Bell Boy Tape story is apocryphal.

greaserkat wrote:
I find it interesting (for the lack of a better euphemism) that there haven't been any replies from "collectors" in this forum as there were with the David Fuller incident a couple of months ago.

Indeed, well there's your answer right there, Whilst is certainly cannot be the case that every leaked demo is stolen, it is certain that a number have been, and this just proves that. If the owner of the Bell Boy tape says she never 'gave' it away, one can only assume it was stolen.
Now how it got to collectors is obviously less of an issue, the only reason to steal it is logically to try to sell it, which is exactly what happened. In my opinion a collector has to seek genuin provenance just as a legit retailer would if he buys say jewels or cars, if they fail to do that they can rightly be prosecuted for selling of stolen goods. Or handling stolen goods.
Getting that provenance is a difficult thing I grant you, but hey that's their problem, just as it is for an antiques dealer.
It must be a huge temptation to buy something if you are in a position to do so, but for the sake of the artists if you really care about them I would simply say no, just as I would if a guy offered me a watch in a pub.
OK, OK so I am making it sound all very dodgy which I am sure it isnt, but in a nutshell this is what it comes down to.

In the case of The Bell Boy Tape, I suspect the "bell boy" himself first put it on the market. Whether he worked at a hotel and it was there that he came upon the tape, I don't know, but my feeling is that he came into possession of it (somehow), knew what he had was valuable to collectors and decided to establish provenance with the (false) story that it was legitimately given to him by Ms. Lamers.

And that's just going by the story we've been told.

Did this person work in a hotel? We don't know. He could have been a friend of Ms. Lamers or a studio employee who made his own copy.

How did he get the tape? Maybe he found it. Maybe he stole it. Again, we don't know.

The Bell Boy story appears to have been good enough for the auction house or dealer in order to resell (if that's how it came into the current owner's possession). Did they take it at face value or was there some sort of documentation he provided with it. I can't imagine what such a document could be, short of a forged note from Ms. Lamers or something like that.

We'll probably never know all the answers, but if the current owner bought it from a reputable auction house or dealer, one that was duped by an inaccurate story, it's not the buyer's fault for purchasing what was offered. The key word is reputable, as there are laws in place for auction houses and pawn brokers and such to try to curb the re-sale of actual stolen items.

In this case it is the story that is was bought legitimately from an auction house that baffled me. I'd like to know exactly what research the auction house did to satisfy themselves that this item wasn't stolen - certainly something enough for them to publicly list it for sale?

Indeed that is a very good question. Sadly it happens all the time, much as auction houses like to claim they will only deal in legit items there are many cases over the years in all sorts of collecting areas where the items have been proved later to have been stolen. Lets not forget much of the artwork liberated by the Nazi's has come up for auction instead of being returned to it's rightful owner.
In this case it would be very interesting to see what was given as provenance