The $160m Willem de Kooning painting stolen and hidden in a spare bedroom
On November 29th, 1985, against the perfectly normal backdrop of a post-Thanksgiving trip, two schoolteachers walked into the University of Arizona’s art museum with only their winter coats on their backs and somehow emerged with a painting worth $160million tucked underneath one of them. It was an objectively impressive crime carried out by an utterly unassuming couple who opted neither to sell nor return it. They simply hung it in a spare bedroom, the triumphant finale of a bizarre theft that dazzled authorities.
On the day of the crime, guards found the couple wrapped outside, waiting for the museums to open. No major alarm bells were ringing; they just looked oddly keen. When security let a staff member in and the couple inconspicuously followed, there were still no alarms. The guards let them in any way. They beelined up the stairs, and the woman started to ramble on to one of them about the works on display, overcome by enthusiasm for artworks as she got halfway up. The man continued upstairs while she gainfully employed the most cliché distraction tactic known to plan – chatting incessantly.
Just as she was wrapping up, the man returned, and they left. By the time they’d jetted off in a sports car, the guards finally realised how unusual the short trip was and ran into the exhibition to find Willem de Kooning’s ‘Woman-Ochre’ had been cut from its frame. The chatting technique might have been old hat, but you couldn’t fault the couple’s execution. They left no fingerprints and either got lucky on the surveillance front or chose the museum for its lack of security cameras.
Either way, all the museum had to go on were eyewitness accounts, which did little more than describe their outfits, which made them virtually unidentifiable. “Granny glasses” and “water-repellent coats” offered little in the grand scheme. Hilariously, sketches were also made of the art thieves, which were so ineffective the case got turned over to the FBI, who also came up with no leads. In 2015, another de Kooning was sold for $300m, which shot the estimated value of the stolen painting to $160m. Two years later, Rita Atler died. Her husband, Jerry Atler, had died years before. They’d raised their own chickens and ducks and made a makeshift sculpture garden on their property. Turns out, they loved art.
Rita’s nephew, Ron Roseman, was named the executor of her estate. Roseman enlisted the help of Ruth Seawolf, a local realtor, to comb through the house for items that could be sold. She was largely looking to shift the pottery, so she then enlisted the help of her own from antique shop owner David Van Auker. During his house tour, he discovered a painting in the Atlers’ master bedroom. He’d found it by pure fluke; it was only visible when the door was closed, and he’d closed it while eyeing up a mid-century furniture piece he thought might sell well.
He had no clue he was looking at a lost de Kooning but went on record to describe the painting as both “great” and “cool”. He wanted to hang it in his guesthouse but change out its frame, which he had decided was neither great nor cool. Before resigning it to home decor, he put it on display in his Silver City shop. A few customers swore they recognised it, but he shrugged it off. It was only when he was offered $200,000 for it that he realised quite what he’d stumbled across, by which point he was already moving it out of view and into the shop’s toilet, which was the only room in the shop with a lock.
With the piece safely squirrelled away, he started Googling, and after a brief scroll and a phone call to curator Olivia Miller, he confirmed it was the stolen artwork. News had travelled fast, and he was turning away people asking to see it between searches. On the advice of the FBI office, who recommended he store it somewhere safer than a toilet, he took it home. Van Auker stashed it behind a sofa and stayed up guarding it with his guns all night. By the time the sun came up, he was in panic mode. The shop had already been rumbled, so he and his partners drove aimlessly around town, looking for somewhere safe to keep it. A lawyer who was dubious of the entire story reluctantly agreed to babysit it for the day.
While he was cruising around, FBI agents tasked with investigating the theft were making their own 225-mile trip from Phoenix. The lawyer Van Auker entrusted with the precious painting was the only one involved who was relaxed about the whole thing and was actually having a party when the FBI agents, Van Auker, Miller and the county sheriff showed up. Van Auker described the reunion of Miller and the long-lost painting as an “electric” moment. She’d become fascinated with the painting in her many years at the museum but never seen it in person. When the moment finally came, she fell to her knees. Lost for words, the best she could manage at the time was a passionate cry of: “Holy shitballs!”
