I said that wasn't the release date that was there before. Thats when it really dawned on me. And I figured, "Well, he just got out of prison. But as he began his new life, Reissfelder said he always had faith that the system that wrongly convicted him would release him. Reissfelders connection to Merlino, 71 who died in prison in 2005 while serving a 47-year sentence for his involvement in the failed armored car depot hold-up became the stuff of presidential election campaign attack ads in 2004. William Reissfelder SLED Premier Account Analyst with Granite Telecommunication North Attleboro, MA. The other one was middle aged and beaten down and had done hard time for a murder he didnt commit. So that's how I saw it, that I knew that he initially was supposed to get out on one date. In taking on the role at the Gardner, he also took on the responsibility of assisting the FBI in solving one of historys most bedeviling museum heists. He told Reissfelder and Turner that they should steal a piece of art as a sort of crime insurance. Several sources say that the franchise's CFO was spotted at several Celtics events with his family. One of them had options and from them, chose a life of crime. But the celebratory scene from his release date on Aug. 30, 1982, did not last for Reissfelder, then 42. So my name is Janice Santos. What attracted you to him? SANTOS: There were none. This Is a Robbery. (Courtesy Boston Globe). Subscribe to our newsletterfor the latest updates,join our Facebook groupto discuss the investigation and if you have a tip, theory or thought,we want to hear it. This is Episode 4: "Two Bad Men.". August 24, 2022 8:00 am ET. Mr. DiMuzio, who was shot to . RODOLICO: So, who is David Turner? Charlie Pappas, Leonard "Lenny" DiMuzio and George Reissfelder, who all worked at Merlino's garage, were also under suspicion. And they're gonna say, 'oh, he's my supplier, Reissfelder.' Reissfelder described his brother as a follower who was hardened by his prison experience and fell in with a bad crowd upon his release. More than a decade before, he had drawn front-page headlines and network TV interviews when he was freed from prison after serving 16 years on the wrongful conviction of a murder charge. I've seen that painting in my brother's apartment." After Kerry and Sragow won him a new trial, then-Suffolk County District Attorney Newman Flanagan decided against re-trying the case against Reissfelder. Charlie Pappas was a second-generation coke dealer for Carmello Merlino. You can try, Kelly Horan, With Reporting By Jack Rodolico. He believes his brother would not have associated with the likes of Merlino if he had been compensated by the state for his wrongful imprisonment. ". BEAUCHAMP: When he came to see me after the Gardner robbery I just looked at him and shook my head and said, "Way too much, George." When he was hauled in on drug-dealing charges, Pappass best option to avoid prison time was to flip on Turner. So, um, eventually, after I didn't go to enough drills I got thrown out of the military thrown out with a dishonorable discharge. Sragows efforts to convince the Massachusetts Legislature to compensate Reissfelder for the 16 years he had served in jail for the wrongful conviction failed, however. 10: Daughter: Irene Reinsfelder. New lead: The apartment building in Quincy where one of the stolen paintings, a Manet, might have been seen. The other one was middle aged and beaten down and had done hard time for a murder he didnt commit. SANTOS:I was 22 years old. The tension between those who possess the Old Masters, and those who would risk everything to steal them. Anthony Amore told us, his leads havent panned out. Because I realized at that point-- I thought maybe they'd steal maybe up to five million dollars at the most, but when it turned out to be hundreds of millions, I said, "You know what type of investigation this is going to be compared to what it would have been?". EXCLUSIVE: Pictures of Marilyn Monroe's naked corpse were taken just hours after her death after a famous photographer gained access to the morgue by bribing guards with alcohol, new documentary . Why? As the investigation progressed, the FBI turned their attention to the Merlino gang, a Boston Mafia crime family full of a number of the most likely suspects. He was teary-eyed. In the culmination of two years of work by Reissfelder's court-appointed Boston attorneys, Reissfelder's murder conviction, for which he had served 15 years in prison, was dismissed. The pair unearthed evidence that had been suppressed at trial. And after you pass by those two it seems like an exercise in futility, but I went through the other 11 pieces. In the same year, she won