0:00

Hello, Death of an Artist's listeners. I'm

0:03

Simon Willis the host of another podcast

0:05

I think you'll like. It's called The Professor

0:08

Hunting for the Mafia's Missing Masterpiece.

0:11

I follow the story of William Veres,

0:13

a man who is alleged to have stolen forty

0:15

million pounds worth of art and antiquities

0:18

from Italy. If he's convicted,

0:20

he faces up to twenty years in prison. But

0:23

William Veres has a plan. He

0:25

struck a deal to avoid jail if

0:28

he can solve the coldest case in the

0:30

history of art crime, the theft of

0:32

Caravajo's Nativity. Keep

0:34

listening to hear the first episode and

0:36

find the rest of the series by searching for

0:39

The Professor Hunting for the Mafia's

0:41

Missing Masterpiece. Wherever you

0:43

get your podcasts, Behi.

0:52

It's three o'clock in the morning on July third,

0:54

twenty eighteen. The police

0:57

are banging on the door of a house and a quiet,

0:59

respectable suburb of North London.

1:02

This is police, yeah

1:05

please.

1:06

The owner is a sixty four year old man

1:08

called William Veres.

1:10

I went to the window

1:13

and there were a large number

1:15

of individuals waving torches.

1:18

Bleary eyed, he goes downstairs to

1:20

see what all the commotion is about. The

1:23

lights aren't working in the hallway and in the

1:25

dark. He's confronted by nine officers

1:28

from Britain's National Crime Agency, London's

1:31

Metropolitan Police, and the Italian

1:33

Carabinieri.

1:34

I immediately began to understand the

1:36

nature of the visit.

1:38

Dawn raids don't happen in this part of

1:41

town. Vera's his neighbors

1:43

are bankers and property developers, lawyers

1:45

and accountants. And him.

1:47

He's an numismatist. He buys

1:49

and sells ancient coins.

1:52

At least that's his story the.

1:54

Police, they take a different

1:57

view us

2:00

as barge passed him and begin to spread out.

2:03

They searched the living room, They head upstairs

2:05

to raid the bedrooms in Vera's study. They

2:08

even climb a ladder to get into the attic and

2:10

inspect to shed at the end of the garden. They

2:13

stripped the place bare, clearing shelves

2:15

and cabinets, emptying drawers and.

2:17

Trays, thousands of coins

2:20

of all sorts. They took away a

2:22

large marblehead of Augustus, which

2:24

may or may not be ancient, a collection

2:27

of Anglo Saxon penny They asked

2:29

me for wrapping materials, which I gave him

2:31

all the bubble wrap I had. What

2:33

would they expect to find with somebody of

2:35

my standing. Somebody's been a dealer for

2:38

fifty years.

2:40

The Italian police have been on Vera's trail

2:42

for years. It's the largest

2:44

investigation ever conducted by the

2:46

Italian art squad code name Operation

2:49

Demetra. They've arrested

2:51

him before, but the charges didn't stick.

2:54

Now they have enough evidence to prosecute.

2:58

They surveiled him at meeting and tapped his phones

3:02

in the conversations they overheard. The speakers

3:04

often use nicknames to mask their identities.

3:08

One of them goes by Big Hair because his flowing

3:10

locks make him look like a cross between John

3:13

Travolta and Jeff Bridges and

3:15

Veres. He was the expert

3:17

that all the other guys looked up to, the

3:20

one they deferred to, the one

3:22

they really respected. They

3:25

called him the Professor. According

3:32

to the police, he is the kingpin of a pan

3:34

European art smuggling ring made

3:36

up of tomb raiders, counterfeiters,

3:39

fences and frontmen. Together,

3:41

he and his co conspirators are alleged to

3:43

have stolen forty million euros

3:45

worth of art and antiquities. After

3:49

emptying the house, the police bundle

3:51

Veres into an unmarked car and take

3:53

him into custody. They charge

3:55

him with fourteen counts, including

3:57

money laundering, wire fraud, fourury

4:00

and conspiracy. If

4:02

Verres is found guilty, he faces

4:04

a jail term of up to twenty years.

4:08

Veres's home isn't the only one being raided

4:10

that morning. Across Europe.

4:12

The police in Italy, Germany and Spain are

4:14

carrying out more than fifty simultaneous

4:17

raids to round up Veres's alleged accompasses.

4:21

By the time the sun is up, the authorities

4:23

have seized over twenty five thousand

4:25

objects and fifty one people

4:27

are in custody.

4:33

Veres doesn't deny doing business with

4:35

his co accused.

4:37

I've known these people for many, many years

4:39

in most cases.

