killer. When he could manage to do it inconspicuously, he tried again to send the help signal. Nothing. Finally the Germans acted on their own, bursting in brandishing Dirty Harry handguns and arresting everyone. Hill and the Czech gang leader ended up sprawled next to one another face-down on the concrete floor. A cop bent low to handcuff Hill’s arms behind his back and whispered into his ear, “Goot verk!”
Charley Hill, on the grounds of Blenheim Palace. The pose was a subtle homage to one of Hill’s favorite paintings, Gilbert Stuart’s The Skater. A man of action with a connoisseur’s eye, Hill liked to think of himself as spiritual kin to Stuart’s skating scholar.
Gilbert Stuart, The Skater. 1782 oil on canvas, 147.4 ? 245.5 cm
© National Gallery of Art. Washington DC, USA /Bridgeman Art Library
Hill’s passport photo, taken in 1969 in Saigon.
A memorial service for the eleven men of Bravo Company’s Lima Platoon, killed in an ambush on Easter Monday, 1969.
Zita Hill, Charley’s mother. An elegant, high-spirited woman, Zita trained as a ballerina but joined Bluebell Kelly’s troupe of high-kicking dancers for a European tour just before the outbreak of World War II.
Landon Hill, Charley’s father, in Air Force uniform.
Hill is proud of his dual ancestry, “log cabin on one side and knight of the realm on the other.” His mother grew up in a glamorous English household where the likes of George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were frequent visitors. His father’s family hailed from the American west. Here several of Hill’s relatives (the boy who would become his grandfather is sixth from the left) pose in front of the family homestead in Oklahoma in the 1890s.
In Charley Hill’s first case as an undercover detective, two crooks tried to sell him a painting by the 16th- century Italian Parmigianino. The painter’s most famous work, often called the Madonna of the Long Neck because of its exaggerated proportions, is at left. Hill examined the crooks’ painting and told them he thought their prize was a fake.
Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery was stolen from London’s Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery by a thief who tucked it under his arm and ran out the door. The painting, by Bruegel, was valued at ?2 million. The painting eventually made its way to a gang of small-time thieves, who showed it to an expert to find out if it had any value. The expert took a look and fainted.
Francesco Mazzola Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long
Neck, 1534-40
oil on panel, 135 ? 219 cm
© Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Italy /Bridgeman Art Library
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, 1565 oil on panel, 34.4 ? 24.1 cm
© The Samuel Courtauld Trust. Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London
Photograph of Edvard Munch c.1892
© Munch Museum, Oslo
Munch painted his self-portrait in 1895, two years after The Scream. A more tormented man would be hard to imagine. “Disease, insanity, and death were the angels which attended my cradle,” he once wrote, and they chased poor Munch throughout his long life.
Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with
Cigarette, 1895
oil on canvas, 85.5 ? 110.5 cm
PHOTO: J. Lathion: © National Gallery. Norway/ARS
Edvard Munch, Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street, 1892 oil on canvas, 121 ? 84.5 cm
© Courtesy of the Bergen Art Museum /ARS
Munch painted this melancholy street scene, Spring Evening on Karl Johan Street, in 1892, a year before The Scream. The skull-like heads and staring eyes would reappear in The Scream.
The Scream has served as the basis for countless spoofs and cartoons. Munch, a tormented and melancholy man, had hoped that audiences would “understand the holiness” of his images.
Munch may have seen this Incan mummy at the Palais du Trocadero (now the Musee de l’Homme) in Paris. Some art historians believe it helped inspire The Scream’s central figure.
Pal Enger was an ex-soccer star turned crook and a publicity hound. Enger, who had been convicted in 1988 for stealing Munch’s Vampire, was a natural suspect when The Scream vanished. He had an alibi, though, and enjoyed teasing the police. Here he poses next to the spot where The Scream had hung; in the place of the $72-million masterpiece is a poster from the museum’s gift shop, hanging above a label reading “Stolen.”
The National Gallery, in Oslo. The Scream had been moved from its customary location in the museum to the second floor, so that it would be more convenient for tourists. Not only was the painting moved closer to ground level, but it was hung in a room with easy access from the street and within a few feet of a window. This photo was snapped moments after The Scream vanished. Note the billowing curtains, as the wind blows through the broken window, and the police tape.
The Scream was stolen on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in 1994. With the world’s attention focused on Norway, the Scream thieves stole the international spotlight as well as a $72-million painting.
An art dealer named Einar-Tore Ulving found himself mixed up in The Scream case when an ex-convict client told him he had underworld contacts who could arrange for the return of Munch’s masterpiece.
The first break in the case —following a tip from an anonymous caller, authorities found a piece of
