This story, by KSFR reporter Mary Lou Cooper, explores the tale of two stolen paintings from the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, New Mexico and their return in May 2025, forty years later.
Our story begins with alleged art thieves Jerry and Rita Alter. The Alters marry and live with their two children in the New York City area in the 1950’s and ‘60s. Jerry is a jazz musician and music teacher. Rita is a speech therapist. After being passed over for a promotion, Jerry retires at the age of 47, and the family eventually moves to remote Cliff, New Mexico where they build a home. Jerry paints and writes. Rita works for the public schools in Silver City. The Alters live the life of Riley, traveling the world from Mt. Everest to the Caribbean. Their home is replete with art and artifacts from around the world, including the West.
Fast forward to 1985. Two western paintings from the Taos Society of Artists—Aspens by Victor Higgins and Oklahoma Cheyenne by Henry Sharp—are stolen from the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. At that time, the Harwood is a public library with a small art gallery upstairs. Then Harwood curator David Witt talks with Cooper about the theft. Although he was ironically at a museum security conference on the day of theft, Witt reconstructs the day and with hindsight speculates how it happened. At the time of the heist, the thieves’ identities were not known.
The same year, 1985, the Higgins and Sharp paintings are reported stolen, a famous de Kooning painting entitled Woman-Ochre is stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art. Neither the Taos nor the University of Arizona paintings are seen for four decades.
So, what happened next?
In 2012 Jerry Alter dies from a stroke. In 2017, Rita Alter dies from a stroke. Rita’s nephew Ron Roseman is appointed executor of the estate.
After Rita’s death, Roseman cleans out the Alter’s CIiff, New Mexico home. He throws away some things and donates other items to a garden club thrift shop in Silver City which later asks the Scottsdale Art Auction house to sell a few pieces.
The Manzanita Ridge Furniture and Antiques store then pays the Alter estate two thousand dollars and change for the rest of the Alter home’s contents. One of the items bought by Manzanita, found behind a bedroom door in the Alter home, is an abstract painting of a woman. The portrait is signed by De Kooning. Research by one of the antique store owners, David Van Auker, reveals that indeed the de Kooning was the Woman-Ochre portrait stolen from the University of Arizona’s art museum in 1985. Amazingly, the Manzanita store returns the $100 million+ painting to the University of Arizona.
The now-deceased Alters become the chief suspects in the Arizona art heist.
And the plot thickens. Back at the Silver City thrift store which received many of the contents of the Alter home as a donation, the staff turns to the Scottsdale Auction house to sell other items from the Alter estate. Among those items are the Higgins and Sharp paintings, stolen from the Harwood Museum in Taos back in 1985. The thrift store apparently did not know that the art was stolen.
In 2018, the Scottsdale Auction house sells the Higgins and Sharp paintings for almost 94 thousand 54 thousand dollars, respectively. When I tried to interview Scottsdale Auction House owners about the two paintings, I was told that “we have turned all information over to the FBI and are cooperating fully with their investigation.” When I contacted the FBI, my request for an interview was deferred until a later date.
In 2022, a documentary entitled “the Thief Collector” tells the story of Jerry and Rita Alter of Cliff, New Mexico. The film speculates that the Alters are the thieves who stole the de Kooning painting. In that documentary, Jerry Alter is shown in a photo with the stolen Higgins and Sharp paintings hanging on a wall in the Alter home.
Come 2023 and California art sleuth Lou Schachter has an aha moment when he links the de Kooning case to the stolen paintings from Taos and finds evidence that it is the Alters who likely stole all three paintings—the de Kooning, the Higgins and the Sharp. Schacter notifies the Harwood museum about his suspicions.
In 2024, the Harwood Art Museum turns the case over to the Santa Fe-based art bureau of the FBI. The FBI investigates and locates the stolen paintings by Higgins and Sharp.
In May 2025 the FBI returns the stolen paintings to the Harwood Museum of Art.
Thanks to University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art for background information on this case as well as David Witt who served as art curator at the time of the theft. We also thank California art detective Lou Schachter, ArtNet News writer Adam Schraeder, Arizona Republic reporter Anne Ryman plus the producers of the documentary “The Thief Collector” for their reporting and insights into Jerry and Rita Alter and the 1985 Taos art heist.