4:40

But he claims their business was perfectly innocent

4:43

and he never led a smuggling cartel.

4:46

I didn't command anybody. These people are all

4:48

autonomous individuals.

4:50

But there's something you should know about his co defendants.

4:54

Some of them are suspected of having links

4:57

with the Sicilian mafia. So

5:02

Veres just

5:05

a simple coin dealer from

5:13

Brazen and PRX. This is

5:15

the professor. I'm Simon

5:17

Willis. I'm a journalist and a few

5:19

years ago I was looking for stories about

5:21

art crime. One day I

5:23

was having lunch with a contact who worked

5:25

as a private detective, and

5:28

he told me that if it was art crime I

5:30

was interested in, I had to meet

5:32

William Veres. This

5:34

guy was accused of being an international

5:36

art criminal, but that was only

5:39

half the story. There was also his plan

5:41

to get out of trouble. Let's

5:43

put it this way, it was audacious.

5:47

In this show, we are going to follow Veres

5:50

as he puts that plan into action. It

5:53

is a journey that will take us deep into the

5:55

underworld and to the dark heart of

5:57

the most famous criminal organization of them

5:59

all, the Sicilian mafia Causa

6:02

Nostra. It's a story of drug

6:04

dealers, hit men, smugglers,

6:07

spies, even a corrupt prime

6:09

minister. And in the

6:11

middle of it all is one man's

6:13

quest to save himself, how

6:17

by solving the most famous cold case in

6:19

the history of art crime.

6:26

Episode one, The Nativity.

6:42

Normal toy with a bit of milk nur. When

6:44

you imagine the house of an international

6:46

crook, trafficking in millions

6:48

of dollars of stolen art. You

6:51

might think of a luxurious penthouse, gold

6:53

taps, giant TVs, a

6:56

long lost Picasso hanging on the wall. That

6:58

kind of thing that isn't how William Veres

7:01

lives. It is March

7:03

twenty nineteen, eight months

7:05

after the raid. Vera's

7:07

is out on bail and I'm in his living

7:09

room. The place is comfortable,

7:12

but shabby, the house

7:14

of a middle class bohemian. There's

7:17

a dirty fish tank full of colorful guppies,

7:20

a worn out leather sofa, bits

7:22

of wood strewn all over the floor.

7:24

My son started a piano restoration.

7:26

That's us mini grand over there, and

7:29

your see bits of it everywhere.

7:31

Verez has a taste for elegant tweed jackets

7:34

and paisley silk scarves. He

7:36

is portly balding and has

7:38

a neatly quaffed handlebar mustache. His

7:41

conversation is frequently interrupted

7:43

by phone calls, which he fields in

7:45

one of the nine languages he speaks,

7:48

Italian come

7:52

or germangen.

7:56

Okay, or Turkish

8:00

mehrhabah. The hebc

8:02

ben Burda.

8:07

Veres may be out of custody, but he's

8:09

still in a cage. He is

8:11

wearing an electronic tag around his ankle, lives

8:14

under a curfew and isn't allowed

8:16

to spend the night away from home. Several

8:18

times a week he has to present himself at

8:20

a police station. Meanwhile,

8:24

his lawyers are fighting an extradition claim from

8:26

the Italian authorities. His

8:29

legal bills are mounting, but he can't pay them.

8:31

His bank has blocked his accounts. They

8:34

don't like doing business with suspected

8:36

money launderers. Whether

8:39

his career was criminal or not, it's

8:41

in ruins veres reckons.

8:43

The police stripped him of four hundred thousand

8:45

pounds worth of possessions. He

8:48

says he doesn't have anything left.

8:51

I don't have many shares or pension

8:53

policy, so it's my wealth, basically total

8:56

wealth. The way of this type

8:58

of punishment, if we look at his in

9:00

the cold light of day, it

9:02

is actually to ruin you.

9:04

It's been a hard fall for Veras. Over

9:07

the course of his career, he has had houses

9:09

in Switzerland, Germany and the South

9:11

of Spain, businesses in

9:13

London and Zurich, clients all over the world,

9:16

billionaires, politicians, even

9:18

the British Museum He's

9:21

been photographed at glamorous art world parties

9:24

chatting to the rock star Chrissy Hind, lead

9:26

singer of The Pretenders. In

9:29

the world of antiquities, his expertise

9:31

was in high demand, even

9:34

from fellow experts.

9:36

I'm Elenni Vasilica that cut

9:38

my teeth at the Brooklyn Museum, and then I was

9:40

keeper of ancient art

9:42

in the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University

9:45

of Cambridge for ten years. William

9:48

is a coin

9:50

nerd, very knowledgeable in

9:52

history. If I needed to

9:54

ask someone, I might

9:57

I might actually want to

9:59

ask him about a certain

10:01

period or what was going on. He would know

10:03

that. I've read that

10:05

he's called the professor in southern

10:08

Italy by dealers and traffickers

10:11

because he is so knowledgeable.

