Man will spend one day in jail for museum heists
After confessing to a string of museum heists that went undetected for 50 years, a Montgomery County man will spend one day in jail. Thomas Gavin’s more than two-decade-long crime spree is remarkable by any standard. He spent the 1960s and ‘70s pilfering historic artifacts — mostly antique weaponry — from nearly a dozen museums up and down the East Coast. Prosecutors said Gavin’s haul included dozens of historic rifles, pistols, revolvers and other artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries — including a rifle once owned by naturalist John James Audubon taken from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
It was only after FBI agents linked him last year to one of those crimes — the 1971 theft of a historic Revolutionary-era flintlock rifle from the Valley Forge National Historical Park — that he volunteered that he’d stolen quite a bit more. But as it came time last week for Gavin, 78, to own up to his past in federal court, the Montgomery County collector walked away with a sentence almost as remarkable as the stunning breadth of criminality to which he’d confessed: one day in jail. U.S. District Judge Mark A. Kearney took pains as he imposed that punishment in a four-hour court proceeding last Tuesday to note that the sentence also included a one-year term of house arrest, two more years of probation, a $23,485 restitution order and a $25,000 fine.
The reasons, Judge Kearney noted, were myriad. Statutes of limitations on many of the thefts had expired long ago. In other cases, the items Gavin stole didn’t surpass a $5,000 threshold for the federal crimes with which he might have been charged. In the end, prosecutors could not charge him with any of the thefts. Instead, Gavin pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of disposal of an object of cultural heritage stolen from a museum, an offense tied to his attempt in 2018 to sell the rifle he stole from Valley Forge — one of the few surviving works of Pennsylvania master gunmaker John Christian Oerter.
And while that crime carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison, Judge Kearney cited both Gavin’s advanced age and rapidly declining health as further considerations in his sentence.
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/crime-courts/2021/11/30/After-confessing-string-museum-heists-undetected-50-years-Montgomery-County-man-spend-one-day-jail/stories/202111240108
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