Man who stole Churchill portrait from Chateau Laurier appeals sentence

A 1941 portrait of British prime minister Winston Churchill, known as the 'Roaring Lion,' captured by renowned Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh was reported stolen from the reading room of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in August of 2022.

The man who stole the iconic portrait of Sir Winston Churchill from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier has been released from jail pending an appeal of his sentence.

In May, Jeffrey Wood was sentenced to two years less a day in jail after pleading guilty to theft over $5,000, trafficking in stolen property and knowingly committing forgery by making a false document.

At the time, Wood’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, called it an “unnecessarily harsh sentence.”

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Greenspon told CTV News Ottawa on Monday that the Ontario Court of Appeal granted the request last week to appeal the sentence and released Wood on bail pending the appeal process.

The court will hear the appeal on September 22, 2025.

The portrait of former British prime minister Winston Churchill, known as the “Roaring Lion,” was stolen from the Fairmont Chateau Laurier between December 25, 2021, and January 6, 2022. The portrait by photographer Yousuf Karsh wasn’t discovered missing until August 2022.

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Last September, the Ottawa Police Service announced the portrait had been located in Italy. Police said the portrait was sold through an auction house in London to a buyer in Italy.

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The photo of Churchill was taken on Dec. 30, 1941, on Parliament Hill after the then-British prime minister delivered a speech about the Second World War to Canada’s Parliament.

Karsh was a former resident of the Château Laurier for nearly two decades and operated his photography studio on the hotel’s sixth floor. In 1998, Karsh donated the portrait of Churchill to the Château Laurier on permanent loan.

With files from The Canadian Press