EDITOR’S NOTE: This account of the investigation into the Louvre heist is predicated on public statements by prosecutors and museum officers, in addition to investigators in France and the United States who agreed to talk with NCS on the situation of anonymity.
It was early night on Saturday, October 25, the surveillance group’s fourth day trailing a 34-year-old Algerian suspect by Seine-Saint-Denis, outdoors Paris.
The work had been tense and tedious. A various space, Seine-Saint-Denis is house to people of more than 130 nationalities, a lot of them of North African origin. For the surveillance group – an arm of the Paris Prefecture of Police often called the Brigade de Recherche et d’Intervention, or BRI – mixing in amongst residents in tight-knit neighborhoods was difficult.
Now, the suspect was on the freeway. The group didn’t know the place he was going, however he appeared by his path to be headed to Charles de Gaulle Airport.
He additionally had a bag. Inside, he would possibly nicely have the crown jewels of France.
Six days earlier, a heist at the Louvre museum had stunned the world. Four robbers shifting with function and dispatch broke into the most visited museum on the globe and made off with a set of jewels carrying an estimated worth of greater than $100 million.
But this was about greater than cash. It was a stab at the heart of French history. Among the gadgets stolen had been an emerald necklace set with greater than 1,000 diamonds that Napoleon gifted to his second spouse, and a diamond and sapphire jewellery set worn by Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense.
Following the suspect on the freeway, the BRI performed leapfrog, speaking by radio to handle the suave choreography of switching tails so nobody automotive was behind the Algerian for too lengthy.
The group chief requested the chain of command: If the goal walks into the airport, will we take him?
Stay with him, the directions got here again. Let him go so far as you may.
The surveillance group unfold out. Soon, the suspect had a ticket, handed by safety and headed for a gate. He was booked on the subsequent flight to Algiers.
At 8 p.m., with nobody showing to strategy him, the order got here down: Take him.
After his arrest, a search of his baggage revealed none of the jewels.
We are inclined to romanticize the individuals who commit these crimes. The culprits we think about are good-looking, suave and complex as they rappel from a skylight in black turtlenecks, navigating a spiderweb of laser-powered movement sensors. The priceless artistic endeavors and gems they steal find yourself in a supervillain’s assortment in a faraway mountain fortress. Maybe the works of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Degas stolen from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 dangle there, whereas their empty frames hang-out the partitions of the Gardner, ready for them to come back house.
But that’s the stuff of Hollywood. In this case, Paris prosecutors have described the 4 suspects presently in custody – three of whom are believed to have been instantly concerned in the heist – as local petty criminals with no connection to organized crime. None has been publicly recognized by authorities.
The hunt for the Louvre suspects has relied on investigators like the BRI, which I frolicked with after the 2015 Paris terrorist assaults as the then-deputy commissioner of intelligence for the NYPD. I used to be impressed by their mastery of mixing in as they adopted suspects to catch them in the act, utilizing group members of blended ethnicities who tailed their targets by no matter means finest suited the state of affairs: in nondescript vehicles, vans, taxis, scooters or bikes, or on foot on the avenue or in the Paris Metro.
The heist investigation has additionally concerned the Paris police’s theft squad, the Brigade de Répression du Banditisme, or the BRB. These detectives examine crews like the Pink Panther gang, suspected of robbing diamonds throughout the continent and promoting them in a black market in Antwerp, Belgium. And they’ve solved many high-profile instances, together with the 2016 armed robbery of Kim Kardashian in Paris, wherein thieves acquired away with almost $10 million price of money and jewellery. The BRB’s work in that case led to the convictions of eight individuals.
Rich with informants throughout the Paris underworld, BRB detectives may faucet their networks for quick theories (and possibly a reputation or two) in the Louvre case. But they could all result in lifeless ends.
Instead, the BRB targeted on forensics. A fingerprint, a hair, a hint of DNA – any of those may doubtlessly result in an precise title by France’s nationwide DNA database, which holds samples taken from convicted criminals and suspects.
The theft was designed to be fast – out and in.
One month in the past, on Sunday, October 19, 4 robbers drove a elevate truck, stolen days earlier, under the home windows of the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, the place the jewels had been on show. To make their presence look reputable, they positioned orange cones round the truck and wore high-visibility vests.
Two stayed on the floor whereas two others went up in a bucket lifted alongside the truck’s extending tower. Using angle grinders, they pressured open a window and entered the gallery. There, they broke into two high-security show instances and took 9 gadgets, brandishing their angle grinders at any time when guards approached. Within 4 minutes, the pair was out the window and descending on the elevate.
Then, they dropped it: The imperial crown of Empress Eugénie slipped, falling almost two tales with its 1,354 diamonds and 56 deep inexperienced emeralds. It landed between two fences in a dry moat, in keeping with a supply, who advised NCS that bystander video displaying the two males bent over, wanting down from the elevate, captured the second the crown fell.
