Man accused of stealing portrait of Winston Churchill pleads guilty

OTTAWA — The Ontario man whose theft of an iconic portrait of Winston Churchill led to an international investigation pleaded guilty Friday to stealing the photograph, replacing it with a fake and selling it through a London auction house.

Jeffrey Wood submitted his plea in an Ottawa courtroom Friday morning, more than three years after the photo of the former British prime minister disappeared from Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier hotel.

Known as “The Roaring Lion,” the wartime photo of Churchill was snapped by Yousuf Karsh in 1941 in the Speaker’s office just after the former prime minister delivered an address to Canada’s Parliament.

Toward the end of his life, Karsh signed and donated the portrait to the hotel, where he had lived and worked for many years.

The theft occurred in late December 2021 or early January 2022 but was not discovered for months because the thief replaced the original print with a copy.

In August 2022, a hotel worker noticed the frame was not hung properly, leading to the discovery of the fake. The hotel then asked members of the public to share photos they’d taken at the hotel; those photos narrowed down the window for the theft to a short period between Christmas and early January 2022.

The real portrait was eventually tracked to Genoa, Italy. It had been sold through an auction house in London to a private buyer. Both seller and buyer were not aware that it had been stolen, police said.

Wood was arrested in April 2024.

He pleaded guilty to three counts Friday: theft over $5,000, trafficking in stolen property and knowingly committing forgery by making a false document.

The hotel valued the print at $20,000 in 2012. Sotheby’s, the auction house which sold it, estimated its value at roughly $26,000.

That figure was lowered when the print was found to be damaged. After it was restored, it sold for around $5,000.

The court heard through an agreed statement of facts that Wood called the hotel for two minutes on Christmas Eve, and called a storage company on December 27.

Police later searched that storage facility and found a second print of The Roaring Lion, purchased from the on-demand printing service Redbubble.

The signature on the forged print was nearly identical to the one on the original, the court heard Friday from the Crown. While it was framed well, the right materials were not used.

Nicola Cassinelli, a lawyer in Genoa, bought the stolen portrait and initially was unwilling to give it up, but eventually decided to give it back to the hotel.

The portrait was returned to the hotel in November and unveiled in a public ceremony.

Karsh’s wife Estrellita sent the hotel a note to be read at the event.

“(The Château Laurier was) not just where we lived and worked — it was our home, and the wonderful staff became our family,” said the note, read out by Laurence Schaller, the hotel’s director of government and diplomatic affairs.

“The Winston Churchill portrait was especially meaningful to my husband because it was taken almost next door, in the Speaker’s chambers in Parliament, and it has become one of the most iconic images in photography.”

The image is also featured on the British five-pound note.

Genevieve Dumas, the hotel’s general manager, said in court Friday the ordeal caused significant harm to employees who were treated as suspects in a crime they did not commit.

She said the hotel has spent at least $100,000 on improving security and alarm systems near its artworks to prevent something similar from happening in the future.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on March 14, 2025.

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press