RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Some thoughs on the Marathon Bombing (2013 repost)

With today being the annual running of the Boston Marathon, my thoughts drifted back to that event in 2013 when terrorism injected itself into the iconic sporting event. Most are familiar with what happened, but this post, which I wrote on April 22, 2013, provides many details and a feel of what it was like at the time, to me at least . . . 

With the past week’s tragic and dramatic events now a part of history, life in Lowell can start edging back to normal. The primary for the special election for the U.S. Senate is a week away (Tuesday, April 30) and conflict at the city council meeting will grab center stage for some. During the crisis, I found it hard to write blog posts: things unrelated to the bombing seemed trivial and things about the bombing were coming in overwhelming waves from other sources. Best to stay silent. Before moving on, however, I wanted to post some observations from the week past, more for archival purposes than anything else.

News of the Boston Marathon bombing arrived at 3 pm last Monday, Patriot’s Day. More than a decade after 9/11, my first reaction when told there had been an explosion at the Marathon wasn’t “terrorist attack” although that reality set in quickly enough. The death toll was quickly set at 3 and the injured at 50. My expectation was that the former number would creep upwards but it did not (from bomb injuries, at least). But the number of wounded did rise with the final figure around 170. Given the packed surroundings, it is amazing more were not killed by the two explosions, but that is attributable to the construction of the bombs (at ground level, they propelled shrapnel outward not upward, causing massive injuries to legs but few to vital organs) and the instant availability of top quality medical care at the nearby marathon runners’ tent.

As is often the case, connections to Lowell were soon established. The photo of a gravely injured Lowell High student being treated by two bystanders dominated the Tuesday front pages of both the Boston Globe and the New York Times. A surprising number of the injured were from Greater Lowell or had close ties to this area, and there was Ed Davis, a calm, authoritative voice throughout the crisis as Boston’s police commissioner.

Wednesday was spent reading of the victims, of those who responded to them first, and speculation about who had done it. One website had pre-explosion crowd photos with every isolated male with a backpack annotated as the possible terrorist. (As someone who routinely carries a backpack, I found this crowd sourcing exercise a bit creepy and while possibly of some assistance, also a source of potential harm to the reputations of many innocent bystanders).

Thursday was the interfaith memorial service featuring President Obama. As is so often the case (in my view) his public remarks struck the right note of comfort to the injured, defiance to the perpetrators, and inspiration to everyone else. After the service the President visited victims hospitalized at Mass General.

Throughout the day on Thursday, the media spread the word that the FBI had photos of the bombers and would be releasing them to the public soon. That happened in the late afternoon: it was a video loop of two men striding relaxed but purposely down the sidewalk in column, the first with a black baseball cap and a black backpack squarely strapped to both shoulders (Suspect #1), the second with a white ballcap worn backwards, with a grayish colored pack slung casually over his right shoulder. Still photos were grainy but good enough to be recognized. I went to bed at about 10:30 p.m. with no further news.

Waking up early on Friday (4:30 a.m.), I immediately glanced at my phone for overnight news. Two emails from my son Andrew who now lives near Harvard Square in Cambridge immediately grabbed my attention. The first was at 11:41 p.m.: “There was just a shooting near MIT. Some injuries. No threat here.” The second at 2:06 a.m.: “I’m sure you’ll see all the details when you wake up. Eventful night. They’re not done sweeping the area of Watertown, but it’s a lot less chaotic than it was. I think I’ll be going to bed soon.” The first thing that popped up on my computer was Facebook. I locked onto Andrew’s feed: “There was a shooting around MIT. Then there was a car hijacked in Central. Pursued by police. I heard sirens then turned the police radio on. I heard explosion and gunshots in the distance from my room…they’re now saying grenades and automatic gunfire in Watertown. Second officer down.”

