The Day the Dalí Escaped From Prison

Market and I'm Holly Fry. So first, let's get to know a little about the man behind this stolen work. He was worn Salvador Domingo Felippe Jacinto Dalis dominic on Man four in the Catalonian town of Figueris in northeastern Spain, to Salvador Dali Kusi and Felipa Dominic Feris. He had an older brother who passed away in infancy, and a sister, on A Maria, who was born when Dali was aged four.

According to Dolli biographer Ian Gibson, his mother was so proud of her son's childhood drawings and reportedly would boast quote when he says he'll draw a swan, he draws a swan, and when he says he'll do a duck, it's a duck. Dali was in his teens when his mother died of cancer. In his autobiography, he wrote of her, quote, this was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshiped her. I saw to myself that I would snatch my mother from death and destiny with swords of light,

that someday would savagely gleam around my glorious name. Several years after her death, he sketched an outline of Christ and scrawl the cross at the words about spitting on his mother's portrait, and some reports suggest that even though he didn't mean this to slander his mother, his father offended threw him out. He is described as having been an imaginative and dreamy child who was also self centered

and spoiled. In his ninety two autobiography The Secret Life of savon Or Dali, he wrote, quote, at the age of six, I wanted to be a cook. At seven, I wanted to be Napoleon, and my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. He spoke about being proud of his delicate sensitivity, and he prided himself on being different

from his peers. There's actually an anecdote about Dolly that when his fellow school children learned that grasshoppers frightened him, they would throw them at him, and in his telling of the story, it was just so that they could delight in his terror. Dalia received his formal education in fine arts in Madrid, and his artistic creations spanned multiple mediums, including not only painting and illustration, but photography and film. He was an artist and author, a critic, and he

was most definitely a provocateur. Dolly was very young, just fourteen, when he first exhibited work as part of a show in Figari's. Three years later, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando in Madrid, and once there he reportedly believed his teachers were He believed he were just out of touch, and in one anecdote, he said while at school that he could learn more from French magazines than his classes, and he wasn't quiet

about it. When it was time for his year end exam in art history at the Academy, Dolly said of his examiners, quote, I am very sorry, but I am infinitely more intelligent than these three professors, and I therefore refused to be examined by them. I know this subject much too well. Academy officials expelled him without a diploma. Smithsonian magazine would say it best decades later when they printed quote, after all, Dolly without the antics is not Dolly.

It's when he moved to Paris in n and he was twenty two at that time that he began painting his first Surrealist pieces. The artistic and intellectual movement of Surrealism was begun by writer Andre Breton just two years earlier in four and it gained popularity primarily between the First and Second World Wars. Inspired by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories, it championed artistic expression through the exploration of the unconscious mind.

Dali was also known for his methods of free association to approach his art. He's credited with expanding on the movement's dreamy imagery with his own erotically charged hallucinations. Dolly quickly became part of the center of the surrealist movement, along with other artists including Renema Greet and Johan Mereaux. Breta wrote that Dali's name was quote synonymous with revelation

in the most resplendent sense of the word. It's his painting The Persistence of Memory, that's the one that features the melting clocks. That might be his most iconic and his most recognized work. He painted that in nineteen thirty one, and many years later Dolly famously recounted its origins, explaining that the quote soft watches were the remains of a

very strong Camembert cheese. He hit the art scene when he moved to Paris, and he remained in the public eye for many decades, right up until his death at a j D. Four in nineteen thirty six. At thirty two, DOLLI was on the cover of Time magazine quote, compared to Velasquez, I am nothing, but compared to contemporary painters, I am the most big genius of modern time. Salvador Dolly said this of himself. He wasn't wrong about his largesse.

