The notion of the “perfect crime” is a tantalizing fantasy for many criminals, but such instances are exceedingly rare.
Cases that once seemed unsolvable, like the Black Dahlia murder, the Zodiac murders, the Tylenol scare of the 1980s, and the Diane Suzuki murder in Hawaii, continue to baffle investigators.
For years, the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. were also on this list, but recent developments have led to the identification of Tupac Shakur’s murderer this year.
D.B. Cooper’s audacious plane hijacking remains another enigmatic case where the perpetrator evaded capture.
Read on to delve into some of history’s most audacious crimes—some solved, others still shrouded in mystery.
The Gardner Museum Theft
The Gardner Museum of Boston, once the home of Boston socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner and bequeathed to the city of Boston by Mrs. Gardner upon her death, was robbed in 1990 by two men disguised as Boston police officers.
The daring art thieves got away with a collection of 13 works of art valued at more than $500 million, including a painting by Vermeer, three Rembrandts, a Manet and five drawings by Degas.
The audacious theft at the Gardner Museum symbolizes a haunting wound in the world of art, as 13 irreplaceable masterpieces vanished into thin air.
Incredibly enough, the museum was uninsured at the time, and to this day the artwork has never been recovered despite a $5 million reward, offers of immunity to the culprits and an appeal on “America’s Most Wanted”.
To date, no one has come forward and the empty frames for these works hang on the museum’s walls as a memorial to the lost paintings.
Brink’s Security Robbery
Billed as the “crime of the century” at the time because of the daring, skill in execution, the size of the booty and because they left no clues.
In January 1950, a gang of thieves, 11 in total, infiltrated the Brink’s Security World Headquarters in Boston.
The perpetrators had carefully planned and rehearsed the heist for two years. After several aborted attempts, they finally had a favorable shot and went in.
Wearing rubber Halloween masks and homemade Brink’s uniforms, they penetrated the building, tied up the only security guards around and made off with $3 million.
They split some of the money and agreed not to touch the rest until the six-year statute of limitations for theft had passed.
Despite eventual arrests, the majority of the stolen funds were never recovered, adding an enduring layer of mystery to the case.
Some of the gang members continued with their lives of crime and were soon behind bars for other robberies.
Demands for their cut of the loot were made so that they could pay for their lawyers in court, and then everything started to go pear-shaped.
Eventually, one of the members ended up as an FBI informant and the entire gang was nabbed and sent to prison. Only $58,000 of the original $3 million were recovered.
No one knows for sure where the rest of the money went, some speculate it is hidden in the hills of Minnesota, but if that were true, the bills now would be worthless and probably severely deteriorated.
Hollywood was quick to pick up on the dramatic potential of this audacious robbery and made a total of four films.
Lufthansa Heist
The spectacular Lufthansa Heist, carried out by NYC crime families Luccheses and Gambinos in 1978 with the help of an insider at New York’s JFK Airport, overturned the Brink’s heist as the largest robbery committed on American Soil.
The mobsters-turned-robbers orchestrated and executed their plan with great precision, no deaths and only minor injuries to some of the employees.
In the end, the gang got away with $6 million in cash and jewels, more than they had expected, which sent the ringleader, Jimmy Burke, into a panic.
The subsequent internal violence within the gang reveals a dog-eat-dog mentality prevalent among criminals, often leading to their downfall.
The unwanted media attention, coupled with the getaway driver’s botch up of his end of the deal, led Burke to have all of the participants in the heist murdered to cover his tracks.
With the violent deaths of most of the heist associates and planners, little evidence and few witnesses remained connecting Burke or his crew to the heist.
However, in the end, the FBI nabbed inside man Louis Werner for helping to plan the heist, and Burke himself was arrested on a separate murder charge, but the money disappeared.
The Lufthansa heist served as inspiration for the popular film “Goodfellas.”
Theft of The Mona Lisa
“Mona Lisa is the only beauty who went through history and retained her reputation.”
Will Rogers
The most famous and priceless painting in history, a veritable masterpiece by the one of the most glorious geniuses of all was the object of a simple and unsophisticated theft by an amateur that briefly involved famed French poet Guillaume Appollinaire and Pablo Picasso.