News came rapidly after that from the TV and the computer. The Marathon bombers had been identified as two brothers from Cambridge. One of them was now dead, the other on the run. The news Friday morning was that they had ambushed and killed an MIT police officer, robbed a 7-11 (an erroneous report), hijacked a car and been stopped by police in Watertown where a massive firefight ensued. An MBTA police officer had been badly wounded in the gunfight, one of the terrorists (Suspect 1) had been killed, and Suspect 2 had escaped.

By 6:30 a.m., Governor Patrick had shut down the entire MBTA and the communities of Watertown, Cambridge, Newton, and several others were all locked down which meant people were to remain at home and business were not to open while a massive manhunt was conducted. Within minutes, the lockdown was extended to the entire city of Boston. Here in Lowell, the work day continued uneventfully, but all eyes and ears were trained on whatever “breaking news” source was available. An Amtrak train in Norwalk, Connecticut had been evacuated and a bomb squad in Buffalo was searching a car with Massachusetts plates. But nothing really came of it.

Twelve hours later, exhausted and disheartened elected officials and police announced at a press conference that the suspect continued to elude them but that the lockdown was lifted and the MBTA was back in business. With that announcement, the local TV news morphed into Diane Sawyer and the national news, something I hadn’t watched in months. She broke for a commercial at 6:50 p.m. but when the commercial ended, the local news anchors on channel 5 were back on screen, telling of breaking news in Watertown. Suspect #2 had been located hiding in a boat stored in a yard just outside the day’s search perimeter. Gunfire broke out and then faded. Wave after wave of police of all types arrived. At 9:00 p.m., they announced that Suspect #2 had been captured, alive but badly wounded.

Since then and continuing has been a mix of stories about the terrorists and their motivations and actions and other stories about the victims, their funerals and their recoveries. For most of us, returning to work today will be a chance to share accounts of consuming the news of Friday night and sharing nuggets of information picked up over the weekend. I suspect that those involved in K-12 education who are just returning from a week of vacation will have a different experience. With the news profiles of the younger terrorist all reporting that he was a fine student, an excellent athlete, a good friend and many other superlatives, those who work with and educate young people must be struggling with the question of what makes someone who by all appearances was a “good kid” morph into a murdering terrorist and how can that transition be identified, diverted and derailed?

European art: a man’s obsession and crime by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

The Art Thief: a True Story of Love, Crime and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel, published in 2023, is a well researched and documented account of one of the most unusual art thieves of all time. For years, his heists stymied collectors and investigators in Europe, especially in France, Switzerland and Germany. And he did his crimes for the love of art!

Stéphane Bréitwieser was born in 1971 in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, bordering on Germany and Switzerland. He was fluent in French and German, and was functional in the mixed (Alsatian) dialect and English. His parents were affluent; their resplendent home had a significant art collection, which Stéphane took pleasure in even as a boy.

When his parents divorced, his father took with him all of the home’s paintings, antique objects and collectibles, leaving an emotional hole in his psyche. Stéphane lived with his doting mother, Mireille Stengel, but spent much time with his grandfather, Joseph Stengel, who took him walking through old Roman ruins in the Rhine Valley. Thus began a lifelong obsession with collecting small artifacts. As an oddball teenager, Stéphane’s interests were archaeology, medieval pottery, old architecture and Hellenic history. He was, as Finkel puts it, “born in the wrong century.”

Deprived by his father of so many of the material objects that resonated with him emotionally, adolescent Stéphane took up shoplifting, from clothes, to books, to whatever caught his fancy.  Psychologists made clear he was trying to fill the void left by his father.  Punishment – forced apologies, paying compensation, even a court-ordered stay at a behavioral therapy clinic – never curbed Stéphane’s insatiable drive for acquiring and collecting things.

He took small jobs, often menial, and spent the rest of his time in and out of museums, studying art and history. For a month he got a job as a security guard at the Mulhouse History Museum, where he learned about the procedures for security – or lack thereof.  He quickly became bored with the regularity of a job.

