[peaceful music playing]
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[suspenseful music playing]
[narrator] Georges and Suzie were almost breathless with anticipation
as they approached the expansive entryway to the museum.
At home in Paris, Georges and Suzie lived a conservative life,
ostensibly.
But they had a double life.
Highly acquisitive by nature,
both were thrill seekers of a particular variety.
Rather than seeking stimulation from activities
such as sky-diving, hang-gliding or Russian roulette,
they satisfied their psychological need
by jeopardizing their freedom in a succession of larcenies.
They saw themselves as masters of victimless crimes.
This was not their first undertaking,
but it was their most ambitious, by far.
My God, this is like a confession.
[woman] Yeah, if it speaks to you, read it.
What?
It's a con-- It's unbelievable.
It is a confession.
[woman giggles]
"Thrill Seekers."
Mild little thrill seekers.
[woman]
"They saw themselves as masters of victimless crimes."
[intense music playing]
♪ I came to last ♪
♪ I came to heal it all ♪
♪ And swindle the best ♪
♪ On my call they all fall ♪
♪ Then spring to confess ♪
♪ Round here it's all for the taking ♪
♪ Light up my face ♪
♪ Straighten my tie ♪
♪ Jump off the page ♪
♪ See your hope whizzing by ♪
♪ But they all like ♪
♪ That I fed a lie ♪
♪ They all just sit there without a care ♪
♪ And kiss that wealth goodbye ♪
All right, so where should we start?
The big room.
Got a pretty nice collection of some "Playboy" memorabilia.
-This is, um, Dansk Mesa. -And this is all American West.
-Yeah, this is a brochure for it. -Ooh.
Some great hand-signed prints.
-Is it signed? -No.
-No? -Might be under the frame, though.
Okay.
That one's kind of cool, too.
I didn't like it at first, but...
almost has that...
[man 2] Feels like a hotel piece.
[man 1] Yeah, hotel art, exactly.
[man 3] Some pretty decent stuff so far.
-[man 1] It's a much cleaner... -[man 2] It is much cleaner.
...much cleaner estate than the Alter house.
And the art is better. [chuckles]
[man 1] Yeah. Well, for the most part.
-For the most part. -Except for one. -[men laugh]
I think you're only allowed one...
one find like that in a lifetime.
-[man 2] That's enough. -Yeah.
[Buck Burns] When we do estates, walking into a home,
you do realize you're walking into somebody's personal life,
so you go in there with that energy.
Walking into the Alters' estate, uh...
it was kind of like a time capsule.
[Dave Van Auker] The house was strange.
The yard was strange.
There were tiled pyramids and obelisks in the yard.
There were these very strange pillars
that formed a circle
that had busts on top of them,
and it was Shakespeare, it was Moliere,
it was Beethoven, it was different philosophers,
different musicians, artists, composers.
It was a very creepy feeling.
In the house, there weren't a lot of pictures of the kids.
There were a lot of pictures of the couple, Jerry and Rita.
It was just Jerry and Rita, Jerry and Rita, Jerry and Rita.
You definitely got the sense that these were kind of
really cool, hip, beatniky people who are really with it.
You know, he was a sax player.
It looked like she modeled.
These people were world travelers.
[Buck] One room was full of just the African stuff.
There was a lot, you know, shelves of it.
[Dave] And there were some spears
and nice sharp, pointy objects.
And then, in the hallways and bedrooms
were the most hideous paintings you've ever seen,
and there were, I believe, 75 of them.
[Buck] Yeah, all the paintings
that, I guess, Mr. Alter did.
So strange.
And they were everywhere, including the bathroom.
It was very just surreal.
[Dave] Handling their objects...
like some of the stuff that Jerry had written,
some really strange poetry...
you had this real sense that they were each other's world.
[camera shutter clicks]
We all three were walking down the hallway
and Rick went into the first bedroom,
Buck went into the second bedroom,
and I turned and went into the master bedroom.
And there was a mid-century dresser
that a door was off of and setting on the floor,
and so I got down on my knees
and I, you know, kind of shut the door
and reached to pick up the dresser door.
And when I did that, I kind of glanced up
and I saw the painting that was behind the door.
And it caught my eye because it was very mid-century.
It was kind of, you know, cool.
I called across the hall
to my partner Buck and I said,
"Hey, come over and take a look at this, see if you like it."
And... because we own a guesthouse, and we thought, you know,
this would be a cool piece to hang in there.
Horrible frame. [chuckles]
I called it a Walmart frame.
Truthfully, probably the ugliest painting
I've ever seen in my life.
I would have left it behind the bedroom door in the house.
[chuckles]
Said, "Oh, okay, then we'll take that."
I brought it down in the back seat of my pickup truck.
Then it went on top
of all of the spears and jaggedy, you know, items.
And, um, we drove it
back here into town.
We took it off and we brought it into the store.
It had probably been in the store maybe ten minutes
and a gentleman walked in the door
and I heard him say to Buck,
"Is this real?"
I just saw it standing on the floor there.
I noticed that it said "de Kooning" at the bottom,
and I was familiar with de Kooning.
James said, "I'm pretty sure this is real,
and I'm interested in buying it if it is."
And I offered Dave $200,000 for it.
And, of course, I'm thinking he's kidding, so I go, "Sold!"
And he walks around the corner to the desk and he says, "I'm serious."
I had some... some money in the bank at the time.
Could have afforded that, let's put it that way.
He said it could be worth $200,000,
it could be worth $2 million.
He said, "But you need to find out, but I definitely want it."
Since I live in my van,
I keep most of my stuff in my storage unit.
Probably would have gone in my storage unit.
We all just kind of look at each other and say,
you know, "This is just too weird. Something's up here."
I kept looking on Google for it, and four pages deep in Google,
I came across the "Arizona Republic" article.
It wasn't a heist you'd see in a Hollywood movie,
but it certainly gained some notoriety as one of Tucson's biggest mysteries.
It's been 30 years since two thieves made off with a priceless piece of art
from the University of Arizona's Museum of Art.
This is where William de Kooning's
"Woman-Ochre" sat 30 years ago,
before it was cut out of its frame
and simply walked out the front door.
[peaceful music playing]
[woman] De Kooning is a towering presence
and he has a wonderful story.
He stowed away, came to America,
suffered for decades,
lived on the edge,
and then had this almost surreal success.
He has a beautiful, forceful, but elusive brush stroke,
that always has a sort of kink in it,
as if it's scooting off in some new direction,
like it's saying goodbye.
He had made one of the best fancy-pants styles,
his black-and-whites of the late '40s,
abstract paintings.
So then he moved from there
to this rude, squawky women series.
[Annalyn Swan] "Beauty is petulant," he said.
"I like the grotesque, it's more joyous."
[Annalyn] De Kooning's 1953 show with the six big women,
major, major breakthrough.
People woke up.
"Life" magazine realized
we have this homegrown American art scene,
and it just took off from there.
He became one of the first rock stars of the American scene.
Then he did another cycle of paintings,
and that's where "Woman-Ochre" is.
"Woman-Ochre" was donated
to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in the early '60s.
The University of Arizona Museum of Art
was off to one corner in the campus.
It was not a gigantic collection,
but it was a really good one.
