Rockwell Heist by Bruce Rubenstein
In 1978 seven Norman Rockwell paintings and a supposed Renoir, later discovered to be a forgery, were stolen from Elayne Galleries in St. Louis Park. It is still the biggest theft in Minnesota history, and no one was ever convicted for the crime. This is the story of the theft, the investigation, and the twenty-year quest to return the art to its rightful owners.The FBI suspected an inside job. Was it the scrappy working mother who owned the gallery? The owner of one of the paintings, who had a checkered past? Was a band of well-known and very talented Minneapolis burglars involved? And what about organized crime, which had the channels and expertise to fence the works or to hold them hostage? Tantalizing threads tied the case to the theft of another stolen forgery in New York City. But a sting operation fell short, and the trail for recovering the works ran cold. The bureau's search for the paintings stopped, and it closed the case in 1987.
Gallery owner Elayne Lindberg and her daughter Bonnie, motivated in part by their desire to clear Elayne's name, continued the hunt. Their story moves to shady connections and the international trade in stolen art, through Portugal, Argentina, Las Vegas, and Brazil, before its final dramatic resolution.
Bruce Rubenstein has published hundreds of true crime stories in weeklies and monthly magazines. In 1991 he received the Chicago Bar Association's Herman Kogan Media Award for his Chicago Magazine article about the conviction of four Mexican immigrants for a quadruple homicide (dubbed The Milwaukee Avenue Massacre by the Sun Times) that they did not commit. They were serving the 9th year of their sentences of life without the possibility of parole when his article came out. As a result of his article the Governor of Illinois pardoned them. An anthology of his crime stories, titled Greed Rage and Love Gone Wrong, was published by the University Of Minnesota Press in 2004. He won the Minnesota State Arts Council award for fiction in 1979, and published short stories in little magazines in the 70s and 80s. His story, Smoke got In My eyes, written for the Akashic Books' anthology, Twin Cities Noir (2006), was nominated for the Shamus Award. His fiction has recently appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. His book about a notorious art theft titled The Rockwell Heist was published by Borealis in March 2013.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780873518901 |
| ISBN 10 | 087351890X |
| Title | Rockwell Heist |
| Author | Bruce Rubenstein |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Minnesota Historical Society Press,U.S. |
| Year published | 2013-03-15 |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |