IRA Art Heists
During quarantine my good friends and I started a book club, the book we read for September (yikes I’m still not done) is Say Nothing: A Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. It’s about The Troubles in Northern Ireland and follows a few IRA members. In order to try and gain leverage to free some of their members from jail, the IRA started conducting art heists and stealing some insanely famous and valuable paintings.
The Troubles
I’ll give you a tiny bit of background before we jump in just so we’re all on the same page. The Troubles refers to the conflict Northern Ireland in the 1960s-1990s where, to be extremely simplistic, some people wanted Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom and other people wanted it to become its own thing; a united Ireland. So on the side of a united Ireland is the IRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) who were fighting against the UK to free their country. There was a TON of violence on both sides and especially in the city of Belfast. During this time many young people joined the IRA and took up the cause even though it was insanely dangerous. Dolorus and Marian Price and Rose Dugdale were three of these young people, and they carried out missions for the IRA and were honestly pretty devoted members. I’ll profile the players for you and give some background below.
Marian and Dolorus Price
So here they are, in the IRA as late teens and they’re asked to go to London with a group of other IRA members to carry out a bombing mission. Again to kind of gloss over the plan, it was, in essence, to plant bombs in cars across London (in front of important buildings) and then 30 minutes before they blew up they called the police to alert them in the hopes that the police would locate the cars and diffuse the bombs, the goal wasn’t to kill anyone. However one of the bombs did end up going off and a man nearby died of a heart attack as a result. When the sisters and the rest of the squad were trying to fly home they were arrested at the airport and taken into custody. So they’re stuck, right?
Well, right. BUT their IRA pals were trying to figure out a way to get them out of jail. Everyone seemed to be obsessed with them because they were young, elegant, beautiful, and full of national pride. However, if bombing things is how your national pride manifests itself maybe that’s an issue, but I digress. So people love them and want them to be released or at least brought back to Ireland to serve out the balance of their sentences and one woman gets an idea.
Rose Dugdale
Rose is also a member of the IRA, she was actually the daughter of a millionaire at the time but rebelled against her privilege and joined the army. When she hears about Dolores and Marian being locked up she comes up with a plan to gain some leverage and hopefully get them released.
Heist #1
I need to preface this section by saying this first heist I am about to talk about has never been solved. So I cannot say for sure that Rose was behind it but it does seem likely. So on February 23, 1974 ~someone~ broke into Kenwood House in Hampstead, London. The security guard that night reported hearing some crashing and glass breaking in the museum and when he got there he found that ~someone~ had smashed through the “shutters and steel-barred ground floor window of the museum with a sledgehammer, grabbed the painting off the wall and, despite a ten-foot wall that had to be scaled, escaped even before an alarm sounded at the Hampstead police station” (Jason, 2020). They scaled a TEN FOOT WALL before the police were even notified, plus it’s reported they also cut the phone lines to give themselves some extra time. Pretty crafty if you ask me.
The painting that was the target was Vermeer’s The Guitar Player worth an estimated $4.5 million. Pretty soon after the police started their investigation the painting’s frame was found about half a mile from the museum. The frame was damaged in one corner and the glass was smashed so everyone was understandably worried that the painting itself was damaged too.
Once they found the frame A BUNCH of anonymous ransom demands started to come into the police but the one that was most credible demanded the release of Dolorus and Marian Price from prison (remember this detail, we’ll come back to it). They never responded to any ransom demands and after yet another anonymous tip they ended up finding the painting in a cemetery in London tied up with newspaper and wrapped in string. Although it showed a few signs of dampness it was otherwise unharmed. Yay!
Now as I said, this is technically unsolved and Rose has never been changed with this robbery but I’ll show you with the next heist that it is highly likely to me that they’re connected. Maybe she got bolder the next time because they never caught who did it or maybe because it didn’t help Dolorus and Marian.
