June 11, 2026 • 57 mins
Hot diggity dog, we love a good heist. And an art heist? Get outta here! And in the Louvre Museum? In Paris? Pinch us because we've got to be dreaming. In 2025, an audacious crew broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and stole glittering, historical jewelry. Then they made a run for it. The perps were eventually caught, but the loot has yet to be recovered. But the best part? A kid in a fedora who doesn't steal art...he steals our hearts.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Heiser, Why Hello, Elizabeth, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm doing well, just hanging out with the interns in here.
We were just having like a cuddle puddle of puppies
and me, fun fun LHR.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We'll make sure to tell them. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I do?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So my hero, Willie Nelson, my favorite living philosopher, is
ninety three years old. He just turned ninety three on
April twenty ninth. He was born in nineteen thirty three.
And I found a story I'd never heard about him.
And I've read his autobiographies. I have multiple of his
books that are not autobiographical but have some autobiographical sketches.
You've interviewed him, I've interviewed him hung out on his
tour bus and like we had a great time. He
(00:43):
stalled his show so that he and I could finish
our conversation and smoke a joint. Yeah, but uh, fantastic
guy like hit it off. Is great when you actually
meet a hero and they exceed your expectations, and you
already had high expectations anyway. So this story is about
him and Dennis Hopper. Now Dennis Hopper was hanging out
in Taus, New Mexico, because that's read shot part of
Easy Rider. Yeah, and he started living there basically part
(01:03):
time in the seventies. And apparently he got a little
sideways Dennis Opera style in the seventies. And I'll just
let Dennis Opper tell the story. Quote. I hadn't got
a clue how Willie knew I was in jail in
Taos at the time. I couldn't imagine how Willy Nelson
even knew who I was. In Taos. I had gotten
real drunk and proceeded to win a lot of acid
in a poker game. So I swallowed the acid, and
(01:25):
I saw a weird, dangerous going on, man, and I
pulled my pistol out of my boot and I shot
up the plaza. And I was ranting and raving in
the jail. People were out to get me.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And here Kim the sheriff, saying Willie Nelson had come
and paid my bail and was waiting outside. I was
free to go with him.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I freaked. Now, Willie Nelson, come on, man, who do
you think you're a kidding? You're gonna lure me out?
And yelled, jail break and blow my ass away, But
I thought, hey, be cool, you are, after all hallucinating
all of this. So I walked out of jail and
I got into Willie's Mercedes with him and his wife
Connie and his golf pro Larry Trader. We drove across
(02:06):
the desert towards Las Vegas. Willie and Trader and I
nearly drove Connie crazy man with our laughing and shouting.
Connie is an angel, but we were too much, and
at one point Connie said, I'm going to stop the car.
Either you guys get out or I'll get out. Who
do you think has the best chance of hitching a
ride in the middle of the desert. There you go, Wow,
(02:29):
right in the top that Hunter s Thompson. You want
a Las Vegas story? There it is right.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I love that Willy is traveling with his gollf pro. Amazing,
He's full of surprises.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That guy is that ridiculous? Ridiculous? There you go.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I'm here for it.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Classic heist and mystery for Doras. This is Ridiculous Crime
(03:15):
a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. HAYSI cons it's
always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Damn right, I am always damn right. I have a
real corker for you today, all timer. Yeah, see, a
while back you told us about the time someone stole
(03:35):
the Mona Lisa from the Louver Museum of Arts in Paris. Yes,
I did, audacious, totally.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
No, one's not coming.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, and it's it's sort of what put the Mona
Lisa on the map.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's why it became valuable.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, the world famous, but people were already familiar with
the Louver.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
The Louver is perhaps the most famous museum in the.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
World, hands down, and I think the biggest.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, well there, did you know there were nine million
visitors in twenty twenty five. I did not know that
they run some like thirty k thirty thousand people a
day consistently through the air. You've been there, right, Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's you cannot see even the tenth of it in
one day.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
