America's First Armed Art Heist: How 2 Masked Men Stole 4 Priceless Masterpieces from Massachusetts Museum By Chris Spargo

Some people believe that the modern era of American art heists started on May 17, 1972.

That is the day two masked men walked into the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts with a gun and left carrying four masterpieces.

The heist took approximately five minutes and had nearly been without incident until the museum’s unarmed security guard tried to stop and question the two men who were rushing towards the exit.

That security guard, Philip Evans, was 57 at the time and in a 1982 interview with the Telegram & Gazette said that he initially stopped the men because they were running across the museum’s 1,700-year-old Antioch mosaic on the ground floor of the building.

“Get out of my way! We’re going through,” the first masked robber allegedly said as Evans tried to grab him.

Evans said he got swatted by the paintings that person was carrying but managed to get his arms around the neck of the second robber. Then, he heard the sound of a gunshot as both men hopped into a waiting car and sped off from the scene.

Police arrived on the scene soon after, followed by agents from the FBI and customs officials.

Evans, who had been shot in the waist, was transported to a local hospital where he was treated for what doctors later said was a superficial wound.

Investigators started to question eyewitnesses and museum staff at the scene, and learned that that the thieves had stolen a Picasso, two Gauguins and a work that, at the time, was attributed to Rembrandt. (It is now believed the piece was actually painted by one of the artist’s students.)

Among those eyewitnesses were four high school students who had been working on a project at the time — two of whom were in the room as the robbers took the paintings.

Beth Ellen T. Hurowitz and Kathy Kartiganer were preparing to enter one of the galleries when one of the masked men saw the girls and told them to get on the floor while pointing his gun at them.

“We kept our heads down and we muttered stupid stuff like, ‘We can’t see you. We’re not looking at you,’” Kartiganer said in a 2022 interview with the Telegram & Gazette. “I remember shaking, feeling like I was just gonna wet my pants. I’m surprised that I didn’t.”

The two teens said that the men then went about their work, collecting “The Brooding Woman” and “Head of a Woman” by Paul Gauguin; “Mother and Child” by Pablo Picasso; and “Saint Bartholomew,” which at the time was attributed to the Dutch master Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.

“We watched these two guys walk from room to room and take specific paintings. They were not arbitrary at all on what they were taking,” Hurowitz said. 

Outside, the girls’ two friends were waiting in a parked car and had their own run-in with the masked thieves when they unknowingly blocked in the getaway car.

“So while we’re waiting, I see two men run out with paintings,” Geri Wolfson recalled in the 2022 interview with the Telegram & Gazette. “The paintings were in these big pillowcase things. They throw them in the car. One, they put on the roof.”

Then, the men shoved a gun in Wolfson’s face and ordered her to move the car.

“I’d never seen a gun before,” Wolfson said. “So I moved. I reversed very quickly and pulled back into Lancaster Street and the [getaway] car went screaming out of the art museum.”

Police would soon learn the getaway car had been stolen a day prior when they found it abandoned less than a mile away on the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

It would take just 10 days for police to arrest four people for their involvement in the heist, thanks in large part to tips which came in from local bar patrons who reported that the criminals had been bragging about their feat.

The New York Times reported on May 20, 1972 that police arrested William Carlson, then 25, and Carol Naster, 28, for their roles in the heist. Carlson was one of the masked robbers while Naster, who was not present at the museum during the actual crime, was accused of being an accessory.

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According to the outlet, two more men were arrested a day later: masked robber Stephen A. Thoren, 30, and getaway driver David Aquafresca, 22.

The paintings were then discovered hidden on a pig farm in Rhode Island and returned to the museum in June — a little over a month after they were stolen.

Officials still had not managed to arrest the mastermind behind the plot though, and the search for Florian “Al” Monday would last for another year before he was tracked down in Montreal and extradited back to the United States to serve a nine-year sentence.

The Worcester Art Museum heist would soon be forgotten — but now, it’s once again being discussed because of the new film from Kelly Reichardt, who also directed Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and most recently Showing Up.

The Mastermind stars Josh O’Connor as the aimless son of wealthy parents who decides to steal a classic piece of art from the local museum and is based on the 1972 robbery at the Worcester Art Museum.

The film, much like the real-life heist, highlights the one element of the robbery that is still unexplained:

Why?

The stolen works were so well-known that the thieves would not have been able to sell them on the open market, The Times reported after the heist, leaving the group with four paintings valued at over $1 million (at the time) that they could not offload.

Monday, the mastermind behind the 1972 heist, would later claim it was all so he could own a Rembrandt of his own — which is the painting that later turned out to be the work of a student of the Dutch master.