A former Scotland Yard detective has claimed James 'Whitey' Bulger gave a number of old masters to the IRA, after they were stolen during one of the world's largest art thefts.
The robbery at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, saw the theft of The Concert, a masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer.
It is now the world’s most valuable missing work of art, worth an estimated $200m. The 13 paintings were taken from the museum in 1990.
Christ in a Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt’s only known seascape also disappeared, along with two further Rembrandts, five Degas sketches, a Manet painting, a landscape by Govert Flinck and a bronze finial from a Napoleonic battle flag.
In total, an estimated half a billion dollars worth of art. Despite a $10m reward, none of the works have been seen in public again.
Charles Hill, a former Scotland Yard detective turned private investigator, claims Bulger, who was found unresponsive in his cell at Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia last week, was behind the robbery.
The 89-year-old gangster was thought to have been murdered with a padlock wrapped inside a sock.
The former detective said he believes the paintings were shipped to Ireland as part of a deal with the IRA and could remain hidden somewhere in the Republic.
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Bulger, who was an FBI double agent, was responsible for a shipment of weapons and ammunition destined for the IRA and intercepted by the Irish navy off the coast of Co Kerry in 1984.
Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris was aboard the Marita Ann when it was intercepted by the coastguard and served a prison sentence in relation to the gun running plot.
Now an art theft investigator Mr Hill claims Bulger gave the proceeds of the heist to the IRA because he felt he owned them after the consignment of guns was seized.
