Every case file, interview, and archive tells a piece of the truth. I'm Kylie Lo and on my podcast, Dark Down East, original reporting is at the heart of every case I cover. I don't just retail crime stories, I investigate them. I'm speaking with families, searching court records, and piecing together the facts that have been overlooked and forgotten with time. The result? True crime storytelling that digs as deeply into a case as you do. You can listen to Dark Down East wherever you get your podcasts. On November 29, 1985, the day after Thanksgiving, two people, a man and a woman who seemed to be young retirees entered the University of Arizona's Museum of Art in Tucson shortly after opening. This isn't a heavily traveled museum on the Pizzius of Days, but at that hour, on a Friday, there was virtually no one there. The woman who had glasses and wore a scarf over her hair stopped to talk to the security guard on duty about a painting that hung in the museum stairs. While the man who had dark hair glasses and a mustache wandered off. Not too long after, maybe five, at most ten minutes. The man came back down from wherever he'd been, met up with a woman, and they both left. It was a very short museum visit. It wasn't until the guard on duty took his next walk through the museum's exhibits, the most routine of duties, because nothing ever changes in a museum, and was frozen in his tracks by something shocking. One of the museum's most valuable paintings, Willem DeKoonings' Woman Okre, was gone. Cut out of its frame, and not with great care. Snaggy fragments of the canvas were still there, attached to the wood frame. The 30x40-inch abstract impressionist oil painting was one of DeKoonings' most famous and controversial works. Estimated to be worth between $100 and $150 million. So the museum called on the FBI's Art Crimes team to help investigate. Agents had only two real clues, a rough description of the perpetrators, as well as a type of car they'd come in, a rust-colored sports car with black louvers in its rear windows. Investigators got nowhere. No suspects were ever identified, and the crime went unsolved. Woman Okre had just vanished. In 2015, upon the 30th anniversary of the theft, the University of Arizona Museum of Art rehung the original frame, empty, with just some jagged edges of the original work still attached, and made it and its story part of the collection. Everyone assumed the painting was gone forever, hanging in some evil mastermind secret layer, or perhaps even lost or destroyed on the black market. Then, in 2017, an antique dealer in Silver City, New Mexico, named David Van Okre, was asked to bid on the estate of a retired schoolteacher who just died. Her name was Rita Alter, and she lived in a lovely house up in the scrubby, opinion-pine-covered hills outside town for decades by that point, with her husband Jerry until a pre-deceased her about five years before. David and his partners weren't really into estate sales, but the collar, the nephew of this recently deceased lady, mentioned that there was some nice mid-century modern furniture in the house. So David figured, why not? He'd drive out and take a look. The furniture was okay, nothing super great, and I wasn't really thrilled with the estate, but I walked 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. 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. 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 said, I got to handle like it. So 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 going to go home with us, I had to take it off to get to the rest of the stuff so we leaned it up against the post in the store. And almost immediately people started coming in and telling us that they thought it was a real deputant building. This is Camillean, a podcast about people who pretend to be something they aren't. And I'm Josh Tean. This week, the Decooning 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 Decooning painting behind the door in their bedroom. Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers and on my podcast The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons, designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice. Because these stories deserve to be heard and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck Now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Camillean. I'm Alice Nato. I'm a documentary film director. I've directed several projects and the most recent one was The Thief Collector. The Thief Collector is a 2022 documentary film that tells the story of the theft and recovery of Decooning's woman ochre. But it's also the story of a mysterious couple at the center of it. The couple who's a state, David Van Ocker was liquidating. Jerry and Rita Alter. 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. 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 a hundred million behind the door in their Chachki and Laundry's strewn bedroom. These two were never considered. They were just two school teachers. Two school teachers were retired early from their jobs back east and moved to Clifton, Mexico. The Alter's traveled constantly and owned a lot of cool stuff, which is why they're nephew, whose job it was to handle the estate, had called David Van Ocker 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 about it. Within a half an hour, it was really strange. The first gentleman that came in like a trust-fun 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. He said, no, it's just a real decooning. And I said, oh, yeah, right. Sure. And he said, I'm a huge decooning fan. David wasn't buying it. 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. Then another person came in, basically said the same thing and then finally the third person came in. 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 decooning dude. Still David is skeptical. Then the first guy, the trust-fun stoner, comes back. 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 the time. And so I jokingly, he also just made an offer and he said, I'll give you 200,000 for it right now. And I said, sold him down. 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. Definitely finally decided to Google it and I came across the Arizona Republic article and I clicked on it and popped a picture of that painting. Willem DeCooning's Woman Okre. 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 a 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. And then when we were done, we were waiting for a phone call from the FBI or the police and nobody ever called. Silver City is a small town. Lots of retirees with nothing with time on their hands. Gossip spreads like wildfire around those parts. I took it home and I put it behind my sofa and I stayed up all night. I got it gone out of the gun safe because I figured some meth head's going to come and kill me for this. The article had placed a value at $100 million three years earlier. David and the painting survived the night without having to cap any methods. 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, penis partners decided they could trust a local lawyer friend. 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. Lawyers, man. What 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 the side 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 panic phone call. The phone call is actually in the movie that these collected. Hi Olivia. This is Dave Annery and Silver City in New Mexico. I have no one with it to cleaning painting. Now all of a sudden I have culture 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 and just freaking out because I'm not hearing from you guys. Somebody might cut my throat for a decision 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. 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. So I called the attorney and told him that and he's like well today's not a good day. I'm having a barbecue from 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. David is a polite guy. He humored this lawyer friend to a point. Finally I got it to get the painting which had been in his conference room and I went over in the door was locked. 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. 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 read about that and the museum showed up. Not just the museum but the state police, the county sheriffs and the FBI. That was a wonderful experience when they showed up because Olivia actually cried when she first saw it. Any doubt was now erased. This was definitively woman-oker and after 30 years the hunt for one of the most famous unsolved stolen paintings in American history was finally concluded. Decoonings masterpiece had apparently been stolen by two retired schoolteachers in 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. 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 his two really admirable happy go lucky relatives of his. 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. 