My Patient the Art Thief: A Dentist’s Brush with a Legendary Heist

In my previous article, I talked about the Dental Office Bandits in Oregon and how their creative plan actually worked and they were never caught.  I also brought up that at about the same time as this was happening, the biggest and boldest heist in recent history was committed in Paris at the famous Louvre museum.  I promised an epilogue to that story involving the biggest art heist in history that was somehow tied to dentistry.

While in dental school in Boston over 20 years ago, I met a cast of interesting characters whether it was treating patients at the school, hospital, prison, or community centers. One eccentric –  but very nice and polite –  patient I had in my last year of dental school was an older gentleman by the name of Myles Connor. He said he had just got out of prison and was looking to enjoy life on the outside now. He was also motivated to get his mouth in healthier order too!  

He was a super friendly guy who also revealed that he was quite the criminal mastermind.  Soon after meeting him, I realized he was not joking, and that his name was all over the internet.  He was at one time one of the suspects in the biggest art heist in history of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, in 1990, which saw over half a billion dollars in priceless art stolen. This art heist involved multiple Rembrandts, a Manet, and even a French imperial gold eagle that was carried into battle by the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Two robbers dressed up like police officers tied up the security guards in the middle of the night and made off with the artwork that was never recovered. To this day, the case has never been solved. It is considered to be the biggest robbery of all time.

My patient, Myles, had an alibi that night: he was in jail!  But that did not stop some people and authorities from suspecting that somehow Myles was the criminal mastermind behind the heist. After all, he was regarded as a genius and a master thief ,having already made off with a Rembrandt from a museum when he was younger. 

What made me remember Myles though was right after the Louvre burglary. ABC News featured an interview and story about him. I mean, he was kind of an expert in the field.  There he was, my patient from many years ago, on national TV giving his “expert” opinion on the big robbery in Paris. 

I have to say, criminal mastermind or not, he was nothing but polite, fun, and charismatic to me as a young dental student! Fortunately, I did not find anything missing from my tackle box of dental tools that week. Unfortunately, I did not find out where the missing Rembrandt was either.