In 1911, an Italian patriot and employee of the Louvre, Vincenzo Peruggia, hid in a museum closet, took the painting off of the wall and hid it under his coat and walked out of the museum unobstructed.
The brazen theft of the Mona Lisa showcased the vulnerabilities in even the most secure cultural institutions.
Peruggia held the Mona Lisa in his apartment for two years before trying to sell it to the directors of the Florentine Uffizi Gallery.
Although Peruggia became a national hero in Italy for trying to bring the Mona Lisa “home,” he did serve six months in jail for his bold theft.
Antwerp Diamond Heist
“Diamonds are forever.”
Ian Fleming
The Diamond District in Antwerp, Belgium is a criminal’s paradise. With 80% of the world’s diamonds going through the District, all that glitters is gold.
That must have been what Leonardo Notarbartolo was thinking when he began planning one of the biggest heists in history with a loot worth more than $100 million in diamonds, gold, other jewelry and cash.
In 2003, Notarbartolo, a member of the “La Scuola di Torino” (The School of Turin), managed to penetrate the district’s impressive security, including a lock with 100 million possible combinations, infrared heat detectors, a seismic sensor, Doppler radar, a magnetic field and the diamond center’s own private security force, without setting off the alarms.
Amidst the glittering allure of Antwerp's Diamond District, Notarbartolo's meticulous orchestration eclipsed all barriers, only to be undone by a humble sandwich.
No small feat that, but they were caught thanks to a half-eaten sandwich after all of their careful planning and preparation.
DNA evidence from the sandwich and videotapes from the crime scene connected him to the heist and he was finally found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
The loot was never recovered. Notarbartolo claims he was double-crossed by insiders within the diamond trade, who ended up with the bulk of the loot.
Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping
The first man to cross the Atlantic on a solo, non-stop flight in 1927, Charles Lindbergh, leapt to fame for his daring feat.
His fame, however, also brought him tragedy when his son was kidnapped and held for ransom.
On March 1, 1932, Lindbergh’s son disappeared from his crib and in his place was a ransom note.
The Lindberghs and the kidnappers exchanged notes until they paid $50,000 to an unnamed individual in May 1932.
The family received a note specifying the child’s location on a boat off Martha’s Vineyard. Police raced to the harbor, but the child and the boat were nowhere in sight.
Lindbergh, the icon of aviation, soared to staggering heights, only to plummet into an abyss of personal tragedy with the abduction of his offspring.
Then their worst nightmare came true the following day when the child’s body was found by accident and identified.
An autopsy showed the child had been dead for 2 months, indicating that he was killed immediately after he was taken.
Years later, police investigators were able to trace some of the ransom money to New York based on a list of serial numbers and a license plate.
The police finally caught the killer, Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
He was arrested in the fall of 1934 and sentenced to death for his crime in April 1936.
The Great Train Robbery
The mythical and famed Great Train Robbery of 1963, immortalized by Hollywood, TV, pop music and more, took just 15 minutes to pull off and $7 million from a British Royal Mail car.
Despite their quick getaway and initial success, a series of blunders regarding their hideout immediately after the heist however, led to their arrest and subsequent imprisonment.
The 30-year sentence received by all the members of the gang was too much for Ronnie Biggs, who managed to escape after just 15 months in jail.
This robbery, enacted in a brief span of 15 minutes, displays both the heights of criminal ambition and the pitfalls of post-operation complacency.
Biggs fled first to Australia and then to Brazil, which refused to extradite him, allowing him to live openly in Rio de Janeiro despite his criminal past.
His Brazilian son even became a famous musician, providing an upscale lifestyle for Biggs.
Biggs returned to England at the age of 71 and was immediately arrested to serve out the remainder of his sentence but was released on compassionate grounds due to illness eight years later.
D.B. Cooper
Normally the FBI does its job right and efficiently, but on the evening of November 1971, the bureau would be stuck with a case that has baffled the institution to date.
