[kellyhound]

The toothbrush, left inside a storage locker, was the missing link.

Nearly two years after a Winston Churchill portrait was stolen from an Ottawa hotel, police had tracked the suspected art thief to a storage locker rented in the name of Jeffrey Wood.

After a senior staff member of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier noticed the original “Roaring Lion” portrait of the scowling former British prime minister — captured by celebrated photographer Yousuf Karsh — was askew in the summer of 2022, all hell broke loose.

The picture on the wall was a fake; the original had been replaced without anyone noticing. The story became an international mystery.

But the thief left clues behind. Crucially, DNA — viable for testing — stuck to the duct tape used to affix the cheap fake to a matted frame and stuck back on the wall in the hotel’s reading room, where the original had hung for two decades.

The photograph had been a gift from Karsh and his wife who were once longtime residents of the hotel, where they were beloved by staff.

The DNA came back with no matches to any known offenders in a national data bank. A dead end.

But classic detective work would lead officers to the storage locker where Wood had left behind some personal items. The toothbrush was tested for DNA. It was a match.

On Monday afternoon in an Ottawa courtroom, Wood was sentenced to two years less a day in jail despite not having a criminal record and after earlier pleading guilty to theft over $5,000, trafficking in stolen property and knowingly committing forgery by making a false document.

Wood’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, immediately promised to appeal the sentence.

Greenspon told reporters outside the Ottawa courthouse after sentencing that he would be launching an appeal within 10 days.

“It was an unnecessarily harsh sentence,” he said, “given that he’s a first offender, it’s a property crime and he pleaded guilty.”

The Crown had sought up to two years jail time for Wood while his defence lawyer, Greenspon, asked for a suspended sentence with probation. Ontario Justice Robert Wadden found that three years detention would have been appropriate but noting the time already spent in custody, restrictive bail and other mitigating factors, agreed with the Crown’s recommendation. The maximum penalty, the judge noted, was 14 years related to the forgery charge.

Wadden cited other cases involving art theft in his decision, ruling the forgery that replaced the portrait in the Chateau was an aggravating factor that contributed to Wood’s sentence.

The judge spoke at length about the symbolism of the portrait, taken in 1941 in the House of Commons after the prime minister made a wartime address to the Allied nation.

“It could well be said that the portrait is a depiction of the human virtue of courage,” Wadden said. He went on to note that Karsh had donated the negative to Library and Archives Canada with the stipulation it not be used to make additional prints.

“A print made by Karsh himself is irreplaceable,” Wadden said.

The judgment brings to a close a cross-continent manhunt — for both Wood and Churchill’s likeness — that has a happy ending for one of them. The portrait is hanging back in place on the bank of the Ottawa River (now more securely).

But in the summer of 2022, Ottawa police only knew that the Churchill portrait was missing.

Det. Akiva Geller started by trying to narrow the window in which the portrait may have been nabbed, requesting help from the public and searching photos taken by visitors posted online.

A photo posted to Twitter and another taken by CBC journalist Paul Hunter gave police the last known sighting of the real Churchill and the first documented appearance of the fake in residence on the hotel’s first floor.

The fake was a bad replica, the kind many printers could have produced. It was a far cry from the delicate and complex silver gelatin print gifted to the hotel by Karsh that came with a requirement for it and several other photographs to be available for public viewing.

The Ottawa police considered but didn’t have the resources to sort out printer steganography — a kind of watermark left behind by on-demand printers and copiers that can be used to identify a specific machine.

But whoever had framed the fake portrait had used duct tape to secure the print. There, on the tape, police found traces of DNA.

When the DNA came back with no matches, Geller focused his efforts on searching online auctions for a Churchill portrait, which has been reproduced all over the world. What purported to be a copy of the “Roaring Lion” popped up on Sotheby’s online site — the famous U.K. auction house — that indicated the seller was a Canadian passport holder.

Since Sotheby’s is located in another police service’s jurisdiction — nearly 6,000 kilometres away — Ottawa police had to wait on diplomacy. A request was made to the United Kingdom on behalf of Canada to assist in an investigation. A reply came eight months later.

