Thirty - five year ago , violinist Roman Totenberg depart his Stradivarius in his office at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge , Massachusetts while greeting well - wishers after a concert . When he came back , the prized instrument was gone .
Totenberg go bad three years ago at age 101 and never saw his longtime " musical partner , ” as he called it , again . At the time , the musician had a intuition about who slip the violin — an draw a bead on fiddler named Phillip Johnson , who was some four decades younger — but there was n’t enough evidence to pursue it . Consequently , the case pop off unsolved until several hebdomad ago when Totenberg ’s girl , Nina , got a sound call from FBI Special Agent Christopher McKeogh .
" I really could hardly conceive it at the time , " said Nina , who is also the legal affairs newspaperman for NPR . Shetold the Associated Press , " I allege , ' I have to call my sisters . I ’ll tell them not to get their hopes up , ' but he said , ' You do n’t have to do that . This is the violin . ' "
It was indeed . The Ames Stradivarius ( constitute for fiddler George Ames ) had been rediscover after the former married woman of Philip Johnson brought it to New York to have it rate . Johnson died in 2011 and his X - married woman found the violin while cleaning out his belongings . She and her fellow broke the compounding lock on the case and institute the legal document with the label inwardly saying it was made in 1734 by Antonio Stradivari . They had no idea it was stolen .
Before he even find the violin in somebody , appraiser Phillip Injeian had seen pic from Johnson ’s former married woman and through his own inquiry into theViolin Iconography of Antonio Stradivarihad learned that a 1734 fiddle belonging to Roman Totenberg was slip and lost over three decades ago . After checking out the goods up tight , Injeian tell Johnson ’s ex - wife to get hold of the authorities immediately .
Yesterday at the U.S. Attorney ’s function in New York , the violinwas returnedto the Totenberg Sister in a stately observance under an understanding charge in federal court . It ’s one of roughly 550 Stradivarius violins still in macrocosm today . While it ’s difficult to speculate on the value , a 1721 slice deal for nearly$16 millionat vendue in 2011 .
