D (3:10)

The furniture was okay, nothing super great, and I wasn't really thrilled with the estate. But I walked in into the master bedroom, and they had taken a door off of one of the dressers, and they had positioned it just so that you couldn't pick it up without closing the bedroom door. I normally would never have closed the bedroom door and looked behind it, but I had to close it to get this piece that they took off. It made me think that it was positioned there purposely. But when I closed the door, I looked up, and at first I thought it was a print.

B (3:46)

It was not a huge piece, and it was in a cheap gold frame behind a bedroom door where you'd hang something to cover a hole in the plaster, not to show off.

D (3:55)

But then as I stood up, I could see the wrinkles in it and things, and I realized that it was an actual painting. So I called my partner into the room and I said, what do you think of this? And he's like, I kind of like it. So I said, okay, great. We'll take it home. So we loaded up the first load of the truck, and we put the painting on the very top. And when we got to our store to unload, even though the painting was gonna go home with us, I had to take it off, you know, to get to the rest of the stuff. So we leaned it up against a post in the store, and almost immediately, people started coming in and telling us that they thought it was a real de Kooning.

B (4:38)

This is Chameleon, a podcast about people who pretend to be something they aren't. And I'm Josh Dean. This week, the de Kooning Affair, a story about a quirky but otherwise unsuspecting retired couple in New Mexico who pulled off one of the most brazen art heists of the 20th century, all to hang a de Kooning painting behind the door in their bedroom. Welcome back to Chameleon Chameleon.

C (5:10)

I'm Alison Otto. I'm a documentary film director. I've directed several projects, and the most recent one was the Thief Collector.

B (5:19)

The Thief Collector is a 2022 documentary film that tells the story of the theft and recovery of de Kooning's woman, Ochre. But it's also the story of a mysterious couple at the center of it. The couple whose estate, David Van Aaker, was liquidating, Jerry and Rita Alter.

C (5:35)

The reason it's called that is because both a journalist and the FBI art crimes unit former director mentioned to me that the hardest type of thief to catch is the thief who is a collector. They're not on anyone's radar, and they don't resell the painting. They keep it for themselves. They're the only ones that feel like they can look at it and touch it and have it. And that's the most dangerous kind of thief.

B (6:05)

Not literally dangerous as in violent dangerous to cases, just very, very hard to catch. Like Jerry and Rita Alter, who hung a painting worth more than 100 million behind the door in their tchotchke and laundry strewn bedroom.

C (6:20)

These two were never considered. They were just two schoolteachers.

B (6:25)

Two schoolteachers who retired early from their jobs back east and moved to Cliff, New Mexico. The Alters traveled constantly and owned a lot of cool stuff, which is why their nephew, whose job it was to handle the estate, had called David Van Aaker to see if he might want to take on and sell their exotic possessions. David had barely unloaded the car and was still planning to take the painting to his house when customers started asking.

D (6:49)

About it within a half an hour. It was really strange. The first gentleman that came in, like a trust fund kind of guy and looks like a stoner, you know, with a ponytail. And he came in and he said, is this real? And I said, well, you know, it's a real painting. And he said, no, is this a real de Kooning? And I said, oh, yeah, right, sure. And he said, I'm a huge de Kooning fan.

B (7:15)

David wasn't buying it. That this painting he picked up as part of some ladies estate sale could be by one of the 20th century's greatest and most valuable painters.

D (7:24)

Then another person came in, basically said the same thing. And then finally a third person came in.

B (7:29)

All of them just tourists who wandered into David's shop to check out the wares and immediately spotted the painting leaning against a wall and said unequivocally, that's a de Kooning dude. Still, David is skeptical. Then the first guy, the trust fund stoner, comes back.

D (7:46)

He's talking to my business partner, and he asked if we'd come up with a price yet. And my business partner said, no, we haven't had time. And so I jokingly yelled, just make an offer. And he said, I'll give you 200,000 for it right now. And I said, sold. And he said, no, I'm very serious. But I think you really need to investigate it, because I think it's worth more, and I'm willing to buy it. And then we finally decided to Google it, and I came across the Arizona Republic article, and I clicked on it and up popped a picture of that painting.