It was a really great snapshot in time
of postwar American art.
The "Woman-Ochre" was sort of the soul
of the museum, that painting.
To have a woman painting here is very, very special.
These are my working notes
that I've had over the years.
Uh, and...
things that I will refer back to every once in a while.
Police reports, articles, handwritten notes, et cetera.
Just things that help me with the investigation
over the years.
There are specific cases that each officer
in their career just...
is there for all of their career,
you know, that they think about.
"What could we have done better that day?"
"Is there anything we could have done more of?"
It was the day after Thanksgiving,
and the campus is pretty much closed on those days,
however the art museum is open.
Now, remember, this was 36 years ago.
[chuckles]
So my memory may be a little bit rusty.
But I got there and I was surprised
because there were two people sitting on the concrete bench
as I approached.
Good morning, John.
What about them?
Sure. We can open up.
[straining]
[door closes]
Go, go, go!
Hi, miss, I just wanted to ask you
about this painting here.
[water flushing]
Oh.
[cutter rattles]
Excuse me.
Ah, actually, I'm going to bring you this way...
Okay.
Well, thank you so much. [laughs]
Did you see that?
Come on, honey!
What are you doing?
Holy shit.
It's a mystery, an unsolved case,
that has the folks working here asking, "Where is the 'Woman-Ochre'"?
Authorities still don't know who took it.
[reporter] The mystery: who stole the painting?
After 30 years of doing these investigations,
I've discovered that there's basically three types of thieves.
The first type is the theft of opportunity.
That's a person who basically shoplifts.
He goes in, sees something he likes,
sees an opportunity to steal it, he takes it.
Most of the collection couldn't be stolen, it was too big.
This was something you could cut out and you could roll up
and you could abscond with.
The second is the individuals who are doing it for money.
That's the largest grouping, by the way.
They see these crazy numbers coming out of auction houses.
You know, they think, "Well, if I can make $5 million on doing an art theft,
I would do that."
Then there's the third kind of art thief,
and that's the art thief who steals for themselves.
They're very rare.
You have somebody that might fixate on a particular piece,
and they just have to have it.
They feel like, since they care about it,
they're entitled to have these pieces.
And those are the most dangerous,
and they're the hardest to capture.
And the reason for that is they don't steal for money,
nor do they steal because it just happens to be there.
They think about it, they steal these materials,
they hide them, they keep them for their eyes only,
and those things go away for many years
before they come back.
[Bob Cauthorn] "Woman-Ochre" was a striking painting.
It was more provocative than most of them. It really was in your face.
That's what got everybody so worked up about the women series to begin with,
that de Kooning punches you.
If you got the right psychology, you go after that painting,
you take it, you make it yours, you know?
Uh, those are absolutely things that could have happened.
But a dominant theory was, is that it was a contract job,
and that it was a collector who needed a de Kooning specifically.
This was your chance to get it if you wanted a de Kooning.
[clicks tongue] Go for it right now, really fast.
Day after Thanksgiving.
Slow day.
Sleepy southwest.
I was out doing Christmas shopping.
What else do you do the day after Thanksgiving?
And, uh, back then there were pagers,
so I got this page to call
and, uh, talk to the chief.
From there, the investigation began.
We immediately brought the FBI in,
along with Interpol.
We worked hand in hand with the university police department at the very beginning.
[Olivia Miller] The director at the time, Peter Birmingham,
was simultaneously, you know, horrified, but also
held out a shred of optimism, you know.
He said, "We have a 50/50 chance of recovering it,
and I'm hopeful that it will be found."
[Bob] First, the FBI said, "We're gonna get it back, we're gonna get it back,
we're gonna get it back," 'cause they assumed it was gonna hit the market.
You know, the FBI's got its way.
I mean, people are monitoring, you know, underground art markets,
and they do find artwork that's recovered that way,
but the painting never hit the market, which continued that dominant theory, right?
This was a contract job. Somebody wanted that de Kooning and wanted it very specifically.
[Brian Seastone] We knew this was gonna be tough.
There weren't fingerprints. There just wasn't anything.
We were relying on the community,
if anybody had seen anything.
We had a psychic call one day and said that,
uh, they thought they knew where it was.
I've always said, you always keep an open mind.
[Bob] I called the FBI.
I would check in on it to find out what the status was.
There was nothing to investigate.
[Brian] The leads dried up very quickly.
[Bob] Basically, a dome of silence dropped over this thing.
Case was closed in 1987 for lack of leads.
[Bob] They hung the empty frame for the de Kooning on the wall.
But when we close an investigation,
that just doesn't mean we're done,
you know, we're never gonna look at this again.
It just means, think of it as,
"well, we're gonna put it on the shelf for a while."
"Woman-Ochre" was, in fact,
on the FBI's top 10 art crimes list.
[Brian] At the time of the theft, it was valued
at between $300,000 and $400,000.
Now it's valued somewhere over $160 million.
It's an unsolved case that still haunts
the University of Arizona Museum of Art,
but with the upcoming anniversary,
the museum remains hopeful.
[ringing]
I'll never forget that moment.
I was sitting in my office and the phone rings,
and it's David on the other line.
And I'm trying to tell her,
I said, "Look, I'm not crazy, you know.
I purchased this estate
and this painting was in it,"
and I said, "It's an exact match."
Me and my coworker just look at each other,
and our eyes get really big,
and she lunges forward and says,
"Are we gonna remember this moment for the rest of our lives?"
And they asked him to email me photos of the painting,
details of the signature.
Every time we opened a photo, we just...
would think, "How do we get to Silver City?"
You know, this is, this is "Woman-Ochre."
We contacted the police department here on campus,
and the police officer said,
"No, you know, we prefer that there's no side conversations happening"
and told me to not contact David anymore,
you know, that they were going to take over from there.
[Dave] And then that was the last we heard from them.
It went crickets.
In the meantime, word has kind of gotten around
to a few people in town, so people are coming in saying,
"We wanna see the de Kooning."
And so, you know, we said something like,
"Oh, we took it away."
Then it comes closing time, and I took it home
and I put it behind my sofa.
I actually went and I got a couple of guns
out of the gun safe,
because we thought, you know,
a meth head, you know, has heard that we have this.
I mean, people are killed for less
than a $100 million painting, so...
It was terrifying. Very terrifying.
[Dave] Nobody was calling us. Why hasn't anyone called us?
Meanwhile, we're losing our minds,
because we're very nervous,
uh, that he sounded genuine
but we had no idea who he was,
and we were fearful that
the longer he had to sit with the painting...
perhaps the more likely he would be to change his mind
or to try to figure out, uh... how to keep the painting
or maybe hide it again.
I get a phone call and I answer it,
and it's somebody identifying themselves
as "an intellectual properties attorney,"
and basically is kind of telling me I'm stupid
and, you know, that I really need to rethink this.
There's a lot of money on the table,
millions of dollars on the table, uh...
So after I, you know, screamed at him for a minute
and I hung up on him, I dialed Olivia back.
Hi, Olivia.
This is Dave Van Auker in Silver City, New Mexico.
I'm the one with the de Kooning painting.
Now, all of the sudden, I have vulture attorneys
wanting me to do things,
and I don't wanna do it.