A man with an ordinary name, Dan Cooper, boarded a flight headed for to Seattle from Portland, a 30-minute flight.
No one could have suspected that this ordinary-looking man would produce a ransom note asking for $200,000 and four parachutes and threatening flight attendants with a bomb if his demands were not met.
The plane landed, refueled, released all the passengers and secured the required items before taking off again under Cooper’s orders.
Despite intense efforts, the trail went cold, save for a minor clue years later, echoing the ephemeral nature of some truths that elude even the most determined pursuers.
After ordering all the remaining crew into the cockpit, Cooper strapped on one of the parachutes and jumped from a height of 10,000 feet into the deep woods below with the loot.
To this day, no one knows if he lived or died. Despite FBI efforts and a massive manhunt, no evidence of the case was found until 1980, when a pack containing $5,800 surfaced in a river close to the drop zone.
Subsequent investigations confirmed that the serial numbers on these bills matched those given to Cooper on the plane.
But that was all, neither Cooper nor the rest of the money have ever turned up anywhere in the world.
Baker Street Robbery
One of the most mysterious bank robberies ever to have occurred was carried out in London in 1971.
Late on the night of September 11, a gang of thieves rented a nearby Le Sac store and then tunneled there way into the bank, tow doors down and under the sandwiched chicken Chicken Inn restaurant.
The burglars used a set of walkie-talkies to communicate, but had no idea their entire conversation had been picked up by a local ham radio enthusiast.
He contacted police and tape-recorded their conversations, but the police were unable to determine exactly which bank the thieves were targeting.
The gang managed to get away with more than 1.5 million pounds in cash and jewels from bank deposit boxes.
The subsequent media silence, potentially cloaked by governmental intervention, adds layers of intrigue and speculation to an already convoluted tale.
Though the story made headlines for the next three days, it suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from the newspapers.
It was rumored that the British government issued a gag order that prevented news media from covering the robbery due to a high-profile personality being compromised.
Years later, The Times reported in January 1973 that four men had been convicted of the robbery at a trial at the Old Bailey and gave their identities.
The 2008 movie “The Bank Job”, based on information about the case, hinted that the British government imposed the gag order to protect Princess Margaret and other royals from damaging photos taken from the vaults.
To this day, there is no evidence to suggest the money or jewels were ever found
The Bernie Madoff Scam
“Curiosity pulls people into the scam.”
Frank Stallone
In one of the many cases that surfaced as a result of the 2008-economic crisis, financier Bernie Madoff, who owned one of Wall Street’s most successful investment firms, scammed investors out of $50 billion from 1960 to 2008.
With some of the world’s most famous millionaires in his portfolio, Madoff offered his clients amazing returns on their money, something other firms could neither do nor believe.
In 1999, financial analysts pointed out that Madoff’s return rates from his investments were mathematically impossible and the jig was up.
Madoff's scam exposes the vulnerability of even sophisticated investors when ensnared by consistently high returns, despite glaring inconsistencies.
It was later discovered that Madoff had been running a giant Ponzi scheme and had used money from new investors to pay returns to older clients and so on.
In one of the SEC’s biggest oversights, the watchdog institution had received complaints but no action was taken and the scam continued.
When it all came crashing down in 2008, Madoff was unable to keep the cash wheel turning and was forced to reveal the scam to his sons.
The ensuing investigation led to Madoff’s conviction and a 150-year sentence in prison.
Stay tuned for the next “perfect” crime
The audacity of crime, a realm where the cunning meet the foolish, and where Hollywood finds its next blockbuster.
From the artful dodgers of the Gardner Museum to the not-so-slick moves of Bernie Madoff, we’ve explored a smorgasbord of criminal endeavors that would make even Sherlock Holmes scratch his head.
And let’s not forget the recent revelation about Tupac Shakur’s murderer—proving that even the most enigmatic of crimes can eventually lose their “perfect” status.
So, dear readers, as you lock your doors and check your bank statements, remember: the only perfect crime is the one that hasn’t been written about yet.
But give it time; someone’s probably plotting it as you read this sentence.
Ah, the circle of life—or should we say, the circle of crime?
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