It's True Crime Documentary Time and tonight's entry is 2022's The Thief Collector which tells the story of a stolen modern art masterpiece found in the most unlikely of places, apparently stolen by the least likely of thieves.
In 2017, an estate sales dealer in rural New Mexico was contacted to sell off the contents of a home of deceased couple Jerry and Rita Alter. Packed with all sorts of odd knick knacks gathered from the couple's world travels, the walls were lined with amateurish paintings which the dealers felt would have little market. However, in the couple's bedroom, hanging behind the door so it would only be visible inside the room with the door closed was one painting that clearly didn't match the rest, though it's aesthetic merit was debatable. (If you're like me and find much of what's called abstract Expressionist "art" to be garbage, you'll agree that this painting doesn't scream, "Good!")
They took it to their shop and almost immediately a customer spotted it, asked if was "a de Kooning" and offered $200,000 for it on the spot. That got their attention and they rapidly determined this painting appeared to be a mid-Century work by Willem de Kooning called Woman-Ochre which had been stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson in 1985 on the day after Thanksgiving after being cut from its frame. A couple who visited the museum were suspects, but obviously the case was ice cold, the work believed stolen under contract for some wealthy collector's secret stash. (At the time it was recovered, it's estimated selling price was $160 million, though the conditions of its donation to the museum was that it could never be sold.)
That the Alters were almost certainly the culprits is rapidly determined, especially when the fact they spent Thanksgiving in Tucson with relatives, they resembled the police sketches, had a car and clothes similar to the suspects, and the odd lack of entries in the diaries Rita meticulously maintained listing everything and everywhere they did and went as if to not have a written record of being in the city where they pulled off the heist. Not to mention the whole it was hanging in their bedroom thing!
Filling out the rest of the documentary is a lot of speculation about how the couple managed a globe-trotting adventurers lifestyle on a single income. They weren't just doing the usual London-Paris-Rome tourism thing, but would go to exotic places where they'd pay someone to sneak them into the neighboring country one couldn't visit directly or they'd live in a hut somewhere for a month. They'd do these expeditions a few times per year.
Adding to the intrigue is a self-published book of lurid short stories written by Jerry which some believe are tantamount to confessions to untold crimes including possibly murdering an itinerant Mexican laborer who may have gotten too friendly with Rita and dumping the body in the septic tank.
Director Allison Otto uses cute, deliberately cheesy reenactments, of the heist and other speculations as to what the Alters were up to, but ultimately nothing comes of it as no other reportedly stolen items were found in their home, though there was a bunch of valuable things that sold at auction for a tidy sum that no one knows how they came into their possession.
If you watch your crime docs to have a complete story told, The Thief Collector isn't for you because even the obviously closed case is only circumstantially resolved. While the speculation is interesting, the lack of resolution moots its relevance. But if you like having more questions than answers, The Thief Collector is for you.
Score: 6/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on Amazon Prime Video)
It's viewable for free with ads on YouTube as well:
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