Art Heist Victims Sue Sheriff

A former Harvard Medical School physician and his business partner who said they had $80 million worth of artwork stolen last year from their California home filed a lawsuit last week against the Sheriff’s Department of Monterey County for defamation.

Last September, Ralph Kennaugh and Angelo B. Amadio reported that works by Pollock, Van Gogh, Miro, and Rembrandt had been stolen from their home in Pebble Beach, Calif.

The artwork has not been recovered, and no arrests have been made in the case at this point.

The Sheriff’s Department shifted the focus of the investigation within a month to the victims themselves after investigators said the pair failed to cooperate, Commander Mike Richards told The Crimson last October.

“They are not answering questions, cooperating with detectives, or providing us with identifying information on the stolen property,” Richards said. “We just don’t know [what happened], but something is not right.”

Now Kennaugh and Amadio allege that the police portrayed them in false light, framing them as “criminals, liars and scam artists in the eye of the public.”

“Despite the detailed and extensive information provided by the Plaintiffs, the Sheriff’s Department chose to egregiously lie and report to the public that the Plaintiffs were not cooperating with them,” according to the complaint.

The Sheriff’s Department said Kennaugh and Amadio could not produce sufficient documentation to prove they had owned the art they reported stolen.

On Oct. 9, Kennaugh and Amadio provided officials with a document listing the artwork that had been stolen, but Richards said the Sheriff’s Department could not verify its authenticity.

According to the police, Kennaugh and Amadio at the time only had a general casualty insurance policy that provided coverage for personal belongings worth up to $500,000—considerably less than the value of the artwork they reported stolen.

Kennaugh and Amadio are suing the Sheriff’s Department for a total of 26 defamatory statements, including one made in a press conference immediately following the reported theft in which Richards said, “the heist appears to be something else: a scam by one or both of the alleged victims.”

The plaintiffs also accuse a detective of slander for allegedly using a homophobic slur.

In response to this charge, Commander Mike Richards told a Monterey County newspaper last week that “No one in their right mind would believe a professional investigator working on a crime scene would say something like that. I think it’s absurd.”

The plaintiffs are seeking general and special damages, punitive damages against Richards, and reimbursement for the costs of the suit.

Both Richards and the plaintiffs did not respond to requests for comment.

—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.