The son of a guidance counselor from the seashore hamlet of Swampscott has long been eyed as a possible culprit in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist – despite denials the suspect carried to his grave in 2004.
Brian M. McDevitt, 43, was twice questioned by the FBI in the $300 million theft and testified before a grand jury.
Investigators zeroed in on McDevitt because of his involvement a thwarted heist at the Hyde Collection in Glen Falls, N.Y. – a crime that bears a strong resemblance to the Gardner caper.
McDevitt and an accomplice, Michael B. Morey, were arrested in December 1980 after their plans to rob the Hyde museum derailed.
They had hijacked a Federal Express van, knocked out the driver with ether and donned the courier company’s uniforms. They carried handcuffs and duct tape to bind the guards and tools to cut the paintings from their frames.
The plan unraveled when the van got stuck in traffic, preventing them from arriving at the museum before it closed.
Identified by the FedEx driver, McDevitt was convicted of attempted robbery and served time in prison.
The two men who robbed the Gardner on March 18, 1990, were dressed as Boston policemen. They were admitted by security guards, who they handcuffed and blindfolded with duct tape before removing 13 items – two of them masterworks by Rembrandt that were cut from their frames.
McDevitt was publicly identified as a suspect in the Gardner case in a 1992 story in The New York Times and spoke to “60 Minutes” about it in 1993.
“This was clearly an operation that somebody paid for,” McDevitt said on the CBS-News show. “The only way that you can get those paintings for your collection is that you pay somebody to go in and steal them. I mean, that’s what, that’s what I used to do.”
The enigmatic McDevitt, who always denied robbing the Gardner, was convicted of five felonies in all, including a Boston safety-deposit theft of $160,000 in cash and bonds. He died on May 27, 2004, of apparent kidney failure.
Those who met him considered him unfailingly charming, articulate, and convincing.
Almost immediately after the art museum was robbed, McDevitt moved to California, where he passed himself off as an award-winning freelance screenwriter and secured a position in the Writers Guild, before being thrown out when his credentials were questioned. There were also doubts raised about business claims he made.
McDevitt attended but was eventually expelled from Bates College, where he drove an MG and passed himself off as a Vanderbilt – a falsehood he would also later use in Glens Falls.
He attended UMass-Boston in the 1980s.
“He always projected himself in a high way,” said Jeffrey Earp of Lynn, who graduated with McDevitt from Swampscott High. “He seemed to be on the path to great things. Then, suprise, he was in the news.”
Did you know McDevitt? What do you think of his possible role in the Gardner case?
