French authorities have a narrow window to track down several thieves who pulled off a jewelry heist at the Louvre Museum before the robbers potentially break down the crown jewels and sell them on the black market.
Four thieves equipped with power tools and a truck with a mounted lift robbed Paris’ Louvre Museum in broad daylight and in front of tourists on Sunday and escaped with the nation’s crown jewels.
The thieves broke into the museum’s Apollo Gallery on Sunday morning and stole the jewels, which are worth an estimated €88 million ($102 million), The Associated Press reports. However, the jewels also carry significant historical value.
Around 9:30 a.m. local time, the thieves pulled up at the museum in a truck equipped with a crane-lift, according to the AP. The robbers then used angle grinders to smash through a window at the south end of the gallery, snatching the priceless jewels before escaping through a window and fleeing the scene on scooters.
One of the items stolen was a tiara worn by Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense, along with a necklace and earrings from a sapphire jewelry set, according to the Louvre Museum’s official website. Other objects stolen from the museum include an emerald necklace and earrings that belonged to Napoleon’s second wife, Empress Marie-Louise of Austria.
The tiara of Empress Eugénie was later found broken near the museum after the robbers managed to escape, the Catholic News Agency reported.
Citing Prosecutor Laure Beccuau’s interview with RTL, a broadcasting company that operates multiple channels in France and other European countries, the AP reported that 100 investigators are involved in the manhunt for the thieves and to recover the jewels.
“The wrongdoers who took these gems won’t earn 88 million euros if they had the very bad idea of disassembling these jewels,″ Beccuau said. ″We can perhaps hope that they’ll think about this and won’t destroy these jewels without rhyme or reason.″
While the thieves remain at large, French authorities have recovered the crane lift they used to enter the Louvre Museum, according to CBS News. Authorities also found a power saw, gloves, a walkie-talkie and a can of gasoline, suggesting that the robbers initially planned to burn their tools once they pulled off the heist.
Alain Bauer, a professor of criminology at France’s National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, told CBS News that the thieves left a lot of DNA behind at the scene, including on the tiara of Empress Eugénie.
While the criminology professor expressed confidence that the thieves would be caught, Bauer said it’s unlikely the jewels will be recovered.
“We will catch them,” the professor said about the thieves, explaining that law enforcement might already have information on them if they are professionals.
Bauer warned, however, that if the thieves are “amateur, or in the middle, under control or subcontracted by somebody else, it may be a little more complicated.”
The heist has raised questions about security at the Louvre museum, with CBS News citing a Radio France report that noted 35% of the rooms in the building’s Denon Wing do not have security cameras.
On Monday, France’s Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin spoke with reporters about the robbery, lamenting the failure to secure the historical and national treasures stolen from the museum.
“I know that we cannot secure totally all the sites. But what was sure was that we failed, because someone was capable of putting in a crane truck, in the open, in the streets of Paris, to have people walk up for a couple of minutes and take priceless jewels and give France a deplorable image,” Darmanin stated.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
