NEW HAVEN - Robert Gentile, an aging Hartford mobster the FBI says is a person of interest in the world's most notorious unsolved art heist, pleaded not guilty in federal court Tuesday to a new indictment charging him with weapons crimes.
The indictment, expected since the FBI arrested the 79-year Gentile during a meeting with his probation officer on April 17, accuses him of being a convicted felon in possession of ammunition and selling a loaded gun to a convicted murderer. A federal judge said Gentile presents a danger to the public and denied him bail. His trial is scheduled to begin June 30.
FBI agents have been pressing Gentile for at last five years in the belief that he has knowledge of what became of 13 priceless paintings that at least two thieves, disguised as police officers, stole from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston early on the morning of March 18, 1990. The theft is considered by many in the art world to be the most expensive, notorious stolen art case ever.
Gentile lives in Manchester but is sworn member of a Boston crew affiliated with the Philadelphia mafia family. Law enforcement and other sources say Gentile was associated with a group of criminals in Boston who are believed to have been involved in or have knowledge of the Gardner heist.
The wife of one of Gentile's criminal associates told Gardner investigators about five years ago that she saw her now dead husband hand two of the paintings to Gentile in the parking lot of a Portland, Me. hotel.
Gentile has denied involvement in the Gardner theft or ever possessing two paintings in an interview with the Courant and in repeated interviews with authorities. The denials, often inconsistent or contradictory, have left FBI agents unconvinced. When Gentile agreed to answer questions about the Gardner case during a polygraph examination, the result showed that there was a 99 percent probability that he was lying.
Since he was implicated by his dead friend's wife in 2009 or 10, Gentile has been the subject of near continuous pressure by the FBI and a museum investigator. In 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison after he was charged in an FBI sting with selling drugs and weapons possession,
Gentile was the target of a new FBI sting – which resulted in the weapons charges outlined in the new indictment - as soon as he was released from prison in April 2014.
Even when offered the $5 million reward for return of the paintings, Gentile has said he has no information that could be helpful to the Gardner investigators. People familiar with the investigation have said that Gentile also has rebuffed offers of leniency in exchange information that falls short of recovering the paintings, but advances the investigation.
Gentile, obese, suffering from a heart condition and nearly crippled by a back injury, has acknowledged that he probably will not outlive the sentence he can expect in the new weapons indictment, an associate said.
The Gardner thieves bluffed their way into the museum, a century-old, Italianate mansion full of uninsured art and protected by an outdated security system, bound the security guards and battered 13 masterworks from the museum walls before driving away in a red car fewer than 90 minutes later.
Among the missing art: a Vermeer, a Manet and five drawings by Degas. Two of the paintings -- "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," Rembrandt's only known seascape, and Vermeer's "The Concert" -- could be worth substantially more than $100 million, if anyone could find a way to unload some of the world's hottest art.
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