I don't wanna do this.
All I want is that painting to go back where it belongs,
and I'm just freaking out
because I'm not hearing from you guys,
and somebody might cut my throat for this de Kooning painting.
Keep this on record.
I don't wanna hold it hostage, I don't wanna hold it ransom,
I want you to have the painting back.
[Olivia] I'll never forget that call.
Just the sense of relief, 'cause at that point we thought
we were so close and maybe we wouldn't get it.
On Friday night, we had the go-ahead
to go to Silver City to go and pick up the painting.
[pensive music playing]
[laughter]
[Dave] People ask us all the time how...
how you could just do it so easily, and it's like...
-how could you not? -How could you not?
And that should be the question,
"How could you not do it so easily?"
Many thought a $160 million masterpiece
stolen from a museum in 1985 was gone forever,
until it turned up in Silver City.
After the painting was back at the U of A,
the museum sent it off to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles
for its conservation process
to restore the painting to its original glory
as much as possible,
fixing tears and paint loss.
[reporter] But who took it and where it went between Tucson and Silver City
is the next mystery to solve.
[narrator] Ken and Judy built their fine home,
complete with swimming pool and extensive gardens,
in rural New Mexico,
and it was now the showplace of the county.
After Ken's heart attack at age 65, he thought...
The first chance I get to hire a good pair of hands
to take over the outside tasks,
I'll do it.
He didn't have to wait long.
-[phone rings] -He received a phone call from one of his neighbors.
Hello.
Yes.
A rancher who had hired a Mexican laborer
to rebuild some fences.
Wonderful.
All right, we'll talk soon.
José was a very good worker, honest, never complained,
and was worth several times the amount generally paid
to illegal immigrant itinerant workers.
Ken couldn't have wished for a better worker.
The food and few dollars this would cost
would be the best bargain he ever made.
He was now free to do some writing,
a secret ambition he always had but never had the time to try,
until now.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[wind whistling]
[Ron Roseman] Rita and Jerry Alter were my aunt and uncle.
Rita Alter was my mother's sister.
She was just very sweet.
I became a teacher because of my aunt and uncle.
I just admired them.
My aunt had a bachelor's in education,
a master's in speech pathology.
I actually had Rita
as one of my teachers
or a specialist when I was little.
I had a hard time pronouncing words,
so I had her when I was in grade school.
She was a nice lady.
She was real nice.
Uncle Jerry, he was a music teacher
for the New York City public schools.
When they moved to New Mexico,
my uncle retired.
Here's some pictures of him playing his clarinet.
I don't know who took this, but it's kind of neat.
I met Jerry Alter in 1965,
when I entered fifth grade.
And I had him for an orchestra class.
Jerry Alter went around like an itinerant teacher
to different classes and would teach music.
Mr. Alter was very, um, vibrant.
Music has just been so important in my life,
and he was the first person to give me music.
He was very empowering, very motivating.
He made me feel like I mattered.
Mr. Alter was just a genuinely nice,
uplifting person.
[Carole Sklar] My mother and I walk into a store,
and who do we see but Jerry, my brother,
and out walks Rita
in a one-piece white bathing suit,
looking very beautiful.
That was how we met Rita.
I thought that was kind of cute.
Especially since they lasted forever.
[Ron] Oh, they were definitely soulmates,
and you could just see it in their eyes
that they adored one another.
He would do anything for her.
We would see them every summer growing up.
Always looked forward to visiting them.
They were exciting.
They always had interesting stories to tell,
uh, about their travels.
You know, I just admired their... their lifestyle.
Here is their list of, uh...
all the places they visited
from 1957,
so they got married in June of '57.
That was their honeymoon trip.
And their last trip was 2010.
Their travels were their life accomplishment.
Rita and I worked together,
and one evening she said,
"Would you and Rick and the girls have dinner with us?"
We saw pictures of some of their travels,
and, oh my God, every trip was like
truly an adventure.
[Rick Miller] Yeah, very unique.
[Christy Miller] It wasn't just, "Let's get on a plane
and go see a few monuments and..."
-[Rick M.] Yeah, they didn't travel in luxury. -[Christy] No.
[Rick M.] They were much more adventurous, you know.
If they would go to Tahiti,
they would go to Tahiti for a month
and live in a hut on the beach.
[Christy] Right.
[Rick M.] Um, or they would go on a safari in Africa.
They would go to Alaska.
Um, they just went to very exotic places.
And that was all very exciting to hear about.
[Carole] In my studio, there are several things
that Jerry and Rita gave us from their travels.
These two figures,
male and female,
they look war-like.
They wrote from their trips.
Who wrote this one? Jerry and Rita. Okay.
"Carib dancers."
In this Anguilla place.
"Hi, Carole and Martin.
This is the best beach in Anguilla
where we spend most of our days swimming
and in the sparkling water and snorkeling
on the fish-filled reefs."
[Ron] My aunt was a recorder,
she recorded everything,
particularly about her trips.
And she had a journal
that she took on her trips.
The itineraries she would make out would be very precise.
That was always part of a trip,
you'd sit down and see the slides
of their latest adventure.
Sometimes the slide shows were a little much.
Their life revolved around that.
-It did. -Planning the next trip.
[Rick M.] I think that's what they lived for.
[Ron] On some level, I, you know,
I wished they were my parents.
They were just cool.
Well, my uncle passed away when he was 81.
He was five years older than my aunt.
When we discovered my aunt had Alzheimer's disease,
uh, we came out to visit her within a month or so
and she named me as executor,
building the estate to divide between her two children.
The kids both had some issues.
[Rick M.] Her son, I don't believe he was able to work,
and I think Rita would go to check on him,
to make sure he was okay.
She had asked me to make sure particularly
her son was taken care of.
She passed away from a stroke
not too many months later.
It felt like a great responsibility
to make sure that, uh,
I wasn't throwing away anything important.
Their house was full of souvenirs
from their travels around the world.
It just had this real sense of mystery to it.
It's almost like going into a little museum.
It was just this big mess of, "who are we gonna find,
who's even gonna want any of this stuff?"
You know, "is any of this worth anything?"
Uh, that's... [laughs]
That's really funny.
"Is any of this worth anything?"
[Ron] I called, you know,
a couple dozen universities and art museums
and sent them pictures of, you know, what I had,
which included the de Kooning.
I sent it to the Met, MoMA, the Smithsonian,
universities in New Mexico.
I got no offers,
either, you know, for payment or for donation.
[Isaac Roseman] My dad's role is to, uh...
either auction or sell off the contents of the estate
for the trust of Joey and Barbara Alter, the kids.
[Ron] Silver City seemed to be the most practical place
to look to sell the things that my cousins didn't want
and hopefully build up part of the estate.
I called Manzanita Ridge, and I sold them furniture,
paintings, bedding and any of those knickknacks
that the museums weren't interested in.
One thing did belong in a museum.
[laughs]
And we found that out, um...
[laughs]
...in a very awkward way.
[Ron] There was a call, and she said, "This is the FBI,"
and she said, "You're not in trouble in any way.
We just need some information."
And then she proceeded to explain what was found
in my aunt and uncle's possessions.
