Bobby Donati

Bobby and Richard Donati were born on June 4, 1940 in East Boston, to immigrants from Milan, Italy. The neighborhood, predominantly Italian-American at the time, was home to many Italian-American Mafia members and street criminals. Both Donatis, known colloquially as Bobby and Dicky D, joined their ranks early; Bobby's first arrest dates to 1958.[2]

By 1965 the brothers were already involved in the Boston mob, working for the Angiulo Brothers' crew, part of the Providence-based Patriarca crime family, mainly pulling robberies and burglaries from a base in the city's North End.[3] That year he was convicted and sentenced to prison for his role in the armed robbery of cash and furs from a Boylston Street furrier.[4] Later, during the 1970s, Joseph Barboza recognized the brothers' prominence in the Boston mob by using their name as his alias after he moved to San Francisco, where he was killed in 1974. In 1981 the Massachusetts State Police described him as "a well-known organized crime figure".[5]

In the early 1970s, Donati became friends with Myles Connor Jr., a former rock musician and son of a Milton police officer who had turned to art theft as a career.[6] Donati, who had begun to search through local antique stores in search of quality furniture and decor for his house,[7] began planning jobs with Connor. In 1974 the two broke into the Woolworth Estate in Monmouth, Maine, and stole five paintings by Andrew and N.C. Wyeth. They were caught when an acquaintance Donati had made who said he would help them sell the stolen works turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. While Connor was out on bail, he arranged for the theft of a Rembrandt from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in which he later claimed Donati had taken part;[8] in exchange for its return he received a reduced sentence. Donati, by then serving a sentence in state prison and unsuccessful in his efforts to persuade a federal judge to reduce his sentence for securities theft, took note.[9]

After both had finished their sentences, they continued planning art thefts. The two frequently visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, as they had done since the early 1970s, noting how weak the security was given the expensive artworks within it. They identified specific works they believed could sell well if stolen; Donati was particularly interested in one of the lesser items in the museum's collection, a Napoleonic Era finial, while Connor had his eye on Titian's The Rape of Europa; he also tried to interest Donati in a bronze Shang Dynasty gu.[8] Connor and Donati went as far as to climb nearby trees and time the guards' movements through the various galleries during the night hours when the museum was closed. They agreed the most effective way to enter was to pose as police officers, which they had done on some other jobs.[10]

In the 1980s Donati's stature within the Patriarca family increased as a result of leadership changes. Family boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca died in 1984; that same year the Argiulos, Donati's longtime bosses, were arrested on federal racketeering charges which led to their convictions two years later. Vincent "The Animal" Ferrara, one of several higher-level mobsters vying for control as Patriarca's son struggled to maintain his father's control over the family, took over the Argiulos' operations in Boston's North End. He chose Donati to be his driver.[7]

The Patriarca situation worsened as the decade drew to a close. Without his father's close Boston allies the Angiulos, the younger Raymond Patriarca was unable to unify the family behind him. In Boston itself, Whitey Bulger, leader of the Winter Hill Gang, began brutally asserting his own authority over criminal enterprise from his base in South Boston, playing off his putative allies on both sides of the Patriarcas by informing on them to the FBI until the Boston Globe revealed the relationship in 1988.[11]

In 1989 Frank Salemme, a close confidant of the elder Patriarca's, was released from prison. Ferrara and the other Boston members of the family feared he would attempt to effectively take over the leadership by becoming Raymond Jr.'s underboss. They attempted to have him killed outside a Saugus restaurant, but he survived some serious gunshot wounds. No one has ever faced charges over that attack, although Salemme knew who was responsible.[11]

In the aftermath, Raymond Patriarca Jr. attempted once again to bring peace to the family by making one member from each side. However, the ceremony, held in Medford, turned into an embarrassment for the Patriarcas when it was later revealed that the FBI's bugs had recorded the initiation ritual, hitherto a secret that had only been revealed in parts through accounts by former members. The subsequent revelation forced Patriarca to step down, supposedly at the behest of Mafia families in other regions of the country, and escalated hostilities between the two factions.[11]

The Gardner museum, in 2008

Ferrara was indicted on racketeering and murder charges around the beginning of 1990 and arrested shortly afterwards. Shortly after 1 a.m. on March 18, thieves disguised as police officers convinced security guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston to let them in, whereupon they bound the two men up and spent the next several hours removing 13 works, including Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt's only known seascape, as well as the finial that Donati had indicated an interest in. The stolen works have collectively been valued at $500 million, making it the highest-value art theft at the time.[12]

Salemme took advantage of Ferrara's imprisonment to become the de facto leader of the Patriarca family. He still faced the challenge of Ferrara's crew and the other Argiulo loyalists in the North End. Both sides reportedly drew up lists of people they intended to kill, and began doing so. At one point the brother of one intended target was killed on the street while changing a flat tire. Many Patriarca operatives report that they were in constant fear for their lives during this period; one told Globe reporter Stephen Kurkjian in 2014 that after learning his name was on one of the lists and that two men had shown up at his sister's home looking for him, he moved to the far north of New England and began living under an assumed name.[11]

No suspects have ever been officially named in the killing, although the files of a state assistant attorney general involved in organized-crime investigations at that time list David Turner, a member of the Patriarca faction loyal to Salemme who has also been suspected of involvement in the Gardner theft, as perhaps having committed the crime.[14] It is believed by law enforcement that Donati was likely murdered by other mobsters loyal to Salemme, possibly in retaliation for involvement, actual or perceived, in the failed attempt on their boss's life two years earlier. Donati was the second of six mob figures killed during the early 1990s; many of the victims' bodies were found, as he was, in the trunks of their vehicles,[15] a common Mafia practice to indicate the killing was related to the victim's criminal activities.[16] William Youngworth, an antiques dealer and mob associate who in 1997 led a reporter to what may have been one of the stolen Gardner paintings, hidden in a Brooklyn warehouse, claimed at that time that Donati was on the verge of being made when he was killed, and killing a made man requires his boss's approval.[17]

Other theories suggest Donati's death resulted more directly from specific crimes he was engaged in. Some reports suggest he was an occasional informant to authorities and thus was killed for that reason;[16] In 1997, a federal prosecutor who had been threatened with contempt of court charges if he refused to say whether Donati was an informant told a judge that he had not been, at least not to any federal agencies.[18] Donati's FBI files also note that he had some large gambling debts at the time.[13]

There are also reports that suggest his death was directly linked to the Gardner theft. Writer Ulrich Boser wrote in his 2009 book The Gardner Heist that it was "widely rumored" that at the time of his death Donati was preparing to tell police what he knew about it.[14] In Kurkjian's 2015 book Master Thieves, he writes that Donati's sister Lorraine believes the brutality of her brother's killing suggests it was motivated by more than being on the wrong side in a gang war. "One bullet could have accomplished what they were looking to do," she told him. "No one has to be beaten and stabbed like that unless there was some dark secret behind it."[19]