Art Puzzle : Diligence Led Police to Twins as Suspects in Fine Print Thefts

On the surface, the thieves seemed sophisticated. They carefully targeted fine art prints created by mainstream contemporary and modern artists, whose pieces command thousands of dollars.

Yet the artwork, taken from a number of upscale galleries around Los Angeles, often ended up folded or creased, visibly damaged in the process of being hidden inside clothing during the thefts.

“That was strange because you don’t do that to fine art,” observed the Los Angeles Police Department’s veteran art theft investigator, William Martin, “because it reduces value.”

Now a pair of fraternal twins living in Beverly Hills stand accused on charges related to the thefts and the attempted sale of stolen prints valued at about $100,000. The works include prints, by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Eric Fischl, Ed Ruscha and Richard Diebenkorn, taken from half a dozen galleries in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, starting in mid-1989.

“A shoplift, basically” is how Martin described the thefts. To him they paled by comparison to thefts of priceless masterpieces, or the counterfeit-art investigation the 44-year-old detective headed last year, which culminated in the seizure of 1,685 prints from the Upstairs Gallery chain.

But the current case is distinguished by some daring, rather public maneuvers the thieves sometimes used to take the prints, often with gallery staff members close by, and by the brothers who have emerged as the suspects.

Paul and Kevin Doremus, a smartly dressed pair of 38-year-olds who described themselves as art collectors at galleries and auction houses they frequented, are to be arraigned on the charges later this month in Superior Court.

Paul Doremus, tall, blond and described as gregarious, told one auction house employee he was an interior designer for men’s clothing stores. Kevin Doremus, shorter, dark-haired and said to be more withdrawn than his brother, told police after his arrest that he was unemployed.

The two drove a Mercedes-Benz and kept a Porsche in the garage of their expensively furnished one-bedroom apartment on South Crescent Drive, according to acquaintances, who said the pair also gave a lot of parties.

The two pleaded not guilty before a Municipal Court preliminary hearing earlier this summer.

In a written statement to The Times, Paul Doremus labeled the charges “untrue, unfounded and outrageous” and said the brothers “will, when the opportunity is provided us, present evidence to clear our name.”

Martin said the case came to his attention when he “detected a pattern of gallery thefts, prints being taken, with either one or two well-dressed white males involved.”

At the victimized galleries, the stolen pieces had been kept in drawers or racks in less public areas, and in many instances the thefts were not immediately noticed.

A John Nieto print taken from Many Horses Gallery disappeared from a drawer in a rear room behind curtains. A Richard Diebenkorn woodcut was taken from a small viewing room in the Richard Green Gallery. Bruce Nauman proofs were lifted from files in a back storeroom of Cirrus Editions. The thefts went undetected for periods ranging from a few months to a year or more.

The pattern was all Martin had to go on, until two prints were stolen from the Jack Rutberg Fine Arts Gallery on La Brea Avenue. Rutberg’s own loss and subsequent sleuthing provided the clues that allegedly linked a number of stolen prints to the Beverly Hills twins.

One day last February, the slender, bearded Rutberg, an art dealer for 17 years, discovered two Robert Rauschenberg and Georges Rouault prints missing. What he would later remember most about that particular morning, he said recently, was a man running in to his showroom and then rushing upstairs where the gallery kept its prints in racks and drawers.

“What was that all about?” Rutberg had demanded of his assistant, seated at the front desk. The man needed the restroom, she replied.

Rutberg thought that was “peculiar,” but he shrugged and went back to putting together a catalogue for an upcoming show. Meanwhile, he said, he paid little attention to a second man who had also entered the gallery and disappeared out of sight to a back area on the first floor.

After the two had gone, Rutberg said, he became aware of the thefts.

After the arrest, Rutberg’s assistant, Lauren Evans, identified Paul Doremus as the man dressed in shorts, shirt and sweater who ran into the gallery the day of the theft. But she could not identify the other man, wearing slacks and a sport coat.

Rutberg said another print, a Joan Miro, had been stolen in July, 1989, and he became convinced the same parties were responsible. “I can’t tell you what this did to me,” he said.

An energetic man who never seems to sit still, he took up the case like another one of his projects and “started doing some detective work.”

While leafing through a pre-sale catalogue distributed by the Butterfield & Butterfield auction house, Rutberg spotted listings for two Rauschenberg and Rouault prints that looked the same as the ones he had lost.

“I thought it was too much of a coincidence that these two prints should come at the same time at the same sale,” Rutberg said. He alerted Detective Martin.

Martin said he learned that Paul Doremus, in the company of his brother, had placed both prints on consignment for sale with Butterfield two days after Rutberg’s had been stolen.

In his statement, Paul Doremus said he was not in the Los Angeles area “during the time these alleged art thefts occurred.”

“I can and will prove this. . . . The only legal matter that will remain is if, at some time, artwork that I legally purchased in the past might have been stolen prior to my ownership.”

In his investigation, Martin said in an interview, he found “there were other pieces,” also placed on consignment at the auction house, “one of which was a Diebenkorn that had been folded. So everything kind of snowballed.”

The Diebenkorn woodcut, originally priced at $30,000, lost all but $5,000 of its value, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing, because of creases pressed into the paper.

Still, Rutberg was not satisfied. “I didn’t want to stop,” he said. “Something still bugged me. . . . Where the hell was my Miro?”

So, Rutberg contacted art conservators and was told that two had done restoration work on several different artworks for someone named Doremus. One conservator later testified that Paul Doremus had brought in a “badly creased” Diebenkorn and, in fact, a Miro--which the restorer no longer had.

Martin obtained a search warrant for the brothers’ Beverly Hills apartment. There, he said, “we located several stolen prints and forged prints.”

The Doremus brothers, who were born in Burbank and graduated in 1969 from Corona del Mar High School in Orange County, had a previous criminal record. In 1980 they pleaded guilty in a plea bargain to thefts of various items in Orange County, including a rug, a wooden duck and decanter sets. Each was given three years’ probation, although Kevin Doremus also was sentenced to 30 weekends in jail.

Meanwhile, Rutberg, now renovating his gallery, has decided to upgrade his alarm system to improve security. And he is still playing detective, looking for his Miro. From what he learned from the restorer who had the damaged print, he believes it is “worthless.”

“It’s more a matter,” Rutberg said, “of putting this thing to bed.”