You got to be like running through.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Just do multa days and divide it up. Yeah. But
so it didn't start out as a museum in eleven
ninety talking King Philip the second had a castle built
inside the Paris city walls. Yes, and it was like
basically this defensive military installation. The purpose was to stop
the Viking attacks. You love this part.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I love this part.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They're coming up on the Seine. And they also they
needed a place to store like the royal treasury and
the archives because Philippe was off on the crusades all
the time, right, like, let's keep everything safe. Mid thirteen hundreds,
we've jumped forward to there. King Charles the fifth, Charles
sonk he had it turned into a fancy palace. Yeah,
(04:56):
and so gone are the battlements, income the gardens, the spirals, aircases,
and then it also it had one of the biggest
private libraries in Europe at the time, and it's like
forty books illuminated manuscripts for days sun. Yeah, with like
forty books. Charles eventually died, as we all do, and
the royal court moved elsewhere. And then in the early
(05:19):
fifteenth century, Henry the fifth of England he crashed there
for a while, but then he moved on. You know
who moved in, No wolves, Yeah, there was like a
pack of wolves that moved in, and which is Rome
in the.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Center of Paris.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, why not in fifteen forty six, from Sis
the first took over. He kicked the wolves out boo,
and he had the old structures demolished boom. So he
built this new modern palace in its place, like modern
for fifteen forty six, Francois. It was also the king
(05:52):
who brought Leonardo da Vinci to France in fifteen sixteen,
and it's his work, the Mona Lisa, that's the big
star at the current. Yes, so, Francois, he got all
sorts of Italian Renaissance works added to the royal collection
and he basically set the stage for everything to come
(06:13):
with the Louver. Yeah. So the Mona Lisa entered into
the French royal collection round fifteen eighteen, that early. Yeah,
and it stayed in royal possession until the Revolution made
it public property. Oh right, yes, So over the years
the Louver expanded, it developed out. Louis the fourteenth hit
the scene. And this is kind of funny because you
(06:35):
did on Tuesday a French.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Story about Louis the fourteenth.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Cycles have once again say I don't know how we
do that. I really don't, because we have no idea
what the other is going to talk about?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Show up there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So it's France week, France week. So okay, Louis the fourteenth,
he shows up, but he moves everything to Versailles, and
once again the Louver falls into disrepair. So revolution there's
this call to create a public gallery that would be
open to all citizens. On the tenth of August seventeen
ninety three, the revolutionary government opened the Mouse Sanchoil des
(07:13):
in the Grand Gallery of the Louver. And so the
inaugural collection was made up of five hundred and thirty
seven paintings and then one hundred and eighty four other objects,
most of it from like confiscated royal, aristocratic and church property.
Admission was free. And then Napoleon Bonaparte, he transforms it
(07:34):
more dramatically than any ruler since Francois. At first he
renamed it the Mouse Napoleon for starters, you know, throw
your name on it. And he started buying up art
like a drunk cast member of the Real Housewives buys
up designer handbag. Okay, I don't even know if that's true,
but what I believe, let's say they do. That was
(07:55):
horrible anyway, So French armies. They're working their way through Italy, Spain,
as you said, Egypt, Netherlands, Prussia, Austria, and like as
they'd swoop in, they would grab up all the valuable
art they could find, ship it to Paris, and at
its peak the collection had around like five thousand confiscated works.
(08:17):
It was the largest art collection ever assembled under one
roof at that time.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The largest art heist of one time.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yes, so Napoleon's defeated exiled eighteen fifteen. The Allied powers
compelled France to return the majority of the looted works
majority to their countries of origin. And then in the
nineteenth century we see the louver grow through like purchase,
excavation and then what we'll gently call colonial acquisition aka looting. Yes,
(08:47):
so they do that. On the eve of World War Two,
the curator orchestrated one of the most remarkable logistics operations
in museum.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
History lock it Down movie.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Over three days in August of nineteen thirty nine, the
entire collection, that's thirty six almost thirty seven hundred paintings,
hundreds of sculptures secretly evacuated by truck to chateau across
France Mona Lisa made five separate moves during the war.
