When Elizabeth “Liza” Rukhina woke up one morning in February 2008, her collection of paintings was gone from her Olmos Park apartment.
About 20 works. All by her father's hand. Valued at $2 million. Gone.
Like every good story, this case — initially considered the largest art heist in local history — has a twist. Several, in fact.
Her father, a dissident Soviet artist, had died in a studio fire in 1976 that some suspected was set by the KGB.
Rukhina, a wispy blonde whose words sometimes flow together in an idiosyncratic tumble, told Olmos Park police she believed her mother, while on a visit, took the paintings and stored them. Months later, she speculated, her brother took them to Los Angeles.
Unique Gift
More than four years later, after the tiny Olmos Park Police Department sank hundreds of hours into its investigation, and after the Bexar County district attorney's office negotiated with her brother's attorney, Rukhina has most of her paintings back.
Portrait Oil Painting
The DA's office is closing the case without filing charges.
“We could not prove ... a crime had been committed by the mother or the brother,” said Adriana Biggs, chief of the DA's white-collar-crimes division. “As you can imagine, inner family dynamics and agreements and disputes — in any situation like that, things are not always black and white.”
Rukhina, 38, is furious. The case should remain open, she said, because three paintings, potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, still are missing. Biggs said the ownership of those paintings is debatable.
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