The Accidental Picasso Thief: The True Story of a Reverse Heist, Outrunning the FBI, and Fleeing the Boston Mob

In 1969, during a Boston snowstorm, a crate containing Pablo Picasso’s Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer vanished from Logan Airport. It should have gone to a Milwaukee gallery—but instead ended up in the closet of Bill Rummel, a young forklift operator.

What followed was a stranger-than-fiction chain of events: FBI agents on the hunt, whispers of Whitey Bulger’s mob, and a daring “reverse heist” devised by Bill’s father to secretly return the painting.

But the mystery didn’t end there. After its return, the Picasso disappeared again—vanishing into private hands, unseen by the public for more than fifty years.

Part true crime, part memoir, The Accidental Picasso Thief uncovers the Rummel family’s incredible brush with art history, crime, and secrecy—and one man’s decades-long search for a lost masterpiece.