Pre-Owned The Rockwell Heist

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, a Twin Cities writer and editor who has covered crime and politics since the 1980s, is the author of Greed, Rage, and Love Gone Wrong. He has received numerous awards for investigative journalism.