A suspect in a $500 million heist from a Boston art museum was freed Wednesday after spending 21 years in prison for a different crime.
David Turner, 52, was nabbed in an FBI sting in 1999 while trying to rob an armored car and was told he was wanted in the infamous 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that saw priceless pieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer walk out the door.
A security guard stands outside the Dutch Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum days after the robbery.APThe agents offered him leniency if he turned over the stolen art, but Turner denied any knowledge of the heist and instead was sentenced to 38 years in the armored car case, the Boston Globe reported.
He was never convicted for the museum caper.
But federal authorities said he remained a suspect, and secretly reduced his armored car sentence several years ago, which led to his early release.
They won’t say if Turner agreed to cooperate in the art theft after all.
“I deeply regret the actions I took and the choices I made,” Turner told US District Judge Richard Stearns in court Wednesday. “I am no longer that person. I cannot change the past, but I have tried my best to change my future.”
Stearns, who presided over Turner’s armored car trial, vacated the sentence last month and ordered that he be released.
“It’s rare for me to be fully confident someone has fully rehabilitated himself,” the judge said. “I believe you have and commend you for it.”
Prosecutors had asked that Turner serve another 18 months behind bars, calling the 1999 plot to rob a Loomis-Fargo armored car “overall brazen and violent in nature.”
Turner and his accomplices were armed with a hand grenade and six guns.
Stearns instead sentenced Turner to three years of probation.
The stolen artwork in the 1990 heist was never recovered, the Globe reported.
Two thieves dressed as police officers walked into the museum on March 18, 1990, tied up security guards and fled with 13 valuable pieces of art.
