front off a case. He managed to get it off, and because he was so clever, he arranged everything else, including the labels, so it looked just fine."

It took several days to realize that anything was stolen, including the rare Peach Bloom vase.

"He had a backpack, so almost everything went in his backpack. We had security people at the door, and they would take a stick and poke around, but he put them at the bottom, and they were small," Vikan said. "And he, after all, was head of night security. He was in a position of trust."

Years later, Vikan interviewed the former security supervisor for his book. 

"He was proud of it—very proud of it," Vikan recounted. "And I said, 'Why did you do this?' And he had kind of a tactile affection for me. He said he loved to fondle the stuff!"

Regret and the Renoir 

While at The Walters, Vikan received a package from "R. Egrette" with a fictional "Church Street" address containing a wooden Egyptian tablet stolen in 1951.

He quickly realized "R. Egrette" meant "regret" and said the thief, nearing the end of his life, was feeling guilty.

Vikan believes it is the same person who stole a small Renoir from the Baltimore Museum of Art, which was also taken in 1951.

"The only question was who in 1951 had access to three different museums in Baltimore and at off hours? And it wasn't too hard to find out who that was, and I knew him. I met the guy," Vikan said.

The Renoir, titled "On the Shore of the Seine," turned up more than half a century later in 2012 when a woman from Northern Virginia said she bought it at a flea market in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, for $7.

Her family had it appraised for more than $100,000.

Vikan believes the woman's boyfriend at the time is the same person who sent the "R. Egrette" package and gave the stolen Renoir to her as a gift while she was attending Goucher College. 

The FBI posted images of the painting and key documents here.

"It was all made up," Vikan said. "She'd grown up with this thing. And again, the FBI figured it out pretty quickly."

"On the Shore of the Seine" was later returned to the BMA after a legal battle. 

"She was old in 2012, about to die from cancer, and I think she told her son and daughter, 'I want to make things right,'" Vikan told WJZ. 

He said the small painting hung in her Virginia home for decades. 

It was legally purchased through an art dealer in France and owned for years by Baltimore shoe heiress Saidie May. 

May gifted her considerable art collection to the museum.

"She gave a lot of her collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art, and in November of 1951, in off hours—in other words, once the public was gone—it disappeared," Vikan said. "It turns out that Fall, things disappeared from The Walters and from the museum at Johns Hopkins."

Fabergé fears 

Vikan also remembered the call he received in 2000 from Interpol telling him one of the Walters' Fabergé eggs was being offered for sale in Europe.

Thankfully, they were safe. 

"What did I do right away? I went to the gallery and looked at it and saw, 'Well, that's good. It's there,'" he said. "The case had not been violated. There wasn't a swap out."

He was concerned that criminals had a target on them. 

"I thought, 'Did somebody offer to get it on commission?' And that's worrisome," Vikan remembered.

The eggs are rare and worth millions of dollars each. WJZ got a closer look on our morning newscast in 2017.

"Fabergé eggs are things made for the Imperial Russian family in the late 19th and early 20th century, and there are only like 30-some of them in the world, and they're valued at upwards of 30 million bucks apiece," Vikan said. "They're little Easter eggs that open up, and they're covered with diamonds and gold and stuff like that. The Walters has two of these things, which is really extraordinary."

Lessons learned 

Whether in Paris or Baltimore, Vikan stressed museums must strike a delicate balance.

"You are responsible for things that are very valuable, and they belong to the public," he told WJZ. "A museum's job is both to protect what it has and to show it to you, so it's tough."

When it comes to recovering the jewels stolen from the Louvre, time is crucial.

"As soon as they get those diamonds off the metal, there is an incentive to deconstruct them as quickly as possible, and once that's happened, it's a catastrophe," Vikan said.