Inside a 'Mysterious, Scandalous Art Heist'

"I think this is the most scandalous, mysterious art heist in Canada in the twenty-first century," declares former FBI agent Robert K. Wittman, a specialist in such thefts. He was speaking to Brett Popplewell of the Walrus, who unpacks the unusual heist in question: In late 2021 or early 2022, somebody took a priceless photo of Winston Churchill off the wall at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa and replaced it with a cheap forgery. It took eight months before a hotel worker—the same man who had secured it in place 25 years earlier—noticed that it was hanging askew and discovered the theft. Police began investigating, and hotel general manager Geneviève Dumas did as well.

In fact, Dumas herself narrowed the timing of the theft to a 12-day period by putting out a public call for photographs people had taken of the hotel's reading lounge, where the "Roaring Lion" portrait by renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh had hung. Investigators thus learned that the real photo was hanging on Dec. 25, 2021, and the forgery was in place by Jan. 6, 2022. The timing counts: That was in the midst of the pandemic, when guests were scarce and the hotel had a skeleton staff. Police aren't saying much about how they unraveled the case—"this is the most complex investigation that I've been a part of," says Ottawa detective Akiva Geller—but it centered on a difficult aspect of any art heist: the sale.

Investigators discovered that an unwitting Sotheby's auction house in London sold the photo to an unwitting buyer in Italy, who hung it in his living room. (It sold for a relatively low $7,500, perhaps because neither party realized it was the original print.) The photo is now back in place at the hotel. Police, meanwhile, have charged 43-year-old Jeffrey Wood, a resident of the small town of Powassan, Ontario, roughly 230 miles from Ottawa, in the theft. He has been released on bail and awaits trial, during which more details may emerge. Read the full story, which details how Karsh came to take the most famous photo of Churchill in existence—it helped that the subject was cranky. (Or read other longform recaps.)