Date: Fri 05-Mar-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

NewWorld

Full Text:

Plot Thickens In New Orleans

with 3 cuts

By Liza Montgomery

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- Mardis Gras is well over in New Orleans, but a hangover of

a different sort lingers.

In and around antiques shops, auction galleries, museums and preservation

societies, the impact of what has become the focus of national and

international attention -- the illegal buying and selling of the city's

cemetery artifacts -- continues to be felt. No matter how much members of the

trade wish it would go away.

"I'm just worn out on that story," one auctioneer recently complained.

A case which began in mid-February 1998 in Lake Lawn Metarie cemetery -- where

a white van left behind a half-wrenched marble angel in its haste to escape a

suspicious grounds supervisor -- has persisted with the arrest (and rearrest)

of prominent dealers and citizens in November and December, as well as reports

on the Associated Press wire, a screaming headline on the front page of The

New York Times last month, and even a spot on the February 24 Today show.

The story's elements make for perfect media fodder: grave robbing; the

possible involvement of well-known New Orleans personalities; mounting

evidence, according to the police, of a national crime ring extending from

California to New York; and finally, booty worth thousands of dollars.

Although the cases against antiques dealers Peter Patout and Aaron Jarabica --

along with collector and former professor Andy Antippas and preservationist

Roy Boucvalt -- are still under investigation, the reputations of those

accused are being eaten alive in the press while public confidence in the New

Orleans antiques trade may have been shattered for years to come.

Perhaps more importantly, the thefts have resulted in a legal campaign by

angry preservationists to protect the city's cemeteries, which, despite being

much-needed and long overdue, could have negative repercussions for dealers

and collectors across the country.

The Accused

The initial, November 4 arrest of Patout, owner of Patout's Antiques on Royal

Street, was the most shocking for the trade, both locally and nationally.

Patout is a well-known and well-traveled dealer; a former board member of Save

Our Cemeteries, thought to be the most active and aggressive of New Orleans

cemetery preservation groups; and a descendant of prominent Louisiana sugar

planters, whose home has often been photographed for the likes of Town &

Country, Vogue, House Beautiful, and Victoria magazines.

An article featuring Patout's French Quarter residence in the December issue

of Victoria may ironically serve as the most compelling of the evidence seized

from its owner: a statue of David pictured in those pages, thought by police

to be a cemetery artifact, disappeared from its place in Patout's shop shortly

after his arrest and, according to information that Third District detectives

Lawrence Green and Frederick Morton gave The Times-Picayune, was recovered

from the Bayou St John after the detectives received a tip.

Patout says he has never seen the statue recovered from the water.

Jarabica, also arrested November 4, is the owner of Top Drawer Antiques and a

third-generation dealer whose grandfather was the first to open shop on

Magazine Street. He faces perhaps a more difficult fight than Patout. Not only

were objects in his shop labeled as stolen, but police and published reports

have also implied he has been identified -- by those who carried out the

actual thefts -- as a contributing member of a "ring."

For many dealers and auctioneers in New Orleans, this kind of evidence carries

with it a certainty of guilt. "Someone sees the statue [from Patout's shop]

being thrown into a beautiful river going right through the city," said one

dealer, who, like most, prefers to remain anonymous. "It doesn't take a rocket

scientist to figure out what happened. That's too much of a coincidence."

Yet dealers here most often questioned what both Patout and Jarabica were

doing with such material in the first place, and therein lies the crux of the

matter not only for the accused, but for anyone who does business with these

types of antiques: How is the term "cemetery artifact" clearly defined, and by

what method can these items be legally and legitimately purchased and sold?

Upsetting the Scales

"What the media isn't telling people is that they arrested five of us, but

found 35 other dealers with these statues," says Jarabica.

Not only statues, but urns, benches and carvings as well, items which for many

collectors and dealers may sound suspiciously like "garden" antiques. How does

one then distinguish a cemetery artifact from other similar items?

According to Sally Reeves, the archivist of the New Orleans Notarial Archives

and a noted preservationist familiar with the personalities and issues

involved in this case, a cemetery artifact "ordinarily has a religious,

bereavement, Christian, Jewish, or Masonic -- fraternal -- theme. That would

be the first clue that it is commemorative.

