The Ontario man accused of stealing an iconic portrait of former British prime minister Winston Churchill from Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier hotel has pleaded guilty.
Jeffrey Wood submitted his plea in an Ottawa courtroom this morning, more than three years after the photo disappeared from the hotel.
The theft occurred in late 2021 or early 2022 but was not discovered for months because the thief replaced the original print with a copy and put it back up on the wall.
The discovery launched a global investigation that tracked the portrait to a British auction house and ultimately to a buyer in Italy who did not know he had purchased stolen art.
Wood was arrested in April 2024.
He pleaded guilty to three counts: theft over $5,000, trafficking in stolen property and knowingly committing forgery by making a false document.
CTV News Ottawa has obtained the following information from court documents, also known as agreed statement of facts:
Jeffrey Wood had been communicating with Sotheby’s in London about auctioning a Roaring Lion print in the spring of 2021 well before the theft occurred. He told them he had acquired it from the Karsh estate. This was false.
Wood ordered a fake copy of the photo online from Redbubble.com. and forged Karsh’s signature.
He used duct tape to secure the print to a picture backing and then placed these inside the frame. His DNA was pulled from that duct tape and was a match to his toothbrush that was seized after police executed a search warrant.
An Ottawa detective figured out a portrait had been sold in London, but it took eight months to get the records. Records revealed the seller was Wood.
The portrait was damaged either after theft, during transit or storage. Mold was visible on the back of the portrait once it was retained by police.
Wood received $4,503.85 for the portrait after auction house took its cut. The Roaring Lion was appraised in 2012 and insured for $20,000.
Wood lived in the Ottawa area shortly before the theft happened. He called Chateau Laurier for two minutes on Dec. 24, 2021.
He left Canada for Mexico on Jan 5, 2022.
He had possession of the portrait during part of the time frame of the theft.
Wood called a storage company on Dec. 27, 2021. Police executed a search warrant at the storage unit on Jan 5, 2024, and recovered a second roaring lion poster print out in its original packaging. An invoice showed Wood’s name and an address in Lapeche.
A sentencing date has been set for April 14, 2025.
Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press
With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Joshua Marano