B (8:22)

Willem de Kooning's Woman Ochre. The story had been written on the 30th anniversary of the theft, when the museum had hung the painting's empty frame. David called the museum and spoke with the curator, Olivia Miller. She seemed thankful, but also a little distant. She asked him to send photos and measurements and said she'd be in touch.

D (8:41)

And then when we were done, we were waiting for a phone call from the FBI or the police, and nobody ever called.

B (8:50)

Silver Springs is a small town. Lots of retirees, but nothing but time on their hands. Gossip spreads like wildfire around those parts.

D (8:58)

I took it home and I put it behind my sofa, and I stayed up all night. I got a gun out of the gun safe because I figured some meth head's gonna come and kill me for this. The article had placed the value at $100 million three years earlier.

B (9:14)

David and the painting survived the night without having to cap any meth heads. The next morning, he called the FBI and managed to reach an agent who advised him not to keep the painting in his home or at the store. He should find a safe hiding spot. After much discussion, he and his partners decided they could trust a local lawyer friend.

D (9:33)

That turned into a fiasco because he started calling other attorneys and that started calling me, trying to get us not to return the painting.

B (9:44)

Lawyers, man.

D (9:45)

One attorney called me, and I said, no, the painting's going back. And he said, well, you don't understand. The state of Arizona and the University of Arizona have deep pockets, and they will pay well to keep this out of the court system. So I just kind of went off on him and hung up. And then I made another phone call to the museum, A panicked phone call. The phone call is actually in the movie the Thief Collector. Hi, Olivia. This is Dave Van Hoffer in Silver City, New Mexico. I'm the one with the de Kooning painting. Now all of a sudden, I have vulture attorneys wanting me to do things, and I don't want to do it. I don't want to do this. All I want is that painting to go back where it belongs and just freaking out because I'm not hearing from you guys and somebody might cut my throat for a de Kooning painting. Keep this on record. I don't want to hold it hostage. I don't want to hold it ransom. I want you to have the painting back.

B (10:44)

That panicked message did the trick. The curator, Olivia Miller, called David back and said that help was on the way. All David had to do was go get the painting out of hiding.

D (10:54)

So I called the attorney and told him that, and he's like, well, today is not a good day. I'm having a barbecue for my brother in law. And I'm thinking, okay, this is weird. But I said, oh, I'll just swing by and I'll pick it up. We went over to his house and he'd invited a whole bunch of people. There was having this big party because of the painting being there. Then he was saying that he wasn't going to allow law enforcement onto his property. He kept trying everything in his power to get us to not return it. We were going to keep it according to him and have our own experts look at it and then negotiate with the university on its return.

B (11:44)

David is a polite guy. He humored this lawyer friend to a point.

D (11:48)

Finally, I got up to get the painting, which had been in his conference room, and I went over and the door was locked.

B (11:55)

The lawyer was now flat out refusing to free the painting. He was basically holding it hostage. David's patience is now gone. Open the door, he said, or I'm going to kick it in.

D (12:05)

He tried his final best to convince me and I said, no, I'm going to take my painting. Go unlock the door. And he said, no again. So I got up and I said, okay, I'm kicking the door in. And I walked over and he finally agreed to unlock it. And right about that time, the museum showed up.

B (12:24)

Not just the museum, but the state police, the county sheriffs, and the FBI.

D (12:28)

That was a wonderful experience when they showed up because Olivia actually cried when she first saw it.

B (12:36)

Any doubt was now erased. This was definitively Womanoker. And after 30 years, the Hunt for one of the most famous unsolved stolen paintings in American history was finally concluded. De Kooning's masterpiece had apparently been stolen by two retired schoolteachers and New Mexico. The sheer improbability of that sentence, that idea is what hooked filmmaker Allison Otto to dig into the story. Literally, no one could believe it.

C (13:02)

Their nephew was so surprised because he's like this mild mannered teacher as well. And he went into teaching because he was inspired by them. And he always thought they were just these two really admirable, happy, go lucky relatives of his.

B (13:21)

Two admirable, happy, go lucky relatives who for Whatever reason, had decided to steal a famous and extremely valuable work of impressionist art. It's a very strange thing for two retired teachers to just do on a whim.

C (13:34)

I think it was premeditated because after the film came out, someone who watched it happened to recognize two of the other paintings that had been in their collection that had appeared on photographs in their house.