"It's material would be another clue," she continued. "It's method of

construction is carved, not poured, with the exception of those which are

cookie cutter in nature, like the `B.V.M.' [or commonly seen Blessed Virgin

Mary]."

For Reeves, the desirability of cemetery items -- in addition to workmanship

and the current market -- is further enhanced by patina. "Pitting in old,

scrolled iron for example is exquisite," she says, "as is the way in which it

holds paint."

Unfortunately -- excluding those objects bearing family names, or those which

relate directly to bereavement, such as weeping angels, or any which may be

missing bases or feet -- many objects offered by dealers and auction houses on

any given day also fit Reeve's description.

Jarabica claims that such material is commonly available on the streets and in

the shops of New Orleans, and is prevalent through the entire area, due in no

small part to the Catholic Church, which has been off religious statues,

altars and other items for the last ten years, and to New Orleans religious

tradition itself.

"This is a Catholic city," he points out. "Every home over 50 years old has

these things."

"That kind of material has been a mainstay of auctions in New Orleans for

years -- absolutely years," echoes Steven Harrison, a former curator at the

Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans and currently the Curator of Decorative

Arts at the Dallas Museum of Art. He is also a friend to, and very vocal

supporter of, Patout.

"You can take a handful of catalogues from any auction house in New Orleans,

and 20 percent of their items are the kind of thing that Peter has been

accused of stealing."

Commemorative objects, according to Harrison, also have a long tradition of

being desirable to collectors. The Louisiana State Museum, he notes, has many

`immortelles,' those hair or bead ornaments in wreath form and French in

origin, which were often put in glass framed boxes and displayed on graves. "A

lot of families took them home, and they were eventually sold with an estate.

They have become often like folk art -- publicly traded."

Harrison also agrees with Jarabica about the Catholic church's contribution to

the flood of religious artifacts on the market. "After Vatican II came along

in the 1960s, these garden statues and other things which no longer had

relevance to the church's liturgy were sold off. Every little churchyard had a

bench, or statue of Mary, or the kind [of thing] they dragged out of the Bayou

St John."

According to Patout, the higher-end items seized from his shop were clearly

garden elements, and that the police "also confiscated things bought locally

at auction for which I had receipts. They still have [those things]."

But for Louise Fergusson, a leading member of Save Our Cemeteries, what was

taken as evidence can neither be categorized as, nor mistaken for, anything

other than cemetery in nature.

"[These shops] had draped urns and planters with names and dates on them in

the windows," she says. "Local dealers know the cemeteries. I think they have

some responsibility to pay attention."

Fergusson also raised perhaps the most nagging and murky issue regularly

facing dealers and auctioneers everywhere, and the one which damned Patout and

Jarabica in the eyes of many we spoke to: "These things were purchased out of

the backs of vans," she said. "Reputable dealers would not do this."

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Like a litany, Fergusson's words were repeated by nearly every member of the

trade in New Orleans we interviewed.

"Any honest dealer would be aware of what [he or she is] buying," says Charles

Murphy, owner of Animal Art Antiques and a well-known dealer in French palissy

and Massier ceramics, not to mention any other furniture or decorative item

related to animals. "The dealers are worse than the people who go to the

cemeteries to steal it. And [the thieves] probably get paid almost nothing."

Murphy's daughter Enid recalls an incident in 1998 at their Rue de Chartres

shop in which her mother turned away a man "who came in with two urns that

looked like they'd just been pulled out of a yard. He said, `I'll sell them

for twelve.' My mother asked, `Twelve hundred?' and he said, `No, $12.'"

"From a moral standpoint," Mr Murphy interjects, "I don't believe for one

damned second that a dealer is not suspicious when these things happen. You

have to have a con artist of the highest magnitude to trick someone into

buying artifacts off the street. The majority of the time, the dealer is at

fault."

Patout vehemently disagrees. "What are they basing [those accusations] on? Did

they know what I had? Did they talk to me?

"I did not know these things were stolen, period. [The objects] were generally

garden ornaments, like the kind you see at antiques and garden shows. What's

garden and what's cemetery?

"The issue is not whether [a dealer is] honest, but whether [he or she] knew

something was stolen," Patout continues. "I didn't buy angels, I bought

religious statues, urns, and wire benches."

