Art thief found dead in London Canal

A middle-age man with a tattoo of a lizard or gecko on his right shoulder was found dead in London’s picturesque Regent’s Canal, his body tied to a shopping cart.

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On Thursday, the police said they had solved at least part of the mystery, when fingerprints taken from the hand of the decomposed body showed that he was Sebastiano Magnanini, 46, an Italian carpenter living in South London.

He was one of the men behind the brazen theft almost 22 years ago, of a masterpiece from an unguarded church in his native Venice.

Mr. Magnanini was sentenced in 1998 to 18 months in prison after he was charged with stealing a 1732 altarpiece painting, “The Education of the Virgin,” by the Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, from the Santa Maria della Fava church in Venice.

The painting was estimated to be worth two billion Italian lire at the time of its theft in 1993, or roughly $1.15 million today.Mr. Magnanini was 24 at the time, and the theft, characterized as an operatic farce by the Italian news media, alarmed some in the country and fanned debate about how to protect treasured artwork.

The church, which had no alarm system, was unlocked, allowing Mr. Magnanini and two other men sneak in and evade the priests by hiding in the church until it closed.

During the burglary, Mr. Magnanini and his accomplices, apparently fatigued from the arduous task of removing the painting from the altar, stopped at a local bar for a drink and marijuana, according reports at the time.

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The newspaper, Corriere della Sera reported in 1993 that one of the men had been reluctant to get involved in the caper because of his concern that stealing from from a church could bring bad luck.

The painting turned up three months later, wrapped in a sheet at a warehouse not far from Venice’s Marco Polo Airport.

According to Italian news reports, the speed of the discovery raised some questions over whether the police were somehow involved but Mr. Magnanini and his accomplices were arrested and charged with aggravated theft.

London’s Metropolitan Police said on Thursday that a post-mortem examination had taken place and the cause of death is still unknown.

The police say they were treating it as a suspicious death.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said on Thursday night that Mr. Magnanini’s past in Italy would form part of the investigation, and that organized crime was not a line of inquiry at this point.

Before going to London last year, he lived in Colombia, Thailand and Cambodia.

In London, he worked building sets for theater and other event companies.

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The police said they became aware of the death after a passer-by spotted the body on September 24 in Regent’s Canal in north London, a scenic and verdant spot peppered with houseboats, public housing and new expensive glass lofts.

Detective Chief Inspector Reeves, said that Mr. Magnanini had taken public transportation to central London two days earlier, before he disappeared. “This has been devastating for Sebastiano’s family,” she said.