10:13

And now to make ends meet,

10:15

Veres is trying to buy and sell a few

10:18

things online.

10:19

Some English pennies.

10:20

Here.

10:21

I bought one eBay from a German dealer, a

10:23

nice penny of Henry the second.

10:26

I believe that's Richard the first. Possibly,

10:30

yes, that's Richard Lionheart

10:33

on a bad coin.

10:41

Veres was born in Hungary in nineteen

10:43

fifty three. When

10:45

he was three years old, his family escaped

10:47

Budapest just before Soviet

10:49

tanks rolled into the city to crush the revolution

10:52

in nineteen fifty six. They settled

10:54

in London. Veraz's father, who

10:56

was a tailor, got a dream job on Savile

10:59

Row.

11:00

Cyril Castle, who was turned

11:02

in those days Taylor to the Stars. The

11:05

Castle's actually dressed James

11:07

Bond in the form of Roger Moore at the

11:09

time, So we got to know Roger

11:11

Moore coming to my father's telief.

11:14

That's what you want to call it. Those

11:16

are hiss still you see Taylor Scissors.

11:22

Growing up, Verez's school friends

11:24

called him weird Veers, deliberately

11:27

mispronouncing his foreign name. Veres

11:30

was the kind of kid that bullies are drawn

11:32

to, nerdy, solitary,

11:35

obsessive. Already his

11:37

main obsession was coins, and

11:39

he remembers his first big deal to this

11:42

day, nineteen sixty days.

11:44

So I'm fourteen years old. Then

11:46

we're looking at her receipt

11:49

for a coin left at the Spinx.

11:51

Spinx is an auction house then located

11:54

in Mayfair, London's Poshus district.

11:57

Verez is haggling with its main coin expert.

12:00

You can see it's a letter from Douglas

12:03

Little. On the fourteenth of November nineteen

12:05

sixty eight, he writes to me, dear

12:07

mister Vera's, with reference to the small

12:09

penny of Elizabeth I which you left

12:11

with me, I have now explored the market for

12:14

this and could obtain for you and net

12:16

sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. I

12:18

think this is a very fair offer, because although

12:20

the coins, of course excessively rare, is

12:22

a very small one and also in poor condition,

12:25

and therefore very much a student piece. Yours,

12:28

sincerely, d Little.

12:31

Stepping into the famous sale room's Sphinx,

12:34

Verez rubbed shoulders with rich establishment

12:36

collectors. From that moment,

12:39

coins became more than just his hobby.

12:42

They became his route into English society.

12:46

All he needed was a steady supply

12:48

of valuable antiquities to sell to those

12:50

collectors, and in the nineteen seventies

12:52

and nineteen eighties, that was easy,

12:56

especially if you had friends in

12:58

Sicily.

13:00

Oh, I love it, I

13:06

lovely.

13:14

This is Domenica Maduno, a singer

13:16

from southern Italy. He

13:18

recorded this song in nineteen seventy three. It's

13:21

called the Mara Terrama My bitter

13:23

Land, and it's a lament for the place

13:25

he's leaving behind.

13:31

Y y.

13:39

E goodbye,

13:46

goodbye love. I leave my bitter

13:48

land, bitter than beautiful.

13:52

This was Sicily in the nineteen seventies.

13:55

Poor, violent, riddled

13:58

with crime and corruption.

14:00

Here has become dominated by

14:02

a more sinister kind of family, one

14:05

so secret, event so ruthless, that

14:07

most Sicilians spirit and publicly

14:09

denied even exists.

14:11

Almost every morning there was another bullet riddled

14:13

body in the streets of Palermo, Sicily's

14:15

capital, or slumped over the steering

14:17

wheel of a car, victims of the

14:20

Mafias turf wars. Since

14:23

the Second World War, thousands had been leaving

14:25

every year for better lives elsewhere, people

14:28

like the man in the song, but where some sort

14:30

of terror and desperation. Others

14:32

saw opportunity because

14:35

Sicily was a gold mine.

14:38

Sicily was the bread basket of the

14:40

ancient worlds. It was part of Magna Grecia,

14:42

which was the kind of Greek diaspora, and

14:45

the colonies there created an

14:47

agricultural society that really fed

14:49

much of the ancient world, and as

14:51

a result of that wealth, they built

14:54

huge monumental temples to the Greek

14:56

gods and lavishly decorated

14:58

these and had a populous there that was

15:01

quite wealthy.