"I never once saw anything [in his shop] that made me pause and say, `I wonder

if that came out of a cemetery?'" concurs Harrison, who often visited Patout

while a curator and Winterthur student and continues to stop in. "And I'm

hypersensitive to that as a curator. We're guardians for the public -- we're

buying objects with the public's money. Whenever I approach an object, my mind

is immediately suspicious. To suggest that he was part of a conspiracy is

ridiculous."

Even Murphy remembers purchasing cast iron out of the back of a truck owned by

a man who, although from out of state, regularly came to New Orleans to sell.

"I bought a couple of things, but I took his driver's license number," he

says. "I stopped buying that way, however, because I felt uncomfortable. This

man routinely still comes here. I called the auction houses -- he [sold] to

them -- and they said they'd known him for years.

"Putting my other hat on, if someone came in here and said `that cast iron

chair is stolen,' I would be put upon," he admits.

"Dealers buy from people who send a picture of a Belter sofa and say, `This is

my grandmother's,'" says Harrison. "People have always unwittingly bought and

sold stolen items. There's no way to accurately or convincingly police these

transactions.

"Dealers in New Orleans have a high demand and lots of tourists, and they

don't have time to go searching around [for merchandise]," he continued. "They

rely a lot on pickers. I defy you to find one dealer who hasn't bought from a

picker."

"I've been in business since 1983," Patout relates. "I'm a public person.

Anybody in the public eye runs a risk and this is what happens sometimes. Many

dealers, from the top to the low, can have things that are illicit."

Jarabica also maintains that he purchased statues and other items in question

in good faith from people who claimed to have recently inherited them, and

points to more sinister reasons for his and Patout's arrests, reasons which

are also, surprisingly, being considered by those who condemn both men.

A War of Words

According to Jarabica, the owners of the other shops found with cemetery items

were not charged because "[the police] picked out the `splash' names. It was

something they could sensationalize. They still haven't told us why they chose

us."

Jarabica described being led away in handcuffs on November 4. "There were TV

cameras around my shop and newspaper photographers hiding and snapping

pictures...I knew I was going to get arrested."

Others in this community also believe the police have used the media as a

public relations venue. Patout chose to fight back a week after his arrest

with a November 11 press conference in front of his ancestral tomb, during

which he stated that the urns seized by the police were purchased in Atlanta

four years earlier and a Lady of Lourdes statue, also taken, was "made of

plaster of Paris, not marble and...could never be used out of doors."

Patout was arrested again on November 24, according to The Times-Picayune,

after police received a receipt from the buyer of a stolen, $38,000 marble

angel -- a receipt bearing Patout's name.

"Why did police lead Peter away in handcuffs in front of the media?" asks

Reeves. "Peter scored a coup with his press conference. It was very effective.

I have a feeling that the police did not take that lightly. Perhaps they felt

that they had to combat that shot -- they proceeded to arrest him three or

four more times."

"We have a new police chief and he's trying to look good," she added. "They

certainly can't afford to look bad on this issue."

Harrison goes even further in his arguments in Patout's defense. "The New

Orleans Police Department has been beleaguered for years with corruption

charges. They have made this a bigger case than it is and taken a high moral

tone [to satisfy] the public. Peter has been pulled into something that isn't

the magnitude that they have portrayed it in the press, and the press has put

a salacious slant on it."

"Everything is pending, nothing has yet been to trial," New Orleans Third

District Captain Linda Buzcek commented. "It is an open investigation, and

we're still actively working it. We get information daily about what's going

on and a lot of it is now about places outside of New Orleans. We're working

with federal authorities here on those angles." (Detectives Morton and Green

were, at this writing, following a lead in New York).

"I not going to get involved in a conversation with what anyone says," she

stated, when asked why other dealers had not been arrested. "Charges are

pending. Some of the minor charges have been dropped, others remain."

In February 16 edition of The New York Times, however, the investigation's

leader, Lieutenant Jeff Winn, sarcastically addressed Jarabica's claim that he

believed the items he purchased came from an estate.

"Such an estate `didn't exist to our knowledge, but if it did the place would

look like a Roman coliseum,'" The Times quotes.

"This isn't only a legal issue, it's a moral issue: stealing from the dead,"

says Jarabica. "They are punishing me and my family for nothing. They

destroyed my reputation. There's no way to regain what I've lost. But it's the

friends who won't talk to my wife anymore and the kids at school who tell my

children `I saw your daddy arrested' that hurts me."

