Dick Ellis has worked as a Detective Sergeant on Scotland Yard's Art & Antiques Squad. He took part in the investigation of Mark Perry and Jonathan Tokeley-Parry for smuggling Egyptian artefacts into Britain. This case is described in The Hairdresser's Tomb.
Ellis now runs a website called Invaluable which represents auction houses online. He answered your questions about the exciting world of art crime.
Michelle Goulburn: Do you think that Jonathan Tokeley-Parry should have received more than 3 years for his involvement in the Egyptian smuggling case? Do you think the sentences are harsh enough?
Dick Ellis: He actually received a sentence of six years with a comment from the sentencing judge that was endorsed by the appeal court that the sentence needed to carry an element of deterrent to others. Of that six year sentence he served just over three. So he did actually receive a larger one. Now is six years enough? I think it is probably right. If you look at the papers today a 17-year-old was sentenced to six years in prison for the manslaughter of another boy. So you have to look at the sentencing in the context of other sentencing policies overall which are of course a matter of some debate.
Alison Waugh:
Recently a French waiter was jailed for stealing more than $1 billion dollars worth of artefacts. He didn't do it for the money however, he just wanted to keep the art himself. Do you feel any more sympathy for this sort of thief who isn't just in it for the money?
DE: No I don't. He was stealing with the intent to permanently deprive the owners of the property. He specifically targeted museums, so although the objects were in the care of the museums he was depriving the general public of the ability of viewing those objects for his own personal satisfaction. I think one has to look at the mitigating circumstances behind any crime when sentencing, and like Tokely-Parry it is difficult to find any mitigating circumstances in either case that would suggest that he was forced to steal to support his family. It was purely depriving others of the right to access that property for personal satisfaction.
Thomas Scott: Are museums taking the issue of security seriously enough? It really seemed like lots of the crimes which were committed in the series, like the theft of The Scream, would have been preventable if a few more precautions had been taken.
DE: Yes, that's right. But security is a constantly moving target. As new security systems are developed criminals develop means to get around them and security becomes an extremely expensive commodity. When you are running a museum you have to balance your budget and out of the same pool they have to fund acquisitions, staffing and security. So many would like to spend more on security but find it financially impossible to do so, they have to use their funds as efficiently as possible. But it is very important that security is under a constant review and the systems are upgraded.
BBC Four It seems like the museums are caught in a catch 22
DE: Yes, there are two issues there. One of the reasons why objects are not insured, or appear not to be insured, is because if you look at our system in this country, objects which are in a national museum (that definition can extend to museums that don't have the word 'national' in the title), are covered by a government indemnity that indemnifies the museum against damage and will compensate the museum for restoration. What the government indemnity doesn't cover is theft, the actual loss of the object. The other factor is that the premiums to insure these collections would be so high that the money is better spent on security to prevent the theft rather than the insurance premium.
Peter Churchill What still unsolved art crime would you most like to get to the bottom of?
DE: I think I can probably say without hesitation the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, the world's largest art theft committed in 1990. Among the pictures taken were a Vermeer, two Rembrandts and Degas (plural), a fantastic art collection which has simply disappeared.
Shane Donnelly Was your job really as exciting as it seemed from the programme, was it realistic or do you think they glamourised it? If it was really that cool why did you leave the force?
DE: Yes, it was that exciting. If you think in 1994, the year that I went to Egypt and started that particular case, on 5 January I was in Los Angeles giving evidence in a trail in some artworks I'd recovered. Enduring the Los Angeles earthquake, coming home to The Scream theft, dealing with the theft and the recovery. In between times, I was raising money for charity by rowing the Californian coast with a group of other police officers. When I came back from doing that at the beginning of June I walked straight into the Egyptian saga and later on in the year while doing that I was involved in another big international arrest and trail. That was all in one year. It was exciting work, of course there was a mundane side to it - you don't put on a trial like that without an awful lot of paperwork, but all in all it was very satisfying work and I enjoyed it enormously. Why I left? In 1999 I had completed 30 years with the Metropolitan Police and had qualified for my pension and I was offered other work in the art market.