They kept moving that lady around.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
That's why Herman Gering never got his hands on it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
That's right. Not a single major work was captured or
destroyed by the German occupation.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
It's not like they weren't trying.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
That's very true. Nineteen eighty one, President Francois Meteriro he
launched the Grand Louver as one of his Grand treveaux,
the great public works projects that would put architectural monuments
all across Paris. And so he gets the Chinese American
(09:48):
architect Yoming Pei for this project. And so his proposal,
this like huge glass and steel pyramid coming up from
the center of the curl Newpole, yeah, above a vast
underground entrance hall, was controversial, yes, because you know, like
the French like to keep it French.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, and it's not. It's like a glass pyramid in
the center of the plaza exactly, and it's inverting because
like there's a whole empty the pyramid underneath.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah. So the public was like, you are desecrating a
national treasure. That meter unbothered, He's like, for whatever, you
guys just don't have vision.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
You love to complain.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So the structure was inaugurated on March twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty nine. The underground hall Napoleon opened the public entrance
to all three wings simultaneously, and so visitor flow just
was transformed overnight. The Richelieu Wing was open to the
public in nineteen ninety three, and that was like the
(10:48):
final piece, the whole project was completed.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
So it's crazy you go past the excavated castle. I mean,
it's like beautiful.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah. So the museum now there are eight curatorial departments
across three wings. They display more than thirty five thousand
works across about sixty thousand square meters of exhibition space,
and the permanent collection is estimated to come in at
over five hundred and fifty thousand objects, most of them
(11:17):
in storage. So you have this massive trove of priceless
works of art in antiquity. So, I mean it should
come as no surprise that it's the target of thieves,
both in film and real life. Sure, and there's the
Mona Lisa theft you told us about, but there have
been others, such as nineteen seventy six the museum got hit.
The crooks use this metal scaffold to reach the museum's
(11:40):
second floor. They climbed the scaffolding, they smashed a window.
Then they broke into some cases, and they stole the
diamond studded sword used in the coronation of King Charles
the Tenth in eighteen twenty four. That case unsolved.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Who doesn't want a diamond studied sword?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
No one ever found, No one I do. No one
ever found the sword missing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Who doesn't want to? You can move that thing so easily.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Buddy, So authorities are pretty sure it was taken apart
and everything melts it down.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
What.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, the gems could be anywhere. The gems could be
absolutely anywhere. In fact, one of them could be in
that handsome diamond and pearl statement necklace you're wearing right now,
zerin thank you for noticing it could be from the sword.
July nineteen ninety thieves cut a small painting renoirs portrait
of a seated woman from its frame, stole it in
(12:32):
broad daylight from a third floor gallery.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Bold, And it should be noted that like July nineteen
ninety was a particularly bad year for thefts of Impressionist works.
There were three paintings stolen from different French museums on
the same.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Day, same day. Yeah, do you think they were coordinated?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Probably? So. The Renoi theft triggered an inventory, and that
inventory showed that a dozen pieces of ancient Roman jewels
had also been taken sometime before then. And so yeah.
The Louve director at the time called it a quote crisis, like, oh,
you don't say, and so he said that the crisis
(13:12):
would be used to increase museum security measures. He wanted
to raise the budget by about one point eight million dollars.
