PART 2-Do The ‘Mangan M*A*S*H’: Fraud, Conspiracy & Poetic Injustice From The Flip-Flopping Felon (Aided By Pierce O’Donnell )

FROM A LOS ANGELES STORAGE LOCKER, TO THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE…TO A NORTHERN NEW JERSEY BOOKSTORE: Purported Mumford-Basquiat “Receipt” Story Evolves

Florida resident Leo Mangan sure knows his flip-flops.

Well, I have some “receipts” of my own.

To recap yesterday’s report, Aaron De Groft, Pierce O’Donnell and Leo Mangan originally maintained that a poem (above) — attributed the Orlando Museum of Art’s “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection” paintings to Mumford and Basquiat, as buyer and seller — and functioned as “proof” of the sale.

In a recent development, Leo Mangan provided “declarations” that introduced a new version of the story: the poem had been provided to him by Adriana Trigiani, acting as an intermediary for (you guessed it) a dead woman with an extensive criminal history.

But according to documents provided to the Orlando Museum of Art in 2022 by attorney Pierce O’Donnell, the poem was originally located in the Smithsonian Institute.

The poem was apparently printed on dot matrix printer paper that would have been common in 1982, in addition to bearing the alleged handwritten initials of “JMB” (purportedly for Jean-Michel Basquiat), and referencing “25 paintings bringing riches”.

In the published version of O’Donnell’s “Heroes & Monsters” essay, he wrote that he “hire[d] renowned experts in several disciplines.”

The first was James Blanco, a “document examiner” who concluded that Basquiat “had initialed Mumford’s elegant poem” and that “[o]ut of the 25 works, all but a few had some form of identifiable marking commonly used by Basquiat on his paintings and drawings.”

But that wasn’t the original “origin story”.

The origin of the poem went through several concocted iterations. First, the story was that it had been presented to one or more of the “owners” by Loretta Swit, the actress who played the character “Hot Lips” Houlihan in M*A*S*H (written and produced by Mumford).

De Groft announced this version of the story at a meeting of OMA staff. In a draft of his essay for the Catalogue, O’Donnell also wrote: “With the assistance of Loretta Swit — Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H — Lee [Mangan] had obtained an untitled, typed poem.”

However, Leo Mangan’s attorey, Richard LiPuma revised O’Donnell’s draft essay to delete reference to the actress and wrote: “not true.”

Around the same time, an entirely different story was posted to bvcg.org, a website created by O’Donnell to market the BVCG works. O’Donnell sent a link to the website to De Groft, who shared it with OMA employees, who noticed that the website stated that the poem had been found in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution.

After reviewing a draft essay for the Catalogue by De Groft’s Curatorial Assistant, Mangan emailed O’Donnell and LiPuma and asked “how [the Curatorial Assistant] determined in [her] Catalogue essay that the Poem written by Basquiat was written by Mumford?”

O’Donnell replied and told Mangan and LiPuma that “Aaron [De Groft] was changing this to written by JMB [Jean-Michel Basquiat].”

Upon reviewing the email chain forwarded by O’Donnell, De Groft explained that he and the Curatorial Assistant “believed” that Mumford wrote the poem but that there was “no problem in modifying this.”

De Groft knowingly continued, “You know Mumford typed it however. Right.”

Shockingly, the story kept changing, even after the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided the Orlando Museum of Art on June 24, 2022, seizing all 25 paintings.

In an August 18, 2023 “Victim Impact Statement” filed by Pierce O’Donnell in the Michael Barzman federal case, O’Donnell trotted out yet another version of the “Mumford and Basquiat collaborated on an autobiographical Poem” gambit.

And it involved Leo Mangan, writer Adriana Trigiani — and a dead woman.

(It’s what my late father would call “a cock and bull” story.)

But, as I reported yesterday, neither of these two characters bothered to spell the woman’s name correctly — it’s Torie Geisler, and not “Torrie” Geisler. (Kind of makes you wonder how well they really knew her.)

But you’d know that if you’d read a story I published here nearly 19 months ago:

LOST AND FOUND AND LOST…AND THEN FOUND AGAIN?: It Appears The “Lost Basquiat” Collection On Display At The Orlando Museum Of Art Had Already Been “Found” Once Before & Offered For Sale As The “Mumford Collection: Borgia Trust Archive” By Two Canadians

On January 7, 2018, an Indiana woman known professionally as Dorothy M. Geisler-Tragardh died of cancer.

Known among her friends in the art world as Torie Geisler, she graduated from the Pepperdine University School of Law in 1983.

And, like some attorneys, she was also a criminal.

According to the June 23, 2022 search warrant filed by Elizabeth Rivas, then head of the FBI’s Art Fraud team, the “sole Member of the MJL Family Trust” (likely Leo Mangan) signed a partnership agreement with Geisler to act as the “front” woman so the collection’s true ownership couldn’t easily be discerned.

After Geisler died in 2018, her son (Jonathan Rhys Norberg) ended the partnership.

The paintings were then transferred back to Mangan some time after he formed the Colorado-based “MJL Family Trust, LLC” in March 2018 — an entity formed to receive the “Borgia Trust Archive” collection from Geisler’s son.

It’s too bad no one questioned Pierce O’Donnell or Leo Mangan about Torie Geisler and the “Heroes & Monsters” dress rehearsal — “LA ’82 Jean-Michel Basquiat”.

And it’s too bad no one asked Leo Mangan why he changed his story — again.

And why did Adriana Trigiani — an accomplished writer — sign a declaration (“under penalty of perjury”) confirming the latest version of a lie?

After repeated attempts, Trigiani hasn’t responded to my inquiry.

When she does, I’ll be back.

But I’m not holding my breath.