The Skylight Caper: Canada's Biggest Unsolved Art Heist

it got a little bit lost in the shuffle. On Friday that weekend, three men were refused entry to Montreal's Wagon Wheel a country in Western bar and in retaliation, set fire to a rear staircase. The blaze ultimately consumed the building and killed thirty seven people. The next day, Canada lost the opening game of the nineteen seventy two Summit Series to the Soviet Union at the Montreal Forum, and hockey was all that the media and really almost

everyone could talk about. The seventy two hockey series has since been called the greatest event in Canadian sports. By the time the Skylight Caper unfolded in the early morning hours on Monday, Canada was immersed in the games, and internationally attention was focused on the unfolding Munich Olympics hostage crisis, and what went down was an art heist that left dozens of paintings and objects missing and most still are today. Welcome to criminal lya, I'm Maria trum Marquis and I'm

Holly Frying. One of the world's greatest unsolved art thefts, which included De la Croix, Rubens and Rembrandt, happened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in ninety two. Seventeen paintings remain missing, and the cat burglars behind the incident have never been apprehended. This

story outs a lot like a Hollywood script. Just after midnight on September four, under the cover of darkness, a man wearing climbing spurs, you know the kind that are used by telephone linemen, scaled one of the trees on the property between the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul. Gaining access to the museum's roof, he lowered a construction cruise ladder

to two men who were waiting below. The three men then entered the building through the one skylight that was under repair. Its alarm was deliberately disarmed for construction. They repelled through the skylight with fifty ft or fifteen meter fixed nylon ropes into the galleries of the museum's second floor.

Katherine Scofield says Kim, contributor to the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art, said what we are all thinking quote, it was a very cinematic theft on the second floor of the museum that the thieves, donning ski masks, spent roughly thirty minutes or so gathering paintings and other objects before they encountered a security guard crossing paths with them either in or nearby the kitchen. The thieves were armed. At least one had a twelve gage shotgun and another

may have had a revolver. One thief fired a warning shot from that shotgun into the ceiling, not really to cause harm, but as an indication of who was in charge here. The two other night guards on duty heard the gunfire, and though they responded, they were overwhelmed. Security staff were bound, gagged and locked in a lecture hall on the first floor. The guards later described to police that the thieves were two men with longish hair, wearing ski masks and armed with guns. One spoke French and

another spoke English. They heard the voice of a third man who also spoke French, though they never saw him. Police never recovered the shotgun or revolver that were said

to have been at the scene. The thieves had planned to exit the museum through the same skylight that they had entered, and they had actually mcgivered quite an elaborate pulley system to hoist the artworks up to the roofs so that they could then take them away, but they ultimately gave up on this pulley plan, instead collecting the artworks and other items at the museum's loading dock to escape in the museum's small cargo van, But when one of the men triggered the alarm while exiting the side

entrance of the museum, the trio just decided to leave with whatever they could carry. They fled on foot with eighteen paintings and thirty nine smaller pieces, mainly jewelry, down Sherbrooke Street. Among the paintings were works by Caro Corbet de Lacroix, Broigel, the Elder Rubens, and a Rembrandt that

was then valued at one million dollars. Among the objects were to seventeenth century Spanish pendants, and an eighteenth century gold watch that had once been owned by Montreal's first mayor, Jacques via It's reported it took the museum guards about an hour to free themselves after the thieves left, at which point they contacted Well. No, they did not contact

the police. They contacted the highest ranking available member of the museum's staff that they could think of, the then curator, Ruth Jackson, who then instructed them to contact the police. Jackson was among the first museum staff at the scene of the crime, and reports she found the gallery rants act shattered display cases, torn backing, and many hundred year old frames cracked to pieces. There was a stack of about twenty paintings left behind, which contained a Picasso and

al Greco, two goyas, a Renoir, and another Rembrandt. We talk a lot about the masters and their works, but museum officials noted that thieves did also select works from lesser known artists and works from more obscure collections. Those paintings had value that would be considered more academic or historic in nature rather than obvious. Jackson later told the Montreal Gazette quote with what they'd proposed to remove. It was just like they meant a general clear out of

the museum. News of the robbery and the names of the stolen works were printed in newspapers across North America and eventually around the world. Museum spokesperson at the time, Bill Banti told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation or CBC quote, they were discriminating thieves and had a fairly good idea of what they were looking for. The thieves got away with these eighteen paintings. Number one Landscape with Vehicles and Cattle.

