Here's another interesting lawyer story...
1978 art heist solved
Retired Mass. lawyer says he held stolen paintings
By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff | February 1, 2006
For 28 years it has stood as the largest unsolved burglary from a private residence in state history: the theft of seven paintings, including a Cezanne, from a collector's home in the Berkshires.
Yesterday, the mystery was abruptly solved, as a retired Massachusetts lawyer told the Globe he has secretly held the stolen paintings, worth millions of dollars, since 1978.
Hours after his name was publicly linked to the case in a London courtroom, Robert M. Mardirosian, 71, said in an interview that the paintings were left with him by the lead suspect in the theft, a Pittsfield man whom Mardirosian was representing in another case.
The alleged thief, David Colvin, then 31, went to his office in Watertown seeking advice and lugging a bag full of paintings, the lawyer said.
''He was going to bring them to Florida to fence them, but I told him that if he ever got caught with them with the other case hanging over his head, he'd be in real trouble," Mardirosian said. ''So he left them upstairs in my attic in a big plastic bag."
The paintings had been stolen from the Stockbridge home of Michael Bakwin over Memorial Day weekend in 1978. It was an easy heist: Bakwin and his wife were away for the holiday and had long been casual about security for their inherited art collection. A much harder question, for Colvin and then for Mardirosian, was what to do with the precious works after the crime.
It was a question, in fact, that went 28 years in search of an answer.
Mardirosian told the Globe that more than a year passed after Colvin's visit before he discovered the paintings in his attic. Colvin had spent the night in a room upstairs from his office and left the bag behind, the lawyer said.
By the time Mardirosian made that discovery, Colvin was dead, shot in February 1979 by two Boston men who had come to his Pittsfield home to collect on a debt. That left Mardirosian alone in possession of the stolen paintings.
His first instinct, Mardirosian said, was to return the paintings for reward money that he thought would be put up by the paintings' insurer. But he abandoned that plan after learning that not even the most valuable of the paintings, the Cezanne, had been insured. In 1988, he said, he moved them from Massachusetts to Monaco and then to a bank in Switzerland for safekeeping while he figured out a plan for returning them to Bakwin for a finder's fee or reward of 10 percent of their value.
Mardirosian maintained an active criminal law practice, defending numerous individuals charged with narcotics, weapons, and white-collar offenses in Boston-area courts and elsewhere between the early 1960s and 1995 when he retired at age 60. He now lives in a gated community in Falmouth, where he works as a full-time painter and sculptor, under the professional name Romard, often traveling to France to work and sell his artwork.
Mardirosian acknowledged in the Globe interview that he was able to keep secret his possession of the paintings over the years by working through lawyers in London, Monaco, and Switzerland, as well as a shell company he incorporated in Panama, which does not name him as owner. He tried to sell the paintings on two occasions through the shell company, Erie International Trading Co., but failed in 1999 and again last year. On both occasions the Art Loss Register, a London-based company that tracks stolen artwork, was alerted to the sales and took steps to stop them.
A lawsuit filed last year by Bakwin and the Art Loss Register to stop the sale of four of the seven paintings led to yesterday's court hearing in London, during which Mardirosian was identified as sole owner of Erie International. The judge also ruled that Mardirosian be held responsible for paying an estimated $3 million in court, legal, and investigative fees accumulated by Bakwin in trying to get his paintings back.
''We're very pleased with today's results," said Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, who has been trying to regain the paintings for Bakwin since 1999. ''There's more legal work to be done, but I have no doubt now that these paintings will soon be returned to their rightful owner."
Radcliffe was sharply critical of Mardirosian for not promptly returning the works and said he hoped that the FBI would investigate his role. ''Mardirosian should have surrendered these stolen pictures as soon as he knew of their location,"' he said. ''We will be providing all the help that we can to the FBI."
Mardirosian said he realizes that the FBI, which originally investigated the theft, will probably want to question him about how he came to possess and hold on to the stolen paintings.
He also acknowledged that he not only served as Colvin's lawyer, but also worked in the same period on an unrelated criminal case against the man whom the FBI believes was to be the fence of the paintings. That could trigger questions about whether he actually obtained the paintings in the fashion he has described.
''I know some things don't look good here, but I believe I have a legitimate case to make," said Mardirosian. ''I could have sold these a dozen times, but never did. My whole intent was to find a way to get them back to the owner in return for a 10 percent commission."
Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, declined this week to say if the agency would take another look at the case in view of recent developments.
Bakwin was not available for comment.
The FBI had identified Colvin as a suspect in the case shortly after the theft, when an undercover federal agent reported that Colvin had approached him several months earlier and asked him if he would be interested in buying a Cezanne painting or stolen guns.
After Colvin's death, Bakwin had tried on his own to pursue the case, hiring private investigator Charles G. Moore of Plymouth to develop leads. Moore discovered that Mardirosian had represented both Colvin and the alleged would-be fence in the theft, but with Colvin dead and the alleged fence refusing to answer questions, the investigation stalled.
For his part, Mardirosian said he was considering filing suit against Bakwin in US courts for reneging on a deal that Erie Trading made with Bakwin in 1999. Under that agreement, the Cezanne was returned to Bakwin, and title to the other six paintings was signed over to Erie.
''I figured it was a fair exchange," Mardirosian said yesterday. ''They would get back the Cezanne, which they were valuing at about $10 million then, and I would get back the other six, which were valued at about $1 million."
A month after the exchange, Bakwin, feeling he could not sufficiently secure the masterwork, auctioned off the Cezanne at Sotheby's for $29.3 million.
Radcliffe has contended ever since that the document signing over title of the other six paintings to Erie International was not legally valid, that Bakwin had been coerced into signing it to regain his stolen Cezanne, and he has vowed to contest any effort by Erie to sell the other six.
Last year, when Erie moved to auction four of the six -- two portraits by Chaim Soutine, an early 20th century expressionist, and two others by French painters Maurice de Vlaminck and Maurice Utrillo -- at Sotheby's, Bakwin filed suit in London to stop the auction.
Erie's lawyers in London have contended that the dispute should be handled through formal arbitration in Swiss courts, as was set out in the 1999 agreement. However, in November, a lower British court upheld Bakwin's argument that the case should be heard in British courts. Last week, British High Court Judge Stanley Burnton said that if Erie wanted to appeal that ruling, it had to put up approximately $50,000 as potential court and legal fees and ruled that a two-page confidential statement that revealed that Mardirosian was the sole owner of Erie International should be unsealed.
The document, with Mardirosian's signature at the bottom, was unsealed at the hearing in Burnton's courtroom yesterday.
''I took [the lawyers'] advice and told them to give up," said Mardirosian.
Mardirosian said his next step will probably be to give back the paintings, but he wanted to consult with lawyers in Massachusetts to see if there are any alternatives, including suing Bakwin for breach of contract. Whatever course he follows, Mardirosian said he would not be arguing his own case because he now devotes all his time to painting and sculpture, work he says he loves passionately.
''An occupation that one is really good at sometimes overrides the occupation that one's heart and soul says one should be doing," Mardirosian writes on his website of his decision to give up his law practice. ''Fortunately, in some cases that real vocation does bubble up to the surface and rather explodes full-blown." |
