![]() ![]() Stout Elementary School. Rita traveled to a couple of schools, helping children with speech and language. With Jerry retired, Rita went to work as a speech pathologist for the schools in Silver City, a 30-minute drive away.Ĭhristy Miller, a special education teacher, shared an office with Rita and a half-dozen others at G.W. Rita was quieter and deferential to her husband. Jerry had a "smarter than the average man" attitude that some perceived as arrogant. They moved there in 1977 and lived in a trailer with their teenage son and daughter as Jerry drew up blueprints and hired contractors to build a 1,700-square-foot ranch house. The family kept to themselves, rarely socializing. The Alters purchased 20 acres on top of a mesa. The Alters were transplants from New York City who moved to Cliff, a ranching town in southwestern New Mexico, in 1977. The Alters’ next stop would be about as far as one could get from New York City.īarbara, Jerry and Rita Alter in an undated family photo. He decided to retire early at age 47 and "get out of the rat race," said Roseman, the couple’s nephew. He said he had been passed over for a promotion. Jerry Alter left the school in 1967, according to his former students. "To teach is to touch a life forever," he wrote.Ĭlaudette Laureano was an elementary school student of Jerry Alter’s in the 1960s, and remembers him playing the students classical music and show tunes from musicals like "West Side Story." She learned to play the recorder in his class. He said he wanted his students to develop a love for music, pride in performing and create happy memories. Beck later became a professional musician and reconnected with her former teacher in 2010 over email, where he shared his teaching philosophy with her. ![]() Nina Beck, a former student, remembered him as sweet and kind. Jerry Alter with Nina Beck in 1967 at P.S. He commuted from the leafy suburb of Closter, New Jersey, to Manhattan where he worked as a music teacher at P.S. Jerry was a professional jazz musician, playing saxophone and clarinet. The couple lived in New York City and had a son, Joseph, in 1962 and a daughter, Barbara, 13 months later. Whether Jerry or Rita saw the painting while it was on exhibit - or knew or crossed paths with de Kooning - remains a mystery. The Alters were known to appreciate art and to visit museums. Jackson exhibited the paintings at her art gallery in 1955. De Kooning added hues of turquoise, green, crimson and orange against a neutral background. He sold the work, titled “Woman-Ochre," along with several other paintings, to Martha Jackson, a New York City art gallery owner. One of the “Women” paintings, made in the winter of 1954-55, featured a nude woman with breasts accented in yellow. They were dramatic, aggressive depictions of women with big mouths, wide eyes and exaggerated breasts. ![]() The Alters lived in New York City at the same time a Dutch-American artist, Willem de Kooning, was making a name for himself in the city. De Kooning shocked the art world in the 1950s with a series known as the “Women” paintings. Summaries of FBI interviews support Frost’s story, suggesting that shortly before her death, Rita Alter acknowledged to her caregiver that she knew the painting was valuable, and to yet another suggested there was more “hidden art” on the property. Now, as the restored painting goes back on display in Tucson in October, newly released FBI documents and more than a dozen new interviews by The Arizona Republic raise new questions about who might have been involved in the theft, and about the couple’s extensive art collection beyond the de Kooning. Museum officials sent it away for restoration. The painting had been damaged in the theft and had faded with decades of neglect. Suddenly, Rita and Jerry Alter were infamous. None of their relatives could explain how the painting, years later, ended up in their house. Could this pair of retirees in southwestern New Mexico have pulled off such a clean heist? ![]() The theft was brazen and bewildering, the getaway swift, the trail of clues sparse and long-since dried up. The de Kooning painting was found behind the bedroom door of an elderly couple, Jerry and Rita Alter, who lived 225 miles away from Tucson in Cliff, New Mexico.Īfter Alter’s death later that year, the antique store owners who bought the painting in an estate sale discovered the painting was, in fact, an original by the artist Willem de Kooning, who named it “Woman-Ochre.” It had been stolen in 1985 from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson. ![]()
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