By the time he turned 20, he had acquired something else of beauty, a girlfriend. His new love, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, was not bothered by his shoplifting, and even seems to have shared his exhilaration for it.  She moved into his room on the top floor of his mother’s house and soon became his accomplice. In 1991, he stole a priceless hammered metal belt buckle from 500 AD and, in 1994,  a flintlock pistol from the early 18^th century.  His father had flintlocks, but this one was nicer.  Stealing it, he said, “was the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to my dad.”

Together, they moved from one small museum to another in that part of Europe, graduating from small objects to stealing paintings, especially 16^th and 17^th century Renaissance and Baroque artists. With Anne-Catherine as his look-out, Bréitwieser would use a Swiss Army knife and other small tools to separate paintings from their frames, hiding them inside his raincoat as they strolled past security guards and out to their car. Some thefts took place in daylight, even when museums were crowded. He would go on to become what Finkel describes as the world’s most prolific art thief. He had lifted more than 200 pieces, worth, according to Finkel, an estimated $2 billion. ARTnews Magazine puts the value at $1 billion, and faults Finkel for building up a mythology around Bréitwieser.

What differentiated him from other art thieves was that he did his crimes for pure psychological gratification. Surrounding himself with objects of beauty gave him inner joy.  His intent , at least initially, was not to sell them for money but to cherish them. The act of stealing them gave him a high. He kept them in the attic of his mother’s house, where his mother respected the young couple’s privacy.  (For years, she would claim not to have known of his crimes.)

He long escaped detection because he never tried to fence these priceless possessions. He was brought to court in 1997 when he and Anne-Catherine were recognized by a Swiss gallery owner. Because the police took him for a first-time offender, he got away with a suspended sentence. He was arrested again in 2001. By this time, his now fully aware mother destroyed many of the works in his collection to cover up evidence of her son’s crimes. She burned many valuable paintings and tossed remnants of collectibles in the nearby Rhone-Rhine Canal, where they came to public attention when pieces floated to the surface. She got three years for receiving stolen goods but served half the time. Anne-Catherine got 18 months but served six months.

For Stéphane, it was rinse and repeat. More arrests followed more thefts. Two years in prison in Switzerland were followed by a sentence of three years imprisonment in France, of which he served 26 months. In 2006, he wrote an autobiography entitled “Confessions of an Art Thief,” but it was not a financial success.

Eventually, closely monitored by arts police in several countries, he devolved to surviving on monthly welfare payments reduced by token amounts subtracted for court-imposed fines. In defiance of his self-identification as a sophisticated art connoisseur “with unusual acquisition methods,” he then started to fence some of his newly stolen pieces. He had become just another art thief, on trial yet again in 2023.

Author Finkel spent a decade gathering pieces of the story, pursuing Bréitwieser for an interview from 2012 to 2017, when he finally was able to meet with him for a total of 40 hours. Finkel also used court records and secondary interviews but was refused interviews by Stéphane’s mother and girlfriend.

His book provides several high points in the history of art theft, including the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa (eventually returned to the Louvre), the dozens of heists executed by Massachusetts’ own Myles Connor in the 60’s and 70’s, and the Gardner heist in 1990. Breitweiser, himself, observed that “the story of art is the story of stealing.” More than one museum director might acknowledge the same.

Finkel covers everything from the economics of the stolen art market to some speculation about the neuroscience of impulse-control disorders that created Bréitwieser’s unstoppable criminal behavior.  (He even stole a brochure from a gift shop while in Finkel’s presence.)  He’s apparently still under house arrest, with only government assistance to live on.

Despite criticism that Finkel relied too heavily on Bréitwieser’s views, “The Art Thief” is a richly detailed piece of non-fiction, a true-crime psychological thriller of sorts, and a well-executed piece of writing. It came enthusiastically recommended to me. I read it because I like procedurals and enjoy learning about different aspects of the underside of the art world. I confess, however, that I am far less empathetic about Bréitwieser’s compulsion than I am repulsed by his truly despicable personality. It’s a good read about a profoundly unlovely major character, but not a useful distraction from today’s real-life grifts and scandals.