Eliot Frank The theft of the Elgin Marbles is one of the original art crimes - do you think that artefacts should be returned to their country of origin or should they be retained by the country that preserved them through periods of turmoil?
DE: First of all I think we have to qualify that the Elgin Marbles were not stolen, had they been stolen Greece would undoubtedly have been able to launch a claim through the courts for their restitution. In purely legal terms they were purchased and there is a receipt for that; that isn't to say that everything that is legal is ethical. What was happening in Greece when Lord Elgin stepped in is actually comparable to what was happening in Afghanistan with the destruction of those Buddhas and other artefacts within the country because of the regime at the time. The Turks and indeed the Greeks were not seeking to safeguard the Elgin Marbles, the likelihood was that they would have been destroyed and undoubtedly Lord Elgin stepped in and saved 60% of the Marbles, 40% are actually still in Greece. So, similarly today there are discussions about trying to recover from the marketplace Afghanistan's heritage and creating a museum in exile, with a view that the objects would be returned to the country when it is safe. So then you have to say should all objects be returned to their country of origin and here again I have to say, no, I don't think they should. I think that it's important that you do have institutions like the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, the Louvre in Paris and so on where people can go and learn about cultures in foreign lands and be stimulated to go and see other artefacts, as it were, in situ and that is very important to a country's tourism. Now if you look at the illicit trade, then that is a different issue. Objects that come out of countries illegally come out in unscientific ways, in other words the archaeologists have not excavated a site and recorded what they have found. Those objects need to be preserved by the country, in the country and if they are recovered in the market then they must be returned to that country.
Margaret Fox My 88-year-old mother who lives in Teesside was robbed of a bag of goodies which were to be taken for valuation to the Antiques Roadshow in Middlesbrough. There were a lot of valuables including a solid silver Nursing Style belt. Can I do anything further to find out who did this?
DE: You can circulate details of the stolen property through Trace, that enables you to place an advertisement in Trace magazine if you want to, which is then seen on the Trace and Invaluable websites. The property will be entered onto the stolen property database and searched against auction and dealer market stock, hopefully identifying the stolen property when it reappears in the art market, which would then lead to its recovery and return.
Simon Waters Is there a lot of cooperation between police internationally or do you work separately?
DE: Specifically on art it is actually quite a small group of people involved, there will be one or two international seminars a year either organised by Interpol or one of the countries, Italy are particularly good at organizing these meetings. And the cooperation between the forces is very good, what is lacking is the judicial support. Because you're working through different legal systems there is a huge amount of bureaucracy and that slows down the investigation enormously.
BBC Four How did you get into this sort of police work?
DE: I grew up with, in particular the Newlyn School of art. One of my great aunts was a pupil of Stanhope Forbes, both my father and grandfather were amateur artists, although doctors by profession and both of them collected antiques. So I'd grown up with art. I'd been in the police 18 months as a probationer PC when my parents' home was burgled. After night duty I took myself promptly to Bermondsey market where I recovered all the silver and arrested my first two receivers. That later on led to tracking down the burglar and he received an eight year sentence. So that kindled my interest in detecting stolen art. By 1984 I was a career detective, working pretty solidly in the East End of London and North East London. That year I was moved to Hampstead where instead of investigating serious assault and murder I began to look at major art theft at a period when the then art squad had been disbanded. I took on the role of investigating these major art thefts that were taking place in Hampstead and there were two particularly successful international investigations which led to my being posted to the international and organised crime group in 1988 and being asked to reform the Art Squad in 1989.
BBC Four It's staggering, from the programmes, the amount of international art crime that is being committed.
DE: It's huge, but it's an international commodity. You can sell a Monet anywhere in the world and get big bucks for it, there aren't many stolen commodities you can do that with. Even with cash you're going to have problems changing that money up and you just don't have that problem with art. While the banks got better at protecting the money and you were likely to get shot if you committed a bank robbery for £10,000-15,000, you could still walk into somebody's house and walk out with a million pound Monet.
Francis Rogers If you could own any work of art what would it be?
DE: If we're looking at paintings it would be a Newlyn work by Frank Bramley called The Hopeless Dawn.
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