I'm not sure I'd ever been this shocked.
[Carole] My God, you know.
I didn't know.
I had no idea
that this painting was in their house.
[woman]
Yeah, we were very surprised, very surprised.
In Cliff, you know.
Nothing had ever happened in Cliff.
[western music playing]
[Mike Burns] Cliff is more than 50 miles from the nearest interstate.
Cliff is your destination.
It's not what I would call a pass-through community.
If it's news that's fit to print or be discussed,
it's gonna be discussed at this convenience store,
sells a little bit of liquor.
[man] Movie company's here and they're making a movie.
No, really.
Yeah, you need to get up here so you can get in it.
[man 2] Be sure and get a picture of my gun up there on the wall.
And then they found that painting behind the door.
[man] Yeah.
Wasn't it worth about 300,000?
160-- Yeah.
My God.
Wow, you know, that just was crazy to me
that it was just hanging up on their wall all those years.
But I would have never figured that that painting
was worth anything just by glancing at it.
[Ron] When I first saw it, I...
I'm not a terribly big fan, personally, of modern art.
It didn't impress me a whole lot.
On the esthetically beautiful, I would say no.
Well, my personal opinion,
I wouldn't give you $5 for it.
And when I look at it, it doesn't...
make any sense to me.
I could make a lot of people mad if I say this,
um, but if you've ever seen pictures of bonobo apes
and the stuff that they paint,
it's kind of similar.
[laughing]
Growing up in this area, you know,
we're into western-type scenery and cattle or horses or deer.
Tim Cox to me, he's the artist, you know.
Yeah.
No offense to this, whoever painted this and all that.
Tim Cox, and if I was to find one of his paintings
on somebody's wall or door or something like that,
I would pay attention to it, you know,
and if I found one that was hidden, it would be suspicious all right.
But to see something like that...
it wouldn't have made me suspicious at all.
I'd have thought they probably put it back there
'cause it was so ugly or something.
Yeah. [laughing]
When we first heard about the painting,
I think, deep down, I didn't want to believe it,
because I really liked Rita.
If they took this valuable painting
worth $150 million, $160 million,
what was the point if they were just going to hang it
on the wall behind their bedroom door?
It's not like they sold it.
[Marvin Strange] School teacher at the school
stealing paintings, I mean...
[chuckles]
But we did wonder how they funded their travel.
[Christy] It would be like two or three
trips a year, maybe.
And I know how much teachers make,
so where did the money come from to live this lifestyle?
I think they took it. I think it was them.
[Dave] The very first time I saw it,
it was like, "How odd."
Nobody would hang a painting here.
[Buck] There was even a screw in the doorjamb
that prevented the door from being opened all the way,
I'm assuming to preserve, maybe, the doorknob
from hitting the painting.
It was definitely hidden.
-It was solely for them. -Yeah.
It was purely for their benefit, for their enjoyment.
It was not for anybody else to see.
[Rick M.] There certainly are unanswered questions.
And they were in Tucson.
[Ron] Probably once every three years
they'd come to my parents' house for Thanksgiving,
and, uh, at the time, in 1985,
we were living in the Tucson area.
And this is the photo in, uh...
November '85.
Thanksgiving, with my aunt and uncle visiting us.
They were very active people,
and when they would come on Thanksgiving,
they'd stay the night
and take off in the morning to hike.
And that's the date the theft happened.
As we were going through stuff, we found these travel journals
that the Alters kept,
and what was kind of interesting about them is
they noted, every time they left Cliff,
every time they went anywhere for more than a day,
they wrote it down.
Thanksgiving 1985 was left completely blank,
which we found fascinating.
And then, you know, then we're right back into taking notes again,
right after.
[Ron] The thing I remember most is,
my uncle was showing off his car.
His... You know, they drove there in their sports car.
They drove their red Toyota Supra that day.
The small description that we had of the vehicle--
rust-colored car.
[Dave] This is what few little bits
of photographs and stuff we had.
And, you know, some of the things
that we found fascinating were the red sports car.
And then we found it fascinating that,
in the description of the woman leaving,
she was wearing a red coat,
and the drawing is exactly this red coat.
And these pictures are 1985.
The envelope that they came out of said 1985.
There's snow on the mountain behind,
so this either happened right before the theft
or right after.
Probably within a month.
[Brian] We were able
to get some composites
of the two people.
Wow, that sure looks like he did.
And it looks like her.
It looked pretty similar to my great aunt and uncle.
I see a resemblance.
Yeah, it looks like them.
The same hair.
Maybe he had a fake mustache
the day he did the actual theft.
The mustache looked like a theatrical mustache.
It did not look real.
But it does look like both of them.
There's a saying that there are no coincidences,
but there's so many coincidences
that it's hard to dismiss that
as a very strong possibility.
Man, I, uh...
You know, if they really came and smiled
and had a great time with us, all the time planning,
it's just weird that, uh,
they could go through
and have just another Thanksgiving
with my aunt and uncle and cousin.
Uh, it's compelling, right? But it's not definitive.
I still would like to think that this isn't my aunt and uncle.
I don't believe it,
but then I think...
I... yeah, I do believe it.
Well, I mean, you know,
I don't know.
[typewriter bell dings]
[typewriter keys clacking]
[Carole] Rita was sweet and good and lovely,
and I couldn't see that as my brother,
my sister-in-law,
my family,
doing something like that.
These books are...
the three that Jerry wrote.
And in this one,
it's called "The Cup and the Lip."
These photos are his photos,
of course, on the cover.
And it's a book
of short stories
of travels
and other invent--
Well, some are...
Well, I think that all artists
have a right to invent
anything they want to.
It's your freedom, you know.
-Here it is. -Guess what I found.
Yep, there it is.
Manuscript
for "The Cup and the Lip."
When he published the book,
he contacted me and asked if I'd like a copy.
And he was very excited about it.
So I read the first couple stories.
There's just so much writing.
I personally didn't find them very interesting.
So, yeah, this is "Thrill Seekers,"
part of the manuscript from Jerry.
Uh, "Georges and Suzie were almost breathless with anticipation
as they approached the expansive entryway to the museum."
"At home in Paris, Georges and Suzie lived a conservative life,"
comma, "ostensibly."
"But they had a double life."
"Highly acquisitive by nature...
both were thrill seekers of a particular variety."
"They saw themselves as masters of victimless crimes."
Wow.
Yeah, it's... [chuckles]
I mean, yeah, so you look at these.
"This is not their first undertaking,
but it was their most ambitious, by far."
It... it describes them.
They were talking about themselves.
[Dave] One of the travel agents
that used to book their things said,
"I'm sure they did it."
And we're like, "Why are you sure?"
And she said, "'Cause they were adrenaline junkies."
They would book a flight into a country
and they would make arrangements
for somebody to smuggle them
into a country that they weren't allowed to go into.
This little old man and his little old lady
were adrenaline junkies.
This is one I thought was kind of, um...
interesting because I don't think
"The Eye of the Jaguar"
is in the table of contents.
But I think the story made it.
[narrator] One afternoon at 4 p.m.,
a well-dressed woman in her late middle age,
accompanied by her 14-year-old granddaughter,
entered the museum.