This painting, which was subsequently recovered during ransom negotiations, had been attributed to Jan Breigel the Elder, but was later determined to have been the work of his students. We're gonna talk a little bit more about this one in a minute. To Landscape with buildings and Wagon by Joan Broigel the Elder. Three Laavosa la Fontaine or the Dreamer at the Fountain by Jean Baptiste Camille Corot for Jean fame Ach or young girl leaning on her left arm

by Jean Baptiste Camillo Caro. Five Landscape with Rocks and stream by Gustave Courbet. Six Head by honore A Daumier seven, Lioness and Lion in a Cave by Eugene Delacroix. Eight, The Sorceress by Narcis Virgilio Diaz de la Pa nine. Portrait of Brigadier General Sir Thomas Fletcher by Thomas Gainsborough. Ten Vanitas, still Life with books, a globe, a skull of violin and a fan by Jon David zund Him eleven, still Life with a fish by Jon David zund Him twelve.

Laboratus or young Woman churning by Jean Francois Millay thirteen, Portrait of Madame Milais by Jean Francois Mela fourteen. Portrait of a Man, possibly a self portrait by Giovanni Battista Piazetta. Fifteen, Landscape with cottages by Rembrandt von Riene sixteen, Head of a young Man by Peter Paul Rubens seventeen, Portrait of a Lady by Francois le Vensson. Eighteen Portrait of a

Man by francoisanble Vinson. Police later concluded that the works on this list were all small enough to be easily stacked together for a quick getaway, and the same could not be said for the pile of art that had been left behind. This all made sense knowing that the thieves fled on foot and fast Montreal investigators contacted Interpol as well as the Art Dealers Association and the International Art Registry to help in the investigation and art recovery process.

Customs officials at border checkpoints were also alerted to be on the watch for the stolen works. Investigators initially stated they were looking for at least suspect a man between the age of thirty five and forty. There really wasn't a lot of information to work with, but they did broaden their search details to include three men, two of whom were approximately five ft six and had long hair, and two of whom spoke French while the third spoke English.

And that was it. Those were the details. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back we'll answer the question, just how did those thieves know which skylight to enter? Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about what happened when the alleged thieves tried to collect ransom. The two art heist wasn't actually the first time thieves targeted the Montreal Museum of

Fine Arts. In nine teen thirty three, a man removed a dozen paintings from the gallery space through an open bathroom window, eventually holding the works for ransom. We've seen that bathroom window business before. You know, there are clear patterns. In nineteen sixty, thieves were foiled while trying to rob a Vincent van Gogh exhibit. More recently, in eleven, two artifacts were stolen from the museum's permanent collection in broad daylight.

In fact, it happened during visiting hours on the anniversary of the nineteen seventy two crime. One of those two pieces, a fragment of a Persian bab relief dating from the fifth century b c E, was recovered by the Surate di Quebec in Edmonton three years later. The second piece, a Roman marble statuette dating from the first century CE,

has never been recovered. As their investigation began, authorities were suspicious how that thieves knew there was one skylight with a deactivated alarm, and investigators considered the possibility the theft was actually an inside job. However, after interviewing museum staff, they determined this to be inconclusive. Plus, would someone from

the inside have tripped an alarm, they wondered. Many museum employees reported they'd seen in the weeks preceding the theft, men sitting unfolding chairs on the rooftop of an adjacent building, smoking cigarettes, and apparently watching the museum's renovations very closely. What followed the heist was a series of seemingly arbitrary

