Stuff The British Stole · ABC Australia and CBC

The Abductions

·35 min·3 clips

In 1977, a five-year-old girl was kidnapped in Geneva, forcing her art collector father to sell his treasures to pay the ransom.

The podcast investigates how five ancient Maori carved wooden panels, buried in Taranaki swamps during 19th-century conflicts, ended up in a Swiss collector's vault through kidnapping and smuggling. George Ortiz was a wealthy Bolivian-Swiss art collector descended from mining magnates who amassed over a thousand antiquities spanning 30 cultures. In October 1977, his five-year-old daughter Graziella was kidnapped from their Geneva chateau by two Italians who demanded a $2 million ransom in used bills. After eleven harrowing days, Ortiz borrowed the funds, paid the ransom, and Graziella was found alive on a highway between Geneva and Lausanne. To repay his debts, Ortiz selected 234 objects from his collection for auction at Sotheby's in London. Hidden among these treasures were the Motunui Epa panels—five intricately carved wooden panels nearly as tall as humans, featuring serpentine patterns and wide-eyed faces carved into the wood. The panels had been part of a Maori storehouse, buried during the intertribal musket wars of the 1820s when thousands fled Taranaki. In 1971, landowner Melville Manukonga excavated them while digging drainage ditches and sold them to British art dealer Lance Entwistle for $6,000 NZ. Entwistle allegedly smuggled the panels out of New Zealand by labeling them as furniture, bypassing required export permits, then sold them to Ortiz in 1973 for $65,000 with a contract forbidding disclosure for two years. Museum worker Ron Lambert saw photographs of the panels in a New Zealand backyard in 1972, then six years later spotted them on BBC television at the Sotheby's auction with false provenance claiming 1930s American origin. New Zealand issued an injunction within 22 days to stop the sale, initiating a legal battle that reached the UK House of Lords. The court ruled in Ortiz's favor, determining New Zealand export laws couldn't be enforced extraterritorially in Britain—an irony given British colonial law's imposition on New Zealand. After George Ortiz's death in 2013, his son Nick invited Maori representatives to view the panels in Geneva's Freeport vault, greeting them in Te Reo Maori and moving visitors to tears. The narrative balances investigative journalism with personal testimony, featuring interviews with Ron Lambert, Dr. Rachel Buchanan (Maori historian with Taranaki heritage), Nick Ortiz, and Lance Entwistle himself. The tone shifts between detective story momentum and deep emotional reflection on colonial violence and cultural theft. The case influenced the mid-1990s UNESCO Convention on Illegal Export and Theft, fundamentally changing international art law. This episode appeals to audiences interested in art crime, colonial history, indigenous rights, and legal precedent, particularly those who appreciate complex stories where sympathetic figures exist on opposing sides. The panels ultimately returned to Taranaki's Puke Ariki Museum for approximately $4 million, making them among New Zealand's most expensive artifacts, representing what descendants describe as rare Crown action benefiting Maori people.

As heard by us

A kidnapping and collection story that becomes a legal challenge, with family pressure and history moving side by side.

The episode traces Graziella Ortiz's 1977 kidnapping in Geneva and the strain it placed on George Ortiz's family and collection. It starts with the child being taken on the way to kindergarten, then follows the news blackout, the journalists outside the house, and the ransom…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A kidnapping story that turns a private antiquities collection into a public legal fight.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Stuff The British Stole