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. That story and the bizarre truth about this retired couple in the hills after the break. Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with. I'm Ashley Flowers and on my podcast The Deck. I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice because these stories deserve to be heard and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers. Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to chameleon the weekly. About a decade ago a guy named Lucia actor was on a road trip in Arizona and stopped into the University of Arizona Art Museum. 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 in a very small card explained that in 1985 over Thanksgiving weekend two people had entered the galleries and stolen the Willem DeCooning painting that had been there. 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. And in 2023 when I began writing I knew that I wanted to start by looking deeper into the theft of the DeCooning and its recovery. Well Lu 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. 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 DeCooning in their antique shop in Silver City. David Van Acker and his partners. I had one question I really was burning to ask him and that was isn't it odd that if the Alter stole the DeCooning they didn't seem to have stolen anything else. After the DeCooning 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. 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 is stolen. 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. That was all the encouragement Lou needed. As soon as he had home to Palm Springs he began his hunt. David Van Acker 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. It was like archival photos that were included in the film. 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 artist of the American West. He figured out the names of the artists. They were by two very prominent artists of the American Southwest Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp. 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. Sharp's painting was of a Native American in a headdress. The Higgins was an impressionistic mountain scene with yellow aspects. 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 five cents or ten you know dollar if we're lucky what is this stuff you're bringing us. They asked an auction house in Scottsdale to help assess an auction anything of value like those two paintings. The local garden club ended up getting a fat check. It was in the hundreds of thousands. Lou didn't know any of this until later. He couldn't find any record of the names of the paintings. He spotted an Alicense film. 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. Bingo. This theft had occurred at the Tiny Harwood Museum in Tauos. 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. So the two paintings from the auction which Lou suspected the altars might have stolen 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 and lo and behold the same two paintings were stolen a second time in 1985. The same year of the Decooning theft. 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 Decooning was stolen in Tucson that same year. Bingo like for real this time. And in fact there are some who suspect that the Harwood theft was a practice for the Decooning 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. 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'd been curating the museum when the paintings were stolen. 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. So the paintings from the Alters collection donated to the Garden Club were in fact stolen in the same manner as the Decooning. 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 a 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. It took a year actually for the paintings to be returned to the Harvard Museum but now they are back where they belong. Luzwork was complete. In fact just a week before we spoke he traveled to Toulouse for a big ceremony to officially unveil the returned paintings. Finally back at their true home the Harvard Museum. 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. I asked Luz if he had any theories about the Alters. The seemingly mild mannered retired couple who turned out to be devious art thieves. 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 decooning was clearly in that category and apparently the Higgins and Sharp paintings were in that category as well. There is this image of Jerry Alter practicing his clarinet in their family photos and you can see the Higgins and Sharp paintings right above his head. This photograph appears to have been taken in the late 1980s. They wanted those paintings but I think they were selling most of them. Alistair Nato 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. That was one of the trickiest parts of making the film was trying to construct a psychological profile of this couple. Both were originally from New York and that's where they'd taught until they pulled up stakes and moved to Cliff, New Mexico. Population 293 as of the 2010 census. 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. Jerry never did work again. 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 news around my neck. Just knowing that you couldn't get rid of it. But it was also a reminder of what you had done. But what if that reminder gave them satisfaction? Pride. We tend to lionize school teachers and for good reason. But not all of them are saints. Ron Rosman, the altars nephew, who was also the executor of their state. 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. Which is a form of fraud. They also died with one million dollars in their account, which for two school teachers is unusual. Allison like Lou has come to think that the altars may well have been stealing and selling art to finance their lifestyle. I mean, if they stole woman ochre and they stole this Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp, I highly, highly doubt that those were the only two crimes they committed. But why? Why would two teachers quit and become criminals? Jerry 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. 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 he 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. One story, for instance, very closely resembles the decooning theft. Others are far darker. 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. Allison and her team brought this to the attention of the police and even organized a search of the Alters former property with ground penetrating radar. We didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there. 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. 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. 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. I think they had a lot of inner demons. Anyone that's going to 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. Luz also read that book and he, like Allison, thinks it contains clues. I think Jerry from his writings was also somebody who wanted to outsmart people, wanted to get away with things. David Van Ocker and I suspect that he wouldn't be at all disappointed to find out that these deaths have surfaced after his death because he would love the attention and the recognition for what he was able to get away with. Luz isn't quite done with the altercase. 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 altars 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. Look, I don't think there are a whole bunch of these out there that I can solve. I had someone approach me in Tows 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. Comullion is a production of campsite media and audio chuck. It's written and hosted by me, Josh Dean, and produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer is Emma Seminole. Sound design and mix by Blake Rook and Tiffany Dimack. Theme music by Ewin Lightramu and Mark McAdam. A production manager is Ashley Warren. Campsides executive producers are Vanessa Grigoriatus, Matt Cher, 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 Comullion on your favorite 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 at chameleonpod at campsidemedia.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. I think Chuck would approve. Hi everyone. Josh Dean here. On our show Comullion, we dig into real-world deceptions that are just plain mind-bibling. Cons, cover-ups, and the people who stop it nothing to hide the truth. But sometimes, certain events simply defy explanation. If you're drawn to stories that go beyond the explainable, check out So Supernatural. Each week hosts and sisters, Russia and Avent explore strange encounters, larger than life legends, and stories that defy logic. And they unravel every possibility along the way. If you're ready to dive into the unknown, listen to So Supernatural or ever to get your podcasts.