After making a one-hour tour through all the rooms,
they stopped to more closely examine
the museum's prized exhibit,
enclosed in a glass case without a pedestal.
It was one of the world's largest
and most perfect emeralds,
the Eye of the Jaguar.
Go.
[suspenseful music playing]
The guard thought, "Wow, those two seem to be in a hurry.
Most unusual for visitors to a place such as this."
"My God!" he screamed inwardly,
"They stole the Eye of the Jaguar!
Our priceless jewel is gone!"
In a room several miles away
from the place this incident transpired,
a plush couch is centered against one wall.
Above the couch, a single beam of light
is focused on a panel in the center of the opposite wall.
At the press of a button on the arm of the couch,
the panel flies to one side,
revealing a stunning 120-carat emerald,
unique in the entire world,
and two pairs of eyes exclusively are...
-"...there to see." -"...there to see."
Jerry, how do you meet so many couples
that happen to steal
certain valuable objects in very similar ways?
That's very odd. [chuckles]
Reading this, in the context of this book,
and my own take on this case,
is about as consistent
as a New York hot dog on a hot summer day.
We didn't know the real Jerry and Rita.
They did a good job of hiding whatever they were.
[Ron] I just wonder a lot.
People who you think are upstanding citizens,
what motivates them all of a sudden
to do something like this?
It seems like this couple is really the story here.
They're the mystery.
[woman] So, where were you working last week?
So, I've been working in the lower right area.
-Uh, you see that brown patch? -Down here?
Yeah, that looks beautiful.
And, um, it's actually quite amazing how much it relaxes
once we get it under the heat.
I'm Ulrich Birkmaier.
I'm the senior conservator of paintings
here at the Getty Museum.
My name is Laura Rivers. I'm one of the painting conservators
working on the painting.
[Ulrich] We're currently in the midst
of the treatment of the painting.
[Laura] It's a very fractured paint surface
that was damaged during the theft.
And this is the moment at which we are,
carefully and very slowly, under the microscope,
putting that back together.
So essentially through the microscope,
I am looking at
sort of canyons formed by the missing paint
that probably flaked off during the rolling.
I am moving pieces back into place
with this hot-air needle
and then pressing very lightly
to sort of set them down.
Because of the rolling,
flakes are scattered over the surface.
So right now I've actually found
a flake that doesn't belong here.
And I'm going to very carefully
put it in box 21.
After the theft, a strainer was made for it
and the strainer is quite crude.
Uh, it would have been available in an art store.
The painting was then stapled to that strainer
and the staples went through
what should have been the front of the painting.
And that's one of the most difficult issues that we face.
And once that was done,
someone chose to varnish the painting.
[Ulrich] You can definitely tell that the thieves
had some art background.
[Laura] It feels like a faint echo
of what would have been done in a professional context.
They also made the choice to do some minor retouching,
so touching in some of the areas of loss with paint.
[Josh Goldberg] That's a sacrilege.
It's just, it's such hubris.
I mean, to think that you could even do that.
Putting your own stupid paint on it?
I mean, if you're untrained? I mean, my God.
Really, uh...
What would lead anybody
to think that they should do such a thing?
[Jamie Strange] Jerry has more grandiose ideas, I guess.
To me, he was a person that was more book smart
than, than common sense smart.
[Jamie] Like he built lots of stuff at the property.
Stuff in the house isn't square.
This structure that we're sitting under isn't level,
so we have a joke now
that stuff in the house is "Jerry-rigged"
'cause it was all done by Jerry.
[Ron] He always seemed to know a lot about
just about anything that came up.
I could picture him speaking with a brain surgeon
and arguing with him about something about brain surgery.
He knew better.
But I think, if you're confident in yourself,
there's no need to impress anybody.
My uncle was a jazz musician, a good one,
and maybe he imagined
that he should have gone on to better things,
but circumstances didn't put him in the right place
at the right time.
He was teaching in Manhattan,
and he felt the schools were getting rougher and rougher
and the administration was insensitive
to the plights of the teachers.
He felt he deserved a promotion he didn't get,
and he had enough,
so he moved to Cliff when he was 47.
[narrator] Quentin Carlyle had spent 35 years
as an accountant in a large company.
He never received a promotion.
And his status had remained identical
to what it was the day he was hired.
As the years passed, he found himself
taking direction from younger and younger coworkers.
To hell with them all!
His 35-year retirement would be effective in a month's time.
[Ron] He had ambitions with some of his artwork
and his writing.
[Buck] Well, even being in the house, the house was set up
more so as an alter to what I consider
the crazy bright vibrant artwork that just lined the walls.
He liked to do a lot of painting.
It's not great painting.
Like, it was a hobby and it was fun,
but his artistic ability was not great.
But I think it was all done, we heard, for therapy.
-Yeah, for therapy. -After he had a stroke or something.
[Ron] His father passed away from a heart attack
at a young age,
and my uncle had suffered a major heart attack himself.
His heart was much weakened.
So he became very afraid of getting ill.
Deep down, Sam knew he was having a heart attack,
but at 39, he was far short of the age for most men
when this occurs.
If you want to live, you must give up
all excessive physical activity
and find sedentary work of a calming nature.
I'll be a painter.
What do you know about art?
You never went to art school
to be properly trained to be an artist.
In painting, formal education is not essential.
During the month-long exhibition,
all paintings sold for 50K each.
Sam realized with all modesty,
he might have been blessed with a spark of genius.
I hate to say it,
but I think he thought more of himself
than he actually was.
Probably his writing this, he'd thought,
you know, he was maybe gonna make it big.
[Buck] Yeah.
Ken was quite a talented writer.
To further hone his skills, he registered in a creative writing class
given at the university in town.
This left Judy with a lot of free time alone.
The picture became clear in Ken's mind.
Ken had José load some tools into Ken's wheelbarrow.
These were brought to the area of the magnificent front garden,
where the septic tank lay buried under 2 feet of soil,
plastic sheeting, and crushed red lava rock.
Ken reached for his 8-pound sledgehammer.
[Dave] You wonder, were they fantasies,
and in his mind, you know, this is what he wanted?
I think Jerry Alter
might have been living in a bit of a fantasy world.
But I think his outlet was his book.
[Isaac] "Harry felt a black hatred for man and all his works.
Certainly in his adult life,
he had already left a swath of destruction
in his wake.
Ruined property and devastated lives
caused not the slightest upset or pang of conscience in him.
Of course, Squire would never commit
the sort of overt illegal act
sure to bring the police down on him.
No, he was too smart for that.
He would have to live freely for a very long time
in order to exact his revenge on God and mankind
for slighting him, for disrespecting him,
and for depriving him of his opportunities."
[Bob] "The Thief Collector"
is the darkest of them all.
And it also speaks of a kind of self-victimhood,
you know, that "I must have this, I must have this,
nobody else can have this."
That's not healthy.
[Mark Stevens] Everything about the case suggests that
the person who stole the painting
had some kind of obsession.
Why would you risk going to jail
if you didn't?
Why would you not sell it
if you were just interested in making money?
Why would you keep it in your bedroom for decades
and hide it there if it was not some personal obsession?
[Bob] It may well be the case
that they experienced de Kooning's paintings directly,
you know, because he was hitting right when they were there.