Gold Canada's Player of the Year. But, you know, it's business as usual for the Boston office of the FBI. George Reissfelder. So, everything that we've seen about David Turner, he's usually the guy inside, like strong arming, like he's very aggressive. The two men had their paths meet in the late '80s when they both were drawn into Merlino's cocaine business. I'm just saying the work of art looked exactly like George to the point where we had a police uniform photoshopped onto him, and you hold the two and he looks exactly like this composite work of art. #ada-button-frame { Amore praised Reissfelders efforts to help the museum. A Quincy man eyed as a fresh suspect in the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist had one of the museums 13 stolen works of art in his possession shortly before his death in 1991, his younger brother told the Herald. Carmello Merlino, a leader of the criminal underworld with mafia ties, ran the auto body shop as a front for his cocaine trafficking business. TURNER: I've seen memos that they sent directly to, uh, the director of the FBI saying that they believe I was a participant. I was 23 years old. But on that receipt is another drivers license number. Hes a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress now, but still has a mild obsession with the Gardner case. HORAN: Reissfelder had not only lost 16 years of his life in prison. BEAUCHAMP:Yeah, a couple of times we had Mexican standoffs, and the only reason that he backed down was both times I had a .357 and he only had a small .22 or .25 automatic. HORAN: Was David Turner in on the robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? We dont know what he bought there, but we can guess. I mean, if you knew who it was you could just look at it and tell them it was who it was. SIKELLIS: And unfortunately, by the time we sensed any connection to the Gardner Museum, Pappas was dead. And then there was a home invasion robbery that happened in 1990 where allegedly Turner and Pappas came and invaded the home of this couple, and made off with $130,000 in cash and jewelry. Composite at left shows digitally aged rendering of one of the thieves. Digital content was produced in partnership with The ARTery, WBUR's arts and culture team. Yeah. Bill Reissfelder Sales Operations at Klaviyo . And in my mind, you know, it was-- it was a form of bragging, right? I hope to hear from you soon. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Undisclosed sources in the investigation believed that the thieves the FBI identified were George Reissfelder and Leonard DiMuzio, both involved in the Merlino gang and both deceased shortly after the robbery in 1991. Investigating further into Reissfelder, you discover that he died within a year after the heist of suspicious acute cocaine poisoning. Im truly struck by how earnest he and his entire family have been, Amore said. In 2010, Guarente's wife, Elene, told the FBI that shortly before her husband's death, he gave two of the stolen paintings to a Connecticut mobster, Robert Gentile, during a rendezvous at a. HORAN: But Janice Santos didnt become the states first female helicopter pilot. He is running on the 2018 Republican ticket for the office of Secretary of State in Massachusetts. The two men were both dead, and their names would not be announced publicly ( though some have identified them as George Reissfelder and Lenny DiMuzio, who belonged to a criminal crew run by. He has even accompanied federal agents on the numerous searches of homes and other properties. KURKJIAN: This was a ploy by him in order to later tell the investigators, Oh, I was in Florida at the time.. And have money left over to buy, like, a seven-bedroom house. Thats the auto body shop about four miles from the Gardner Museum that doubled as an underworld nerve center. Beauchamp is serving a life sentence at MCI-Norfolk for second-degree murder. But yeah. But his former sister-in-law, Donna Reissfelder, said in the docuseries that she may have unknowingly helped him hang one of the stolen paintings in his apartment. It was painted between 1878 and 1880. What did you see in him? Came back negative. RODOLICO: In the late 1980s, David Turner and George Reissfelders lives in crime converged. Janice Santos was 22 years old and in the Army National Guard when she married George Reissfelder just two months after his release from prison in 1982. Fred Reissfelder. His brother believes that Merlino. At the time, organized crime members seemed excited about the idea that they could trade a stolen painting in exchange for no jail time, if they were ever caught doing more unsavory business. A UH1. And heres someone who spent years trying to