He wanted to hire a quote super specialist to recommend
policy changes. And as to the loot, that painting and
the Roman jewelry never recovered.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
They don't recover much, they really don't.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I'm really hoping that the painting turns up on BBC's
Fake or Fortune soon.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh right, your favorite and Philip.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
They would be beside themselves.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, I'm going to check it. You keep telling me.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Maybe they'd call in our buddy Bendor Rosner and the
flying squad who knows the girl can dream. Okay, But
so when I say louver heist to you today in
twenty twenty six, yes, I'm guessing one thing comes to
mind French rise. Yes, let's talk about the history of
French hose. I'm talking about that incredible twenty twenty five heighs.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Of course, the most recent, the audacious.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, the most so. We were positively flooded with messages
dms about it when it happened.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, rude dudes were losing their.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Minds and we were losing our minds, and the rude
dudes kept asking us tell the story. Tells the story,
but we had to wait a little to see it
play out some And I think the time is right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Oh do you It.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Hasn't fully resolved itself, but it's pretty darn tootin close.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, the French judicial system will take its time. I think,
yes it will.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So let's start by talking security at the Love Oh please,
So the museum. They did security audits twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Wait, three different ones.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, and all of them determined that the louver was
not in any way able to fend off clever thieves.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It's like, I want a new audit. Yeah, like, nope,
still the case.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They're like, it's going to take us eight years of
upgrades to get the place secure.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
You have to build a new cast.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
As of twenty twenty four, only thirty nine percent of
the rooms in the museum had CCTV cameras. That seems odd,
and that's just the start of the problem.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It's not like those things are expensive these days.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
No, you get a couple ring cams, a blank cam.
I don't know, put them in there. So a new
museum director came in, Laurent des car and she came
on board in twenty twenty one. No one ever told
her about the findings of the audits.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
What how How is that not the first thing? Like, hey,
by the way, everything you're supposed to protect is not
able to be protected. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
According to the New York Times quote, the sad irony
is that the process for beefing up security had begun
and several companies had put forward bids to do the
work just four days before the thieves rolled up. Oh
so like she doesn't know like the depth of it
with the audits, but she knows like, oh god, we
got to tighten this up.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Walking around, she's like, there are no bars.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
She resigned earlier this year.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
By the way, oh right, I saw that headline.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So it's important to note vibe in the run up
to the twenty twenty five heist, which happened on October nineteenth,
twenty twenty five. So starting in September of that year.
Last year, there were a cluster of burglaries at French
museums and they all followed similar patterns. They targeted something
other than paintings and sculptures. They went after stuff like jewelry,
(16:22):
coins or like things with high historical value. There was
the hit on the National Adrian Debouchet Museum in Limoge.
These made off with three Chinese porcelain objects like dishes
and a oz worth about nine point five million euro.
These were classified as national treasures.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
You can see why.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Then a crew hit the Natural History Museum in Paris.
They used a blow torch and a grinder to steal
raw gold nuggets.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Oh like a stegosaurus.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
No I wish, I mean, as long as you're in there,
crap one. And so this was just a few metro
stops away from the loof Mind you right. A few
days after the heist, according to Reuter's quote, prosecutors said
they had charged a Chinese born woman over the theft
of six gold nuggets worth about one point five million
euros from the Museum of Natural History in Paris. She
(17:15):
was arrested in Barcelona while trying to dispose of some melted.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Gold, trying to sell or dispose throw it in the river.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I don't know. I hate when that happens when I'm
in Barcelona, like I get busted trying to get.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Rich, trying to dispose gold again.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Act okay, So the House of Enlightenment and lawned that
was broken into and thieves stole two thousand gold and
silver coins two thousand. So the museum opens the next
day and the workers are like, oh, that display case
is smashed, and apparently the coins were selected with quote
great expertise, A statement to French media from the local
(17:49):
authority set so the stolen coins dated from around seventeen
ninety to eighteen forty. They were part of the city's
private collection. They'd been discovered in twenty eleven during renovation
work at the building that now houses the museum.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
So they've already been lost and they got discovered.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Well yeah, they were like buried.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Somewhere, like, oh, we should put these out.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So just a few days before the loop job, four
men broke into the Jacques Sharrock museum in Saram. The
first incident was October twelfth, twenty twenty five. Still like,
this was straight up armed robbery during open up.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Oh really, they.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Came in shotguns, knives. It's late morning. They hit the
like the gift shop, and they emptied the cash register
for Yeah, they just took all the cash registers, so
they just wanted dru Okay, fine, But then the next night,
same museum gets hit again, this time under cover of darkness.
