The real thief, Peruggia, should have been a suspect from the outset. He had the means, motive, and opportunity. A craftsman who helped build the wood and glass box that protected Mona Lisa, he was privy to a fateful museum secret—Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece was secured to the wall by little more than four metal hooks and guarded only by a lone and drowsy military pensioner. The Louvre was so cavernous and in such a state of constant renovation that Peruggia, with his white workman’s blouse and smock, drew little attention when he waltzed into the Salon Carré shortly after sunrise that Monday morning.
“The room was deserted,” Peruggia recalled years later. “There hung the painting that is one of our great works. Mona Lisa smiled down on me. In a moment, I had snatched her from the wall. I carried her to the staircase, took off the frame, slipped the painting under my blouse, and left with the greatest nonchalance. It was all done in a few seconds.”
Peruggia hid Mona Lisa in his tiny Paris apartment for two years. He was careful, of course, but like most art thieves, he became frustrated when he could not sell the painting to a legitimate dealer. In 1913, he smuggled the painting to Italy, and offered to sell it to a dealer who was close to the director of Uffizi Gallery, the most famous museum in Florence. The dealer and museum director met Peruggia in a hotel room and promised to pay 500,000 Italian lire on the condition that he bring Mona Lisa to the Uffizi for a final examination. They tipped the police, and officers arrested Peruggia when he arrived with the painting. Afterward, Peruggia claimed to be a patriot, insisting that he stole the Mona Lisa to return her to her native Italy. The story appealed to many Italians, but it fell flat in court. As prosecutors noted, da Vinci himself brought Mona Lisa to France during the sixteenth century, and they presented a letter Peruggia wrote to his family after the theft in which he boasted, “I have finally obtained my fortune!” At trial, Peruggia’s own testimony proved his motives were not pure. He expected to claim a reward for “rescuing” Mona Lisa.
“I heard talk of millions,” he testified.
Convicted in 1914, Peruggia spent less than a year in prison, an appalling sentence for so serious a crime, yet a trend that would haunt art crime cases throughout the century. By the time he was released, a world war raged across Europe and he was largely forgotten.
IT TOOK ME the better part of a week to interview the HSP staff. I met with thirty-seven of the thirty-eight employees—a custodian named Ernest Medford called in sick. The supervisors insisted that talking to Medford would be a waste of time. “Ernie’s been here seventeen years,” Froehlich said. “When we have a problem, he’s our go-to guy.”
We turned next to the public, and helped the museum publicize a $50,000 reward, blasting faxes to a long list of media outlets, from National Public Radio to The Inquirer to Antiques and The Arts Weekly. This generated a quick splash of publicity, but the reward tactic that had worked so well in the Rodin case brought dubious results this time, clogging our confidential tip line with useless crap. “Caller reports suspicious man eyeing a display case. No further information,” an operator scribbled in her notes. “Caller saw a sword in the backseat of a car at a parking lot on Essington Avenue near Seventy-fourth Street in a Chevrolet. Two weeks ago.” And my favorite: “Caller is psychic, will volunteer time, notes a Capricorn moon day of robbery.”
I turned the hunt to a more familiar and likely venue.
As it happened, one of the nation’s largest Civil War shows, the Great Southern Weapons Fair in Richmond, Virginia, was scheduled for the week after we began our investigation. As a collector, I’d attended the sprawling show three or four times over the years and knew nearly every serious dealer on the East Coast would be there. I drove down with Special Agent Michael Thompson, and sure enough, we ran into prominent Pennsylvania historian and dealer Bruce Bazelon, author of a book on presentation swords. I told him about the HSP swords. Funny you should mention it, Bazelon said, and he related a story he’d heard from a Poconos dealer. According to the dealer, a customer came into his shop and showed him a picture of a presentation sword that he had for sale. The dealer had called Bazelon because he believed the sword was supposed to be in the HSP collection.
When I called the dealer, he confirmed the story. He dug into an old address book and came up with a name for the Philadelphia history buff peddling the sword—George Csizmazia.
We showed up unannounced at Csizmazia’s office on a chilly morning two days before Christmas. He was an electrical contractor, fifty-six years old, with weathered white skin, thick jowls, and narrow brown eyes. He parted his silver hair on the left and wore a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache. His boss retrieved him from a job and he met us brightly.
“What can I do for you, fellas?”
“We need help with an investigation related to Civil War artifacts,” I said. “George, we want to talk to you about some swords.”
Csizmazia turned ashen. “Ernie told you, didn’t he?”
Ernie was the janitor, the only museum employee we hadn’t interviewed.
I shot Thompson a look. “Of course,” I bluffed. “That’s why we’re here.”
“So where are the swords, George?” Thompson asked.
“At my house. I’ll take you to them.”
Csizmazia lived with his wife in a modest two-story home in a working-class suburb called Rutledge, a few miles southwest of Philadelphia International Airport. He led us upstairs, and we followed. He took us to a bedroom door; the door had more locks and alarm systems than any room at HSP. As he opened the door, he said, “I call this my museum.”
The moment we entered, I knew our pudgy little electrician was a thief on a grand scale, responsible for the theft of more than three swords and a rifle.
Two hundred museum-worthy pieces from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries lined the walls and crowded display tables. As I circled the room, I silently counted twenty-five presentation swords and fifty firearms, assorted rifles, muskets, pistols, and revolvers. Valuable relics from early Americana filled the room—an ivory tea caddy; a brass carriage clock; a Victorian silver whistle; a teetering stack of U.S. Mint Indian ten-dollar gold coins; a tortoiseshell cigar holder; a pair of Revolutionary-era oval cuff links; a Georgian silver watch with a glass face; a pear-shaped silver sugar bowl; mother-of-pearl opera glasses in a leather case; a mahogany toy chest of drawers. It was all quality stuff.
Csizmazia played coy, rambling on about the vagaries of provenance in the military collectibles market. My partner and I didn’t say much. We just stood in the room, surrounded by so much history, so much evidence. We stared at the pieces and then we stared at Csizmazia. We let the silence hang, knowing he couldn’t help but try to fill it. He fidgeted and fidgeted and finally pointed to a Mayflower-era sword. “I use that to trim my hedges!” I gave him a look that said we were not amused. My partner crossed his arms sternly.
“George,” I said. “Come on. Don’t insult us, huh?”
Csizmazia dropped his eyes. “OK.”
He led us to the garage and opened a large cardboard garment box. Inside, we found $1 million worth of presentation swords, including the three missing from HSP.
There was so much stuff to seize we called for backup. Everywhere I looked I saw history. I picked up an early-nineteenth-century silver presentation wine cooler and marveled at the stylized swan-head handles, the chased rim, and an etched relief of Philadelphia’s famous Fairmount Water Works. I put it down and eyed a gold presentation watch with a double woven chain as long as my arm. I flipped it over to read the tiny inscription. “Presented to Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, USA as a token of esteem and regard from his friend E.P. Dorrl, Gettysburg July 1st, 2nd, 3rd. VICTORY.” I laid the watch on the table. The case was growing bigger every minute. What else was here?