Heist #2
This one is solved so I can say for sure that on April 26, 1974, Rose and three other IRA members broke into Russborough House, then owned and occupied by a former conservative MP, Sir Alfred Beit. The group of four forced their way into the house before pistol-whipping, tying up, and gagging Alfred and his wife. They then proceeded to make off with 19 (NINETEEN) paintings from their home valued at approximately £34 million in today’s currency. The collection of works included paintings by masters such as Gainsborough, Rubins, Goya, and (guess who?!) Vermeer. This time the Vermeer that was taken was Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid and it was the only Vermeer in a private home outside of Buckingham Palace.
And again here there was a ransom note received offering to “swap” the paintings for £500,000 and the release of Dolorus and Marian Price (I told you this detail would come back!!). The police immediately started searching for the paintings and did not meet the demands of the note. Eventually, they traced them to Cork where Rose was renting a cottage and all 19 works were found in the trunk of her borrowed car. Yikes.
SO to sum everything up in a nice bow Rose was actually convicted of this second heist and she did plead guilty. She was sentenced nine years for her part in the robbery though it kind of worked out for her because they let her marry her husband while in prison (he was also in prison serving a 20-year sentence) and she gave birth to their child. In terms of the heists, to me, the connection is clear through the ransom notes. Rose badly wanted to help the Price sisters get home to Ireland and was willing to do whatever it took. When her first attempt didn’t work she upped the ante big time.
Heist #3
There was YET ANOTHER HEIST on May 1, 1986, and it was AGAIN at Russborough House. It has nothing to do with the Price sisters or Rose but it was carried out by infamous IRA gangster Martin Cahill so you know, it’s related loosely. The thieves learned from the last robbery there and instead of charging in, they snuck up to the house at 2:00 am and cut one of the panes of glass out of the French doors leading to the back of the property. The infrared alarm sounded but the thieves had time to hide while security looked around for a possible threat, finding nothing the guard and the police decided it was a false alarm. An hour later the thieves entered the house again and in the span of 6 minutes stole 18 paintings. Want to take a quick guess as to one specific painting that had been stolen??
If you guessed Vermeer’s Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid you would be correct!! It had been stolen from the very same house again. The police thought the IRA was probably short on money and had stolen these paintings to sell them for ransom, BUT they ended up finding 7 of them the next morning in a ditch four miles from the house. Of course, these ones were the least valuable of the bunch.
The remaining 11 paintings were put into the bunker that had been prepared for them in advance and they stayed there while their thieves tried to organize sales. The issue was that the paintings, and especially the Vermeer, were so well known that they were almost impossible to sell. The group even tried to hold the Vermeer for ransom for £20 million but of course the government didn’t pay.
Over time though the paintings were slowly recovered here and there in various countries around the world. Then finally in 1993 Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid was recovered by an undercover police officer posing as a buyer. When he received the piece it was wrapped up with Goya’s Portrait of Dona Antonia Zarate, another one of the stolen paintings.
Soooo there we are I guess. The paintings are home and it looks to me as if the first two heists were carried out by the same person though we don’t know that for sure. The last heist of course isn’t liked to the Price sisters but it was too interesting not to throw it in. As we have seen time and time again, stealing the most recognizable paintings in the world for re-sale isn’t always the best plan. Looks like scaling a 10-foot wall before the police are notified is the easy part.
Works Cited
Dudley Edwards, Ruth. “The Oxford-Educated Upper-Class Rebel”. The Daily Mail. 2020. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8704105/She-debutante-turned-IRA-bomber-whos-frame-infamous-1970s-art-heist.html
Jason, Jonathan. “Vermeer Thefts: 1974 - The Guitar Player”. Essential Vermeer. 2020. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/fakes_thefts_school_of_delft_lost_sp/vermeer_theft_02.html
Jason, Jonathan. “Vermeer Thefts: 1986 - Lady Writing A Letter With Her Maid”. Essential Vermeer. 2020. http://www.essentialvermeer.com/fakes_thefts_school_of_delft_lost_sp/vermeer_theft_04.html