Thief of iconic Winston Churchill portrait sentenced to two years in jail

Ottawa Citizen

27-05-2025

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Sadly, the man who has worked at the hotel for more than 30 years was subjected to police questioning and a lie-detector test, which he passed. (Polygraphs are not legally allowed in Canadian courts as evidence in light of significant flaws, which have led to wrongful convictions.)
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Hotel manager Geneviève Dumas said the case was awful for morale because some staff were wrongly treated as suspects.
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The hotel did not store surveillance footage long enough to capture the crime, so there is no video account of the theft.
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Police appealed for the public's help and asked to send them photographs of the Roaring Lion. Hotel visitors and guests sent in enough photographs to pinpoint the last time the original had been on the wall, and, days later, when the fake had replaced it.
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A detective, using online searches, found that a 'Roaring Lion' print had been sold at auction months earlier, and asked for help from counterparts overseas to get the auction house records.
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It turned out that Wood had used his real name and address when he negotiated with Sotheby's auction house.
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The Ottawa police investigation found Wood had contacted the auction house months before he stole the print, falsely claiming he acquired it from the Karsh estate. The print was sold to a buyer in Italy, where Ottawa detectives went to retrieve it.
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According to the police investigation detailed in court, Wood left for Mexico on Jan. 5, 2022. His phone records showed he called a storage company on Dec. 27, 2021. Police later searched Wood's storage locker, where they found and seized another online print of the Roaring Lion.
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Police also found a bar of Irish Spring soap and a toothbrush, which they swapped for DNA. That provided a match to another DNA sample lifted from the tape that Wood used to frame the fake portrait.
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The iconic print was valued and insured for $20,000, but it had been damaged during either the theft, storage or shipping. So it ended up being sold for 5,292 British pounds (almost $10,000 CDN). After fees, Wood received just $4,503.85, according to his bank records.
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In a touching impact statement read into court by the prosecutor, Estrellita Karsh detailed why the portrait and the hotel had been so special. Her late husband kept a studio on the sixth floor in the early 1970s, and later in the early 1980s they moved into a suite at the landmark hotel.
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'It was not just where we lived and worked. It was our home and the wonderful staff became our family,' she wrote.
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When the couple moved out of the hotel, they gifted a collection of historic prints to express their gratitude for the years of hospitality. The only stipulation was that the photographs needed to be displayed in the hotel.
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She said it was fitting the Churchill portrait was displayed in the reading lounge, where she spent good times with her husband and friends. She said the Churchill portrait was especially meaningful because it had become one of the 'most iconic images in photography.'
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