*Chez Tortoni* was the only item taken from the first floor. The thieves had to make a specific trip down the stairs and into the Blue Room to get it. They left everything else on the first floor untouched—including a major Titian and important works by Botticelli and Sargent.
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## March 18, 1990: Entry and Restraint
The documented timeline of the theft begins at 1:24 a.m.
At that moment, two men in police uniforms approached the employee entrance on the museum’s north side and rang the buzzer. Twenty-three-year-old guard Richard “Rick” Abath was on duty. He pressed the intercom to ask what was happening. The men said they were responding to a disturbance call. Abath buzzed them in.
This act violated museum protocol. The policy, which guards had been instructed to follow, required that anyone claiming to be a police officer responding to a call be verified through the intercom before entry was granted—and that supervisors be alerted. Abath did not verify and did not call for a supervisor.
Once inside, one of the men told Abath they had a warrant for his arrest. Abath initially believed it. He said later that he realized something was wrong only when he noticed that one of the officers had a false mustache. By then, it was too late. The second guard on duty that night—a man identified in some accounts as Randy Hestand—was in another part of the building. He was quickly located and both guards were escorted to the basement, where the thieves handcuffed them to fixtures and wrapped duct tape around their heads. The guards were told, explicitly now, that this was a robbery.