They broke in and stole more than a million euros
(18:49):
worth of watches and jewelry. And it was all stuff
that like dignitaries had given Sharrock while he was President
of France.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Okay, so like are we talking like rolexes.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And yeah, there are like five thousand diplomatic gifts in
this museum that he got.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
He's like, look at my swag.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, check all this out, gift bags galore, and so yeah,
it was probably like a rollie and like some other stuff.
I don't know some who knows a challenge coin. So anyway,
if the Research Section of LIMOGE and the Central Office
for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property, they kicked
off an investigation. They worked quickly, and so even though
(19:29):
the thieves escaped that night, they were arrested just a
couple days later. So whether the crimes across all these
museums are connected remains unclear. Or maybe the French just
had heist fever. Do you know who has heist fever?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Me?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Is it's this Galmy?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, I can see it's me.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Let's take a break and when we come back, I'm
going to tell you about the main event. Yeah, Zarenza, Okay,
(20:14):
where are we? Sunday, October ninth, twenty twenty five, Paris.
In just seven minutes, a heist crew made history in
seven minutes. So this crew October nineteenth, twenty twenty five.
They get to the louver at nine thirty in the morning.
The museum had just opened a visitors a half hour before,
(20:35):
so they got four people. They're wearing masks. They showed
up to the museum with a vehicle mounted mechanical ladder,
Like that's some serious business.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Vesical mechanical ladder. So it's an extension ladder on top
of a van. Well.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, The thing is it's sort of like a common
sight in Paris because stairways and buildings are often narrow
and if people are moving furniture in, they can't carry
it up.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
They have a lot of these Yeah, movers need to.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Use these ladders to move things in through the way
they done so it wasn't out of place.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
No, And it's like a very common construction site.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah. And so to add to the blending in they
put construction cones up, so probably just look like a
crew moving some big piece of art into or out
of the museum. Here's a fun fact though about the ladder.
The company that made the ladder was this German place
called Bucker machine Werk, and when word of the heist
got out, they just like didn't miss a beat. According
(21:32):
to the Associated Press quote, it didn't take long for
the Germans to seize on the marketing opportunity. By Monday morning,
Baker's company had come up with a social media post
featuring a photo of the freight lift, which is typically
used for furniture and construction, and a slogan in German
that translates to when something needs to be done quickly.
The post also touts the ability of the Baker Agilo
(21:55):
to transport up to four hundred kilograms that's eight hundred
and eighty two pounds of quote your treasures at a
speed of forty two meters or forty six yards per minute,
and it moves quote whisper quiet thanks to its two
hundred and thirty volt emotor.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
The post says, who says the Germans aren't funny, you know?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And so here they are. Okay, So they've got this
this lift. Two of them got on it to get
up to a balcony that sort of overlooked the river
set and from there they got into the Gallery d'Apollon
the Gallery of Apollo.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh, not the Gallery of Chicken.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Now that's Poule, Okay, there it is, yeah, okay. So
the thieves, right, they use grinders to get in a window,
metal grinders, like they were going to steal a catalytic converter,
but instead they got in the windows. They're smart, and
this of course set off an alarm. But they were
on a roll at this point. So they ran into
(22:52):
the Gallery of Apollo, headed right for the glittery goods,
and they were after the collection of royal jewels and
crown diamonds sitting in display cases throughout the gallery. So
this room, the Apollo Gallery, is said to be one
of the fanciest most ornate rooms in the whole place
is gilded up the wazoo, massive Baroque paintings on these
(23:16):
high domed ceilings, incredibly detailed and over the top molding.
Here's what author Henry James had to say about it.
Quote D.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Henry James, D.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Henry James quote the wondrous gallery Dapoulon drawn out from
me as a long but assured initiation, and seeming to form,
with its supreme coved ceiling and inordinately shining parquet, a
prodigious tube or tunnel through which I inhaled, little by little.
That is, again and again a general sense of glory.