His paintings would later command more than twenty one million dollars at auction. So now that we know about Dolly, we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. When we return, we should probably talk about how an original work of his ended up in the mess hall at an American prison. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk first about Rikers, the correctional compound where this whole thing took place. So we know the artist, so we'll explore the scene of the heist. Rikers Island, known

as Rikers. The Rikers Island Complex is the main correctional compound of New York City, and it's located on which you could probably guess, Rikers Island, and that sits in the East River between the boroughs of Queens and the Bronx. It's one of the country's most notorious correctional facilities, with a reputation for both violence and neglect. During its history, it has held between four thousand and two detainees and prisoners, some famous, some not. In more recent decades, the island

saw rapper Tupac Shakur. John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman was sentenced there, as was former New York Giants wide receiver and Super Bowl champion Plexico Buris. The island is named after Abraham Reichn, a Dutch colonist who purchased it in sixteen sixty four. The City of New York bought the Island from that family in eighteen eighty four, and it has housed correctional and mental health institutions pretty much

ever since. The complex has ten different facilities. The Otis Bantam Correctional Center, the Anna M. Cross Center, the George Matchen Detention Center, and the George R. Virno Center hold detained adult males. Robert and Devoran Complex houses males between sixteen and eighteen years of age. The Eric M. Taylor

Center holds sentenced male adolescence and adults. The Rose M. Singer Center houses sentenced adolescent and adult female detainees, and the Vernon See Bains Center is a floating eight hundred bed jail capable of holding medium to maximum security inmates. The island maintains a barge dock to accommodate it. The North Infirmary Command houses prisoners in need of medical attention, and the West Facility houses inmates with contagious diseases. These

things are changing, though. In October, the city passed into law a plan to shutter all prison facilities on Rikers

Island by the year. Instead of the jails of Rikers, there will be a network of four modern jail sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and according to city and Corrections officials, this smaller Borow based jail system will house a population of no more than three thousand, three hundred people, so it is much smaller and the jails will be located within communities and not sequestered on

an island. This is the very short telling of the story of Rikers, but it's not really the jail that we're interested in, to be honest, this could have been any incarceration facility like Alcatraz or Sing Sing for that matter.

What we're really talking about is the heist. In February of Salvador Dolli was invited to visit a Rikers Island inmate art program by long time Department of Correction commissioner and Across Cross had met Dolly's business associate, Nico Eperi Fanos at a dinner party where the two laid the groundwork for Dollie's Island visit. Anna believed in rehabilitating prisoners through the arts, including painting, as well as through theater productions.

The famous painter's visit would be conducted under the marketing banner of Salvador Dolly Goes to Prison. Dolly it said, was known to twitch his waxed, upturned mustache and endorsed pretty much any product you put in front of him, and usually for French and American television commercials. So here's one example for an am Erican television commercial in seven, he sat in an airplane seat alongside Whitey Ford, who was the star pitcher for the New York Yankees at

the time, and he proclaimed in heavily accented English. The advertising campaign slogan of now defunct brand of airlines said, Dolly quote, if you got it, flaunt it, said Ford in reply. That's telling him, Dolly baby. So when Nico mentioned the event and its potential press coverage to Dolly, naturally, Dolly was down for Rikers. On February, Dolly woke up with a fever of one degrees fahrenheit thirty eight degrees celsius.

He was scheduled to visit Riker's Island that day to meet with inmates and his wife Gala, his pet Acelot Babu, and a whole lot of press was going to be there along with him. Dolly never missed a good pr opportunity, except he did miss this one. He was just too sick and it was too cold out and he couldn't make the scheduled ferry ride to the island, and that was the only way to access the facility at the time.

But to make up for this cancelation, he decided to send the prisoners accustomed Dolly as a means of an apology. It's said that in about an hour or two, Dolly whipped up a surrealist crucifixion scene with pencil and India inc on a five by three ft piece of paper so quite large. The painting depicts Christ on the cross from the Christian Crucifixion story. Dolly signed and dated it in the lower corner and included a note saying quote

for the inmates dining room on Riker's Island Belly. Nico e very Fanos hand delivered the artwork to the prison, sending word from Dully to the inmates that quote, you are artists. Don't think your life is finished for you with art, you have to always feel free. News photos from that day show Nico presenting Anna with the untitled work.

It hung in the mess hall of what was then known as the Correctional Institution for Men for sixteen years until an inmate threw a coffee cup at it, but the danger it phase actually wasn't from the inmates or from caffe aated beverages. Really, it was from prison guards. After the coffee mug incident of the untitled Dolly was

removed from the wall of the cafeteria. When a warden named Alexander Jenkins arrived at Riker's that same year, he was actually skeptical about whether the Dolly was truly a Dolly, and he stated that to one media outlet, saying, quote, there weren't any records on the painting, and for all I know, it could have been an inmates copy of

a Dolly. It was sent to a dealer for authentication and appraisal, and depending on what report you read, it was valued at around a hundred thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand either way. After its authentication, it was then shipped to a Virginia gallery for temporary display in a prison art exhibit, and then it was returned to Rikers and the Dolly was placed into storage and

kind of forgotten about by that point. As Robert Tanner wrote in the Los Angeles Times, it wasn't forgotten just at Riker's it was quote a forgotten footnote in the art world. It sustained some water damage during that time in storage, and it doesn't seem to resurface again until sometime in the nineteen nineties, when reportedly the drawing was found in the trash and saved by a corrections officer.