The seller’s name was Jeffrey Wood.

Still, there were several roadblocks. Investigators had to confirm this print was the portrait missing from the reading room. But Sotheby’s had already auctioned off the portrait, police would learn, to an unsuspecting Italian lawyer in Genoa. And the detective needed evidence Wood had actually stolen the portrait.

Karsh’s own signature turned out to be the key to the first problem. The late photographer was known to hand sign each of his original prints — not the copies — and because of that, each signature was unique. Police overlaid the signature they knew to be from the authentic portrait from the picture found on Twitter to the one that had been held by Sotheby’s. It was a perfect match.

Next, Geller needed the help of Italy’s federal police, who located the new owner. The man graciously agreed to hand it over to police for investigation. Again, the signature was a perfect match. Police, working with the Canadian embassy abroad began arranging for Churchill’s — the real one’s — return to the hotel.

Meanwhile, police obtained phone records for Wood, revealing a call to the hotel and also to a self-storage company. They obtained a search warrant.

Last January, inside the locker, they discovered a second fake printout of the “Roaring Lion” with an invoice from the online company Redbubble. The receipt was in Wood’s name.

Also inside the storage locker were some of Wood’s personal items, including a toothbrush.

A DNA analysis of the toothbrush would come back with a match for the DNA on the duct tape. Police had their thief.

Wood, 44, was living with family in a remote area near North Bay, Ont. A warrant was issued for his arrest and after being contacted by police, Wood turned himself in to the Ontario Provincial Police.

With the “who” out of the way, the focus turned to the “why.”

Wood, his defence team told the court, had not had an easy life “by any stretch of the imagination.”

After starting a philosophy degree at the University of Ottawa, his education came to an abrupt halt after a snowboarding accident left him with a broken back. He languished in a titanium cast for six months.

After his accident, he continued working in various roles, including as a bank teller, until his uncle, who was like a father figure to him, died by suicide in 2016 — an event that “altered Mr. Wood in a way he describes as a ‘physiological and emotional shift’” and made it difficult to maintain employment, his defence team told the court.

So too, was he challenged by his brother’s mental illness, finding himself needing to be his sole provider for nearly two decades.

But Wood had started up an interest in the art world, becoming a dealer.

“Mr. Wood would scour North America for important photographs which he deemed misplaced and prior to buying them he would shop them and get consignment agreements from various major auction houses in New York, L.A. and the U.K.,” his lawyer told the court.

But, realizing he needed to help his brother, who was living in the U.K. at the time and struggling with homelessness and addiction, he plotted a way to bring him home.

“I had never in 40 years gone to bed or woken up considering committing a crime,” Wood said in a lengthy statement at his plea hearing. “I never even had a speeding ticket and some day in the first 10 days of December 2021 I knew that I had to intervene in a meaningful way and I had an obstacle. That obstacle was money.”

He planned to steal the portrait — what he thought to be a victimless crime at the time — and sell it to Sotheby’s where he knew there was interest in legitimate Karsh estate prints.

The photograph sold on a Tuesday at noon, Wood remembered. The Crown said the selling price was $9,399 in August 2024. Wood would receive just under $5,000.

Ninety minutes after the sale was finalized, Wood’s brother was found dead in his bathtub, he said.

“This crime was committed for naught.”

Wood told the judge his punishment has been a “long time coming.” He said he would lay in bed at night “formulating and reformulating apologies” to those who searched for him and those who he stole from.

He apologized to the Ottawa police and Geller specifically, for the resources needed to track him and the portrait down.

Also to Karsh’s wife, whose legacy, along with their relationship to their former home in Ottawa, Wood said he’d “disgraced.” Estrellita Karsh died in March, age 95. Yousuf Karsh died in 2002.

And lastly, he said he was sorry to the hotel’s staff, including its general manager, along with the senior employee, Bruno Lair, who first hung the real portrait and was the one to discover it missing.

When asked about the prospect of an appeal minutes after Greenspon spoke, the Chateau Laurier’s general manager Geneviève Dumas simply said she believed the case was solid.

“Good luck.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...portrait-from/