B (13:51)

That story and the bizarre truth about this retired couple in the hills. After the break, You're listening to Chameleon, the Weekly. About a decade ago, a guy named Lou Schacter was on a road trip in Arizona and stopped into the University of Arizona Art Museum.

A (14:14)

And when I was there, I encountered something I'd never seen before, which was an empty frame. There was literally no painting in the frame. And a very small card explained that in 1985, over Thanksgiving weekend, two people had entered the galleries and stolen the Willem de Kooning painting that had been there. And so I took some notes and then just followed the story. When it popped up in 2017 that the painting had been found, I was kind of amazed. And I followed everything after that. In 2023, when I began writing, I knew that I wanted to start by looking deeper into the theft of the de Kooning and its recovery.

B (14:52)

What Lou means is that after he retired, he decided to pursue his passion as a writer of true crime stories. He started a blog on medium called True Crime Road Trip and knew exactly what he wanted to write about for his first story.

A (15:04)

I went back to the Tucson Art Museum and saw the painting on display again. And then I drove to New Mexico, where I visited the house of Rita and Jerry Alter, who had stolen it. And then I went to Silver City and met the three men who found the de Kooning in their antique shop.

B (15:22)

In Silver City, David Van Aaker and his partners.

A (15:26)

I had one question I really was burning to ask him, and that was, isn't it odd that if the altar stole the de Kooning, they didn't seem to have stolen anything else?

B (15:37)

After the de Kooning was recovered, the FBI did investigate the entire estate and ran any objects of apparent value through its database of stolen art. Nothing came up.

A (15:47)

And David responded to me with a twinkle in his eye and said, just because something isn't in the FBI stolen art database doesn't mean it isn't stolen.

D (15:58)

They have a system where they can take a picture of it and then it'll immediately show up if it's on their watch list. And they cleared everything. And Stacy Gutierrez, the investigator, she's actually the one that told Me. Just because it's not on our radar doesn't mean it's not stolen.

B (16:16)

That was all the encouragement Lou needed. As soon as he got home to Palm Springs, he began his hunt. David Van Aaker didn't have photos of the entire estate. Some items had been donated to a local garden club before he even went to the house. So Lou watched the thief collector again very carefully, and that's where he spotted them.

C (16:35)

It was like archival photos that were included in the film.

B (16:38)

Lou had to freeze the film in zoom, but in one shot, he could clearly see two paintings that hadn't been in the estate collection. Both looked like works by artists of the American West. He figured out the names of the artists.

C (16:50)

They were by two very prominent artists of the American Southwest, Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp.

A (16:58)

The artists were both very well known artists in what's called the Taos School, who were a group of painters in Taos, New Mexico, in the early 20th century and became famous for what they accomplished in terms of Western art.

B (17:12)

Sharp's painting was of a Native American in a headdress. The Higgins was an impressionistic mountain scene with yellow aspens.

C (17:19)

And there's a really funny line in the film where one of the ladies from the local garden club recounts how she received all of these items that were just being dropped off very quickly, this giant pile of art. And she realized that this was really quality art. And she was like, wait, wait, hold up a minute. We sell items for 5 cents or 10, you know, a dollar if we're lucky. What is this stuff you're bringing us?

B (17:47)

They asked an auction house in Scottsdale to help assess and auction anything of value like those two paintings.

C (17:52)

The local garden club ended up getting a fat check. It was in the hundreds of thousands.

B (17:58)

Lou didn't know any of this until later. He couldn't find any record of the names of the paintings he spotted in Allison's film.

A (18:04)

So I then began looking at old newspapers, and I found a theft in 1977 of the Higgins painting and a J.H. sharp painting, which seemed to match the one that had been auctioned after being found at the altars as well.

B (18:21)

Bingo. This theft had occurred at the tiny Harwood Museum in Taos.

A (18:27)

I just thought, oh, my gosh, this is incredible. So I look at all the articles around that period and discover that not only were the thieves caught, but the paintings were returned to the Harwood Museum. So then I was just like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy, because now the paintings are back at the Harwood, but they're not there today.

B (18:46)

So the two paintings from the auction, which Lou suspected the altars might have stolen the had in fact been stolen from the Harwood, but they were quickly recovered. Still, Lou wasn't deterred. He went deeper into the newspaper archives.

