They took the museum’s surveillance videotapes with them on the way out. They left the Titian. They left the Botticellis. They left the Sargents. They left hundreds of millions of dollars in art that they did not touch.
The two guards remained bound in the basement. They were found and released by Boston police at 8:15 a.m. when police arrived at the museum that morning.
—
## Discovery and the First Hours
Museum director Anne Hawley was reached by telephone early that morning. She would describe the first hours after the discovery as overwhelming—the shock of comprehending not merely that the theft had happened but what specifically was gone.
The police and FBI responded quickly. But several crucial things had already been lost. The surveillance videotapes were gone—taken by the thieves, presumably destroyed or hidden. The physical evidence in the galleries had been disturbed by the theft itself: canvases cut from stretchers, cabinets opened and emptied, frames left on walls and on floors. The thieves had worn gloves. Fingerprint evidence was limited.
One thing that survived, and that would prove critical: the motion sensor printout. This document, generated automatically by the security system during the thieves’ 81 minutes inside, recorded the location and timing of their movements with enough specificity to tell investigators exactly where the thieves had gone and in what sequence. It established how long they spent in each gallery. It helped determine which pieces were taken in what order.
What it could not tell investigators was who the thieves were, where they went after leaving, or what happened to the thirteen pieces of art they carried out in the early morning hours of March 18.