For days, his identity was a mystery: a middle-aged man with a tattoo of a lizard or gecko on his right shoulder, found dead in London’s picturesque Regent’s Canal, his body tied to a shopping cart.
On Thursday, police said they had solved at least part of the mystery, when fingerprints taken from the hand of the decomposed body showed that he was Sebastiano Magnanini, 46, an Italian carpenter living in south London and one of the men behind the brazen theft almost 22 years ago of a masterpiece from a church in his native Venice.
Magnanini was sentenced in 1998 to 18 months in prison after he was charged with stealing a 1732 altarpiece painting, The Education of the Virgin, by Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, from Venice’s Santa Maria della Fava church. The painting was estimated to be worth 2 billion Italian lire at the time of its theft in 1993 — or about US$1.15 million today.
Magnanini was 24 at the time and the theft — characterized as an operatic farce by the Italian news media — alarmed some in the country and fanned debate about how to protect treasured artwork.
The church, which had no alarm system, was unlocked. Magnanini and two other men snuck in and evaded the priests by hiding in the church until it closed, according to the police report from the time, cited by the Italian news agency ANSA.
During the burglary, Magnanini and his accomplices, apparently fatigued from the arduous task of removing the painting from the altar, stopped at a local bar for a drink. They also smoked marijuana, according to reports at the time.
During their escape, the canvas fell on the ground, unrolling itself and the three men picked it up and secured it with a shoelace. The newspaper Corriere della Sera reported in 1993 that one of the men had been reluctant to get involved in the caper because of his concern that stealing from a church could bring bad luck.
The painting turned up three months later, wrapped in a sheet at a warehouse not far from Venice’s Marco Polo Airport. According to Italian news reports, the speed of the discovery raised some questions over whether the police were somehow involved, but Magnanini and his accomplices were arrested and charged with aggravated theft.
An anti-Mafia investigator initially handled the case, because of suspicions of links to organized crime. Now, police officers in London are trying to piece together whether Magnanini might have had enemies who wanted him dead.
London’s Metropolitan Police on Thursday said that a postmortem examination had taken place. The cause of death was not yet known. Though a murder investigation was under way, the police were not ruling out any possibilities, including that the death could be connected to organized crime or could be a suicide.
“It is rare for someone to be found in this way,” said a police spokeswoman, who declined to give her name in line with police protocol. “It is unusual.”
Magnanini’s brother, Matteo, told the London Evening Standard that his brother was a “romantic free spirit” who had moved to London to put his past behind him.
“As far as we all know, my brother was clean, hard working and not involved in any criminal activity,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Before coming to London last year, he lived in Colombia, Thailand and Cambodia. In London, he worked building sets for theater and other event companies.
The police said they became aware of the death after a passer-by spotted the body on Thursday last week in Regent’s Canal, a scenic and verdant spot peppered with houseboats, public housing and new expensive glass lofts.
Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Reeves, who is investigating the case, said that Magnanini had taken public transportation to central London two days before he disappeared.
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