CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 22, 2009 | Joel Rubin
Richard L. Weisman, the noted art collector who made news recently when he decided to forgo a multimillion-dollar insurance policy for stolen art, had some critical words for the LAPD detectives investigating his case. "Maybe if they would do their job . . . and spent some time looking for the art instead of being accusatory of the person who had it stolen, they might actually find it," Weisman said in an interview last weekend. The art world was set abuzz in early September with word that a series of original works by Andy Warhol had been stolen from the walls of Weisman's home on Los Angeles' Westside.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 16, 2009 | Joel Rubin
The owner of a multimillion-dollar collection of artwork stolen last month has unexpectedly waived the insurance policy he owns to protect the paintings, Los Angeles police detectives confirmed Thursday. The art world was abuzz in early September with word that a series of original works by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol had been stolen from the walls of noted art collector Richard L. Weisman's Westside Los Angeles home. In all, 11 brightly colored silk screen paintings were gone -- 10 are portraits of famous athletes and one is of Weisman, 69, who was friends with Warhol and commissioned the series in the late 1970s.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
October 9, 2009 | Steve Chawkins
Like an Impressionist painting, the outlines of a massive art theft in Pebble Beach have blurred over the last week as the victims offered varying accounts of just what was stolen and how much it was worth. But the changing details brought the situation into sharp relief for law enforcement officials. "They're clearly lying to us," said Cmdr. Mike Richards of the Monterey County Sheriff's Department, raising questions about whether two men sharing a rented $4-million home in a gated community ever actually possessed the Rembrandts, the Jackson Pollock, the Van Gogh and the other works they say have gone missing.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 12, 2009 | Joel Rubin
A multimillion-dollar collection of original work by famed Pop Art icon Andy Warhol was stolen last week from a Los Angeles home, police said Friday. On Sept. 3, a housekeeper for noted art collector Richard L. Weisman walked into the dining room of Weisman's residence and saw that 11 large portraits that had been on the walls the day before were gone, according to Det. Donald Hrycyk, head of the LAPD's art theft detail. The housekeeper called police, and investigators soon brought in Hrycyk, who has spent years chasing forgers and thieves in the shady art underworld.
NATIONAL
June 20, 2009 | Associated Press
A second defendant indicted after an investigation into the theft and illegal trafficking of American Indian artifacts from the Four Corners area has been found dead in an apparent suicide, the FBI said Friday. The body of Steven L. Shrader, 56, of Santa Fe, N.M., was found behind an elementary school in Shabbona, Ill., on Friday. The DeKalb County Sheriff's Office said he died of two self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the chest.
WORLD
March 9, 2009 | TIMES WIRE REPORTS
A 450-year-old painting by Renaissance artist Lucas Cranach the Elder has been stolen from a Lutheran church in the southern Norway town of Larvik, police said. Art expert Gunnar Krogh-Hansen estimated that "Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me" could be worth $2.1 million to $2.8 million. It was probably painted around 1540. The theft was discovered when firefighters responded to an alarm at the church and found a broken window and a ladder outside. The roughly 3-foot-wide work, painted on wood, had hung in the church for about 330 years.