Robert King Wittman - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Robert Wittman was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1955. Wittman's mother is Japanese and his father American; they met while his father was stationed with the US Air Force in Tokyo during the Korean War. He came to the United States in 1957 and lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where his mother and father owned and ran an antique store. It was in this antique store that Wittman learned the business of art. He graduated from Calvert Hall College High School in 1973. Following high school, he attended Towson University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 1980. Wittman initially found employment with a Maryland agricultural magazine where he learned how to be an effective salesman, a skill to which he attributes his success later in undercover stings. He married Donna Goodhand Wittman in 1982 and has 3 children. He joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1988 and was assigned to the Philadelphia Field Division where he went into the field of tracking down stolen art. His reputation within the FBI for solving art theft cases grew during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2005 Wittman was instrumental in the formation of the FBI's Art Crime Team, the first of its type.