A (18:59)

And lo and behold, the same two paintings were stolen a second time in.

B (19:03)

1985, the same year of the de Kooning theft.

A (19:06)

This time, they were stolen by a man and a woman, and it was a distraction crime, which is very similar to the way the de Kooning was stolen in Tucson that same year.

B (19:18)

Bingo. Like, for real this time.

A (19:20)

And, in fact, there are some who suspect that the Harwood theft was a practice for the de Kooning theft. And it was a crazy moment because I knew I had found something really important and really great. But at that moment, I didn't know who to tell.

B (19:36)

Without getting too far into the weeds, what basically happened is that when the paintings were stolen from the Harwood in 1985, they weren't worth enough for the FBI to care. Neither of them hit the $50,000 threshold to make it onto the FBI's stolen art database. Lou also found the guy who had been curating the museum when the paintings were stolen.

A (19:54)

The curator of the museum is still around and was heartbroken when these paintings were stolen. And ironically, the day of the theft, he was not at the museum because he was attending a conference on art security in Santa Fe. He'd been trying to convince the University of New Mexico to add security to the museum. And while he was gone, there was one person in the museum, and that's when the paintings were stolen.

B (20:23)

So the paintings from the alter's collection donated to the garden club were, in fact, stolen in the same manner as the de Kooning. But the FBI still had to figure out how to get the paintings back. The bureau, after all, had cleared them back in 2017, and the local garden club had worked with the house to auction them off to fund projects at the club, which had since disbanded. Someone would have to find the buyers who purchased the paintings at auction, assuming they were free and clear and not stolen, and find a way to make them right.

A (20:56)

It took a year, actually, for the paintings to be returned to the Harwood Museum. But now they are back where they belong.

B (21:02)

Lou's work was complete. In fact, just a week before we spoke, he'd traveled to Taos for a big ceremony to officially unveil the returned paintings, finally back at their true home, the Harwood Museum.

A (21:14)

One of the amazing things for me this past week was I finally got to See the paintings in person, which I never had, and I hadn't even thought about that in advance. But I was sort of emotionally taken by seeing them for real.

B (21:24)

I asked Lou if he had any theories about the Alters, the seemingly mild mannered retired couple who turned out to be devious art thieves.

A (21:31)

I believe that the Alters had several motivations. I guess number one is that they led a lifestyle that could not have been financed, given their occupations and careers. They were both public school teachers and they earned very low salaries. Somehow they were able to buy 30 or more acres in New Mexico and build a home and take trips all over the world every year. It is unclear how they financed all of that and left over $1 million in their estate. So that money came from somewhere. What I suspect happened is that they were stealing art and selling it. There were some pieces that they personally enjoyed so much. They kept. The de Kooning was clearly in that category. And apparently the Higgins and Sharp paintings were in that category as well. And there's this image of Gerry Alter practicing his clarinet in their family photos. And you can see the Higgins and Sharp paintings with right above his head. This photograph appears to have been taken in the late 1980s. So they. They wanted those paintings, but I think they were selling most of them.

B (22:41)

Alice no didn't know about the Higgins and Sharp paintings when she embarked on the project that would become the thief Collector. But she didn't need to either. She was plenty fascinated by the simple questions of how and why this quiet retired couple could steal one of the most important paintings of the 20th century and hang it in their bedroom behind a door for 32 years.

C (23:02)

That was one of the trickiest parts of making the film, was trying to construct a psychological profile of this couple.

B (23:12)

Both were originally from New York, and that's where they taught until they pulled up stakes and moved to Cliff, New Mexico, population 293 as of the 2010 census.

C (23:22)

That particular area of New Mexico has a reputation as a place where people go to hide even from the wild west days. Up until today, that region has been a place to disappear into. It's very far off the beaten path.

B (23:38)

Jerry never did work again.

C (23:40)

He retired at age 47. She continued to work once they moved to New Mexico as a speech therapist for kids in schools. She was really beloved by her students, According to the accounts from neighbors and family. He was the more domineering one and she was more subservient. But she was also willing to engage in at least two robberies. Jerry died first, and then Rita Died about five years later. That painting would have been the first thing they saw when they woke up and the last thing they saw before they fell asleep, given that it was hanging at the base of their bed. And I think that thing would have started to feel like a noose around my neck, just knowing that you couldn't get rid of it, but it was also a reminder of what you had done.