"I've never been charged," Patout points out. "My mother asked my attorney

[when the trial will be] and he said `we have no idea, it could be a year.'"

"Although I do know that [the arrest] has hurt me, I've also had a lot of

support from friends and clients and I will continue to buy and sell antiques.

I do feel that I will be exonerated."

Sally Reeves attempted to describe the divisions and discomfort felt by those

associated with the trade here, many of whom are friends who see one another

socially. "From the point of view of a lifetime resident of New Orleans who

visits cemeteries on All Saints Day every year -- where we tell each other

about our ancestors and drink champagne at the end of the day -- we live in

the cemeteries. They are not only a place to mourn, but a place of culture.

"It was painful to read about and be frustrated by the reports of things being

stolen. It is painful to come to grips that friends in the French Quarter have

been party to this. The evidence is pretty strong. And they are going to have

to pay for these big mistakes. I hate to condemn them, but what they did was

wrong and they've got to admit it."

Reeves pauses. "But if Peter goes to jail, it will be like one of us going to

jail," she adds finally.

"I'm agitated because Peter's my friend," agrees Harrison. "But more than

that, a reputation is at stake. A dealer's reputation is everything. I'm

appalled by the whole situation."

Harrison's final words, however oft quoted, were chilling: "There but by the

grace of God go you or I."

A New Law in Old New Orleans?

Whatever the outcome will be for Patout and Jarabica (formal charges must be

made 150 days after an arrest), the thefts have led to action at a different

and more lasting level. On February 18, The New Orleans City Council, acting

on the recommendations of the Cemetery Preservation Advisory Committee,

adopted an ordinance which would require dealers and auction houses to fill

out detailed forms for every "cemetery artifact" they buy, or is consigned to

them.

Information will include a value and in-depth description of the item, and the

name, Social Security number, address, date of birth and photo ID of the

seller. The forms would then be given to the police, who would allow 30 days

to pass before a dealer could resell the piece.

Every auctioneer and dealer we spoke to felt that such action was necessary

and a step in the right direction, but balked at the ordinance's definition of

a "cemetery artifact," which reads:

"Any object produced or shaped by human workmanship or tool, including

ornaments of archaeological, historical, cultural and/or sentimental

significance or interest, which may be used to memorialized the dead and shall

include but not be limited to all cemetery items, objects, properties,

including...any type of religious or sentimental addition and/or adornment,

inside or outside a tomb...regardless of monetary worth, age, size, shape or

condition, including...statues, bricks, signage, plaques, tablets, urns, pots,

planters, benches, chairs, crosses or other religious symbols, vases, gates,

fences, or any portions thereof."

Questions were also raised regarding the police department's ability to handle

the deluge of paperwork and the loss of money a month-long waiting period may

result in.

"It sounds like a whole lot of hassle," says Jean Vidos of New Orleans/St

Charles Auctions. "And it won't solve the problem. Auction houses will

probably just say `don't consign it.'"

While Bill Rau, of M.S. Rau Inc., on Royal Street, calls the ordinance

wonderful, and "can't imagine that anyone would remotely deal in this stuff

anymore," he also believes passing the law now "is like closing the doors

after the cows left."

"To isolate that part of trade -- those who deal in garden objects -- and to

put them under this ordinance is ridiculous," argues Harrison. "The way they

can better prevent this kind of crime is to provide more police patrols in

these cemeteries, rather than passing an ordinance which will have no

validity."

Sally Reeves agrees, but points out that Metarie, one of the best-kept and

well-funded perpetual care cemeteries in New Orleans -- and one which enjoys

an army of workers -- was where the whole scandal began.

"I want your readers to know we are not trying to alienate dealers," says

Fergusson, who, with Save Our Cemeteries, worked hard to put the ordinance

together. "Dealers are a thriving part of our community and our economy."

"Save Our Cemeteries can't be faulted," says Reeves. "They have killed

themselves to rebuild [and protect these areas]. This is a wake-up call to the

city to do something."

Those members of the trade in the Northeast should wake up as well: according

to Fergusson, historic cemeteries in Boston and elsewhere are considering

backing similar legislation. Save Our Cemeteries is now looking to see it

passed at the state level.