It had eventually found its way to the wall of a warden's office and then eventually to the lobby of the Eric M. Taylor Center that was the facility that held sentenced mail adolescents and adults. As Holly said earlier, most employees of the Department of Corrections and its visitors may not have even noticed it on the wall of the lobby or the framed note from a warden explaining that the image was a genuine ali that was worth

a lot of money. It hung in its original gold frame in a glass case next to a soda ending machine until Mark first, two thousand and three. On March first, two thousand and three, the untitled Dolly went missing and it hasn't been seen since. So we're going to take a break here for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back we will tell the story of the night A Dolly was stolen from prison. Welcome back to

criminal Eat. Let's talk about the night of the heist and the four men who tried to pull it off. Four men stole the dolly from inside the Riker's complex, but the suspects were not who you might initially think. This, it turns out, is the story of how to prison wardens and two corrections officers conspired and carried out the theft of the Rikers Island Dolly. Just after one am on March one, two tho three and unplanned fire drill was staged by four prison officials inside the Eric M.

Taylor Center. All two thousand incarcerated people housed there at the time were put on lockdown. Guards on duty rushed from their posts and convened in a remote wing. This was all what they had been trained to do, and this left the lobby where the dolly hung completely empty. The theft was as basic as this. One person manned the fire alarm, two people worked as lookouts, and a fourth person was responsible for switching the real dolly with a forgery. But this was not exactly a well planned

out caper. It was not carried out with a great deal of efficiency or grace. It was just a few hours later, after the guard shifts had changed and the heightened drama of having that unplanned drill had all quieted down, when another corrections officer stated that there was something odd about the dolly. It was because it happened that this particular guard had this habit of quietly praying to the

drawing every time he started his shift. But that day when he arrived, he noticed right away that something was very different, and he reported to the warden that the drawing appeared to be a fake. It was a fake, and it was so obviously a fake. In fact, some of the scene that morning compared what was left behind the drawing of a young child. It was a noticeably smaller and sloppy copy of what had been hanging in

that spot for years. There was something else, too, The art no longer had that special quirkiness of having been at Rikers for so long. The painting had hung in a cafeteria originally for sixteen years, and it had developed some reddish food stains ketchup, it's assumed, as it hung near the trash bins where inmates dumped their leftovers. The splotches on the counter fit though they were brown, but actually before you even noticed the counterfeit details of the

replacement itself. The most obvious difference may have been that the gold leaf mahogany frame that had held the original piece was also missing. Instead, there was no frame at all, and the thieves had hung the forgery with staples to

the back of the inside of the glass case. Thomas Attendant, a spokesperson for the New York Department of Corrections, told The New York Times at the time, quote, it looks like the painting has been replaced by a copy that appears to be the case, based on a consensus of non expert opinion people who work near the painting and see it day in and day out. Investigators quickly concluded that the only people who had access to the artwork were not the inmates, but the guards. Inmates did not

have access to that lobby. Investigations were marred by the surveillance footage, though just so happened that a camera that pointed directly at the Dolly was linked to a recording device in the warden's office, but it had mysteriously stopped working overnight. No way. Other reports suggest the footage was lost,

but despite the faulty security footage. Four suspects were uncovered within days, and those included Benny Nutzo and Mitchell Hawkhouser, both assistant deputy wardens and Greg's so called and Timothy Pena, both corrections officers. It was only a few days after the heist on March fourth, that Timothy Peena, racked with guilt, was the first to turn himself in, and it's Pena

who implicated the other three men. According to court documents, he confessed to then Department of Corrections Inspector General Mike Caruso that Neutzo and Hawkhauser came up with the idea inside the Riker's commissary known as the Bodega. The men believed they could sell the painting for a good sum on the black market and planned to split the proceeds. Pena stated that they had first approached him in November of two thousand two about helping to steal the Dolly

