On Saturday night, March 17, 1990, Rick Abboth reported for work at the Isabella Stewart

Gardener Museum in the Fenway neighborhood of Boston.

He was a 23-year-old aspiring musician who had informed his bosses a few days earlier that he was quitting his job as a night guard at the museum. He wanted to focus more on music,

and the job was getting in the way of playing with his band. That night, March 17th,

Rick appeared every inch of the Free Spirit musician.

His long, curly hair fell down below his shoulders. He wore a Stetson cowboy hat, a tie-dye t-shirt,

red corduroy pants, and white high-top tennis shoes. And since it was 1990, he wore the obligatory multicolored fanny pack around his waist. Needless to say, it was not the standard apparel

for a museum security guard. He did wear his light blue short-sleeved security guard shirt

over his tie-dye t-shirt, but of course the security guard

shirt was open and unbuttoned so as to show off the tie-dye t-shirt underneath.

Part of the reason for the eclectic ensemble was that that was Rick's personality.

And the other part was that nothing ever happened on the night shift.

There was very little reason to take it as seriously as the bosses demanded,

even when one of the bosses dropped by for a possible checkup.

The previous night, Friday night, Larry O'Brien, the deputy director of security,

dropped by the museum and chatted with Rick for a couple minutes just before

1 a.m. Right before O'Brien stopped by, Joe Mulvey stopped into the museum and talked to Rick.

Joe was an older security guard, probably in his 60s, and he was supposed to work with Rick

on Saturday night, but he called in sick. A younger guard named Randy took

Joe's place on Saturday night. Randy had never worked the night shift, and he only had two

hours warning that he would be working that night. He was a musician like Rick, and Randy brought

his trombone to the museum with the assumption that he would spend most of a long,

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