(23:49):
The glory meant, ever, so many things at once, not
only beauty and art and supreme design, but history and
fame and power, the world in fine raised to the
richest and noblest expression. I really need to point out
here that Henry James wrote that in eighteen fifty six,
when he was thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Your kid is special?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Thirteen people? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Thirteen damn yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Back when people had literate society.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yes, yes, so for all the gold and polished woods,
and isn't that crazy? And like gleaming light. There's one
thing missing. The windows were in no way reinforced, and
you know, as we heard, they're very accessible from a
second floor balcony. So we got two thieves inside now
(24:41):
armed with power tools, and that was enough to scare
the guards because apparently the guards who are unarmed, they're unarmed,
they're so freaked out when they see these guys running
at them with power tools that they ran away.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Paid well, they're.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not really doing a whole lot to counter the stereotype
of the surrendering French guys. So it was not which
is just it is. It's a it's not true.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
They kicked a lot of butt for many centuries.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
So it was now nine to thirty four am, So
this is like four minutes minutes. When the authorities they
watched the CCTV footage of the heist, they calculated that
it took them four minutes to get in, get the loot,
and get out. They knew exactly what they were doing,
where they were going, what they wanted. Here's what they wanted,
wantbe thank you. According to France's Ministry of Culture, here
(25:30):
are the stolen items tiara and brooch belonging to Empress Eugenie,
wife of Napoleon the Third, an emerald necklace and a
pair of emerald earrings from Empress Marie Louise, wow tiara
necklace and single earring from the sapphire set that belonged
to Queen Marie Amalie and Queen Hortense, and then a
(25:53):
brooch known as the Reliquary Brooch according to the BBC.
Between them, these pieces are adorned with thousands of diamonds
and other precious gemstones. Thousands of diamonds, so.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
They're just gonna pop all those out and.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, exactly make a necklace for you. They did forget
one thing. One of them dropped Empress Eugenie's crown. What Yeah,
you dropped the tiara. It was a straight up crown
bro it like the little spotted fur and stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, it was fat dropped that. I don't know. It
was found on their escape route. It was all bent
and bashed up from being dropped. It was a real
fine baby doll of a crown. I call it that
because I went to an auction once and the auctioneer
kept referring to things as a real fine baby doll,
like a quilt or a rifle. Oh, we got us
a real fine baby doll here. I don't know, but
(26:43):
I love that intricate crown one and fifty four diamonds,
fifty six emralds, soft gold crushed underfoot, underfoot. So the
thieves they jump back out the window, climb down. The
ladder took off with the other two members of the
hest crew on like scooters mopeds. H.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
They're waiting on the ground floor on scooters, yeah, like
zoom zooms.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And they had them all set up seven minutes total.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
You're never finding them in Paris.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
No, it would have been a little faster. But the
remaining crew members tried to set the ladder truck on fire,
but they couldn't get it to light, and then the
museum staffer stumbled upon them and was like, hey, knock
that off.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
A lot of people think that you can just light
gasoline on fire. You gotta light and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I've thrown matches, a puddles of gasoline, nothing lafter. It
just puts the match up.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I know, it's sad for you, I know. So in
a scene like something right out of a movie, the
four crooks raced along the banks of the scent on
their motor scooters until they reached this suburb of Ivaiser.
Sent there they jumped into a white Citrum van they'd parked,
(27:53):
so the four of them they ditched the scooters, hop
in the van, take off, and after that they're just
one of like innumerable white cruising around western Paris. So
just thirty seconds after the scooters took off, cops and
security guards were standing in the Gallery of Apollo staring
at the broken display cases. That's a pretty good response time, right, Yeah,
(28:16):
they would have been there earlier, but museum staff weren't
exactly helpful.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
I thought maybe they stopped for espresso.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, it could be too like smoking cigarettes side. Well, no,
this is this is terrible. So per the New York
Times quote, museum staff gave officers the name of the
long narrow room where the jewelry was held, but didn't
specify which end of the gallery to go to. As
a result of the staff's mistake, police officers headed to
the wrong side of the building and had to turn
(28:44):
around when they realized the error. Class Like, the gallery
is huge. You got to be specific people, you know, It's.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Like, what, maybe run with them?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
There's that maybe run with them. It's because you had
the guards.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Who ran on the witnesses. You know exactly where it
was good at running.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
So I mean, but this is like what I've read
about calling nine to one one that before you tell
them what's the matter, you're supposed to tell them your location.
