In the early hours of March 18, 1990, two men posing as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and pulled off the largest museum robbery in history,. In this episode of pplpod, we break down the 81-minute heist where thieves handcuffed the night guards and slashed 13 masterpieces from their frames, including works by Manet, Degas, and Vermeer's The Concert, the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world,,.

We explore the enduring mystery of why the thieves took relatively valueless items like a finial while leaving Raphaels and Botticellis untouched, and why empty frames still hang in the museum as placeholders today,. The discussion covers the FBI's investigation into the Boston Mafia, focusing on suspects like the Merlino gang, mobster Bobby Donati, and Robert Gentile, whose backyard shed was r ...