Into the Dark World of Catching Crooks, Culprits and Convicts: An Interview with Robert K. Wittman

by Michael J. O’Malley III Robert King “Bob” Wittman in no way resembles the highly romanticized portrayals of FBI agents made famous over the decades by movie studios and television series. He is not the heavy-hitting, gang-busting, chain-smoking G-man, replete with fedora rakishly angled atop his head. Instead, he embodies the old-school preppy style – looking as though...
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The Last of the New Hope Crowd: Faye Swengel and Bernard Badura

While Faye Swengel Badura (1904-1991) is remembered and collected as a fine artist, her husband Bernard “Ben” Badura (1896-1986) is increasingly being recognized as one of the most important makers of frames in the United States. In fact, his frames – works of art in themselves — have far eclipsed the desirability of his accomplished paintings. The couple was a fixture of the art colony at...
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Bookshelf

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, with John Shiffman published by Broadway Paperbacks, 2011; 324 pages, paper, $15.00 While employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Philadelphia, Robert King Wittman created and was senior investigator of the bureau’s Art Crime Team. He arrived in 1988 in Philadelphia, “home to two of the...
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