yet related events. Not long after the theft, someone claiming responsibility for it directed museum officials to go to a pay phone outside McGill University's rotic gates, where they could expect to find a discarded cigarette package on the ground. Officials did as this tip told them, and inside that package they found appendant, which was one of the stolen items. Then, in late October of nineteen two, museum officials received a

brown envelope labeled Ports of Montreal. The contents were photos of the missing paintings with a requested ransom of five thousand dollars for both paintings and objects. In correspondence with the alleged thieves, which happened through phone calls and mail, the director of the museum suggested returning one of the taken paintings as a sign of good faith, a painting was selected, landscape with vehicles and cattle, which was at

the time attributed to young Broygal the Elder. It was returned by those who had taken it, left in a locker at Central Station unharmed as part of the act of good faith during negotiations. When inspected upon its recovery, though experts found well, they uncovered a few problems. The painting and the signat sure were inconsistent with Brogel, the artist the piece had been attributed to since it was

painted in the mid sixteen hundreds. The work was determined to be misattributed, and that means it was determined unlikely by museum experts to have been painted by this great master. It was instead concluded to be a copy of the original painted by students in Brogel's workshop. Did the thieves know that the painting they returned in a show of good faith was actually a fake? That we will never know. The museum did not pay the ransom, and the thieves

continued to bargain. They dropped their price, though, from half a million to two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Instead, the museum requested another show of good faith they wanted another painting. Using an undercover officer, police carried on and attempted to exchange cash for another of the missing paintings, but an unexpected and unrelated appearance of a squad car near the scene where they were supposed to make this exchange put

a stop to the handoff. In that moment, that show of good faith fell apart, and the alleged thieves called museum officials the next morning, claiming that the whole thing had been a trap and a police set up. There were alleged plans for a secret meeting between museum officials and the thieves, but in the end, whether that meeting happened or not, because after all, it was a secret, nothing more was recovered from this heist, and no one

was arrested for the matter. Communications ceased shortly after the Broigel debacle. A last apparent effort to exchange artwork for cash came in the summer of nine three, when an anonymous caller contacted the museum offering information that could lead to the missing paintings in exchange for ten thousand dollars.

So they followed this lead an insurance a jester contracted on behalf of the museum when on what became really a fourteen hour wild goose chase across the city, they followed tips from pay phone to pay phone before finally being instructed to drop the payout under a sign in a vacant law in Laval, a suburb of Montreal. But the whole thing was bullshit actually, and the paintings were never recovered, and this seems to have been really the final recovery effort, or at least the final one that

gained any news coverage. Within days of the heist, the Montreal Gazette reported that there was in fact actually a second art heist that had taken place that same week, as fifty thou dollars worth of paintings were stolen from the summer home of Agnes Meldrum, who ran a successful trucking and storage business in the city. Authorities tried to link that event to the same thieves. Both were said to have involved three armed men, to who spoke French

and a third who spoke English. At the Meldrum crime scene. Ropes were also used here to scale a six foot cliff from a waiting motor boat on the Lake of Two Mountains in order to gain access to the home. Ultimately, though police noted similarities between the crimes, they considered these circumstances to be coincidental. We are now going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back we will talk about one theory that art

students may have been involved in the heist. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's meet the Columbo of the art world, a man named Alain la Courtier, who may have gotten the closest to solving this cold case. Advice for thieves that we've seen again and again this season is lalo for a few years. If you've nicked some high profile work, they need to cool off before they're transported or they're sold.

Two items, one of two stolen burgles and dependant were returned to the museum during the initial ransom and negotiations, all within weeks of the crime. But fifty years later, nothing else has resurfaced. Nothing has been inadvertently brought to auction, nothing has been intercepted or discovered during police raid at the home of some criminal kingpin. There are still no leads, and still no one has been implicated in the theft.