looking into Our Crystal Ball. This totally jibs with Hawkhouser's court testimony when he explained to Don Levin, the prosecutor, how the heightst developed from a joke between him and Nutso in late two thousand two into a serious plan. Just a few months later, Peina agreed to wear a wire for Caruso and agreed to meet with and record his co conspirators. The first meeting was with Sokol, who

met with Peana at a local coffee shop. So Cool, unaware his conversation with Pina had been recorded, was taken into custody as he left the shop. Caruso then also convinced Socol to agree to wear a wire and record conversations with hawk Houser and Nutso at work at Rikers on March five, and he did. By June, all four men were arrested. Also that June, Pina, Sokol, Hawkhauser, and

Nutso were each charged with second degree and larceny. If convicted, anyone facing that charge could be sentenced to up to fifteen years in prison. Pena, Sokol, and hawk Houser pleaded guilty to the charge, while Nutso denied everything. Hawk Houser's lawyer, Martin b. Edelman said of the whole affair quote, it was incredibly stupid. It's interesting because their sentences differed. Pena was sentenced to five years probation. Sokol was sentenced to

three years probation and find one thousand dollars. Hawk Houser was given one to three years in prison, but Benny Nutzo, who was often considered the alleged ring leader of this heist, was acquitted in his jury trial. Yes, acquitted, and some people think this may be because Nutso had a high profile, high powered attorney, Joe Tacopina, representing him, and if you don't recognize his name, you'll recognize names of some of his clients, who have included Jay z and Alex Rodriguez.

Tacopina has since described his method in the courtroom, and it focused on using Socle's wire taps against the prosecution. He presented the recordings to the jury, pointing out that you can't clearly hear what was being said during the parts of the admission of theft. He said, quote on the vital parts, the part where Benny's allegedly making an admission. I did this. I took the painting. I knew what the plan was. Don't worry about it. I destroyed it.

On those vital parts, the word do and don't were interchangeable. I do know where it is and I don't know where it is. We're not distinguishable in other clips he used from under cover recordings. Takapina pointed out, Neotso is heard saying of the work, I never had it. Takapina also read back the official transcript of the recordings to Soco, intentionally replacing dues with domes and vice versa throughout the text,

effectively changing the meanings of sentences completely. Socle stated he too could not tell when Tacopina had swapped out words, making the point that the wire taps may not have been accurately transcribed. Said Tacopina, that was the watershed moment of that trial, the death knell to the prosecution's case of the trial. He continued, quote, this ranks in the top five of the most challenging cases I've ever tried.

From an evidentiary standpoint, for sure, this definitely ranks is my favorite case I've ever tried because it wasn't just a criminal trial. It was a criminal trial with the focal point being Salvador Dolly. Nutso was offered a deal plead guilty in exchange for just four years behind bars, but Nutso, maintaining his innocence, refused. Tacopina maintained his client had nothing to do with the heist, and ultimately Nutso was found not guilty and was acquitted of the charge.

Nutso wasn't totally free to go, though. When investigators searched Nutzo's home, they found items that were stolen from Rikers, although the Dolly drawing was not among them. In a subsequent and unrelated charge, Nutzo was found guilty of stealing more than one thousand dollars worth of items from Rikers, and he was fired from his job. And of the

missing untitled Dolly, it continues to be lost. We have high hopes, just as everyone else, but we do also know that, according to those court records, Hawkhauser stated, Newtso destroyed the piece in a panic shortly after stealing it. Of the entire situation, those new dollies seemed to overwhelmingly agree on one thing and laugh about it, and that is that this would be a big joke to him

and that he would have loved it. So there's this quote that I came across during research, and it's from the St. Regis magazine Beyond, and it says of the artist who lived at the St. Regis Hotel for quite some time. Quote he would announce his entrance on the premises with a loud shout of Dolly is here, and he would rule the place from that moment until his departure.

