We’ve been reporting and blogging for two months about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist and our efforts to use crowdsourcing to help recover the stolen art. It has been working well. Our blog’s followers have  taken up the cause, sending us dozens of ideas, tips and leads.  Some, like leelofland.com, have posted the information on their own blogs to help reach as wide an audience as possible.

Now another player has entered the effort.  A twitter.com user named GardnerTheft has been posting links to our articles and others.  Check out the info-tweets at twitter.com’s web site (search: GardnerTheft).  With just a click you’ll see frequently updated news, insights, ideas and blog posts.

This is just the sort of help we’re seeking.  Keep it up. That art is somewhere, and a bona fide $5 million awaits the finder(s).

When medical illustrator Nicole C. Wolf produced her digital paintings to update the renderings of the two Gardner thieves, the public got the best images of the robbers ever produced.  Wolf’s work, done in anonymous collaboration with one of the Gardner guards on duty during the theft, has led to dozens of new leads for the museum’s investigator, Anthony M. Amore.

With those tips in mind, it’s time to provide more information about the two thieves’ physical descriptions. Each detail is aimed at jarring the memories of people who know the behavior patterns of many in the criminal underworld.

The thief who did all of the talking to the guard behind the watch desk — identified in The Herald as “Richard A.” (see  “Guard’s moments before theft clouded in intrigue”)  — is commonly referred to as UNSUB 1  (unknown subject No. 1).  UNSUB 1 was the older of the two thieves, described by both guards as being in his early 30’s.  (History shows that such age identifications from younger crime witnesses can be as much as 10 years below a suspect’s true age.)  No. 1 was the shorter of the two,  and spoke in what has been described as a controlled but somewhat pushy manner, exerting authority to ensure the guards knew he was in charge.  His height has been described as 5-foot-7 to 5-foot-10, his build medium.

Whether or not UNSUB 1 had a mustache, and if so whether it was fake, is not clear, as the two guards gave investigators somewhat unclear initial descriptions.  UNSUB 1 also wore wire-rimmed glasses, according to one guard. As with UNSUB 1, it is unclear whether UNSUB 2 wore a fake mustache.

UNSUB 2 presented a particular challenge to Wolf, as the guard with whom she worked described him as having unique cheekbones, unlike any he’d seen before or since. Wolf’s final renderings, however, were good enough to get a thumb’s up from the cooperating guard.

UNSUB 2 was younger than UNSUB 1, described as being in his late 20’s to early 30’s.  He had dark hair and dark eyes, about 180 to 200 pounds, and tall. One of the guards on duty was tall himself, and recalled that UNSUB 2 was tall enough to look in the eyes, perhaps 6 feet or 6-foot-2.

UNSUB 2 was also notable in his demeanor. Unlike his partner, UNSUB 2 spoke little. When he did, he was kindly to the guards.  He even thought to ask the guard he handcuffed if the cuffs were on too tight. When told they were too tight by the guard, UNSUB 2 uncuffed him and reapplied the manacles to ensure more comfort.  He also reportedly apologized to one of the guards more than once, explaining that the thieves knew the guards were just there doing their jobs.

Before leaving the museum, the thieves checked on the guards at least once.  And when they had finished looting of the galleries, the thieves told the guards if they said nothing about what they saw, they could expect a “reward” in about a year’s time.

Of course, no reward ever came, and the thieves have not been heard from in more than 19 years.

Do these descriptions of the guards’ actions and behavior, coupled with the new digital paintings, bring anyone to mind?  Let us know.

Attention Gardner heist hounds.

We’ve gotten many great tips from you all in recent days. Here’s a great chance to crowdsource one of them:

We need your help identifying these keys. Do they look familiar? Have you had a similar set before? Are they from a specific locker or storage facility?

Let us know by email at theft@isgm.org

Many people following the Gardner mystery have been asking whether the Herald’s collaboration with FOX-TV’s popular “America’s Most Wanted” show has produced specific leads.

The answer is “yes, quite a few.”

