The Accidental Picasso Thief
The True Story of a Reverse Heist, Outrunning the FBI, and Fleeing the Boston Mob
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In 1969, during a Boston snowstorm, a crate containing Pablo Picasso's Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer vanished from Logan Airport. It should have gone to a Milwaukee gallery-but instead ended up in the closet of Bill Rummel, a young forklift operator.
What followed was a stranger-than-fiction chain of events: FBI agents on the hunt, whispers of Whitey Bulger's mob, and a daring “reverse heist” devised by Bill's father to secretly return the painting.
But the mystery didn't end there. After its return, the Picasso disappeared again-vanishing into private hands, unseen by the public for more than fifty years.
Part true crime, part memoir, The Accidental Picasso Thief uncovers the Rummel family's incredible brush with art history, crime, and secrecy-and one man's decades-long search for a lost masterpiece.
Whit Rummel
Whit Rummel Jr. is an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker. After graduating with a Master's in Film from Boston University, he began his career as a documentarian. His first project, TATTOO, was a quirky 16mm film about heavily tattooed people that aired nationally on the PBS series, Independent Focus. His first screenplay, Secret Boy, was awarded the Nicholl Fellowship from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He was contracted by DisneyToon studios to script an animated feature called Pigs Might Fly. He went on to establish WITCOM Associates, a Boston-based production house specializing in innovative programming for corporate and commercial clients.
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