15:02

That's Jason Felt, an author and investigator

15:04

who published a book called Chasing Aphrodite

15:07

about the illicit antiquities trade.

15:09

So the grave goods in Sicily are

15:12

amongst the best archaeological

15:14

evidence we have of Greek society

15:16

and the riches that the ancient

15:18

Greek world had.

15:20

But the Sicily of the nineteen seventies was very

15:22

different.

15:24

Yeah, you had the combination of two

15:26

factors that are usually behind archaeological

15:28

looting. You had a very rich archaeological

15:31

history just below the surface, and

15:33

at the same time, on the surface, you have political

15:35

instability, unrest, poverty,

15:38

a lack of government, of tension in that region

15:40

because the government did not play a strong role

15:42

in society, Mafia groups

15:45

really dominated and organized crime

15:47

communities really controlled businesses

15:49

above grounds. And the combination

15:51

of those two the rich archaeological sites

15:54

and organized crimes dominant

15:56

role in society, meant that it

15:58

was a prime spot for for decades.

16:02

Whereas began going to Sicily as a young

16:04

dealer in the nineteen seventies, I

16:07

used to go to coin fares there.

16:08

Now the coin fares were somewhat different there,

16:10

because, of course in Sicily you'd get

16:12

more diggers.

16:14

Sicily's diggers were usually poor, unemployed

16:16

people armed with metal detectors

16:18

and shovels and hoping to hit the jackpot

16:21

statues, ceramics, gold

16:24

and silver, vessels, and sometimes

16:26

literally money.

16:28

So there was a huge boom when the first

16:30

detectors came out. You could imagine you could find

16:33

hundreds of coins within the day. So

16:36

it goes hand in hand

16:38

unemployment lots of archaeology.

16:42

If these diggers and tomb raiders struck it lucky,

16:45

the art world was waiting to buy up their

16:47

discoveries because in

16:49

those days nobody cared whether

16:51

antiquities were looted or legitimately

16:54

acquired.

16:55

You could do everything you wanted. Nobody was

16:57

interested.

16:58

This is Arthur

17:00

Brand. Brand is

17:03

a kind of art world celebrity, lorded

17:06

in the international media for his work recovering

17:08

stolen art.

17:09

If a grave robber in Italy found

17:12

the doom of a royal or whatever,

17:15

and he found gold, silver,

17:18

stuff like that, now we say

17:20

this should go to a museum, but in those

17:22

days a grave robber would

17:25

put it up for auction. Even the biggest

17:27

museums in the world bought from these grave robbers.

17:30

At the time this trade was worth

17:32

millions of dollars. Here's Jason

17:35

Felch, the author and investigator.

17:36

Again, some of the most

17:39

remarkable pieces of ancient Greek

17:41

art in the world came from archaeological

17:44

looting in Sicily in

17:47

the seventies, eighties and nineties. This

17:49

would include the Getty's Aphrodite, which has dug

17:51

up in Morgantina. In the late seventies.

17:54

They broke this massive sculpture into three

17:56

pieces and smuggled it in the back

17:58

of a carrot truck from Sicily all

18:00

the way up the spine of Italy to Switzerland,

18:03

where it was smuggled across the border and

18:05

put back together before it was sold to

18:07

the Getty in nineteen eighty eight for eighteen

18:10

million dollars.

18:11

So how close was there is to the biggest

18:13

looters in Sicily. Well,

18:16

put it this.

18:16

Way, Razio de Simoni was the one who

18:19

smuggled out of Italy the Aphrodite

18:21

of Morgantina. Arazio de

18:23

Simoni, in fact was my best

18:25

man at my wedding, and I had nothing

18:27

to do with that. But of course the association

18:30

is rather unfortunate in Sicily.

18:32

Where there was money to be made, there

18:34

was the mafia. Here's

18:37

a Leni Vasilica, the ancient art

18:39

expert.

18:40

If you think of some poor

18:42

Sicilian who barely speaks or cannot

18:44

even speak Italian, speaks

18:47

dialect, it's not possible

18:49

for that person to sell something

18:51

to a dealer in Mayfair or

18:53

in New York without

18:56

some sort of infrastructure.

18:59

And the mafia provided that infrastructure.

19:02

It's a kind of force that

19:05

can negotiate judges, customs

19:08

officers, transport agencies

19:10

and hide the material

19:13

or pay people off in order to get the material

19:15

out of Sicily.

19:19

If you were a dealer working in Sicily, you

19:22

probably crossed paths with the mafia,

19:25

whether you knew.

19:25

It or not.