The chances of them bumping into de Kooning are very high.
You know, the chances of anybody bumping into-- these guys are just drinking in bars.
Everybody and his brother showed up
at one time or another at the galleries
or at the Cedar Bar who was interested in painting.
So it's not far-fetched at all.
They could have been, you know, I don't know,
but they could have been disappointed that
their life didn't work out
in the way they might have wanted.
You can imagine it was a symbol of all his disappointment,
all his aspiration, all his anger.
And then to... to razor it out of the frame,
um, that's saying that, "Well, secretly, actually,
I'm as good as any of you.
I can kill you, I can steal you, I can dominate you."
[Ron] I could see my uncle thinking,
"If I can't be famous,
at least I could be infamous."
I wonder if they felt like the painting personally, that it belonged to them.
[Dave] We have some early pictures of Rita,
and she was a stunning woman, absolutely beautiful woman.
And then, of course, then you start hearing
about how de Kooning was a womanizer
and slept with his models and things like that.
And so then we thought, well, maybe that was part of this.
Maybe Rita was the model for it.
[Bob] "Woman-Ochre" was painted in 1955.
[Ron] My aunt and uncle met
somewhere in 1955.
[Christy] Somehow that made...
that made it easier for me to believe...
[Rick M.] Yeah, if that were true.
[Christy] ...if she was the model, like, okay.
Well, and if he told you that it was yours because you were the model,
then, and you didn't get it, well then, by golly, then just steal it.
I mean, it's...
I guess it makes it a little easier to swallow.
Makes it a little bit more romantic,
like a movie or something.
Uh, no, he didn't use...
He wouldn't have used her as a model.
He had women in mind, you know,
including particular women,
but no, he never put a model on the stand
and carefully painted her in his studio.
But she could well have been,
uh, you know, one of the many women
who were hanging out at the Cedar Tavern,
or he might have met her at an opening.
[Ron] Carole lived near the Martha Jackson gallery,
where "Woman-Ochre" was on display.
And it makes sense to me
that they saw that painting on at least one occasion.
I mean, um, there's all kinds of ways
that they probably did know each other a little bit.
Which might be part of the resentment, right?
I mean, he was a sort of sleep-around, too.
I guess it's not beyond the pale
to think that they might have had something like that.
In the theft, you can see aspects of both revenge
and awe
and worship.
I don't want to blame any of it on Rita.
It's okay to blame it on Jerry.
[Rick M.] The vibe you got
was that Rita went along
with whatever Jerry wanted to do.
"Rita, we're going to the end of the world."
"Okay, Jerry, I'll go to the end of the world with you."
So that's the feeling I got.
Jerry made the decisions.
[Dave] A woman came into our store
and she said she had always loved Rita,
and Rita had come back from one of her trips.
They had gone into...
somewhere deep into the country, into the jungle,
or wherever it was they were going.
And apparently it was two tribes.
And they stood on a hillside, and these two tribes
were battling.
And I don't know if it was a ritual
or if it was, you know, a real whatever it was.
But they actually killed each other.
You know, it was that kind of a battle.
And she said, "Rita is sitting here telling me this story
of watching people being killed
like they'd gone to Disneyland."
And she said, "That quick, my opinion of Rita had changed."
And she said, "I went from thinking
what a wonderful, lovely person she was
to what a horrible human being she was."
Seriously?
[Buck] So I really should read this manuscript.
-Wow! -So...
Okay, that's pretty cool.
"Rita and Jerry had their driver rush to the field
so they could witness the scene from a time in pre-history.
Within a half-hour, both clans were standing in the fields face to face.
All warriors were in tight formation
while the respective chiefs argued their points as loudly as they could.
While Rita and Peter remained in the parked jeep
on the roadway adjacent to the field,
Jerry with his camera in hand found a way to cross the deep trench
which separated the field from the roadway.
He ventured very close to the center of the action
while taking a set of remarkable photos."
-All right, that is... -It's awesome.
Okay.
-[Buck] What do you believe at this point? -[Dave] Yeah.
[Buck] There's a great possibility
that these are actually not made up.
These are true stories.
That's horrifying.
[Dave] I hoped that this
would start the FBI
into digging deeper and deeper
and deeper into...
-But we don't know that it hasn't. -Right.
[Mike Burns] With an organization like the FBI,
I would bank on the fact that that book was reviewed
by people who have degrees in psychology
or human behavior,
because there's a wealth of information
between the lines.
I did read through three-quarters of it
that I was able to manage through, so...
It's a hard read, right?
I don't think anyone else--
I know I had recommended it
and had asked a couple of them to do that.
I don't think that ever made it on their list, though.
We really need to read these.
I think these are just like true stories.
What he told me was that all of these stories
"come from my personal experiences."
He... His statement to me was all inclusive.
The title of this book, "The Cup and the Lip,"
probably for any English speaker,
it's probably an odd title.
But in Yiddish,
which is the Jewish language of the Old Country,
uh, cup refers to the head,
but also refers to your mind.
And then the lip refers to your mouth.
It refers to what you say, what you speak.
"Oh, you've got some lip."
What comes to mind for me
is that
whenever we tell a story,
we have to choose what to say
and what to leave out.
When I hear "The Cup and the Lip,"
you've got the story in your cup
and then you've got the story that you can tell with lip.
"The Cup and the Lip" was his outlet.
That was his way
of communicating
the stories
that he experienced himself
but couldn't tell anyone about.
I wonder what else they did.
[chuckles]
[intense music playing]
They were living this lavish lifestyle
and traveling around the world,
and where did they get their money for that, you know?
Did they steal other paintings, you know?
Were they career art thieves?
If they did it once, I bet they'd do it again.
You can't just do it once.
When we got all of the photo albums from the estate,
we went through them before the FBI went here, of course. We were being nosy.
But they had gone to museums and they had taken
a lot of pictures of paintings in museums.
Lots and lots and lots.
Sounds almost like casing the joint.
It's the simplest explanation.
It wasn't just one theft, it was many.
The FBI came in and X-rayed the walls
to see if there was any other type of stolen artwork.
Actually I was there for that, and so I led the team that went out and did that.
[Buck] Rita had told caregivers that in the attic
they had stored some precious stuff,
and I think she actually said paintings.
We took an FBI bomb technician with us,
because they had the X-ray machine that we could use
to quickly X-ray the walls.
Nothing in the walls, so, I don't think there's anything in the house.
[Dave] But before we were contacted,
apparently Ron donated
tons of stuff to charity,
and really good stuff.
Well... [chuckles]
Um, these people said, "My aunt just died
and we're dealing with all the stuff in her house
and we'd like to donate to the Garden Club
because we found out that you give all your profits
to worthwhile community projects."
So I made an appointment for them to come and donate their stuff,
and they arrived the following Tuesday
with a pickup truck full of stuff.
One of the teenagers came in carrying
a very familiar work of art,
a bronze Remington, Frederic Remington bronze,
and Frederic Remington is one of the most famous
art sculptors of the western schools.
So I said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we can't take stuff like that.
We're a thrift store.
We sell things for $2 and $5,
and if we're very rich, it's $10."
Oh, yeah, I remember that, yeah.
