A Marc Chagall painting stolen from a couple's New York City apartment nearly 30 years ago during a mysterious robbery has finally been recovered, The Seattle Times reported.
The crime was carried out in 1988, when a sophisticated team of art thieves slipped into an empty apartment on East 57th Street near Sutton Place and plundered an exquisite collection of paintings from Chagall, Renoir, Picasso, Léger and Hopper as well as antiquities from Peru and Costa Rica along with jewelry and rugs.
The robbers left without a trace and the case has remained unsolved for all these years, much to the dismay of the victims who returned from their Aspen vacation to discover the rare pieces of art they had spent a lifetime collecting were gone.
However, one of the missing pieces of art, Chagall's 1911 painting "Othello and Desdemona," was recently recovered in the attic of an aging Maryland man with ties to Bulgarian organized crime, NBC affiliate WNBC said.
The Maryland man allegedly obtained the painting from one of the art thieves that had raided the Upper East Side apartment, who is believed to have been a building worker with access to the home's security system, the station said.
The Maryland man's tried to sell the painting to a potential buyer he had located but, when the deal collapsed, he stashed the piece of art in his attic for several years, later trying to sell it to a local gallery in 2011 and again in 2017.
Both times he was turned down because he could not produce proof of ownership and then advised to contact law enforcement, which he did, and handed the painting over, The Daily Mail said.
The owners of the painting, Ernest S. Heller and Rose Heller, are long dead but that did not stop federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. from filing a complaint for return of the artwork Thursday morning, The Seattle Times said.
Marc Hess of the FBI's Art Crime Team said the Maryland man came forth because, at 72 he is terminally ill and wanted to clear his conscience before he dies.
"One of the things he did say to me is that he was partially motivated by his imminent demise," Hess said, per The Seattle Times. "He talked about meeting his maker and trying to clear his conscience and make things right before he dies."
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