July 23, 2000
CONTENTS:
- Police Recover Stolen Virgin Mary
- Web site lets crooks sell what they steal
- Treasures Among the Ashes (Indian Ruins Discovered in Fire-Ravaged National Park)
- Arrests show dark side of art world (Dealers charged in beating of broker; FBI seeks link to international thefts)
- British arts set to get GBP.150m net showcase
Police Recover Stolen Virgin Mary
Updated 5:33 PM ET July 21, 2000
MEXICO CITY (AP) - In a raid on an art gallery, police recovered an 18th century painting of the Virgin Mary that had been stolen from a church last year, Mexico's attorney general's office said Friday. Police found the painting at the Attik art gallery in Mexico City's popular tourist area, the Zona Rosa, the announcement said. It said no arrests were made.
The painting, the "Birth of the Virgin Mary" by Manuel Arellano, was stolen in December 1999 from Nuestra Senora de Dolores church in Mexico City. It is considered a national treasure.
Online Hawk Shop
Web site lets crooks sell what they steal
Saturday, July 22, 2000 By Adam Miller
NEW YORK - Crime pays big bucks - on the Internet. A newly launched Web site is offering burglars and thieves an opportunity to sell stolen items back to their rightful owners for top dollar.
http://www.TheBurglar.com makes this selling point: "The burglar[s] will get more money for the goods compared to the black market ... and will clear their conscience."
But Jan Petersen, president of the Denmark-based dot-com, says that the primary goal of the site is to reunite owners with their stolen goods. And he insists that he doesn't condone burglary.
full story at: http://www.foxnews.com/etcetera/072200/crook_website.sml
Treasures Among the Ashes
Indian Ruins Discovered in Fire-Ravaged National Park
By Maria F. Durand
July 22 - A fire burning out of control in Mesa Verde National Park has unearthed hidden ancient Indian artifacts, complicating fire fighters' task of putting out the blaze before it spreads to other areas of the park. About 350 firefighters battled the flames in a 3,500-acre area of rugged, steep terrain on the eastern boundary of the park, about 260 miles southwest of Denver.
"The conditions have not improved," said Brian Peterson, spokesman for the National Park Service. "We are hoping for some moisture, a drop in the temperature, anything." The wildfire, which spewed wind-whipped flames and sent a gray curtain of smoke into the sky, doubled in size Friday and spread quickly across tinder-dry mesas and canyons, forcing the evacuation of 1,000 tourists. "Oh, my! It [has] grown," said Jane Anderson, who works for the park and lives nearby. The fire has not threatened any of the cliff dwellings and mesa villages built by Pueblo Indians more than 1,000 years ago.
Ruins Uncovered
Thirteen park archaeologists traveling with firefighters are protecting and securing the previously undocumented sites and taking an inventory of the find. The group has not yet detailed what items were uncovered. The mounds of rubble, which are believed to be walls, were exposed when the flames burned away vegetation. "The archaeologists are very excited," said Elaine Simo, spokeswoman for the National Park Service. The fire, apparently caused by lightning, broke out on the eastern boundary of the 52,000-acre park on Thursday. It raced through juniper, pinon and oak brush, burning within a mile of the single road through the area. National Park Service officials said the park would probably remain off limits to tourists through the weekend. The canyon walls are so steep that firefighters had difficulty reaching the flames. Officials said the fire was so intense that it was creating powerful updrafts, in effect, making its own weather rather than being pushed by winds. Centuries after the original cliff dwellers left the Mesa Verde area, Pueblo Indians began filtering into the region to inhabit the dwellings, and referred to the original cliff dwellers as the Anasazi, or Ancient Ones.
full story at: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/mesaverdefire000722.html
Original URL: http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/jul00/art22072100.asp
Arrests show dark side of art world
Dealers charged in beating of broker; FBI seeks link to international thefts
By Tom Kertscher and Marie Rohde of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 21, 2000
Whitefish Bay art dealer Marilyn Karos appears in court Friday. She was charged in the felony beating of an art broker. The FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating the case for links to an international art theft ring. The arrests Friday of two middle-aged art dealers in a gangland-style beating opened a window into the sometimes shadowy world of million-dollar artifacts and on Milwaukee's links to an international art theft. Behind the glamour of treasured objects sparkling inside glass cases is the likes of 34-year-old Zak, a Libyan-born businessman of many trades. Zak has had his legal problems, but only after he began work as a fine-art broker did he take a beating with a baseball bat. Since that assault nearly three years ago, Zak, who asked that his full name not be used, admits he's paranoid even inside his Shorewood home. In an interview Thursday, he nervously moved a loaded automatic pistol from a pants pocket to his waistband. "I'm sleeping with my gun under my bed 24 hours," he said. On Friday, however, Zak was breathing easier after the two arrests, which gave momentum to an international art theft investigation by the FBI and a federal grand jury in Milwaukee. Taken into custody Friday were Marilyn N. Karos, 59, a Whitefish Bay art dealer, and Richard F. O'Hara, 58, of Winnetka, Ill., who runs a Chicago gallery. Both are charged with felonies in the beating of Zak, who sold art on commission for Karos. The dealers have not been charged in the art thefts, but the beating and the thefts are linked by the FBI and in criminal complaints filed this week. Zak, who has testified before the grand jury, has told authorities that he believes he was beaten on Karos' orders because he had not returned four valuable objects she had given him to sell. FBI spokesman Barry Babler in Milwaukee confirmed Friday that the four objects are the subject of the grand jury probe, which could result in criminal charges for the theft, and that authorities believe the objects had once been in Karos' possession. The pieces are a globe-like armillary sphere and three astrolabes - compact devices used during the Renaissance to locate celestial bodies for navigation on sea and land. Stolen in 1984 from a museum in Italy, they are