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By now most people in the art world are familiar with a shadowy character who called himself William Milliken Vanderbilt Kingsland. By nearly all accounts a rather unkempt, bespectacled man with a toupee (or comb-over) who insinuated himself into the tony circles of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he died this past spring without a will. It has since been revealed that Kingsland’s real name was Melvyn Kohn and that the cache of art found in his apartment included stolen works, among them a Giacometti bust, a painting by John Singleton Copley and a portrait of a Harvard University president.

Less widely reported is that Kingsland was a regular contributor to Art+Auction during its early days, from 1979 to 1984. His articles, consisting mostly of auction reviews and previews, may not reveal whether he was an innocent buyer of the purloined works, a conduit for their sale or an outright thief—some of the central issues now being investigated by the FBI. But they do serve as a gauge of his considerable knowledge of and involvement in an art world that was smaller and clubbier and more hospitable to, well, shadowy characters than it is today. In the time before Web databases of stolen art and more sophisticated methods of tracking provenance, it was simply easier to acquire stolen works, knowingly or not.

For a man who invented his own aristocratic heritage, Kingsland was fastidious about tracking the history of the art he wrote about. Of a painting by François Boucher up for sale in 1981, he pointed out that “the catalogue listed the Boucher’s provenance since 1777, but somehow omitted mention of its appearance in a 1976 Parke-Bernet sale—when it sold for a mere $3,000 as ‘attributed to Boucher.’” His reporting often had a winking, know-it-all quality. Previewing an Old Masters sale in the same year, Kingsland observed of a Filippino Lippi estimated at $60,000 to $80,000: “Those with long memories will recall the picture’s appearance in a 1972 Parke-Bernet sale, where it made $3,000.”

Manuela Hoelterhoff, Art+Auctions inaugural editor and now the executive editor of Bloomberg News’s arts division, says she has mostly visual memories of Kingsland and, in particular, of the “Sherlock Holmes–type coat” he wore. “He was utterly nonconfrontational and seemed to know his material well,” she says. “He mostly stood out in the way he looked, what he wore and the slightly somnambulistic way he walked around. He was never in a hurry.”

The magazine’s second editor, Isolde Motley, who went on to help launch Martha Stewart Living and to develop Real Simple, recalls that Kingsland “knew everything there was to know about decorative arts.” Indeed, in addition to his coverage of Old Master, European and American painting sales, a fair number of the 70-plus articles he penned for the magazine dealt with the decorative arts, and French furniture in particular. “I thought he was a fantasist, but it never crossed my mind that he might be a criminal,” says Motley. “He really did know what he was talking about, and in those days that was tremendously valued. Back then the art-and-antiques world was peopled with eccentrics, so he didn’t stand out as much as he might now.”

According to the New York Times, which first reported on the mysteries surrounding Kingsland in July, he was an avid and witty conversationalist who claimed to have attended Harvard and to have once been married to a French woman of royal descent. Acquaintances also described him as a genealogist and zealous preservationist.

Christie’s called the FBI in September with concerns about provenance that had arisen during its standard pre-sale research of items from Kingsland’s estate, says auction house spokeswoman Bendetta Roux. Because Kingsland died without a will, his property had been consigned by the New York City public commissioner to Christie’s and Stair Galleries, a modest-sized auctioneer in Hudson, New York. (Colin Stair likens visiting Kingsland’s one-bedroom apartment on East 72nd Street to entering “a filthy, dirty Aladdin’s cave” chock-full of art.)

The group of artworks that went to Christie’s included a Giacometti sculpture, two Fairfield Porter paintings, a Kurt Schwitters collage and a watercolor by Odilon Redon. The house was informed by the Giacometti Foundation that the sculpture had been taken from a New York gallery in 1967. As for the other works, their catalogues raisonnés listed them as having been stolen in the late 1960s.

Meanwhile, the consignment at Stair Galleries went on the block October 14. (Stair says his firm wasn’t aware at the time of any problems with the estate.) All the 250 or so objects sold, bringing a total of $250,000. The sale consisted mostly of European and American paintings and drawings from the early 18th to 20th centuries, and most pieces were unsigned, says Stair. One of the highest estimates, at $1,500 to $2,500, was for the Copley painting, which was listed simply as “English school.” None of the auction firms that had looked at the items in Kingsland’s apartment—including Sotheby’s, Bonhams and Doyle New Yorkhad recognized it as a Copley, according to Stair. The picture sold to Alexander Acevedo, a New York dealer of American paintings, for $85,000.

Acevedo says that although the picture was not described in Stair’s catalogue as a Copley, he thought he recognized it as one. “Not half an hour after I got the painting home, I found it listed in several books,” he says. “I called Ted Stebbins [curator of American art at Harvard’s Fogg Museum] and asked if this painting was misattributed, deaccessioned or stolen. He said, ‘It’s the third.’ ” The picture—since identified as Copley’s 1790 portrait of the second Earl of Bessborough—had been missing from the Fogg since 1971.

A second painting that sold at Stair—a portrait of Harvard’s 14th president, John Thornton Kirkland, attributed to Gilbert Stuartalso turned out to be missing from the university’s collection. (It is currently thought by at least one Stuart expert to be a copy.) Both paintings are now back with Stair Galleries, which rescinded all its sales from the Kingsland estate and hopes to return any stolen works. In early November, a Harvard spokesman said arrangements were still being made for the return of the university’s paintings.

Little consensus exists among those who knew Kingsland about whether he was an innocent buyer or a thief. One former acquaintance with suspicions is Peter Fairbanks, who owns Montgomery Gallery in San Francisco and worked in Doyle New York’s paintings department in the 1970s. “There was a close group of people in New York who were fascinated by him and would defend him when doubts were raised about him,” says Fairbanks. “He was a wry wit and amusing. Then again, he was a fraud, and I can see him slipping paintings under his coat and walking out.”

Then there is Acevedo, the buyer of the Copley, who says he used to see Kingsland on the antiques circuit. “He may just have bought from the wrong people.”

The testimony of this magazine’s early editorial staff reveals a clever and somewhat slovenly man who would occasionally stop by the small office, then on West 57th Street, to chat. Although Kingsland was something of a misfit, his own writings show that he nevertheless knew his stuff and covered the sales with flair, erudition and a clear passion for the material. “A series of October auctions,” he wrote in December 1979, “brought almost a thousand lots of European 19th-century paintings onto the market; enough sheep to populate a sizable ranch, enough military men to form several regiments and barefoot waifs in sufficient numbers to inhabit a large orphanage.”

Whatever the ultimate truth about Kingsland—who he really was and how he obtained the stolen artworks found in his home—his unfolding story has a ready-for-the-big-screen quality. Even as the FBI continues its attempt to reconstruct Kingsland’s history, Acevedo quips that he is keen on writing up the Hollywood treatment. “Kingsland looked like a nice, sweet guy,” he says. “But so does the bogeyman.”