Marie Heitmeyer blog

A Con Artist, a Secret Affair, and Drunken Debauchery Enliven New York's Corot Mystery

NEW YORK – In a turn to a story that seems to have been tailor-made to relieve the late summer news doldrums, the courier who claimed to have lost a $1.35 million Corot painting while on a drunken bender at a New York hotel now appears to have been in the employ of a serial scam artist. The improbable imbroglio received its latest twist when it was revealed that , the co-owner of the missing artwork, is really , a convicted crook who just got out of prison for, you guessed it, art theft, .

Making things even more interesting, the majority owner of the 1857-1858 "Portrait of a Girl" painting, , who had filed a lawsuit against the soused courier (Doyle's friend ), is now confessing that she's in love with Doyle — and has found it in her heart to forgive his light-fingered, mendacious past,. (Much to the chagrin of her lawyer, who is attempting to back out of the lawsuit). Meanwhile, Haggerty, who failed a lie-detector test when asked if he was concealing information about the painting's loss, has been missing since August 1, ,

Doyle, the Times reveals, has a history of larceny: he stole a $600,000 bronze Degas nude statue of a dancer from Manhattan collectorin 2007, a crime that earned him two years in the clink. In that incident, Doyle — who had falsely portrayed himself to the 73-year-old Alexander as a descendant of famed early-20th-century dealer Lord Duveen of Milbank — had made off with the Degas by saying he was taking it to an authenticator while actually making a bee-line for a gallery, to which he sold the piece for $225,000. Doyle's rap sheet also includes a 30-month federal sentence for pilfering books from a University of Kansas art library, and another two-year lockup for pocketing a Tennessee woman's jewelry.

According to the Times, Trudgeon’s lawyer — who also retracted a $25,000 reward for information about the work's whereabouts — says that his client was totally naïve of Doyle’s illicit past. The Daily News quotes Trudgeon as saying of the man they paint as her lover: "He does have a prison record, but he’s a very honest, upstanding man. He’s totally legit." Doyle and Haggerty, meanwhile, reportedly know each other from consulting work they both did forImperial Jets, a company which charters and leases out private planes.

As of yesterday, the policehad not been contacted and had not initiated a criminal investigation.