When Laud “Nick” Pace died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Melrose Park six years ago, his notoriety had long since subsided, but Bob Spiel remembers him well. Back in December 1978 three Cezanne canvases disappeared from the Art Institute for a loss of $4.3 million, then the biggest art theft in U.S. history. Spiel, an FBI agent specializing in art-related crimes, focused his investigation on a shipping clerk at the museum: Nick Pace had asked a curator about the value of the paintings, a janitor had spotted him carrying a package out of the storage room, and when agents searched Pace’s house near Western and Diversey they found a short story he’d written about an art theft. Five months later Pace was arrested at a hotel while trying to collect a $250,000 ransom from the museum. He spent four years in jail, the bulk of it on a weapons charge, and Spiel earned another of his six commendations from the bureau.
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Spiel was raised in Lake Forest, and at Yale he earned a BA in history with a concentration in art history. “I liked it,” he says, “but I never thought I’d use it again.” In 1968 he completed a law degree at Northwestern and was recruited by the FBI. The bureau sent him to Minneapolis and Grand Forks, North Dakota, and eventually he transferred to the New York office, hoping to work in art theft and fraud. There was only one agent doing so full-time, but a wave of art-related crime in the early 70s forced the bureau to focus on the problem, and in 1973, Spiel finally got his chance. A year later he worked his first undercover assignment, helping to nab three thieves who’d broken into a North Carolina gallery and made off with original art by Rembrandt, Picasso, Durer, and Daumier valued at $388,000. His art background had turned out to be a real asset. “If you’re posing as a criminal art buyer, you had better know something about it.”
In those days one of the most notorious art-theft rings operated out of Chicago. Around 1971, Charles Richmond began stealing paintings from Marshall Field’s and other department stores, then moved on to New York. According to a November 1986 story in Chicago Lawyer, Richmond was “one of the nation’s most successful art thieves,” suspected by the FBI of having lifted about a million dollars’ worth of paintings and sculptures from high-end galleries in New York. He was busted by Spiel in 1974 and convicted of transporting stolen art over state lines. One of his best fences was Donrose Galleries, an art and antiques emporium at 751 N. Wells whose owner, Donald Paset, paid Richmond a tenth or less of a work’s cash value. Federal agents raided the gallery and recovered paintings worth $75,000, including a Bierstadt, a Corot, and a Grandma Moses. Paset pleaded guilty to a federal charge of possessing stolen goods and was sentenced to six months of probation and a $4,000 fine.
Spiel has eight scrapbooks filled with newspaper and magazine clippings about his investigations and with letters, reports, photographs, and features about art heists and art scams. There’s even a 1979 series of Dick Tracy comic strips based on the Art Institute caper. But by 1988, Spiel had decided to retire from the bureau and go into private practice. He wouldn’t miss the drudgery of surveillance details, which could sometimes take days and lead nowhere. He could see the FBI’s resources for art-related crimes beginning to dwindle. And he’d found himself in some bone-rattling situations: one time in 1981 he posed as a shady art dealer to help nab a Cook County sheriff’s deputy and another man who’d stolen a truck from a Skokie art center parking lot and needed to unload 220 artworks valued at $50,000. Spiel set up a meeting in a motel parking lot in Des Plaines, though an informant had told him the thieves planned to rob and kill the buyer. Sitting in the suspects’ vehicle, Spiel asked to see the art before he produced the cash, and as soon as the art appeared, the pair were busted by Des Plaines police.
The FBI says no charges have been filed, but the painting’s ownership is being contested. Last year the U.S. government filed a civil complaint in New York district court against Sears and against the painting’s most recent owner, a Chicago collector who apparently bought the painting after it had changed hands several times. “My piece was merely to see if I could help Sears prove ownership,” says Spiel. “The original owner hired me to make the bona fide buyer less bona fide. That’s a very common situation.” He wrote Christie’s a report detailing the circumstances of the purchase; the case is still pending.