Lowell Politics: April 19, 2026

Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was a business-like gathering with no overt controversies. However, a couple of innocuous items on the agenda shed some light on the workings of local government and some important public policy considerations so I’ll discuss them first.

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A routine public hearing on a request by Boston Gas to replace an existing gas main on Fletcher Street generated an interesting discussion. Several members of the public spoke, recommending that instead of replacing an entire stretch of pipe, that the gas company just fix the leak. The reasoning is that replacing the entire pipe is more expensive than plugging the leak but because the gas company just passes the cost onto its customers, it doesn’t have an incentive to do the less expensive repairs.

Mayor Gitschier countered that these gas pipes are likely 50 years old and if a pipe starts leaking in one place, it’s likely to have a second and subsequent leak nearby, so replacing the entire stretch of pipe can be cheaper in the long run. Also, the gas company tries to replace pipes just before the city repaves a street. If the “just plug the leak whenever it happens” approach is used, a newly paved street could be dug up repeatedly which devalues that benefit of the repaving project.

As I understand it, most of the gas pipes buried beneath Lowell’s streets are made of cast iron which is brittle and prone to cracking from ground movement caused by freeze-thaw cycles and heavy surface traffic. Utilities now use plastic pipe which is more durable in that it does not rust, corrode or react to acidic soil, while also being flexible which allows it to move with the ground as it freezes and thaws.

I also believe this pipe replacement effort is partially in response to the 2018 gas explosions in Lawrence and Andover. In that incident, a series of fires and explosions ripped through those communities killing one, injuring two dozen, and damaging or destroying over 100 structures. The catastrophe occurred when a gas crew that was replacing old cast iron pipes with new plastic ones botched the job which caused gas to flow through the old iron pipes at a pressure level far higher than the system could tolerate. This in turn caused gas regulators on appliances in countless homes and buildings to fail which allowed gas to flow into those places. Wherever it found an ignition source, it exploded, hence all the destruction.

In response, the state of Massachusetts, among other things, significantly accelerated the time in which utility companies must replace older gas pipes since the newer pipes and their ancillary fittings reduce the risk of a similar occurrence.

However, the state has also imposed rules that will help move away from our reliance on natural gas which is used primarily for home heating. Although gas hookups in new construction have not yet been banned, state policy provides strong incentives for shifting from gas heat and cooking to an “all electric” home that relies on heat pumps and induction stovetops.

Which is all to say that public policy, particularly at the local level, is quite complicated with many moving parts. Nothing major came out of this public hearing, but it provided insight into the balance that must be struck between safety and cost.

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The second policy issue arose with twin votes by the council to accept deeds for the real estate parcels located at 251 Church Street and at 60 Clairmont Street. Both were “deeds in lieu of foreclosure” only the foreclosure contemplated would have been for unpaid taxes.

In general, a deed in lieu of foreclosure is a mechanism whereby a homeowner who is facing the foreclosure of their mortgage “hands over the keys” to the house in exchange for the lender releasing them from their mortgage debt and halting further legal action. This is done by the homeowner executing a deed which conveys ownership of the property to the lender who then becomes the outright owner of the property.

In the two deeds on the Tuesday agenda, the city stepped into the shoes of the mortgage lender, except instead of the delinquent debt being an unpaid mortgage, it was unpaid real estate taxes. Once the deed is signed by the homeowner, the city will record it at the registry of deeds, and the city will own the property.

Historically under Massachusetts law, the city would “take” property for the nonpayment of taxes by recording a Notice of Taking at the registry of deeds. However, that did not mean the city immediately owned the property. Instead, it kicked off a long, complicated legal process which would end up with the city owning the property provided the property owner did not bring their tax payments (along with fines and interest) up to date.

Instead of getting cash for the unpaid taxes, the city would get the property itself. This was a draconian remedy since if the tax liability was just $500 but the property was worth $500,000, the city would end up owning a property worth $500,000 and the property owner would get nothing despite having $495,500 in equity in the property.