19:26

In Sicily, it's impossible not

19:29

to know somebody who is in the mafia,

19:31

whether it's a relative, a friend of a friend.

19:34

It's just like saying it's impossible

19:37

not to speak English in Wales.

19:38

Some of the contacts Vera's cultivated in Sicily

19:41

turned out to be directly implicated in

19:43

mafia activity. His biggest

19:46

sale came in nineteen ninety one, when

19:48

he acquired a golden bowl from the fifth

19:50

century BC for ninety thousand

19:52

dollars. The man he got it from was

19:54

an old Sicilian friend.

19:56

He was a very erudite collector. He

19:59

was a landowner, well positioned

20:01

in Sicilian society,

20:03

and he was a very interesting, eccentric

20:06

character, a typical collector, a little

20:08

bit loopy.

20:09

The ball was eventually sold to a billionaire

20:11

in New York for one point two million

20:13

dollars. Veres acted

20:16

as an intermediary in the sale, and

20:18

the man he bought it from, well,

20:20

one day in nineteen ninety nine, Sicilian

20:23

police came to his palatial house to

20:25

arrest him.

20:26

Well, as I say, I can't remember

20:28

the exact details, but he was accused of collusion

20:31

with the mafia, using mafia money to

20:33

collect and make money with antiquities and coins.

20:36

In the art world. Having contacts like

20:38

this can ruin your reputation, but

20:41

it can also make you useful. Here's

20:44

Arthur Brand again.

20:46

It's like a pyramid, and the bottom you have the

20:48

petty thieves, the people who do illegal

20:50

diggings in Italy or wherever, and

20:52

at the top you have like forty men and women

20:54

who control more or less to business. William

20:58

knows them all from the top to the bottom.

21:07

We'll be back after this shortbreak. Yeah,

21:19

I will press record here now. Good

21:22

Okay, So yes, Arthur, what I want

21:24

to do today is just talk a bit about the

21:27

Caravaggio. Arthur Brand, the

21:30

art world celebrity, is the second

21:32

big character in our story. He

21:34

started out as a small time coin

21:36

collector, but about two decades

21:39

ago he began to track down stolen

21:41

masterpieces Picasso's

21:44

Darley's Treasures looted by the

21:46

Nazis during the Second World War. He's

21:49

often compared to a certain brash,

21:51

swashbuckling hero.

21:53

This is a man who's been referred to as the

21:55

Indiana Jones of the art world.

21:57

He's been dubbed the Indiana Jones of the art

22:00

world.

22:00

My guest today is perhaps the world's

22:03

greatest art detective.

22:05

Dubbed the Indiana Jones of the art

22:07

world. Brand

22:09

has turned this work into a small

22:11

media empire and flucable

22:14

days. He has his own show

22:16

on Dutch TV called The Art

22:18

Detective a Knowful

22:21

Impact, and has written a best seller

22:23

about his recoveries. Arthur Brand

22:25

has become well a

22:28

brand, and right now

22:30

he is hoping to crack the coldest case

22:33

in the history of art crime.

22:36

One or two or three or four thieves

22:39

entered this church in Palermo,

22:43

cut off the caravacco and

22:45

walked away. That's all we know.

22:49

The caravadu in question is the Nativity

22:52

with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence, painted

22:54

in sixteen hundred. It was stolen

22:56

in nineteen sixty nine from a Sicilian church.

22:59

It could be worth as much as one hundred million

23:01

dollars today, making it one of the biggest

23:04

deaths in our history. But

23:07

for fifty years the case has thwarted

23:09

investigators.

23:10

Well, there are some facts

23:13

and the rest is speculation. The most credible

23:16

theory is that two or

23:18

three or one local thief cut

23:21

down the caravaccio and afterwards

23:25

this group voluntarily or

23:27

forced gave it or

23:30

sold it to the

23:32

mafia boss. That's

23:35

normally the theory which

23:37

is most accepted. Every

23:40

criminal in towns like Palermo

23:43

is somehow under protection

23:46

of the mafia. You just can't go around

23:48

stealing from tourists or starting your

23:50

own drug transport

23:53

unit or whatever without permission of the mafia.

23:55

For brand, the caravaggio is the holy grail

23:57

of art. Recovery is to

24:00

find it, but he doesn't work alone.

24:03

Over the years, he has cultivated a network

24:05

of Underworld informants, people

24:08

who know where stolen stuff ends up

24:11

and who has the keys. That's where

24:13

William Barras comes in. Brand

24:15

calls him Bill. By the way.

24:17

I once asked Bill, how many mobsters

24:20

do you know in Sicily? He said, well,

24:23

officially none because it's

24:25

not like they are dressed in a uniform.

