The myth of the art thief: It's not a gentleman's crime - Salon

There are thieves who stole art for other reasons, but wind up keeping it. Adam Worth swiped the world’s most expensive painting at the time, 1876, because he planned to ransom it to help spring his brother from custody. But when his brother’s lawyer did the job for him, Worth (called “the Napoleon of Crime” and inspiration for Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories) ended up keeping Gainsborough’s "Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire" for 25 years.

Vincenzo Peruggia stole Leonardo’s "Mona Lisa" in 1911 ostensibly for ideological reasons — he claimed to have thought it had been looted from his native Italy by Napoleon (a fair guess, but not the case), and thus smuggled it from Paris, where he kept it for two years, to Florence, where he returned it to the Uffizi, and appeared entirely surprised to find himself arrested. These thieves kept the art they stole, but they stole it with a different initial rationale.

Perhaps Jerome Alter stole the de Kooning, if indeed he did, with another plan in mind as to how to profit from it, but this also bears no relation to his known biography. Most art is stolen by members of organized crime groups (which can include large, international mafias, but is defined as any group of three or more individuals, engaged in criminal activities for collective, long-term goals), and no one seems to think that Alter was a criminal. Steve Cooperman stole his own paintings, hid them away, and tried to claim their insurance value. But this, likewise, is not the case for Alter.

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