'Portrait of a Heist:' A look back at 1978 Christmas Eve burglary at SF's de Young Museum

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- If you were around for it, the 1970s in San Francisco were a wild time. Entrenched in the terror of the Zodiac and Zebra killings, San Franciscans endured the tragedy of the Jonestown Massacre and the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. Patty Hearst made headlines, someone tried to shoot President Gerald Ford at the St. Francis Hotel, all while Mayor Dianne Feinstein tried to keep the city together. It would be easy, then, for one not to remember that the largest art heist in San Francisco's history also happened in the '70s.

It happened on Christmas Eve, 1978, to be exact.

"Watch ABC7's Original documentary, 'Portrait of a Heist' in the media player above or wherever you stream ABC7.

"I can't believe I hadn't heard of it," said Nicole Meldahl, the Executive Director of a community history nonprofit called Western Neighborhoods Project. She produced a podcast on this exact case in 2024.

"Every year, we like to record a Christmas episode. A Christmas Eve heist at the de Young was just too good to pass up. So, we started digging into it, and oh boy, was it a story," said Meldahl.

Sometime between when the museum closed on Christmas Eve, at around 5 p.m., and when they opened at 9:15 the next morning, someone swooped in and stole four paintings from Gallery 12. The biggest, in terms of size and value, was "Portrait of a Rabbi," attributed to Rembrandt at the time and worth about $1 million. The security on duty was none the wiser.

"One reporter at the time called it 'a textbook robbery,'" Meldahl said.

Police believe the thieves made their way to the roof of the museum by way of the scaffolding that was present at the time.

"We created vulnerabilities with the construction, to be sure," said Tom Seligman, former director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. Seligman was a deputy director with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco at the time of the theft.

Seligman said that the de Young Museum was undergoing renovations in preparation for the "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit, a world-famous showing of the treasures of King Tut.

"They climbed the scaffolding," said Meldahl, "and they go to a skylight in the building."

Police believe the thieves then lowered themselves down to the secondary skylight before climbing down to the museum floor. They removed seven paintings, still in their frames, from their hooks.

"They're pulling all these paintings off the walls," said Meldahl. "And in the process of removing these pieces, they jostle loose a reflector or a light bulb or something. It crashes, and it spooks them."

In their panic, the thieves left three paintings behind, including another valuable Rembrandt painting called "Portrait of Joris de Caullery."

They made their exit by pushing a 600-pound 17th-century Dutch cabinet to the middle of the room. They pulled the drawers out to form a makeshift staircase and climbed back out through the roof.

"I see that as being pretty cunning," said Seligman. "To move that over and I thought it was kind of smart to use the drawers as stairs."

"There's no way one person did this on their own," said Meldahl. "That's why I tend to believe that there's multiple suspects at play here."

"And then, they were gone," said Seligman. "They were gone."

Meldahl notes the likelihood that multiple people were involved because in August of 1978, there was an attempt to steal "Portrait of a Rabbi" from the de Young.

That time, a lone man walked up to the front door of the museum in the middle of the night and knocked on the door. He told the guard who answered that he was his relief for the night, before flashing a gun and forcing his way in. The gun was actually a pellet gun, but the burglar managed to get the guard into the men's room, where he tied him to the sink. The man then encountered a second guard, and after another tussle, forced that guard into the same bathroom, tying him up the same way as the first.

As the man was in the process of stealing "Portrait of a Rabbi" and several other small pieces, he encountered a third guard, one whom he apparently was not expecting. Though he was able to subdue that guard as well, by this time, the other two guards were able to wriggle free.

The three guards then chased the man out the door and into the street. The third guard told police he fired six shots at the man as he fled.

Police believed, at the time, that the man who attempted to steal "Portrait of a Rabbi" in August was the same person who came back for it on Christmas Eve later that year.

"Since it was Christmas morning and I was leaving my family behind," said Ian White, the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 1978. "It was an obvious emergency, and I was deeply distressed."

"It was a mob scene, there was a lot of press there," White said. "Everybody was interested in where they came into the museum."

In the aftermath of the theft, a lot was made of security at the museums.