I was there, yeah, 'cause I remember seeing the statue.
[Ron] I mean, I looked at, it was, you know, a reproduction.
I had made what I thought
was a reasonable attempt to sell them,
and no one seemed interested.
We were also pressed for time for me getting back to work,
so we were trying to get it wrapped up.
I mean, this was an amazing deal.
And my son is loading stuff into the car,
and all of the sudden, he said,
"Can I look at that painting there of the Indian's head?"
And he picked it up and he turned it over,
and he said, "Oh, my Lord, this is a JH Sharp."
JH Sharp is one of the most famous western artists.
So that caused him to look at other stuff that was here.
He looked at the bronzes.
There were two R.C. Gormans.
He's a famous sculptor.
My son called Sotheby's
and they were interested.
I mean, this stuff was good enough for Sotheby's.
Sotheby's was one of the places I thought...
I contacted Sotheby's with... I emailed them and asked them.
[Isaac] And they weren't interested at the time, but then...
Yeah, they said, "We don't deal with this type of thing,
we deal with higher-end things."
Oh, wow. The Remington?
So, they had authentic materials,
but they told everybody they were reproductions.
-Like, uh... -Yeah.
Maybe they, um, were shy
about telling people that they had authentic art
because they didn't want people to start thinking,
"Well, what else do they have that's authentic?"
They want people to think,
"Everything in our house is a reproduction."
-[Buck] I think it was a safety thing, you know. -[Dave] Yeah.
Their not wanting to draw attention to art, I guess.
You know, living in Cliff,
if anybody knew that you had a Remington,
everybody would know you had a Remington.
What was she, a speech pathologist
for a local school,
to have a real Remington?
You know, none of this stuff was insured.
And it's not very expensive. I mean...
Maybe they were all stolen.
At one point, the FBI was involved,
and they came out and took pictures,
and they ran it by their database,
and we were clean, stuff wasn't stolen.
But I will tell you that one of the agents said,
"Just because we cleared it
doesn't mean that it's not stolen."
"It could have just not been reported,"
or, you know, it's not on their radar.
[Harriet Rogers] To make a long story short,
they sold them at their auction.
The Higgins was the most val--
It made $80,000.
The total intake for the gallery was about 160,000,
of which we took in something like 129,000.
We got a check for $129,000.
Yeah, I mean, we were a thrift shop.
It would have been nice if my aunt or uncle
would have documented this
for their poor executor.
[chuckles] There was nothing about any of their items
or what they were worth, so what am I supposed to think?
And we actually purchased some of it from the Garden Club.
We have several of the Navajo rugs
and they're really fine Navajo rugs.
Well, then we find out
that there is the Amerind Museum.
In 1989, they had
like a million-dollar chief's blanket
stolen from them.
And it was the exact same M.O.
[intense music playing]
A woman distracted the guard
and a man took it and ran, and then the woman left.
Thank you so much.
The Amerind called us,
and then the very next day, the FBI called us.
The agent sent us a picture of the blanket.
[Tim Carpenter] Uh, that's a bit foggy.
I seem to have some recollection of a mention of that,
but I don't know-- I personally didn't follow up on that.
I'd have to talk to the case agent about that.
[Dave] Looks like August 27 of '89.
And...
what we happen to have...
another journal here,
a few days before
they...
flew into Tucson.
"Arrived in Tucson at 2 p.m. on a Delta flight."
And then that's it. Then nothing else.
The first thing that made me kind of go "hmm"
is when they would fly into Tucson,
they would visit family for a few days.
I don't know if they ever just flew into Tucson
and drove straight to Cliff.
But not one thing written down.
And they usually wrote
about their trip back to Cliff,
which isn't here.
On the 27th...
they're blank again.
Buck, come here, I wanna show you this.
The Alters, after they flew into Tucson,
would have driven right past Dragoon,
where the Amerind Museum heist happened.
Right on the path.
[Ron] Carole mentioned that there might be an expensive rug
in their home,
but I had sent photographs of things on the wall
that none of them were what she thought that they had.
If there was an expensive rug there,
I wouldn't know what happened to it.
It looks somewhat familiar, but no.
-Yeah, but if we had, it would have gone to the Garden Club. -Yeah.
[Dave] You know you have those things that you're like,
oh, I know it.
Like, that blanket was there.
They probably took it to another country, you know,
on one of their trips.
[Isaac] What if they went on their trips
to sell the stuff that they stole in the U.S.?
[Ron] Yeah, nobody would think any different of it.
[Isaac] There was no, uh, TSA back then.
You know, it would make a lot of sense.
It would kind of tie up those loose ends very neatly.
He wasn't sloppy.
I mean, everything he did was meticulous, clearly,
'cause he got away with it, and that's the craziest part, you know.
[Ron] It makes sense to me,
if they were stealing a lot of art,
that they wouldn't want to exhibit that wealth
to friends and family, wouldn't want the questions.
They wanted to give a air of frugalness
that might fit a couple who only had one income
throughout their marriage.
They kept their home simple.
They had furniture there from 40 or 50 years ago.
I'd say nothing is extravagant.
There's not... like you would expect thieves
to have some kind of extravagant lifestyle,
stealing multi-million-dollar paintings, but...
I mean, it's just a humble, simple little house.
[Ron] They didn't even replace their septic tank
after 40 years of living there.
When I would visit there,
they didn't want anything other than liquids
going down their toilet.
Number two's, they just said,
"Don't flush, we'll take care of it."
I think they would wrap it up, probably put it outside,
and then they would take the trash to the city dump.
And, uh... odd as that was, um,
I found out, years later, they didn't want
to spend the money to replace their septic tank.
"He pulled the body to the hole and forced it down, head first, into the tank.
He watched it sink to the bottom.
Using all the strength in his body,
he lifted the lid, centered it above the opening,
and, bending over as far as he could,
he dropped it.
It fell into place with a hollow thud.
He raked back the sand, tamped it down with his feet,
and replaced the plastic."
Well...
So he's definitely had a history of...
you know, hiring itinerant workers.
Well, I certainly hope he didn't do anything like this.
Um...
But I don't think that was his character, right?
[Ron] I don't think so.
When I became my aunt's conservator,
the caretakers were complaining,
so I brought out some septic engineers
and they put in a new septic tank.
These notes were from one of our technicians,
and it says that, "date last pumped: never, 40 years."
So they just put the note that it had never been pumped
since it was installed.
Right away they noticed heavy deterioration
because it's double over the replacement age.
And gasses and just time will erode the concrete.
And this one almost had solid waste top to bottom.
When we serviced it, we pumped the liquids out.
That way there's a void there.
And they get a backhoe or an excavator
and they'll just put the heavy bucket on there
and it will collapse it in.
I would say that there was nothing in there.
Um, it's very unlikely that there was anything in there.
Okay.
"He lifted out the lid
and maneuvered it alongside the hole.
Yes, there was the water level in the 8-foot-diameter tank.
It was a foot below the opening, exactly where it should be."
I hadn't read this story before.
Um, so that definitely opened my mind.
The detail of that was,
well, it's surprising 'cause 95% of the customers I talk to
think that the tank is full,
but he described that the tank level
was where it should be,
which most people don't understand that.