They must go away with out the crown of the crown jewels.
Witnesses stated the thieves tried to set the elevate truck on fireplace with a handheld blowtorch and gasoline however had been interrupted by a museum safety officer.
Soon, they had been out of time. They hopped on Yamaha TMAX scooters and fled.
The whole heist took simply seven minutes, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez stated.
On the first day of the investigation, the Paris police’s forensic group labored slowly and intentionally, photographing the scene, swabbing for DNA, dusting for fingerprints and securing what clues had been left behind: an angle grinder, a white helmet, a blowtorch, the orange cones.
Meanwhile, the BRB was working with the police command heart, which controls 1000’s of cameras and license plate readers all through Paris. Investigators discovered footage of the suspects on scooters escaping alongside the Seine at speeds of about 100 mph earlier than they deserted the scooters and switched to vehicles, headed east.
One of these scooters was recovered and processed for DNA and prints. Police had been going to leverage each alternative to gather forensic proof.
Their efforts paid off. DNA recovered from the getaway scooter matched that of the 34-year-old Algerian and was already in the prison database, resulting in his arrest at the airport on the evening of October 25.
And DNA from the angle grinder and the window at the Louvre matched that of one other particular person, in keeping with prosecutors: a 39-year-old unlicensed taxi driver who was beforehand identified to police for aggravated theft and was underneath judicial supervision for ramming a automotive into an ATM to get the money inside.
Still, the histories of each males appeared out of league with the daring Louvre heist, which appeared at first to be the work of seasoned professionals.
But investigators had been assured they had been onto the proper suspects. The DNA proof gave them a stage of certainty.
Shortly after taking the Algerian into custody at the airport, officers had been confronted with one other resolution. Once the taxi driver – already underneath BRI surveillance – knew his alleged confederate was in custody, he would possibly attempt to run, too.
The order got here all the way down to the group to arrest him instantly.
Four days later, on October 29, French prosecutors claimed the two males had made “partial” admissions related to the crime. Sources advised NCS the admissions got here as the suspects tried to clarify why their DNA would have been discovered at the scene, on the instruments or a getaway car.
Based on these statements – together with data retrieved from the two suspects’ cellphones and different observations made throughout the surveillance operation – investigators developed different individuals of curiosity.
Soon after, the BRB detectives started to tug of their nets. They arrested a number of extra individuals in Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, although all however two can be launched with out cost inside days.
One of these two, a 37-year-old, is believed to be the third member of the Louvre theft group. The fourth particular person is a 38-year-old girl stated to be in a relationship with considered one of the male suspects. Whether investigators imagine she was a part of the planning or allegedly helped the suspects after the reality is unclear. Both of those suspects have denied any involvement, prosecutors say.
All 4 suspects have been positioned underneath formal investigation for organized theft and prison conspiracy.
Taken collectively, the arrests imply police doubtlessly have three of the 4 suspected robbers in custody. Still, the jewels haven’t been discovered.
There have been higher outcomes in the wake of previous heists. Take the 1964 case that turned a prototype for a lot of the art-theft fiction that has adopted.
That yr, Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy – a self-proclaimed violinist, Miami-based surfer {and professional} jewel thief – got here to New York with an audacious plan to steal the Star of India, the world’s largest star sapphire, and a half dozen different diamonds and rubies locked inside glass instances at the American Museum of Natural History.
With a lookout posted outdoors, Murphy and an confederate rappelled on a rope from above, gathered the gems, and disappeared into the evening, undetected by alarms or safety employees. In that approach, it was similar to the motion pictures.
But inside two days, the NYPD had arrested the first suspect, and a short while later, the different two, together with Murphy. Months later, Murphy reached a take care of the district lawyer. If the jewels had been returned, the sentence can be brief. Indeed, Murphy and his crew spent simply three years in New York’s Rikers Island jail after the gems had been recovered from a locker at a Miami bus depot, and at this time, the Star of India sits as a replacement at the museum.
Could one thing related occur in the Louvre case? Will the jewels be returned, or the tiaras and necklaces ransomed again by a 3rd get together? Or has the gold already been melted down, and the diamonds, rubies and sapphires pried from their settings and offered for the sum of their elements?
For that to have occurred earlier than the swift arrests of the suspects feels unlikely. It would have meant that they had a jeweler proficient sufficient to do the work, and unscrupulous sufficient to be keen. It might have meant having a purchaser lined up. Even then, with the theft in the headlines and police on the path, the jewels in any type would doubtless have been too sizzling to deal with, even on the black market.
That might imply there’s hope but for the crown jewels of France. History tells us that, for the proper deal, they only would possibly reappear.