The Great Milwaukee Violin Heist

At about 10:30 p.m. on Monday, January 27, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was tased in the parking lot of Wisconsin Lutheran College following a performance at the school. The incident wasn’t a random attack. The thieves—a trio (allegedly) comprised of a forty-something man with a history of botched artifact pilfering, a barber with a stun gun named Universal Knowledge Allah, and a 32-year-old mother of five with a van—left the scene with a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin worth $5M. What would follow was something of a cross between the genial, high-concept heist of Ocean’s Eleven, augmented by the bumbling, quietly desperate crooks from Fargo, a tale of true crime tale that would ignite local news and even catch the attention of the New York Times.

For 11 days, Wisconsin’s largest city—a place widely regarded for its breweries, its predominately blue-collar past, and being the place where Laverne and Shirley happened—became the high-culture epicenter of the universe. Suddenly, the metro area was reeling from the loss of a rare treasure many of us Milwaukeeans had only just learned we’d once possessed.

First: Why, exactly, would a fucking violin be worth five million dollars? Well, it was made in 1715 for one. There are only about 650 in existence, too. More important than that, it was ours, even if it took getting stolen for the majority us to realize we even had it. An anonymous $100,000 reward was offered for any information leading to the recovery of the missing Stradivarius, which only served to support the motif of the violin’s immense significance and beauty conveyed by person-on-the-street interviews given by assumed symphony-goers.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra was established in 1959. It was the first American orchestra to make its performances available for purchase via download. In 2007, famed film composer Marvin Hamlish (one of just 11 humans to obtain “EGOT” status, with a bonus Pulitzer Prize thrown in) served as MSO’s Stein Family Foundation Principal Pops Conductor. Currently, the symphony orchestra employs 83 full-time musicians from all corners of the country who perform throughout the world close to 150 times annually.

Evan Rytlewski, Music Editor at Shepherd Express (a weekly Milwaukee publication) grew up in Milwaukee and has spent most of his life in the city. While he considers the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra to be an important and generally appreciated amenity that the city is “lucky to have,” he feels it took the instrument’s uncommon disappearance to bring belated appreciation to the Stradivarius.

“Some people were certainly aware and probably had a big appreciation for it,” Rytlewski tells me. “That being said, the media response was maybe a little bit disproportionate. I don’t think the city as a whole was aware of its before its theft.”

With every day the violin went unrecovered, the shitshow continued to build. The FBI got involved. For all anybody knew, the distinct sounds of the 1715 Lipinski Stradivarius that Mr. Almond had dutifully played since 2008—including on his album “A Violin’s Life”—was reverberating off the walls of an eccentric European billionaire’s secret bunker. Maybe the thieves hadn’t even known what they’d picked up, and when they found out they’d committed a serious felony discarded the thing in a dumpster rather than face years in prison. “It’s probably the best thing that’s happened to local news,” Rytlewski says. “Not that they wanted it to happen.”

Thursday morning, after nearly two weeks of speculation, the prized Stradivarius was recovered safe and sound, stuffed in a suitcase stored in an attic on East Smith Street in the relatively crime-free Southeastern Milwaukee neighborhood of Bay View (coincidentally, the house is also about four blocks from my place). Three suspects—alleged mastermind Salah Jones (who served jail time for possession of a stolen sculpture in the 1990s), registered taser owner and ex-“Dep’s Hall Of Fades” barber Universal Knowledge Allah (née Shaundell Johnson), and an unidentified/later released woman suspected to have driven the getaway van, were taken into custody.

At high noon, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, Mayor Tom Barrett and a gaggle of other men with neckties and beaming smiles assembled for a press conference, where Flynn said the violin was “handled like a baby” and “literally, with kid gloves.” Flynn added he felt his team had the right instrument, adding, “but obviously we’ll wait for Frank Almond to hit a few notes on it before we know for sure.”

Mayor Barrett then took his turn at the podium to wax philosophical: “There are good days and there are bad days. Today is a good day.” He then revealed that Allah had once given him a haircut.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra responded with a sterile, succinct press release penned by (or on behalf of) MSO President and Executive Director Mark Niehaus, saying, “We are so thankful to the Milwaukee community, as well as the national and international arts supporters that rallied in support of Frank Almond and the MSO to help solve this crime. It is a salient reminder to us all how fortunate we are to be home to a world-class symphony orchestra with tremendous musicians.” My calls and emails to individual orchestra members went unreturned.

If you are a consumer of the unique cultural institution that is local news, you know how hard it is for those tactless ass-clowns to just let a story die. That evening, CBS 58 News vaulted the violin to its top story slot, preempting a fresh report of a missing newborn baby in Beloit (who, fortunately, has been found since). Their scoop was footage of two armed police officers guarding the reclaimed Strat from inside the police station. They threw two field reporters out in the Milwaukee cold in matching red Columbia thermal jackets: one outside the downtown courthouse, the other in Bay View. Not to be outdone, FOX 6 also led off its broadcast by sending someone to Bay View, where they interviewed a Smith Street neighbor who confirmed that he had “heard the violin had been stolen” before cutting back to the studio to display a photo of Mayor Barrett posing awkwardly in Universal Allah’s barber chair to prove the now-fabled interaction had indeed occurred. FOX also enlisted the services of an “instrument expert” during its 9 o’clock broadcast. Tactfully, ABC affiliate WISN 12 elected to withhold the details of the violin’s theft until the third story, after talking about missing newborn and a windchill advisory announcement, but still before breaking news of a fatal fire. But soon, field reporter Nick Bohr recapped the day’s events from the Wisconsin Lutheran parking lot, the origin point and fitting conclusion site of the heist that all-too-briefly cut through the bitter cold and injected an air of highbrow intrigue and mystery to the ass-end of Wisconsin’s winter.

Tyler Maas previously reported on a Green Bay Packers tribute rap group for Noisey. He's on Twitter - @TylerJamesMaas