SHORT TAKES : 4 Stolen Paintings Recovered
Four paintings stolen from the Detroit Institute of Arts eight years ago are back at the museum after passing through the hands of cocaine dealers, the FBI said.
Detroit FBI spokesman John Anthony said Tuesday the art works were recovered in Miami, where they had been kept for a period of time in a safe-deposit box by an admitted cocaine conspirator.
Anna Barnes, who had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sell cocaine, testified during a Wilmington, N.C., drug trial that she took the paintings as payment from Michigan drug dealers. The owner of the deposit box is not a suspect in the art thefts, and no arrests have made made despite a $30,000 reward offered by the DIA in 1982. The Michigan drug traffickers were not identified.
The paintings were recovered in December, 1989, and January, 1990, in connection with an undercover drug investigation in Miami, Anthony said.
Anthony said the return of the paintings to the DIA earlier this year was kept quiet until now because of the continuing federal investigation.
Among the paintings that turned up missing on May 28, 1982, was “A Woman Weeping,” attributed to Rembrandt.
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