Mom!!

Last October thieves stole several paintings from a museum in Rotterdam. They were invaluable masterpieces from painters including Monet, Matisse, and Gauguin. Three suspects were later arrested, one of whom had stored the paintings at his mother’s house in a small Romanian village.

You could just picture the woman showing a neighbor the artwork on her walls: “This is a still-life of a dung heap, that’s a photo of the haystack out by the outhouse. Oh yeah, and here’s the Monet.”

Like any good mother, the lady sprung into action when her son got arrested. Probably figuring that a lack of physical evidence would kill a prosecution, she gathered up the paintings. And then burned them in a wood-stove.

Forensic art experts were brought in to study the ashes. They verified that the paintings were indeed burned – they needed to rule out the possibility that the paintings had been hidden elsewhere and the burning-story was just a ploy.

That investigation must’ve been a strange scene. Imagine the woman looking at a charred, swirly piece of picture frame and saying “That? Oh, that’s just the leg of a chair we burned last winter.”

But here’s the funny part. According to experts, art this famous is largely unsellable. And when thieves get bagged, returning the art becomes a bargaining chip to lessen their sentences. Deals are often cut with thieves to ensure the safe return of priceless art. But with the paintings gone, this guy no longer had a bargaining chip. And he (and Mom) will likely face an additional charge of destroying priceless art.

The moral of the story isn’t that crime doesn’t pay, because Wall Street keeps disproving that. No, the moral is that criminals should never, ever involve their mothers in their crimes.

Crime and enduring love just don’t mix.