24:27

But he said to me, Luke Arthur, we

24:29

all know that if

24:31

you go to Sicily you're on a bed and breakfast,

24:34

or you go there shopping oranges,

24:37

the guy could be a mobster.

24:39

You know, It's so widespread there

24:41

that you never know who we are dealing

24:43

with. So he said, I probably

24:46

know some of them without knowing that

24:48

they are in the

24:50

organization.

24:57

But these two men need each other. Veres

25:00

and his mafia contacts to find the Caravaggio,

25:03

and he thinks he can help Veres in return,

25:07

because Brand also has contacts with

25:09

police all over Europe, including

25:11

in Italy.

25:14

You cannot go around as a civilian

25:16

as I am in the Underworld without

25:19

having some kind of permission. You

25:22

have to do everything in coordination

25:25

with the police forces.

25:26

If Veres can make himself useful to Brand

25:29

and to the Italian authorities. Maybe

25:31

they can help Veres cut a deal with

25:33

the Sicilian public prosecutor who has

25:35

put him on trial, find

25:38

the caravaggio, and stay

25:40

out of jail.

25:42

When I asked William to help me, I have to offer

25:44

him something. They said, Look, I know you have troubles

25:46

with the law. You're going to face

25:48

a judge, and the judge will say,

25:51

look at all the things you did wrong. Is that not

25:53

anything good you did? In the meantime

25:56

that you are waiting at home to face

25:58

the judge, let's do something, Guje.

26:01

Bad people can do good things.

26:03

Verz doesn't just need Brand's help for his

26:05

own sake. He has a family

26:07

to support, and his family life is

26:10

complicated. While

26:12

I was reporting this show, one of

26:14

his three sons died in a car

26:16

accident. After a long struggle with

26:18

mental illness, Veres

26:20

cannot afford to go to prison. The

26:23

caravaggio may be the only thing

26:25

between him and a jail cell.

26:35

It's a Friday morning in October

26:38

nineteen sixty nine. Antonella

26:40

Lampone is fifteen years old. She

26:43

lives in Palermo, Sicily, where

26:45

her mother works as a caretaker In the Oratorio

26:47

di San Lorenzo, a Baroque church

26:50

in the city's old center. Their

26:52

tiny apartment is right across the

26:54

courtyard from the church's heavy wooden

26:57

door. That

26:59

Friday, Antonella watches as

27:01

her mother strolls across the cobbles to

27:04

unlock the church and prepare it for

27:06

Mass the following Sunday.

27:11

And when she went in, she

27:13

looked and saw that the canvas had

27:15

been cut, and she came out crying.

27:20

Library This is Antonella

27:22

speaking to me in twenty twenty two, remembering

27:25

that day more than fifty years earlier. The

27:28

church had been shut all week since last

27:30

Sunday's Mass, but at some

27:32

point someone broke

27:35

in and stole one of Italy's most valuable

27:37

paintings, Caravaggio's Nativity

27:39

with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence. It

27:43

was a precision job. The thieves

27:45

scaled the altar to get to the painting, which hung

27:48

high above it. Then they cut

27:50

the canvas from the frame so perfectly

27:52

that not a speck of paint was left behind.

27:58

It was a night of very heavy rain

28:00

with thunder. With that thunder,

28:03

you couldn't hear anything. They

28:06

had also stolen a carpet in the sacristy,

28:09

a very large rug of

28:12

no value, which

28:15

had certainly been used to wrap the canvas

28:17

painting.

28:22

This wasn't one of those ingenious crimes

28:25

where a cracked team of expert thieves

28:27

outsmarts, museum guards and high tech

28:29

security. It didn't have to be. The

28:32

old center of Palermo had been badly bombed

28:34

during the Second World War and hadn't yet

28:36

been rebuilt. The place was

28:38

practically abandoned. Not even

28:41

the Caravaggio was protected.

28:44

Temple.

28:45

I know it sounds crazy. At

28:47

that time, there were not even grates on the

28:49

windows. It

28:51

was very easy to steal it.

28:54

From mult.

28:56

All you had to do was forced

28:58

the lock and you're in. Any

29:00

old petty thief could have done that. We're

29:03

going to get to the police investigation in the next episode.

29:06

For now, all you need to know is

29:09

that the painting has never been seen again.

29:15

This was Palermo in the nineteen sixties. The

29:18

mafia controlled the island. Palermo

29:21

was its power center. You couldn't so much

29:23

as open a coffee kiosk in the city without the

29:25

Mafia knowing about it. Much less steel

29:27

than multimillion dollar painting, and

29:30

so suspicion inevitably began

29:32

to fall on them. If

29:36

there's one thing the mafia does well, it

29:39

is keeping secrets, and

29:41

nobody was saying anything. But

29:44

then twenty years after the painting

29:46

disappeared, and completely out of the

29:48

blue, someone began

29:50

to talk. His

29:54

name was Francesco Marino Manoya,

29:57

but within the mafia he was known as the Chemist.