But a city needs current revenue, not a big property portfolio, so instead of pursuing this long legal process to its end, the city instead began auctioning off its right to conduct tax foreclosures to private companies which would pay the city money upfront and then pursue the foreclosure in their own names, eventually selling the property to a third party and reaping a substantial profit.

This all came to a screeching halt in 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court held in a Minnesota case that the kind of absolute foreclosure used in Massachusetts for tax takings was an unconstitutional taking of private property in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Recognizing that the Massachusetts law would also be deemed unconstitutional if challenged, municipalities across the Commonwealth, including Lowell, paused any new tax lien foreclosures and delayed scheduling tax lien auctions. A Massachusetts trial court subsequently confirmed this assumption by ruling the state’s tax lien law unconstitutional under the new Supreme Court precedent.

While the Massachusetts state legislature is reportedly working on a legislative fix, the suspension of tax lien foreclosures has had practical consequences for local governments. Cities have temporarily lost one of their primary legal tools to address abandoned, dilapidated, and tax-delinquent properties, leaving local officials frustrated as problem properties remain untouched.

Consequently, it was great to see that the city is adopting new tactics in its efforts to collect back taxes. Unfortunately, the deed in lieu of foreclosure route requires (1) the homeowner to assent to it; and (2) the property to be free of any other encumbrances like an outstanding mortgage or creditor liens. Still, in the right situation – the two properties acted on Tuesday night were both relatively small undeveloped parcels – it is a useful tool for the city to use.

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The council also endorsed a motion by Mayor Erik Gitschier that that city rename the stretch of road in front of University Crossing from its current name of Pawtucket Street to the new name of Meehan Way in honor of UMass President Marty Meehan.

On Tuesday, many councilors spoke of all the good that Meehan did for UMass Lowell and for the city while he was chancellor of the school from 2007 until 2015 when he became president of the entire UMass system, and for his service in the US House of Representatives from 1993 until 2007. The catalyst for the street renaming was the recent announcement that Meehan was making a $1.5 million charitable gift to UMass Lowell to support paid internships for current students. In gratitude for the donation, UMass Lowell will rename its University Crossing building the Martin T. Meehan Student Center with a dedication ceremony on Saturday, May 2, 2026.

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One hundred sixty-five years ago today, two young men from Lowell were shot and killed in Baltimore, making them two of the first of 725,000 people to die in the American Civil War. Luther Ladd and Addison Whitney, two mill workers, were also members of the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia Regiment, that era’s National Guard. When, on April 12, 1861, the South Carolina militia attacked the US Army’s Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteer troops to come to Washington DC to help suppress the rebellion.

The Sixth Massachusetts was among the first to mobilize and move out. As it passed through Baltimore on its way to Washington on the morning of April 19, 1861, the Massachusetts soldiers were attacked by a mob of Confederate sympathizers. Ladd, Whitney and two other soldiers were killed and a dozen were wounded.

Despite the bloodshed – the soldiers returned fire and killed more than a dozen rioters – the Sixth made it to Washington, the first northern military unit to do so, and helped protect the capital from seizure by nearby rebel forces.

The remains of Ladd and Whitney were returned to Lowell where they were memorialized as heroes and called “the first martyrs of the rebellion.” On June 17, 1865 – Bunker Hill Day – the city dedicated an obelisk monument to their memory. Known as the Ladd and Whitney monument, it stands just to the front of Lowell City Hall on Merrimack Street. The grassy triangle the monument sits atop, historically called Monument Square, is also a cemetery since Ladd and Whitney are both buried there.

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If you are interested in learning more about Lowell’s history, come to one of my Lowell Cemetery tours which will be held on Saturday, May 2, and Sunday, May 3, at 10am from the Knapp Avenue entrance of Lowell Cemetery. (Same tour both days).