Evidence little there ever was was reportedly improperly stored and has degraded over time as well, and the museum's insurers settled the claim, which means the paintings aren't museum property anymore. Technically, if they were to be returned, they would belong to Lloyd's. But not everyone has given up on this case. Allain le Courtier is today an art praiser, but is a

former art investigator from Montreal and Quebec police forces. He's known as the Columbo of art for his successful efforts in investigating other cold case art thefts in Quebec, and he took on the Skylight caper as something of a pet project during the nineteen nineties. Every solid lead or theory that authorities had in the nineteen seventies fell apart, and Allen has gone on record with his frustrations over the sloppy way with which the investigation was initially handled.

Early in the investigation, police put some of their focus on the possibility that the theft was committed by art students, and they surveiled five students for just shy of two

weeks before they gave up on the lead. Elaine, decades later, picked up that lead and began looking into students who were at the Cold Bozao in the nineteen seventies, and I apologize for what I just did to the name of that school, the Fine Arts Institute in Montreal, LA And ultimately, like those before him, could not crack this case, but he did develop some interesting theories about what may

have happened. About thirty years after the theft, Elane struck up a conversation with a man he would come to nickname Smith, a man who was an art student in Montreal at the time of the heist. Smith was not one of the five suspects initially surveilled by police, though he liked to hint he may have been one of them. Smith was interesting because he knew details of the crime that had never been made public. Smith also seemed to have come into a considerable amount of money shortly after

graduating from school and had become an art collector. Elan always maintained that in his gut he knows Smith had to have been involved somehow, but Smith, though he may

have teased otherwise, always denied any involvement. And now we'll never know because Smith passed away in or The museum, as we mentioned earlier, settled with insurers, and with part of the payout in nineteen seventy five, purchased Reubens The Leopards in a show of extraordinary bad luck, though and adding insult to injury, A conservationist who examined the painting after its purchase determined that it, like that Breugel's landscape with vehicles and cattle before, it was not what it

seemed to be. Leo Rossandler, the museum's deputy director in nineteen seventy five, is quoted as saying fake is a harsh word. But the painting is not by the person who was said to have painted it, but probably by his studio. The work was not by Reubens but by

his apprentices, and it has not been exhibited since. A subsequent review of the museum's files on the stolen paintings, as reported in the Journal of Art Crime in twenty eleven, revealed that there had been doubts about the authenticity or the attribution of seven paintings in the museum's possession, and it couldn't be blamed on the heist or sleight of hand knockoffs returned in so called good faith by thieves. In some cases, the records dated back to at least

six years before these thefts even took place. It's reported that the estimated value of most of the missing pieces has dramatically increased since nineteen seventy two, in particular the Rembrandt, which some art experts and dealers believe could be worth as much as twenty times more than it was when it went missing. Today, though there is limited interest among a limited group to continue this investigation, the theft is,

for all intents and purposes, a cold case. On the fiftieth anniversary of the heist in two, spokesperson a Unique de Repentinee of the Montreal Police Department, when asked for comment about the unsolved theft, stated that the case is still considered open, but offered no further comment. Stated Maud belan media relations officer for the museum, quote, any ore it works. Theft is a tragedy as it deprives society of the benefits of art and knowledge. Of course, we

would love to have them back. Unfortunately we do not have any new information. This one makes me sad because it was just early enough in history that there were not a lot of great photographs of these paintings. So for some of them, it's what did that look like? Their descriptions so they're black and whites. Let me draw you a quick little piece that you can compare it to. I know, like we did a show earlier in the season where I believe it was considered the first art

theft and it was Pirates, which makes sense. But it's not like you're alarming. Anything like that. Doesn't really happen until centuries later, and then sometimes not at all. Tip up a little heist hoods to guys who seem to have gotten away. I'm ready for heist hooch, but you have to make a deal with me where you won't be pedantic about the time of day this heist took place. We know, we know, I love my Dayton High. This one will have daytime lighting, not night time. You know

it came up on our last episode. But this one is so intense, the whole skylight maneuver, and so I wanted to make a drink inspired by a skylight entry. That's fantastic. I can't wait to see what this is. And this one is called Skylight and you'll see that it references the sky. It's a pretty easy drink to put together. There is a little trick in execution, but I will give you my trick on how to do it.

