The Accidental Picasso Thief

In 1969, a Picasso painting was stolen by mistake. This book explores how the accidental thief pulled off a reverse heist while avoiding the FBI and 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.