Former looters helping Cambodia reclaim its stolen heritage: "The gods want to come home"
A former looter turned confidential informant, weakened by cancer, witnessed the return of a stolen Cambodian statue just months before his death.
Toek Tik spent decades supplying antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford with thousands of looted artifacts. But the former looter, in a final act of redemption, joined forces with a team of Cambodian investigators, led by American lawyer Brad Gordon, who have been tracking down stolen treasures.
"He felt tremendously guilty about many things he had done in his life, about the killing, about the looting," Gordon said.
Scars of plunder in Cambodia
The theft of Cambodia's cultural treasures from religious sites across the country — thousands of sacred stone, bronze and gold artifacts — began a century ago when the country was colonized by France. The looting became a global business in the 1970s, '80s and '90s amidst genocide, civil war and political turmoil.
The genocide began in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge, a radical communist group, took over. Some two million Cambodians were slaughtered or starved to death.
Toek Tik was a child soldier of the Khmer Rouge, which lost power in 1979. Fighting and instability continued for decades, leaving the country's temples unprotected and vulnerable.
Nearly all of Cambodia's 4,000 temples have been plundered, including Angkor Wat, one of the biggest religious sites in the world.
For Cambodians, these are not just works of art – they are sacred deities that hold the souls of their ancestors, to whom they ask for guidance and pray.
Looters hacked the heads off many statues. They stole the bodies as well, leaving behind empty pedestals where gods and deities once stood. On some pedestals only the feet remain.
Who was Douglas Latchford
Cambodia's temples were easy targets for unscrupulous antiquities collectors. At the center of that shady world was the British dealer Douglas Latchford.
According to investigators, Latchford was the architect behind the large-scale looting in Cambodia. He kept some antiquities for himself, but he also sold them to wealthy private collectors and museums.
"I would say that he was, in many ways, the mastermind behind the greatest art heist in history," Gordon said.
Latchford portrayed himself as a scholar and protector of Cambodia's culture. He donated and sold sculptures to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other prestigious institutions. He published three books filled with the finest examples of Cambodian antiquities. Later, he was accused of stealing many of the same artifacts featured in his books.
The antiquities dealer popped up on the radar of U.S. law enforcement in 2011 after a 500-pound sandstone warrior from Koh Ker appeared in a Sotheby's auction catalog.
Several archaeologists immediately recognized the statue as coming from a specific temple in Cambodia, according to J.P. Labbat, who was a special agent with Homeland Security's cultural property, art and antiquities unit until his retirement in September.
The 1970 UNESCO Convention requires member states to prevent the illegal import or export of cultural property. It also requires countries to take appropriate steps to recover and return cultural property at the request of the country of origin.
A team from the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York went to Cambodia to investigate the provenance of the statue in the Sotheby's catalog. Investigators were able to trace its original sale back to Latchford.
The testimony of former looters found by Gordon and his team was critical for the U.S. attorney's case against Latchford.
"It's quite remarkable to have looters actively assisting a team of investigators to recover artifacts that they had a firsthand in helping remove from the country," Labbat said.
Latchford was finally indicted by U.S. authorities in 2019 for smuggling, conspiracy and wire fraud, among other charges, but he died before he could be put on trial.
Stolen Cambodian antiquities still on display in museums
Gordon negotiated the return of Latchford's personal collection of stolen treasures with his family. Other artifacts have been returned by museums, but Cambodia is still working to bring more home.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the most important collections of Cambodian antiquities in the world, but many of the pieces are believed to have been stolen by Latchford. Under pressure 10 years ago, the Met did return two statues called Kneeling Attendants, which had been donated to the museum by Latchford. Federal prosecutors in New York this year presented the Metropolitan Museum with a list of more than a dozen Cambodian antiquities they say were stolen.
Latchford donated and sold several other items to the Met, but after the return of Kneeling Attendants, a spokesperson for the Met in 2013 told the New York Times that no special effort was under way to re-examine the provenance of those items.
Andrea Bayer, deputy director for Collections and Administration at The Met, said that after Latchford's indictment in 2019, the museum "immediately and proactively went to the U.S. Attorney's Office and offered our full cooperation."
In May, the museum announced it would create a research team to examine the provenance, or acquisition history, of all its collections.
"It was a slow process, I'll grant you that. It was a slow process, but I think that the fact that we are fully engaged now, fully cooperative now is our only answer to this really," Bayer said. "It's a moment of reckoning, and we're ready to do what it takes now to right whatever the wrong is."
She declined to specify if the museum would return all the pieces, but said The Met was on the verge of "returning a number of them."
The Met and the U.S. Attorney's Office reached an agreement for the voluntary return of 13 artifacts tied to Latchford, the Southern District of New York announced Friday. Those pieces are in the process of being turned over.
In addition to the 13 pieces being returned as part of the agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the museum is returning one other piece to Cambodia and two to Thailand, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said in a press release.
"The Met has been diligently working with Cambodia and the U.S. Attorney's Office for years to resolve questions regarding these works of art, and new information that arose from this process made it clear that we should initiate the return of this group of sculptures," Max Hollein, the Museum's director and CEO, said.
Cambodia's culture minister called the Met's announcement a "first step" and said she looks "forward to the return of many more of our treasures."
Returning stolen antiquities to Cambodia
More than 30 other sculptures are on their way back to Cambodia. Their whereabouts were discovered in 2008, when Architectural Digest published images from the Palm Beach mansion of the late billionaire George Lindemann and his wife Frayda. The couple had spent an estimated $20 million building the collection in their home with the help of Latchford.
In September, the Lindemann family struck a deal with federal authorities, voluntarily agreeing to return 33 stolen treasures.
"Having purchased these items from dealers that we assumed were reputable, we were saddened to learn how they made their way to the market in the United States," the family said in a statement.
Frayda Lindemann declined a request for an interview.
The family's collection was moved to a warehouse in upstate New York, where a nation's gods and ancestors wait for a ride home.
Muikong Taing and Thyda Long, two members of Gordon's investigative team, were there when the crates were opened at the warehouse. They were likely the first Cambodians to set eyes on the stolen antiquities in decades.
"We always say, the gods want to come home," Gordon said. "We feel like the gods have spoken today. They want to come home."