30:00

In the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,

30:02

the Sicilian mafia controlled the international

30:04

heroine trade, supplying addicts

30:07

across Europe and the United States from a network

30:09

of heroin refineries in Sicily. Manoya

30:12

round the labs, hence the Chemist.

30:16

The police also suspect that he worked as

30:18

a hit man. He once said that

30:20

to strangle a man is very cruel and horrifying.

30:23

By comparison, dissolving the

30:26

body in acid is nothing, because

30:28

by then the victim has stopped suffering. But

30:32

eventually the killer became

30:34

the prey.

30:38

The early nineteen eighties or appearance of intense

30:41

violence in which literally thousands of people

30:43

are murdered in and around.

30:45

Sicily, This is Alexander Steeler.

30:47

He is an American journalist who covered Italy

30:49

and the mafia in the nineteen eighties and nineteen

30:52

nineties. At that time,

30:54

a new branch of the mafia from the town

30:56

of Corleone began a war

30:58

within Cosinostra in a bit to take control

31:00

of the organization and its drug business.

31:03

As part of that power drive,

31:05

they began killing everybody

31:08

associated with the old clans. People

31:11

who were connected to the

31:14

old families are on

31:16

the run, hiding out

31:19

and in many cases watching helplessly

31:22

as their relatives are being exterminated,

31:25

and this inevitably creates

31:28

a kind of backlash.

31:29

Manoya was one of the people who turned against

31:31

the mafia, and in nineteen

31:34

eighty nine he began to collaborate

31:36

with the state.

31:38

Annoya's Francisco Marino, Manoya's

31:41

brother, disappeared, was

31:43

kidnapped and probably killed, and

31:45

Manoya understood that he would be next,

31:49

so he essentially cooperated

31:51

to save his life.

31:54

Bartila Vita, This is Marizia

31:57

Ortoland. He is a retired Italian

31:59

cop. In the nineteen eighties, he was

32:01

tasked with protecting mafiosi who

32:03

returned state's evidence. Manoya's

32:07

decision would have catastrophic personal

32:09

consequences. In revenge

32:11

for his betrayal, the mafia murdered his

32:13

mother, sister and Auntquetra.

32:19

At that time, the mafia followed a scorged

32:21

earth policy. With any mafia

32:24

members who collaborated with the state, they

32:27

killed all their relatives.

32:31

Come Minoya

32:35

began to give evidence to Italy's leading anti

32:38

mafia investigator, Giovanni Falcone.

32:41

Ortolan was there to transcribe the testimony.

32:44

The three men gathered in a small theater

32:46

in Rome, usually used for police training. On

32:48

stage were two desks illuminated

32:51

by a single light bulb.

32:55

Is moggd a lot? Because doctor falconees

32:57

mogged a lot? Marino Manoya has

32:59

mogged more than him. Eyes smoked

33:01

as well. There was always a

33:03

cloud of smoke on this stage.

33:08

Manoya's testimony was a litany of assassinations,

33:11

international drug trafficking and extortion.

33:14

He himself was responsible for over twenty

33:16

murders. But that day, in nineteen

33:18

eighty nine, he was talking about how

33:21

he joined Cosenostra in the first place.

33:23

It was all because he stole a painting.

33:26

He Manoya Racnto

33:30

Monoya recounted, when he was still a

33:32

boy, not even eighteen years

33:34

old, some of your guys

33:36

started inviting him along to commit

33:39

petty theft or small criminal

33:41

episodes.

33:43

One of these times that they took

33:45

him with them. He told me that he participated

33:48

in the theft of the Caravajia nativity.

33:51

It was one of the first things he did.

33:54

John del remu

33:57

to Manoya at the Caravaggio wasn't all that

33:59

important and it was just something

34:01

he took to prove himself to local bosses.

34:04

See Luira, Kontoke and

34:07

Arno.

34:07

And he said that

34:10

they went to this place called the Oratory

34:12

of San Lorenzo.

34:15

They got in very easily because there were

34:17

no locks on the windows, and they

34:19

cut the painting, leaving the frame

34:21

in place. Then

34:24

they rolled the painting and loaded

34:26

it on a track that they had brought

34:28

to take it away.

34:32

Soon Camion cadover

34:37

per Portaloya.