several centuries old and worth at least $1 million apiece, Babler said. Zak believes he almost died because of those pieces. The incident, according to Milwaukee County Circuit Court records, Whitefish Bay police reports and other accounts, evokes images of the Mafia descending on the North Shore. On Nov. 22, 1997, Karos invited Zak to her $416,000 home on N. Shore Drive, ostensibly to talk business. They had been introduced by a longtime Milwaukee attorney a couple months earlier. Just after Zak arrived at the house, he was accosted by three men and hustled into a laundry room through a "secret panel" in the basement. One of the men, wearing a mask, belted him on the wrist with the baseball bat. When Zak broke free and called 911, the men fled. Karos told officers that the men, whom she did not know, had burst into her home 10 seconds before Zak arrived and that she had nothing to do with the beating. Zak, who said Karos directed the beating, said the men shouted "You're in way over your head" and "I'm going to kill you," among other threats. Zak said this week that he had returned two of the four objects to Karos before the beating and had the other two in safekeeping. He said that while trying to sell them, he grew suspicious that they were stolen, and he planned to turn them over to authorities. Police said he was checking to see if there were rewards. Whitefish Bay police found no forced entry into Karos' home, and they arrested her, noting that she told the 911 dispatcher that nothing was wrong. But the Milwaukee County district attorney's office decided not to file charges, and the case stayed dormant until this month. That Karos could be cast as a shot-caller ordering around thugs stretches the imagination. Married to a physician, she buys and sells art from a gallery in her home and has no prior criminal record in Wisconsin. The Karos home, packed with art, reminded Whitefish Bay Police Detective James Staudacher of a museum. "Every time a door opened even for just a moment, a humidifier and furnace kicked in to keep the temperature and humidity perfect. Some of the things there were hundreds of years old," he said. Karos was charged Friday with being a party to the crime of false imprisonment and battery as well as giving false information to police. She posted $10,000 bail and was released from the Milwaukee County Jail late Friday. Less is known about O'Hara and the one other suspect who's been arrested. James Kosi, 52, was arrested earlier in Chicago and charged July 14 with felony false imprisonment and misdemeanor battery. Karos has at least some ties, however, with O'Hara, the Chicago gallery owner. On two occasions, when Karos got traffic tickets, she listed as her residence the address of O'Hara's gallery. O'Hara is charged with being a party to the crime of false imprisonment and battery, and of concealing his identity. O'Hara was at Karos' home on the night of the beating, but told police he did not see or hear anything. Officers reported that he "continually attempted to interfere with our investigation and was warned several times for obstructing a police officer," but he was not arrested. O'Hara has been portrayed as an enforcer of sorts. A week after the beating, according to a lawsuit filed by Zak, he appeared at the office of Zak's downtown Milwaukee attorney and echoed a threat uttered during the beating: "(Zak) is in way over his head, and if he doesn't bring us the stuff he will never see his unborn child." Zak, too, has his rough side. Court records show that in 1992, he was convicted of two counts of fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, in Waukesha County. And judgments totaling nearly $50,000 have been entered against him in Milwaukee County for failing to repay lenders and investors in his business enterprises. But Zak has never been in something this deep before, and he is angry. He says he has already turned down an offer of $50,000 to settle his lawsuit against Karos over the beating, vowing to seek a lot more - all of which, he promised, would be donated to the Whitefish Bay Police Department. And yet, Zak also insists he regrets his break with Karos. He remembers dinners where she would fly in lobster from Boston and pop open $200 bottles of wine. "I trusted this woman like my mother," he said. "I really did."
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on July 22, 2000.
British arts set to get GBP.150m net showcase
Nicholas Hellen, Media Editor
AFTER spending more than GBP.1 billion on rebuilding the nation's museums and art galleries, the government plans to catapult their entire collections into cyberspace. Chris Smith, the culture secretary, has devised proposals for a virtual "gallery" to display artefacts from every publicly funded arts body in Britain. The network, Culture Online, could eventually air performances from theatres, orchestras and opera houses, including Covent Garden. Leading figures in the arts world have urged Smith to develop the internet service into a culture channel. Sources said his department was confident of receiving GBP.5m to develop the plans after talks with the Treasury. It hopes as much as GBP.150m could be devoted to the project. One senior source, who has advised on the proposed scheme, said: "The BBC appears to have downgraded its arts coverage. There is no reason why it should have a monopoly of public service broadcasting." The BBC and Channel 4, which also has public service obligations, cover only a fraction of the performances staged at Covent Garden, Sadler's Wells and other venues that have been renovated with lottery funding. Earlier this month, morale in the BBC's arts department sank to new depths when it emerged that Lord Bragg, presenter of ITV's The South Bank Show, rejected an offer to take control of its output. Last week, Smith warned the BBC to reconsider plans to reinvent BBC1 as an entertainment channel. He said: "I hope they will not conclude that they should have one major channel which provides entertainment and place everything else, news documentaries and so on, on a minor channel." The Department of Culture, Media and Sport said Culture Online "demonstrated the government's interest in exploring the internet to promote cultural excellence"; but it was intended to be educational, rather than to compete with the BBC. The cost of moving into cyberspace is likely to impose severe strains on the finances of galleries and museums. The British Library is already seeking commercial partners to pay for the digitisation of its collection of 150m items, making it the biggest source of information on the internet.