Stolen Picasso etching recovered after nearly a decade in vacant Milwaukee apartment

A Milwaukee landlord cleaning out an evicted apartment in Bay View found a framed print hanging on the wall, dusty and forgotten. Tim Dertz didn't immediately know what he was looking at, but something about it caught his attention enough to ask an antique dealer friend. That conversation changed everything. The dealer recognized the signature and the style—this looked like a Picasso, and not just any Picasso. It looked like the one stolen from a gallery on North Jefferson Street nearly a decade earlier.

On February 16, 2018, someone took a signed etching titled "Torero" from Bill DeLind's Milwaukee gallery. The print, created by Picasso in 1949, was one of only thirty known copies the artist had personally signed. It was appraised at somewhere between thirty-five and fifty thousand dollars. For years, it simply vanished. The theft haunted DeLind's former business partner, who died in February 2026 still grieving the loss. Every year on the anniversary, he would call police, pushing them to keep looking, to keep the case alive in the public eye.

When Dertz brought the etching to the Milwaukee Police Department's District Four station on August 5, 2026, he did so because his instinct told him it belonged to someone else. An authenticator confirmed his suspicion the very next day. This was the stolen print. DeLind's own appraisal sticker was still attached to the back of the frame, a small detail that made the identification absolute.

DeLind's reaction when police contacted him was one of disbelief and relief. "I was overwhelmed," he told the Associated Press. "It was indeed mine. It came back full circle." The print had been sitting in that vacant apartment for what appeared to be years, collecting dust, waiting for someone to notice it mattered. Dertz had done exactly what the Milwaukee Police Department hoped citizens would do—he recognized something wasn't right and acted on it.

The value of the etching may have shifted since its theft. DeLind suggested that the story of its recovery, the years it spent missing, and the circumstances of its discovery might push its worth closer to the fifty-thousand-dollar ceiling of its original appraisal. But the artwork itself remains in police custody while the client who originally commissioned it for sale through DeLind's gallery works through insurance claims and ownership questions. The statute of limitations for theft in Milwaukee is generally six years, which means the case technically falls outside that window, though police have kept the investigation open. What matters now is that a piece of art history, signed by one of the twentieth century's most significant artists, has come home.