The list was damning circumstantial evidence. Gentile knew what had been stolen, knew the underground value of each piece, and had, according to Guarente’s widow, received two of them. But the paintings were not in the house. Gentile denied everything. He had taken a polygraph examination and, by the FBI’s assessment, failed it. He then stopped cooperating.
Gentile’s cousin provided additional details: according to the cousin, Gentile had planned to sell the paintings for $500,000 each and had kept the Napoleonic eagle finial at his auto repair shop. Gentile denied this as well.
Elene Guarente’s account, while credible enough to generate sustained investigative attention, was never corroborated by physical evidence or a second witness. It pointed toward Gentile. It did not produce the paintings.
Robert Gentile died on September 17, 2021, at age 83, without providing investigators with useful information. His attorney maintained throughout that authorities had focused on the wrong man.
The trail to Guarente and Gentile was the FBI’s most sustained recent lead. It produced no recovery.
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## The Philadelphia Connection
In 2013, the FBI made an unusual public statement. Without naming names, investigators announced that they believed the stolen works had been moved through Connecticut and into Philadelphia in the early 2000s—that they had been in Philadelphia, or passed through it, sometime around 2003 or 2004.
The Philadelphia connection has not been publicly explained in detail. The announcement itself was notable as a departure from the FBI’s usual reticence on active investigations: naming a geographic area and a time frame for where the art had been was an explicit invitation to anyone in Philadelphia who might have knowledge of the works to come forward.