"Security was inadequate, no question," said Seligman. "By today's standards, (it was) infantile."

"Obviously, we weren't secure," said White.

Robert Wittman is a former senior investigator with the FBI's national art crime team. He started the team in 2004 and remembers learning about this case.

"This is a very unique case," said Wittman, "because four months before, they could've stopped the whole theft."

"It would've been very important for the police to catch this guy," Wittman said. "For me, it seems like that was something they should've done."

"I think there was considerable concern that the guards were at fault," said Seligman.

The paintings were gone and police had little-to-nothing to work with by way of a description of the thieves.

Twenty-one years later, at a New York City art gallery called "William Doyle Galleries," a large crate was left behind after one of their weekly appraisal days. The gallery invited the public to bring their art to the gallery to have it evaluated and appraised, and a disguised man wearing a wig and hat took this opportunity to return the stolen works.

"My first thought was that I was concerned, it was an unattended package," said Alan Fausel, curator for the American Kennel Club's Museum of the Dog. Fausel worked at Doyle's and saw the paintings when the crate was eventually opened.

"We opened it up, and there were a few paintings inside," Fausel said.

His first call was to the police. But the return had not yet made headline news, which worried the mysterious man.

Dr. Sharon Flescher is the Executive Director Emerita of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). Her office received an anonymous phone call a few days after the paintings had been dropped off.

"I was out at a meeting," Flescher said, "And my assistant took the phone call and he wanted to meet with me."

"He claimed he was not the thief," Flescher said, "but he clearly was connected to the thieves. (He) was concerned that he hadn't seen - he expected this to be headline news in the newspaper."

"He wanted us to check on Doyle's to make sure they weren't doing something underhanded," Flescher said.

The man on the phone disguised his voice and identified himself as "Carl La Fung," according to Flescher.

"He apparently had a disguise, according to one of my colleagues," Fausel said. "The guy looked like he had a wig, and like a sailor's hat, or something like that."

Fausel had previously worked at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, so he contacted them right away to let them know their paintings had been recovered. The museum immediately flew its curator to New York to see the paintings for herself.

But of the four paintings that were stolen: "Portrait of a Rabbi," attributed to Rembrandt, "Interior of the Church of St. Lawrence in Rotterdam" by Anthonie de Lorme, "Harbor Scene" by Willem van de Velde, "River Scene at Night" by Aert van der Neer, only three were returned.

"Harbor Scene" was still missing and, based on the condition of the other three works, was thought not likely to ever be seen again in one piece.

The three returned paintings sustained considerable damage during their 21-year vacation away from the museum. Experts believe this was due to improper storage and clumsy attempts at restoration.

"The de Young Museum, to their credit, puts these pieces on display after they've been conserved," said Meldahl.

"There was an exhibition, right away, right after the recovery," Flescher said. "The museum did put these works on view, so the public could see it."

But in the time "Portrait of a Rabbi" was gone, it was determined that it was not a true work of Rembrandt. A Dutch research team had declared that the painting was most likely done by "a follower of Rembrandt," but they left "Rabbi" off their definitive list of Rembrandt's body of work.

According to Dr. Otto Naumann, widely considered an authority on Rembrandt, this dramatically reduced the value of the painting. At the time of the theft, it was valued at about $1 million, or about $5 million in 2025 dollars. With its current attribution, Naumann believes it would be worth about $500,000.

And as for that painting the thieves left behind?

"Portrait of Joris de Caullery" was confirmed by that same Dutch research team to be an authentic Rembrandt. Naumann estimates it could be worth at least $75 million today.

"I'm imagining, if these people are still alive, seeing this information start to become public," Meldahl said, "thinking, 'my gosh, what we could have gotten.'"

"I think one has to remember that at the time of the theft, both works were considered and labeled 'Rembrandt' by the museum," Flescher said. "So, to expect the thieves to know that one would later be downgraded to 'follower of' or 'studio of' and the other would retain the attribution, is maybe asking too much of thieves."

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco declined to appear in the documentary. They did confirm, however, that "Portrait of a Rabbi" is in their possession, in storage, and not on display.