Seal Cove Auto Museum launches its speaker series with the incredible saga of the world’s most famous Aston Martin.

Carrie Jones

Jul 25, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Witham Family Hotels.

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TREMONT—What do you get when you combine a $4.2 million Aston Martin equipped with James Bond gadgets, its strange theft from an airport hanger, a Florida land developer, family feuding, and a gun that was used to kill a presidential assassin?

You get one heck of a real life mystery that was explained in detail by one of its players this week at the Seal Cove Auto Museum.

Executive Director Mike Staggs stood before the audience at the auto museum, surrounded by historical automobiles and bikes, Thursday evening, looking dapper, white cap perched upon his head, a martini in hand as he spoke his first words of the night.

His eyes met the eyes of one audience member, then another before he said, “My name is Staggs, Mike Staggs.”

The play on movie spy James Bond’s famous line (as well as the dapper costume and martini with two olives, likely shaken not stirred) were a perfect beginning to a talk by Mary Seelhorst, a writer, museum professional, and independent contractor who has a personal relationship with one of James Bond’s famous cars—the DB5 from Goldfinger.

The 1963 Aston Martin DB5 is a luxury car. In Goldfinger and other Bond movies, it’s a car that’s not just luxurious; it’s full of gadgets and spy gear, cooler than cool: tire shredding blades, a machine gun, an ejector seat, and so much more.

In her talk, “The Platonic Ideal of a Sports Car: James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5,” Seelhorst explained the spy-like saga of a car that was part of a court trial after it was stolen from an airport hangar in Boca Raton, Florida, approximately 30 years ago. It was insured for approximately $4.2 million.

“There weren’t a whole lot of cars selling in the multimillion dollar range then,” Seelhorst explained.

The car disappeared and no one saw it for years before lawyer and founder of Art Recovery International Christopher Marinello said that he located the car somewhere in the Middle East.

“In the dead of night on June 18th, 1997, Bond’s original Aston Martin DB5 was stolen from Pugliese’s hangar in Boca Raton airport. The thieves tore a secure gate from its hinges, cut the alarm and fastened a chain to the car’s axel, before dragging it away. Insurance company Grundy Worldwide paid out $4.2 million to Pugliese, and offered $100,000 to anyone with information that could lead to the car’s recovery,” writes Gentleman’s Journal.

The Aston Martin used in the movie was a modified DB4, a DB5, a prototype.

The Bond gadgets were taken off and the car sold to Gavin Keyzar in 1968. He had the gadgets reinstalled.

He sold the car to Richard Loose in 1971. He sold it at auction and Anthony Pugliese III, paid $275,000 for it. Pugliese was a Florida developer. He loved movies. He was a collector of things.

Pugliese is the same man who shot bullets from the gun that killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, and sold those bullets for $500 a piece.

His brother-in-law, Robert Luongo, exhibited the car in multiple places. One of those places was at a museum where Seelhorst worked.

“He always looked a little rumpled,” Seelhorst told the Great James Bond Car Robbery.

And he may not have always made the right decisions. For instance, Robert took that gun and in what he may have believed was marketing genius was in D.C., had some time, and went to the Capitol building. There, he spotted a senator coming down the stairs. He did not know the senator, but intercepted him, showed him his briefcase and said something like “wouldn’t you like to see the gun that killed Lee Harvey Oswald” and he opened the briefcase.

The senator was Speaker of the House Thomas Foley.

The police swarmed. They confiscated the gun.

“Under the District of Columbia’s gun law, the Ruby gun would have been destroyed if Luongo was convicted of a weapons charge. But authorities decided not to pursue the case,” the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

There was a bit of a falling out between the two men whose families went back three generations together to Italy.

Or so the story goes, according to the podcast and the paper. Some believe Luongo’s actions caused a falling out between the men. According to the Orlando Sentinel, in 1992, the gun was returned to Pugliese.

But then the Aston Martin was stolen and it wasn’t found.

“The investigation that followed possessed all the international drama of a Bond film without any of the resolution. Scotland Yard dispatched detectives. The FBI opened files. Insurance companies offered rewards. Art recovery specialists began their patient hunt through the shadowy networks where stolen treasures hide. The theories multiplied like conspiracy novels: the car had been airlifted by cargo plane to some Middle Eastern stronghold, dropped into the Atlantic to claim insurance money, or hidden in one of Pugliese’s own storage facilities in an elaborate fraud,” British Classics writes.

Luongo said that he’d always been promised 10% of the car’s worth when it was sold, which was why he’d worked showing the car every day for free. He went to court trying to get that $420,000. Pugliese counter-sued and said that was Luongo was doing was extortion.

Eventually, because of that connection and her work, Seelhorst had to testify about the stolen car and its worth. Was it the most famous car in the world, she was asked.

No, she told them, she believed that car would be the one where President Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated.

Prior to her talk, Bar Harbor’s Rob Packie, spoke about his own association with James Bond—the ornithologist who summered on Mount Desert Island in Pretty Marsh. Carroll Sargent Tyson Jr. was Bond’s uncle and brought him to the island and influenced Bond’s love of the outdoors.

Having the same name as a movie character wasn’t easy.

“It called a lot of consternation over the years,” Packie said. This, he said was especially true for Bond’s wife, Mary Fanning Wickham Bond née Porcher, when women started calling looking for a dashing spy.

The Smithsonian backs Packie’s story, writing, “The strange late-night phone calls sounded dodgy from the get-go, and James Bond knew it.

“Sultry female voices would ask, ‘Is James there?’ Then came a giggle and a click—not the typical call for the noted Philadelphia bird expert.

“The year was 1961, and neither Bond nor his wife Mary could figure out what was happening until a friend clued them in: Ian Fleming, the British spy novelist, had confessed to Rogue magazine that he’d stolen his 007’s name from the author of a birding book.

“‘There really is a James Bond, you know, but he’s an American ornithologist, not a secret agent,’ Fleming explained in the interview. ‘I’d read a book of his, and when I was casting about for a natural-sounding name for my hero, I recalled the book and lifted the author’s name outright.’”

Showing those connections—to car, to communities, to place, to history—are part of Seal Cove Auto Museum’s mission.

“It’s to tell the story of innovation, ingenuity, technical and social change in New England and America through the development and use of early motor vehicles,” Staggs said.

There are multiple opportunities to do just that this season. Seelhorst’s talk was the first of the speaker series for the summer. The museum is public and open to visitors. The museum will also be hosting multiple Cars and Coffee events on Saturdays. The one today, July 25, ends at 1 p.m.

Its 1912 Crane just won best in class at the Misselwood Concours de Elegance.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Seal Cove Auto Museum

Mary Seelhorst’s website

The Real James Bond

https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-great-james-bond-car-robbery-spyscape/id1580413419