The building at 6111 Excelsior Boulevard was Elayne Galleries’ second location. Six years before the robbery, it had opened in a St. Louis Park storefront, with an inventory of European oil paintings that Russ Lindberg had acquired in connection with his interior decorating business. Sales were brisk, and the Lindbergs soon decided they needed more space. The mall where they moved wasn’t exactly where one would expect to find an art gallery, but it fit Elayne Lindberg’s unconventional approach to the business.
“Mom was all about sales,” says Bonnie Lindberg, “and she wasn’t shy when it came to publicity. She’d mail out circulars to everyone she could think of. She even put them under the windshield wipers of cars when we were having a show.”
The robbery was carefully planned and methodically executed. Only the most valuable pieces were taken. Investigators assumed that the three men who came to the gallery the day before were the thieves, but the possibility that they were just three guys who wandered in because somebody put a leaflet on their windshield could never be totally discounted. That was one of the frustrating things about the case.
The Pinkerton guard was missing when the theft took place. “No one has ever figured out where he was, or why he wasn’t at the gallery,” says Bonnie. According to FBI records, there was some dispute about whether he had been instructed to stay on the premises or to patrol every half hour for the duration of the show.
It was the guard who discovered the theft at 12:30 AM and phoned 911. Investigators surmised that the thieves made a hurried exit when a lookout signaled the guard’s return.
The St. Louis Park police initially pieced together a burglary that took about fifteen minutes. Evidence at the scene indicated that one more painting, another Rockwell, was ticketed for theft, but the thieves fled without it. A black garbage bag was left on the gallery floor. The investigators theorized that the missing paintings were taken out in the same type of bag, and the bag left behind would have been used when the thieves grabbed the last Rockwell.
The plate number of the white Chevy was checked. It had been bought and sold three times the previous month. The only owner of record who could be traced was quickly cleared of any involvement.
Eight paintings were stolen. They were:
(All the Rockwells were executed as studies for reproduction, either as a magazine cover or a calendar illustration, and were untitled by the artist. They sometimes came to be known by more than one title later.)
Horvath and Verson had been gallery clients for a while. Horvath bought “She’s My Baby” from Elayne Galleries, and they had both purchased signed Rockwell lithographs.
“Date/Cowgirl”
“Date/Cowboy”
“The Spirit of 1976”
“No Swimming”
“Summer”
The gallery’s diptych was insured for $35,000. A rider was written on the gallery’s policy insuring Brown & Bigelow’s four paintings for $90,000. Horvath’s Rockwell and Verson’s Renoir were not covered by the rider. Both men had been cautioned to insure their paintings but hadn’t done so.
By 3:30 AM on February 17, three hours after the theft was discovered, police had issued a report of a “half-million-dollar robbery.” It mentioned the Rockwells but said the Renoir was the most valuable painting stolen. It noted that the perpetrators confined their activities to the north end of the gallery where the Renoir and the Rockwells were hanging and apparently knew exactly what they were after. It included Russ Lindberg’s description of the three suspicious men, all white males, who are referred to as suspects in the FBI files.
“Winter”
“She’s My Baby”
Untitled “Renoir”
Suspect one was five feet eleven inches, approximately 170 pounds, well dressed, about forty years old, with a hook nose, a dark complexion, and dark hair. He “looked Italian” and “gave the impression that he was the leader.”
Suspect two was in his late thirties, about six feet, with sandy-colored collar-length hair, knit slacks, and sharply pointed, alligator-skin cowboy boots. He had wires on his teeth and scars on his upper and lower lips “as if he had recently been in an accident.” He wore a black trench coat. He wandered all over the gallery and kept popping back and forth, seemingly to report on something to suspect one.
Suspect three was over six feet as well, a little older than the other two, with graying brown hair and wearing a three-quarter-length “pieced” leather coat. He stood off by himself most of the time and said little.
The robbery was big news in the Twin Cities. “I remember there was a lot of talk that it was an inside job,” says Minneapolis attorney Thomas E. Bauer, who was a Hennepin County prosecutor at the time.
The FBI took a keen interest in the case. They pursued it vigorously for a while and developed the only real theory that ever emerged. According to their analysis, someone with an insider’s knowledge of the gallery, and the Rockwell show, conspired with professional burglars to commit the crime. They also related it to the activities of an organized crime ring operating out of Miami that was under investigation for selling fake art.
There was a sound basis for their theory. It fit with evidence they already had and more evidence they would soon discover. Furthermore, just about all art thefts are related to organized crime in some way, even if the involvement begins after the theft.
An hour after the initial report was released, a St. Louis Park detective on the overnight shift received a phone call from “a gentleman who identified himself as a full-time art dealer who did not want at this time to give his name or get involved.”
The FBI files refer to him as Terrance W. Huberg, owner of Antiques Americana in Bethel, Minnesota. Huberg had been in his car when he heard about the crime on the radio. He told the detective that if the Renoir was the one he thought it was, it depicted a dock scene and had a five-inch crack running diagonally from the border through Renoir’s signature. He had heard that it had recently been sold.
Several months before, sellers from Miami had made a concerted effort to persuade Huberg to buy the painting, which included an appraisal from Rikki’s Art Studios in Miami claiming it was worth $125,000. The initial price was $50,000; the owner of record was a Miami resident of Cuban extraction. Huberg had a buyer promising to pay him $140,000 if he could prove the painting was genuine, and he sent photos along with a written description to an expert on French Impressionism at the Hammer Galleries in New York. He was told it was a fake. Not only did it lack Renoir’s distinctive, streaky style of brushwork, but Renoir was known to be living inland at the time it was allegedly painted and concentrating solely on landscapes. Huberg declined to buy the painting. A few weeks later, he was told he could buy it for $15,000. He assumed this meant that word had gotten out that the painting was a fake, and a “fire sale” was on.
The FBI was already investigating the Cuban. His name is blacked out of the files, but a document written by a confederate of his dated February 8, 1978, refers to him as Rolando—last name unintelligible, but possibly Aherene.
Huberg gave the FBI a translation of a notarized document, originally in Spanish, purporting to detail the painting’s provenance. In it, someone whose name is redacted in the FBI file claims to be the sole owner of the painting, which to his knowledge was painted by Renoir.
“This painting was bought by me approximately in the year 1958 from [redacted] who bought it from [redacted] who reported to him that it has been in her possession since the beginning of 1946. That same year it was brought into Cuba from Spain. This painting has been mine since approximately the year 1958 and has been kept and stored in Cuba since those years.”