B (24:41)

But what if that reminder gave them satisfaction? Pride. We tend to lie on high school teachers, and for good reason. But not all of them are saints.

C (24:51)

Ron Roseman, the Alter's nephew, who was also the executor of their estate, when he was reviewing all their old documents, he realized that when Jerry Alter retired from school teaching at age 47, he had fiddled with his pension in such a way that it listed him as having worked more years than he did. So he was collecting a larger pension.

B (25:16)

Which is a form of fraud.

C (25:18)

They also died with $1 million in their account, which for two school teachers, is unusual.

B (25:24)

Allison, like Lou, has come to think that the Alters may well have been stealing and selling art to finance their lifestyle.

C (25:30)

I mean, if they stole Womanokre and they stole this Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp, I highly, highly doubt that those were the only two crimes they committed.

B (25:43)

But why? Why would two teachers quit and become criminals? Gerry Alter left behind a clue in the form of a book of short stories he wrote and self published. It's now out of print, but Allison sent me a PDF of some of the stories. It's fiction, but feels pretty thinly veiled.

C (26:01)

Given what I read of Jerry's stories. It feels like he had a lot of resentment towards what he considered the man. He had a lot of resentment towards authority and felt that never got his due. He'd been passed over for certain promotions. He fancied himself an artist. He never got the recognition that he felt he deserved. And so I think stealing these items, stealing this artwork, was not only a thrill for him, but it was also a way to stick it to the man, so to speak. As I was doing the film, that's when I started to connect the dots between real life moments and moments in these stories.

B (26:49)

One story, for instance, very closely resembles the de Kooning theft. Others are far darker.

C (26:55)

There are multiple stories that deal with murder, but one of them is a very, very thinly veiled version of Jerry and Rita and their house and their neighbors and the landscape or layout of their house and how it was built. That really does make me think it's plausible that they might have Murdered someone and hid the body on their property.

B (27:22)

Allison and her team brought this to the attention of the police and even organized a search of the altar's former property with ground penetrating radar.

C (27:31)

We didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

B (27:37)

In the story, the body is dumped in an old septic tank. This would have been decades ago if it actually happened. But also, to have a murder case, you need a murder victim.

C (27:47)

In this particular story, the murder victim was an undocumented immigrant. And the policeman I talked with mentioned that they get tons of calls from people who are looking for lost loved ones who are undocumented immigrants, and there's almost no way to find them.

B (28:10)

Her work on the film and especially her reading of this book Changed Allison's view of the alters dramatically. It's hard for her to think of this as just a romp of a story anymore.

C (28:20)

I think they had a lot of inner demons. Anyone that's gonna steal a piece of art just to keep for themselves and deny everybody else the opportunity to enjoy this piece, that's not a great person, you know? And so I always felt that there was something slightly sinister about them, but not to the extent that I did after making this film.

B (28:48)

Lou's also read that book, and he, like Allison, thinks it contains clues.

A (28:53)

I think Jerry, from his writings, was also somebody who wanted to outsmart people, wanted to get away with things. David Van Ankar. And I suspect that he wouldn't be at all disappointed to find out that these thefts have surfaced after his death because he would love the attention and the recognition for what he was able to get away with.

B (29:15)

Lou isn't quite done with the alter case. He has more photos of the estate collection now. He's even heard about other thefts that occurred in the same period where there's a similar MO but so far, he's been unable to place the alters in any of those locations at the time of the thefts. He also plans to keep an eye out for new cases, and he's already getting tips.

A (29:38)

Look, I don't think there are a whole bunch of these out there that I can solve. I had someone approach me in Taos last week with a story that I find interesting. It's a lost object of some note. I don't think I can find it. I'll spend a day working on it. If I get nowhere, I'll probably put it to bed. But if I find it, then that would be amazing.

B (29:59)

Chameleon is a production of Campside Media. And audio Chuck. It's written and hosted by me, Josh Dean and produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Sarah sound design and mix by Blake Rook and Tiffany Dimmack theme music by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email us@chameleonpodampsidemedia.com or leave us a message at a special number We've set up, 201-743-8368, dial plus one from outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

C (31:07)

I think Chuck would approve.