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This week in Seen & Heard, I wrote a review of the book The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II; commented on an article by McKay Coppins in The Atlantic on his experience with legal sports gambling in the US; and commented on another article in New York magazine about the tragic loss in a flash blood of 37 girls attending a summer camp in Texas last summer and the controversial efforts of the camp to reopen this year.

Donuts Back in the Day

Donuts Back in the Day

By Leo Racicot

There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when Lowell could have earned the nickname, The Donut Capital of Massachusetts. The city was home to many.

Let’s see now: there was Donut Shack. Its made-on-the-premises, old-fashioned donuts have been a crowd pleaser with Lowellians for years. I’m not sure — I don’t often find myself in the Highlands but think the place is still going strong on Westford Street. As I recall, it opened extra early in the morning and would remain open until its morning supply had run out, bought up by eager, hungry customers heading to work or school so – pretty fast, given its tasty offerings…

Mary Lou’s Donuts held forth on Chelmsford Street (close to Plain Street) for more years than I can count. The lines to get in the door were long. It wasn’t uncommon to see early risers lined up on the sidewalk for its filled-to-bursting jelly and marshmallow wonders. And I mean real jelly and real marshmallow; today’s jellies and marshmallows hardly compare and have me wondering what the heck passes for a marshmallow donut these days.

Eat-a-Donut on School Street was another favorite among locals. Before our morning shift started, my pal, Connie Carrigg and I used to take our CTI vans there to start our long days with a piping hot cup of fresh coffee and a treat. I liked the shop’s Bismarcks, beignets and “sinkers”. Not sure but I heard The Board of Health shut the place down due to sanitary issues, must have been in the early 2000s?  That shop was always mobbed, a crowd lingering outside at any time of day. It was one of the city’s most popular stop-offs.

My favorite long-operating donut spot was Quality Donuts run by John Apostolos. It was so convenient, being a two-minute walk from our house, at the corner of Fletcher and Butterfield Streets where John held court for lots of years. Its tiny space for a long time sold only coffee and donuts (Honey dipped, plain and crullers — this last word “cruller” seems to have disappeared from the lexicon — you never hear it said and I gave up years ago asking for it in bakeries by name. I guess the Dunkin’ Donut jelly stick and glazed stick come closest nowadays to the crullers of my youth. I miss the ridged, twisty shape of a cruller, especially a sugar cruller, the crisp exterior, the moist, cake-like interior. Sorry but the Dunkin’ version simply doesn’t compare.  Later on, John “expanded” his menu  to include steamed hot dogs on a plain bun. As with the other donut establishments described above, John’s (we always called it “John’s” was always always a mob scene. Many’s the time we’d go in, only to be told all the donuts had been sold. I can still see the morning cars, workers on their way to the job, stopping mid-Fletcher Street one-after-another, the driver getting out, going in and coming out quickly with their donut and coffee, continuing on to their destination. It was a common sight finding neighbors and friends of our mother inside, having a nosh, shooting the breeze with the always affabe John: Jane “Jenny” Tournas, Ellen Wilkerson, Doris Pratt, the Dubes, the Brissettes, Virginia Chateauneuf, her husband Al, their son, also Al. Virginia liked to stop in with her dog, Rinny, for a honey dip (her fave and Rinny’s). It was a sad day in The Acre when John decided to close up shop. The tiny space now houses the equally popular Eliu’s Hole-in-the-Wall.

Now, we have the ubiquitous Dunkin’ Donuts which may I say I’m not all that crazy about — too much cream in their coffee, plastic-y looking, plastic-y tasting pastries. Unfortunately, it’s the only game in town that I know of.  For a time in the ’90s, there was talk that a Krispy Kreme outlet was coming to Lowell but that never, as far as I know, happened.

Here’s to the old-fashioned coffee and donut shops of yesterday. They not only served up yummy treats but also served as community gathering spots for gossip and casual, friendly social exchange.

Tray of donuts

Quality Donuts

Mary Lou Donuts

Enjoying a marshmallow donut

Donut Shack

Eat-a-Donut