That was surprising.
That's the diameter of lid,
and what he would have been looking at
when he was describing putting the body in the tank...
that's what it would have looked like.
It's very feasible, yeah.
Maybe that actually happened.
[Tim] We did not look into the septic tank.
We've reviewed this book down to some extent, right?
And some of it can seem to be pretty compelling,
but again it's an effort of what can be corroborated,
right, what can you establish as fact
versus fiction, right, something that was just written down,
and so frankly, that's also really more of a matter for the local police
than it would be for the FBI.
Uh, all I can say with this is,
is it possible? Sure.
Is it consistent with details on that property? Yes.
The yard is completely full of lava rock.
Full of lava rock, yeah.
[Mike] Were the gardens manicured at one time? Yes.
And is it possible to put somebody,
a dead body, into a septic tank?
The way he's describing it, that would be consistent
with a ferro-concrete septic tank,
which was commonly used,
and the access to the tanks are well large enough
to dispose of a body.
A whole body would be easier, in that particular tank,
to fit in there.
[Dave] In the late '70s,
craftsmen would come up from Mexico, and still do,
to help in the building of the house.
You know, because Jerry certainly couldn't have built that house on his own.
In '77, he showed us his blueprints
and he bragged that he was gonna hire
undocumented workers to do it.
And what's sad is,
unfortunately, especially then,
if somebody came up missing,
you know, who was gonna investigate it?
Who was gonna track 'em down?
[Mike] Our society tends to turn a blind eye in many ways
to people who are living in the shadows, in the cracks.
And for those people to disappear,
if you don't recognize their presence in the first place,
how would you notice their departure?
I've actually had inquiries
from Mexican authorities over the years,
from families in Mexico, wondering where people are.
[Ron] Hi, this is Ron.
Uh, I was thinking about everything
after our interview,
and, uh, what struck me was,
when I talked to my aunt about the septic tank,
she was dead set against having it done.
She got very upset about it,
started making some excuses.
And her agitation grew and grew
till the day she died of a brain hemorrhage
less than a week later.
So what I'm thinking,
I'll probably get the GPR and bring it around here,
around over here.
At some point, you're gonna end up seeing the in-flow...
-Mm-hmm. -...from the house,
and then whether it's an infiltrator or a leach...
-Right. -...field below it.
-Okay. -Just ask Bach, right?
[chuckles] He probably knows where it is.
[Mike] Law enforcement does tend to use this equipment
for things that are a little bit less mundane
than finding a buried water line, electrical line.
Ground penetrating radar can indicate
an old gravesite, a murder victim.
But it takes the trained eye, like yours,
doing what we're doing right now.
Yeah. Yeah, I have a few spikes on the screen.
One is pretty significant right here.
There's a clear solid image of an indication
of there's something disrupting the signal.
[Mike] Common sense would tend to think it's a leach line.
Yeah, yeah, I would say without a...
Almost 100% sure, that's more than likely what it is.
-Makes sense. -Like I said,
the indication happens right between the tires, so...
I would say that's the best... the best guess right there.
Got a small indication right there.
Might it be the edge of the tank itself?
It could be the edge.
It could be, um, see that dip in the floor right there?
-Okay. -It could have been the GPR
going down and coming up real quick.
I want to go across the house.
-[Mike] Like the lawn area? -Mm-hmm.
I'm getting the same reading that I was over here.
-See, right here? -Mm-hmm.
How it jumps up like that.
That's a pretty solid return there.
Yeah. So, how she said,
I think she was right how, sort of rectangle right here.
-Mm-hmm. -And it splits.
So that would make sense from what I'm getting.
I'm gonna do one more on the other side,
and then I think...
that'll be pretty much
all I can pick up with this.
At my point in my career, I'm quite resigned to the fact
that I may not have all of the blanks filled in
when cases are closed.
Law enforcement cases rarely end the way they start.
And many times, what you start with
has to be completely rewritten two or three times,
and you go where the evidence takes you.
Nothing?
-No. -At least nothing unusual?
Nothing unusual.
If the evidence doesn't lead you
to a certain place or conclusion,
then you really can't defend that conclusion.
You know what, I may have to go.
I may have to go.
Okay, units there yet?
[woman] Yes, uh-huh.
Okay, I'm gonna be headed that way shortly.
Okay, thank you. Mm-hmm, bye.
[woman] If you need to get going...
I do. We have a homicide.
[woman] Okay.
I don't have any, any issues
with there still being unanswered questions.
[Ron] Most people who commit crimes, I would assume,
think they could get away with it.
So that wasn't anything for my uncle to aspire to.
He thought he was better than most people.
He could confess to it and still get away with it.
In a sense, his book was his confession.
But you're just left to wonder,
which parts are reality and which parts are fiction?
[Isaac] Maybe that was his plan all along,
to keep himself within the realm of consciousness.
You know, the mystery is very exciting,
just knowing that, that I'll never know
what parts are true and what aren't.
His intention perhaps was
to turn himself into a legend.
[Buck] I think in death he got what he wanted.
-Yeah. He's well-known. -I really do.
[Mark] But the final line of the book is,
"To own wealth is to be possessed by it."
"Stolen assets are not safe anywhere."
"It can bring only disquietude to their possessor,
for such is the nature of man..."
"...they spin an endless web of deceit..."
"...forever imprisoning their owner
in an insidious embrace."
[Isaac] It was probably very hard for him to keep this a secret.
Must have been torture.
[Dave] Maybe at the very end, by giving the painting back,
we outsmarted Jerry.
People will walk in and they'll say,
"Is this the place that found the de Kooning?"
[Rick Johnson] We've had people from the Netherlands,
from everywhere, that have come over to see the store
where the painting was found.
-We've gotten phone calls from... -Spain...
-...all over the world. -Yep, all over the world.
Just calling to say thank you, you know.
And those still choke us up.
We just received gifts yesterday from one of our customers
who brought us this fantastic book on de Kooning
and this absolutely fabulous letter.
"In this day and age, when greed, dishonesty...
and lack of integrity are commonplace...
you three wonderful people are a beacon of hope for this world
and you put Silver City on the world map
in the most fantastic light possible.
Sincerely, Nancy."
That's... sorry.
I mean, who thinks you're gonna ever get that proclamation
that a good deed you did...
has that much pull
that it makes the world pause even for a second
to say "Wow"?
[Brian] August 6th will be the day that I retire.
It will be a big day and a new chapter.
When I saw our cars come up with the painting
and then when I actually got to see it again
here in the art museum, uh...
I got a little choked up, I'll admit that.
The warmth came back, if that makes any sense.
There was a sense of closure.
Only the Alters know the circumstances
of how they came into possession of that painting,
and unfortunately they've taken that information to the grave,
and so we close that investigation.
[Buck] One of the most prized possessions from this whole experience is that empty frame.
It held that painting for 30-plus years,
and everybody that has been a part of this story
has signed the back of it.
"Thank you for everything.
So glad it was you all who found it."
"Our heroes, love you guys."
"We could never possibly thank you enough.
We love our heroes."
Why does that make me wanna cry?
I know.
I don't know, I think we got the better end of the deal.
All right, let's see how it looks.
[upbeat music playing]