follow the trail of both of them. DAVID TURNER: Um, you know, actually I had nothing to do with the robbery. HORAN: But someone else could have. Thats what Boston Globe reporter Shelley Murphy wondered in 2016, when she made a sharp discovery. That man, Robert Beauchamp, claimed that his former cell mate -- a man named George Reissfelder -- told him way back in 1990 that he had taken part in the heist. Robert Sikellis is the former assistant attorney general for Massachusetts who spent years in the 1990s trying to put David Turner behind bars for those crimes. William Reissfelder currently lives in Westwood, MA; in the past William has also lived in Norwell MA and Coppell TX. 1. All these theories are frustrating. And I told him probably the best museums to rob would be university or college ones because they probably have the least amount of security. At the time of his death, Bill Russell was married to Jeannine. She looks submissive. Stay up-to-date with important news developments, delivered right to your inbox. I'm not saying George Reissfelder committed the heist. June 4, 2015. HORAN: And after that? So I mean, so very quickly, within the first two weeks, it was violent. It was also being surveilled by a law enforcement operation that would take it down in 1991. And when these two men met, the lucky one was young and handsome and had also, it is alleged, gotten away with murder. Thank you! And if he did commit the robbery, and we don't know that for sure, right? Where was he? Beauchamp contends that Reissfelder and David Turner visited him in Bay State Correctional Facility in Norfolk numerous times in 1988 and 1989 and without providing details, mentioned intentions for a museum robbery. SANTOS: A helicopter. Ulrich Boser is the author of The Gardner Heist, in which he posits that David Turner and George Reissfelder were the thieves who robbed the museum. I never ever mentioned the Gardner. And that's what happened. Turner has steadfastly denied that he has cooperated with authorities in the Gardner case but The Boston Globe reported in 2016 that federal officials shaved seven years off of his 38-year sentence, a reduction that puts his release in 2025. Kerry and Sragow managed to win a new trial for Reissfelder in June 1981 based on the deathbed confession of his co-defendant, Sullivan. People like Carmello Merlino. George A Reissfelder, 83. I don't know that he could have pulled it off. At a press conference five years ago, the Boston FBI said that they knew where the Gardner art was taken after it was stolen. Bill Reissfelder is a married man with a wife and family. Clara J Reissfelder. George A. Reissfelder was found dead of an apparent drug overdose 51 weeks after the heist, on March 11, 1991, in his Quincy apartment. George Reissfelder was found dead in his apartment of "cocaine poisoning" after Merlino told firefighters that he hadn't heard from his friend in several days. No one would be happy about it, but you woulda thought, you know, once they had arrested us and, you know, the paintings didn't show up, you know, they would have gotten reasonable with us. Here he is in the 1986 documentary about wrongfully imprisoned men, "Exonerated: The Wrong Man.". HORAN: And before then he was saying that his brother hadn't done it, but it was seeing that painting that convinced him that his brother must have done it. He had kind of a Beatle haircut very straight hair. Background. This hits you anywhere, you're dead." George Reissfelder waves to photographers as he arrives at Suffolk Superior Court on Aug. 30, 1982. Reissfelder said he recognized his brothers appearance in the digital painting the Herald is calling Suspect One. Nicole C. Wolf, a medical illustrator and animator, prepared the image after weeks of input from one of the two Gardner watchmen who was on duty the night of the theft. HORAN: Robert Beauchamp says that when Reissfelder was released in 1982, Merlino was waiting for him with a job at TRC Auto Electric. to Henry & Helen (Tully) Reissfelder. They had listening devices that could pick up two-way radios. I got a call from a State Police lieutenant, and we all rushed to the scene. HORAN: By business as usual, Turner meant that he believed hed been set up for one crime the planned Loomis-Fargo robbery because the FBI needed leverage in order to question him in another one: the Gardner case. HORAN: David Turners 38-and-a-half-year prison sentence was suddenly seven years shorter. I always fought back. One of them was born lucky. And you know, it's frustrating. Witnesses told investigators they saw Reissfelder at the crime scene. And he said, "My brother did it. 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