And I am not particularly graceful in this regard. So if I can do it, I think probably most people can as well. This starts with a very simple bass to the drink. It is three quarters of an ounce of lemon cello, and then you're going to pour that over ice into like a rocks class and then top it with ginger rerail. You pour in that ginger real second, you kind of get them to mix on their own. You don't have to do a whole lot of work.

Then into a shaker, you're gonna combine a half ounce of blue curos ow three quarters of an ounce of vodka, and you're going to give that a dry shake, meaning it doesn't have ice in it. You just want to combine those two things so that you thin out the blue curos ow a little bit. Because we're going to do a floater. I feel we have not done this in a while. We haven't. And the thing is right,

we talked about it many moons ago. But if you're going to try to float any liquid on top of another liquid, the one on top has to be a lower density, or it will just fall to the bottom and blue curos ow because it is so surrupy and it has that sugar content is heavy. That's why we're mixing it with vodka to thin it out and make it a little bit like lighter in its volume. So then you're gonna take here's the trick. You need a bar spoon with one of those flat bottoms at the end,

you know what I mean. Some of them have the tear drops and some of them have just like literally it sits on a little disk, and those are your friends, because that disc will allow you to pour your mixture of blue Curius sound vodka down the spirally shape of the spoon and onto that little disk, and then it floats out over the top of the rest of the drink and it doesn't drop to the bottom, and you get a really beautiful blue stripe across the top of

your beverage. And it looks very pretty and it makes you think of the sky. Now, I will say, to drink it. This is a presentation thing. You probably want to mix it for because all your spirits sitting on top right, but it looks pretty right up until the moment that you do. Yes, I have definitely been with people who don't realize that sometimes you gotta mix in a floater like on Classic Matie. Sometimes they'll have that dark rum floated on top, and if you just sip that,

you're in trouble. I don't like to mix them together. I do and I will, but I'm like the presentation. The visual is nice. The visual is nice. I will say with this one. The nice thing is when you mix them together, it's still quite a pretty color. Good. So that's the skylight. The good thing about the skylight is that it's really easy to do a non alcoholic version here. Also, I should mention when you do your

ginger ale for this one. You know how I always go, oh, I like a low sugar ginger ale, Not for this. You want the ginger ale to have that sugar and density, so it makes it easier to float something on top of There's no way, who are you? It's like all I've been possessed, right, been possessed by sugar a ginger ale. Because there is enough sugar in that ginger ale and you're using two liqueurs. I don't feel like you need to add any sweetener to this, and there's plenty of citrus,

so you don't need a citrus thing. It's pretty easy to do this, this simple thing. So for the non alcoholic version, I would just toss a little bit of lemon juice into your ginger ale and then we've mentioned it on the show before, you can get a non alcoholic blue Curas house syrup. I can get it in my grocery store, and I live in a place where you can't have hard liquor in the grocery store, so I feel like if our store has it, almost anyone

could get it pretty easily. I do not have easy access to most foods in most grocery shoes are much more rural than you are. But I guarantee you it would only take me two to three days to get that online. And at that point you can just thin that out with a little bit of water if you want, or you can do a little bit of lemon juice with it if you want. You just want to thin it out so that it, like I said, is a lower density than that ginger ale base, and then you're

you're all set. It's a very refreshing sip in either version because it is so citrusy and bright and like citrus plus ginger ale is just always going to be kind of a yummy, easy breezy combo delicious, and we're calling that the Skylight. Please do not drink it and then repel fifty ft into the gallagh. Just don't repel

fifty feet into a gallery. I think we hope that you have enjoyed us not getting into trouble at all today, and that you maybe enjoy these little SIPs if you give them a try, and that you will come back and hang out with us again next week where we will have more fun Criminalia and more Bevrage time for you. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership

with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,