Focusing on the History of Woman-Ochre, discuss the Investigation about the Recovery.
Investigation Although the painting was recovered, the investigation into the theft has continued, as the FBI cannot say for certain that the Alters had anything to do with the theft or that they knew Woman-Ochre was stolen when they took possession of it. A considerable amount of circumstantial evidence, some of which has emerged since the recovery, connects the Alters to the crime, however. They were apparently fans of de Kooning's work, as several replica sketches of drawings by the artist were also found in their home.While going through his aunt and uncle's estate, Roseman, who still strongly doubts that they were the thieves, found a picture taken showing the couple at a family Thanksgiving dinner in 1985, the day before the painting was stolen. When the photo is compared side by side with the sketches distributed after the crime, they did show an apparent resemblance. Three people The New York Times spoke with confirmed that in the mid-1980s, the Alters primarily traveled in a red two-door Nissan sports car, and the FBI found home movies they took showing them traveling in that car then.The Alters kept, at that time of their lives, a day planner which they used as a diary, documenting the medications they took, where they went, and what they ate on a regular basis. But the entry for Thanksgiving 1985 is uncharacteristically blank. In one piece of luggage in the house, Seawolf found a small compartment containing a scarf and glasses she believed were similar to those the female thief wore to the museum. The FBI, however, did not appear interested when she contacted them about the items, she said.Seawolf has speculated that the woman may actually have been a man in disguise, perhaps Jerry Alter, since descriptions of the man involved suggest he appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s, half the age Jerry would have been at the time. The man could have been one of the Alters' children, Joseph, who also appears in the 1985 Tucson Thanksgiving dinner photos; at the time he was 23. Roseman said Joseph, who also has lived in Silver City, has had psychiatric issues that have required lengthy hospital stays throughout his life, including at the time Roseman talked to the Times about the case. Roseman did, however, tell the Republic that at some point after the painting's recovery he had taken a picture of Woman-Ochre to show Joseph while visiting him, which made him laugh hysterically. "That's one of the ugliest paintings I've ever seen!" he said.Journalists also discovered another apparent link between the Alters and the theft of the painting in the three books the couple published. In one, about their extensive travels, two chapters discussed museums where thefts had occurred. And in 2011, a year before he died, Jerry had self-published through Amazon a collection of short stories called The Cup and the Lip: Exotic Tales, which he called "an amalgamation of fantasy and reality" in his introduction. One, "The Eye of the Jaguar", particularly struck readers after the missing Woman-Ochre was found in the Alters' house.In it, a grandmother and granddaughter visit an art museum near their homes and are taken by a 120-carat emerald on display. They ask the guard, Lou, for the history of the stone. Six months later, Lou sees them return and then leave again quickly. After he sees that the emerald has been taken, he runs out to stop them as the women flee in the grandmother's car, but is killed when she runs him over, leaving "absolutely no clues which police could use". At the end, the emerald is kept in a hidden display case in the grandmother's house "where two pairs of eyes, exclusively, are there to see!"The fictional theft has a similar modus operandi to the theft of Woman-Ochre, and its display where only two people can see it also recalls how the Alters kept the painting in their bedroom such that they were the only people likely to know it was there. One other person who did, an artist neighbor who went into the bedroom with the Alters' permission to photograph a painting she had made of them on horseback in the Himalayas, then hung there, recalled seeing the de Kooning and asking the couple about it; they did not answer her questions and did not want to talk about it.Other relatives of the Alters who have talked to the media dismiss the possibility the couple could have stolen the painting. "[They wouldn't] risk something as wild and crazy as grand larceny—risk the possibility of winding up in prison, for God's sake—they wouldn't do that", Rita's younger sister told the Times. "My driving instinct is to say: 'This couldn't be my aunt and uncle who had it since the beginning'" Roseman said, although he allowed that it was possible since he knew little more about their lives than their neighbors did. He said of the people he had shown the sketches to, about half thought it might be them, although he himself did not, but he admitted he probably could not be objective.Roseman, who also saw the painting behind his aunt and uncle's door when he began arranging support services for Rita due to her worsening dementia early in 2017, but did not recognize it, has offered an alternative theory as to how the couple came into possession of Woman-Ochre. They liked to visit galleries and museums, he recalled, and believed that someone might have seen them appreciating a de Kooning at one and offered them a better painting, the stolen one, from their personal collection. The Alters might even have believed it was a copy.However, other evidence suggests the painting had been in the Alter house since its theft. Van Auker recalled that not only were there dusty cobwebs between the frame and the wall, the space behind the painting was lighter and free from dust, with a visible outline where the painting had hung, suggesting it had been there for a long time. UAMA staff also found evidence of only one reframing.Roseman said that when he was a student at Arizona himself during the late 1970s and early 1980s, he visited them at least once a month, visits he recalled fondly as they would share stories and pictures from their travels. But since his graduation and eventual relocation to Houston, he was not able to make the trip as frequently. He concluded that he was not as close to them as he thought.After the rediscovery of Woman-Ochre in the Alters' house, their neighbors, who described the couple as pleasant but generally keeping their own company, also noted that it seemed strange that they had been able to travel so much—their book jackets said they had visited "140 countries on all seven continents, including both polar regions"—on their salaries as public school teachers, or (later) their pensions, often being away from Cliff for weeks at a time. After Rita's death, bank records showed the couple had over a million dollars in their account. "I guess they figured they were being frugal", Roseman told The Washington Post.
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