And I couldn't help but think, in that one moment, that would have been the version of the story about the Dolly at Rikers that I would really like to hear. So let's go to our mess hall and pour out some high spooch. I'm just picturing a bunch of incarcerated men looking at him. It's a story I want to know, col cool dude. I wanted with this cocktail to make reference to Dully's Spanish origin, and so there's a liqueur in here that I really really love. That's a very

unique Spanish liqueur. It's called Liquor l I c O R. Forty three, and if you've never had it and you have access to it, I highly recommend trying it because it is very interesting. It's like some other liqueurs we've talked about, where it's made with forty three different ingredients. That's where the number comes from. But the flavor of

it I have heard describe different ways. Some people really taste the vanilla note in it, which is it's prominent and it's there, but it tastes like something more than vanilla. It also has this sort of citrusy situation going on, and there's like a whole other spiciness to it. It's just a really unique thing. So I wanted to take advantage of doing a Dolly centered episode to bring out

the liquor forty three because I love it. If you are in a pinch, if for some reason you cannot get ahold of that, you could look for another vanilla liqure and maybe add a little citrus to it. But boy, if you can get it, highly recommend. So this is a very easy little cocktail called Dolly's Antics. You are gonna put a I would suggest like a small coop. It's not a big drink, So you want a smallish glass, whatever glass you love. Put it in your your fridge

to chill, or your freezer to chill. I even put a few pieces of ice in mine and put it in the beverage cooler to chill. Why while I made the drink, so it is an ounce and a half of vodka. You want a very neutral, very clean vodka. Here three quarters of an ounce of the Liqueur Liqueur forty three and then three quarters of an ounce of heavy cream. You can use half and half here. You can use a nut based cream, you can use an

oat based cream, whatever you like best. You want to get this very frothy, so you're gonna if you have a frother, go ahead and use it a little, but you'll also give it a shake with some ice, and then you're gonna strain it into your pre chilled glass with a few pieces of ice in it. It's a very beautiful pale color. And then it's time to get out the Angerstra bitters. So you're gonna just put three drops of bitters on top. They are not going to

stay intact. They're going to spread across that milky surface and kind of make almost a marbled effect. And then one more thing, you're going to sprinkle just a little bit of black salt on top. I have some that's lava salt, and I love it and I love to put it in things, and it really brings out the flavor of that liqueur forty three, and you get all of those interesting notes and the Angersta does some interesting

things with it. It's kind of a dessert drink, but it has a little bit more edge than like if you were to get like one of those birthday cake martiniz or whatever. It's definitely not sweet like that. It's a little heavier hitting. That is why I include ice in the glass, because you wanted to dilute a little bit as you're drinking, because it smooths it out more and more as you go, which is really nice. This

is a good one for holiday time. I think if you don't want to do the standard holiday flavors of nutmeg and gingerbread, this is like, it's interesting, but it's and it feels a little cozy. But what is it? Which seems correct for a Dolly center, but what is I really like this? And I'm gonna be making a lot to do the mock tail version. You're gonna have to do some trickery here. So I would get I'm gonna once again lean into tea, but we're going to make it in a different way. So I would get

a vanilla et. Sometimes you can get like a vanilla black tea. Sometimes you can get just a vanilla herbal tea that doesn't have that black tea caffeination to it. And I would do at the same time, a light tasting citrus tea. Like an orange tea and you're gonna put those two tea bags. Or if you do loose leaf, you're two loose leaf amounts into a sauce pam with. I would not do all cream here. I would do something that's a little lighter, like you know, if you

do like an oat milk or whatever. I would do half of like a regular oat milk and half of the cream version, so that it still stays creamy and rich, but it's not like heavy, because it will condense down as it's simmering, and you'll lose some of the liquid and it gets thicker and more intense. So I would do that. You're gonna let that just come to a simmer and then you're gonna turn off the heat and

let it steep for five to ten minutes. I would take the citrus out first, let the vanilla stay a little longer in there, and then you'll let that cool and you'll shake it pour it into your pre chilled glass.

If you absolutely don't do bitters because of their alcoholic content, you can leave them out, or if you want to get real fancy and experimental, you can with a little dropper, drop a little, just a little vanilla extract on top, because you know how that is a thing that tastes sweet, but in concentrated form it has a little bit of a bitterness. So you can do that, put that black salt on top, and you still have a very interesting drink that will make you go, what exactly is this?

I'm a such a huge savadord Alie fan that it was like my delight to think about what would be a good drink to represent him, and hopefully this does the trick. We are certainly glad that you are here hanging out with us while we talk about art heists and other crimes. We will be right back here again next week with more high story and more heist Hoochery's making upward. I believe you should. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.

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