34:38

Finally, after twenty years

34:40

of silence about the theft of Caravajo's

34:43

nativity, here was confirmation

34:45

that the mafia had taken it. The

34:48

question is do they still

34:51

have it. It's

34:58

twenty twenty one. Veras

35:00

and Brand are in a back room of an Amsterdam

35:03

hotel. Behind the lobby, Brand

35:06

has arranged a meeting.

35:07

I informed the Dutch police and I said, look, the Caroaco

35:11

I'm going after it, and then

35:13

I asked them. Police informed the

35:15

Italians that I am trying to recover

35:18

their piece.

35:19

Today, three Italian agents are

35:21

here to meet with Brand and Veras. They

35:23

are from Italy's Anti Mafia Investigative

35:26

Directorate, the DIA.

35:28

Two male agents I've

35:31

calculated there late thirties

35:33

early forties, and a

35:35

woman who was supposedly

35:37

the second in command of the organization.

35:40

The DIA oversees mafia investigations.

35:43

It also tries to seize mafia assets,

35:46

assets like priceless stolen paintings.

35:48

The police, the Caramanieri and other police

35:51

groups. Of course, they know that the

35:53

mafia.

35:53

Is involved, but the trouble is getting

35:56

current members of the mafia to admit that or

35:58

to give up information about the painting might

36:00

be. And that's why Veras and Brand

36:03

are at the hotel in Amsterdam. They

36:06

are going to offer to help obtain information, and

36:09

if Brand and Veras are successful, the

36:11

Italians agree to talk to the public prosecutor

36:13

in Sicily to help Veras in his

36:15

own case.

36:16

If I managed to recover something,

36:19

they would speak to the prosecutors.

36:21

The Italian police are used to doing this kind

36:23

of deal, offering favors in exchange

36:25

for information has been the key to cracking

36:27

down on organized crime for decades. Members

36:30

of the mafia who collaborated with prosecutors

36:33

were often given lighter sentences, some

36:35

avoided jail completely. So

36:39

here's Vera's plan. He

36:41

is going to reach out to contacts in the underworld to

36:44

see whether he can shed light on a case that

36:46

has eluded the Italian authorities.

36:49

You find it simply by using human resources,

36:51

by speaking to people who

36:54

have a chance to speak to people who

36:57

you or they suspect know something

36:59

about the case. You have to get

37:01

to mafia sources or

37:03

people, and then of course at some

37:05

state, somebody within the mafia will

37:08

be making a decision or

37:11

how to give it back, under what terms to

37:13

give it back.

37:14

Sometimes when you put somebody in the middle like me

37:17

who knows friends or friends or friends,

37:19

sometimes it does work out. So

37:22

that's one of the reasons why I think

37:25

they'll let me do what I do. And

37:27

the most important thing is Bill is

37:29

willing to help for whatever motive.

37:37

Now is the perfect time. Verez's

37:40

lawyers have successfully fought against his extradition,

37:43

and a British judge has agreed to lighten his bail

37:45

conditions. Meanwhile,

37:47

his case is stuck in a COVID related

37:49

backlog in the Sicilian courts.

37:52

If you can recover the caravad Joe, it would

37:54

obviously make a great deal of difference.

37:56

The delay gives him a window of opportunity and

37:59

he knows it exactly where to start

38:03

next time.

38:04

On the Professor, it wouldn't surprise

38:06

me that some informants said, look,

38:08

this is the person with Carvacco and if they turned

38:11

out to be a very close friends

38:13

to Berlusconi, well.

38:16

What do you think.

38:21

This has been? The Professor with me, Simon Willis.

38:24

This podcast is written and co created by

38:26

me. The show is produced by Brazen

38:29

in partnership with PRX Rubini.

38:31

Bamashaker is managing producer. Susie

38:34

Armitage is our story editor, and Lucy Woods

38:36

is our associate producer and fact checker. Mixing

38:39

and sound designed by Claire Urbarne. Executive

38:42

producers for Brazen are Bradley Hope

38:44

and Tom Wright. At Brazen, Mariannel

38:46

Gonzalez is our project manager, Meghan

38:49

Dean is our network manager. Francesca

38:51

Gilardi Quadrio Curzio is Italian

38:54

research assistant and podcast strategist arn

38:57

Avbinikia and nor Abdel Latif

38:59

are as stant strategists. Ryan

39:01

Hoe is the series creative director. Cover

39:04

art designed by Julian Pradier. Our

39:06

interpreters are Daria Bocchetti and Lawrence

39:08

Moggridge. Voiceover translation from

39:11

Denise Morino and Tomaso Tollun. For

39:15

more information on this podcast and other podcasts

39:18

from Brazen, go to our website Brazen

39:20

dot fm

40:02

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