This Is a Robbery on Netflix: Where is convicted art thief Myles Connor Jr now?

In the last week Netflix released a new true crime docuseries, This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist, about one of the world’s most expensive unsolved crimes. In 1990, over half a billion dollars worth of art was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. One of the main suspects at the time was seasoned art thief, Myles Connor Jr.

Myles Connor Jr was notorious for being involved in art thefts, drug deals and he was once convicted of murder. He soon became known as the biggest art thief in America, so it’s no surprise he was suspect number one in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery.

via Netflix

After the robbery, police thought the job was done too well to just be a one-off thing. It looked as though those involved knew exactly what they were doing. The incident lasted 81 minutes and 13 pieces were taken, including legendary works by Rembrandt, Vermeer and others.

Myles Connor Jr is described as a “legendary outlaw” from Massachusetts who had a history with stealing art, including Rembrandt pieces. In the documentary on Netflix he’s said to have had a lavish lifestyle, keeping pets such as cougars and stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fine art pieces.

As well as this, he was a singer and musician, but this career was “interrupted” by his criminal behaviour. Myles Connor Jr didn’t exactly come from the kind of background you would expect, his father and a brother worked in the police, and another brother of his was a priest.

via Netflix

In his criminal career he had shoot outs with police, and was shot himself “four or five times at once”. He admits to being behind over 30 art heists in total, adding that the authorities know of “very little” of them. His lawyer claims that Connor had said the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was “on his bucket list”.

In 1975, Connor stole a Rembrandt painting from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, with hope that returning it would lighten a prison sentence. He was also convicted for a 1981 double-homicide, but the ruling was overturned four years later.

What is Myles Connor Jr up to now?

via Netflix

After the Boston heist in 1990, Myles Connor rang the police himself to confirm he had nothing to do with it. On the day of the robbery, Connor was serving 11 years in jail for drug trafficking.

Over his lifetime, Myles Connor Jr has spent over two decades in prison, but he was released for good in 2000. His final conviction was for cocaine distribution, for which he served 11 years in prison.

In 2010, Myles released an autobiography with crime novelist Jenny Siler, called: “The Art of the Heist: Confessions of a Master Thief.” In the book he talks openly about the crimes he committed as an art thief, including shoot outs with police and the ins and outs of huge burglaries.

Myles Connor Jr is now in his late 70s and living in rural Blackstone, Massachusetts. He appeared on a podcast in 2018, where he is described as slurring his words after suffering from a major heart attack a few years ago. He describes being bright as a child and was even offered a place at Harvard, which he turned down to be a “rockstar”.  “That was a turn in my life that I regret. Looking back at it, I think I would have been a better surgeon than I was an art thief,” Connor said.

This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, quizzes, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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