Here are a few examples of information that has come to “AMW” and the Herald, or to Gardner museum security chief Anthony Amore. They have been edited to maintain anonymity and avoid tipping off any bad guys.

* Information related to a notorious New England art thief and one of his long-time — but little known — accomplices.

* A report from a man who believes he recognized Nicole Wolf’s updated sketch of Suspect 2 as a local career criminal involved in a string of robberies.

* Claims that a person now incarcerated in Massachusetts has stated that a well-known criminal lawyer has possession of at least some of the art.

* The suspicions of the girlfriend of a New York artist who moves art through the black market.

* A person who may have seen the Gardner art being moved in carpets in a back alley in Downtown Boston the morning after the theft.

* A man from a Caribbean island who is aware of an art fence in his hometown who receives regular visits from an American.

* A possible sighting of one of the missing pieces of art in Texas.

* A former cellblock-mate of a major suspect in the heist who is confident that the art is stored in a southern state.

We’ll report back when we learn more.

One of the aspects most common to museum thefts is speed. Art thieves often pull a painting or two from a wall and run out of the building to a get-away vehicle, scoring a treasure worth far more than the cash snared in the typical bank robbery. Instead of taking time to subdue customers or bank tellers, museum thieves can pull off their job in just minutes.

Take for instance the theft at Sir Alfred Beit’s collection at Russborough House near Dublin in May 1974.  A gang connected to the Irish Republican Army raided the house and made off with 19 priceless works, including Vermeer’s “Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid.” Incredibly, the gang took just 10 minutes to do the job.

Sixteen years later, though, when two thieves stole 13 masterworks (also including a Vermeer) from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, they were anything but swift.  The Gardner thieves took a full 81 minutes to complete their crime. In fact, data from motion sensors show that the thieves didn’t step into a gallery to start stealing until they had been in the museum for 24 minutes. (Some of that time was spent subduing the Gardner’s two night watchmen and securing them in the basement.)

All told, the data show, the thieves spent nearly half the 81 minutes they were inside the museum NOT stealing things. It’s a true departure from the way art thefts have been executed in recent history — and it speaks to an audacious level of comfort on the part of the two thieves.

As followers of the Gardner theft know well, the two thieves, posing as police officers, convinced the guard who buzzed them into the building (and now identified by the Herald as “Richard A.”) to step out from behind his watch desk by asserting they had a warrant for his arrest. Once he did so, Richard A. was left unable to hit the museum’s silent panic button — the only alarm available to the guards that night for instantly summoning police. And if Richard A. could not reach the panic button, then the real police simply were not coming to the rescue.

One might look at this and say: Very wily of the thieves. They drew Richard A. away from the panic button on a clever pretext, then quickly subdued him.  But is it really that simple?

Imagine that the thieves had inside information and knew the following:  1) there was a panic button; 2) there was only one panic button; 3) the panic button was the only alarm for summoning outside help; and 4) there was no so-called “dead man switch” that would automatically alert a police station that the guards were incapacitated (such switches were in wide use at the time at guarded compounds like the museum).

So far so good. But all the inside information in the world couldn’t have solved one crucial problem for the thieves: What if Richard A. (shown at top left trussed in duct tape in an exclusive photo from the day of the crime) had in fact hit the silent panic button as soon as the cops buzzed for entry, or just after they’d walked into the museum? Since the button was designed to summon cops, hitting it might have seemed redundant to him.  On the other hand, there was no harm doing so if the visitors were real cops. In any case, policy and prudence dictated hitting the panic button for safety’s sake. The guard after all said he was told — by the fake cops — about “a disturbance” at the museum.

All we know for sure is that Richard A. did not hit the panic alarm. That can perhaps be chalked up to human error. As can the fact that he violated policy when he granted the “cops” entry without confirming their ID’s by calling the actual local police station. What we cannot account for is how the thieves knew, without any doubt, that Richard A. hadn’t hit the panic button. Their movements were those of thieves in no fear of interruption by the real police. They knew that no one was coming, and took a leisurely 81 minutes to steal the 13 pieces of art. Normally, thieves do not grant themselves such a luxury of time.

Sleuths out there, what are you thoughts?