Like first thing you relay, you're like, I'm at whatever
your addresses and I need an ambulance, police or whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Then you start saying.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Because that gets a moving quickly, that's a pro tips aron,
thank you, I'm going to I want you to keep
that in your pocket. So there are the cops and
the security guards nine forty five or so in the morning.
Now they're looking around the wreckage. There's two angle grinders,
a blow torch, gasoline, gloves, walkie talkie, blanket. Yeah, the
(29:40):
crown they draw.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I still can't believe that.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Backup outside, they keep.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
A car on your on your belt.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Did you have I have an apron for when I'm
in the garden and i'm and I'm harvesting right and
it loops up and you just fill it was stuff
and the clips. I could walk around with a big
old pouch of tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Weren't they wearing like workmen's clothing.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
They got garden pouches on. It's very French.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
When I was a house painter, I used to cover
it the French and the German overalls, like are the
greatest work.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I'm saying, yeah, come on, come on, come on, if
you're going they did. They had they found a safety
vest like the mesh yellow kind that the someone dropped there.
They had warned them to disguise themselves as workers, and
I guess you know one dropped because they had to
like take them off before they got on the scooters.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Once again, when I was a house pain I sud
always tell my guys. I was like, look, we would
make the best heist team. No one looks at us twice.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
The best act like you know tactic construction or maintenance.
Like I've seen videos where guys put on vests and
like a hard hat. One'll have a ladder and the
other as a clipboard, and they get into all sorts
of places that they should.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Just make sure you got workshoes on.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That's another pro tips there. I want you to keep
that in your pocket. So initially, the museum's director said
that the thieves had quote entered undetected because a key
security camera had been facing the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
But then later on down the line, like a couple
months after the heights, the museum officials had to testify
in front of the French Senate and they had to
admit that, yeah, you know, the cameras were actually facing
the right way and they were recording.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
At them.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
No.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
See, Apparently the problem was that, you know, per the
New York Times quote, it took too long, up to
eight minutes for security guards in the museum's control room
to switch to the live feed. By that time, the
thieves were already making their getaway. What happened was that
the security control room in the louver has limited screens.
(31:52):
They can't broadcast every camera feed simultaneously, and the guards
had to manually switch back and forth between various cameras.
So while the guards are on duty that day, they
could have been watching the whole thing unfold in real time,
but the only things up on their screens were the
main entrances. So like, was this whole not enough screens
(32:16):
thing addressed in the security audits probably metcha that it
was time three times. So not only were there not
enough screens, yes, not all of the cameras work, of course,
so the inspector who led the investigation, he told French
senators quote, of the two cameras near the scene, only
one was operational, but it was sufficient, despite its poor quality,
(32:38):
to allow for preparations for the burglary to be seen.
So they could have watched these guys like get up
on the balcony with the angle grinder.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, with the one camera they had pointed in the
right direction that was on.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And they're like, should we get the crown?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, get the crown too.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
So closing the gate after the cows had already set.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
They also already had eyewitness guards like, who are they
going to send scaredy cats?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I guess I don't know. The museum then decided, okay,
we're immediately moving our most valuable jewels out of the building.
It's a little late. Yeah, they sent them for safe
keeping in the Bank of France. I mean, maybe it
does make sense because there had been this spate of heist.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You have to make double dip, right, and.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
There wasn't anywhere near enough time to get security up
to snuff. Remember, it's like an eight year project.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
They put like a piece of wood in the broken
out window.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Do you think so put a blue tarp flapped. I
think it actually probably would have been the perfect time
to strike. Now that I think a dang.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
You hack like you're a cop and another person's construction,
you point them out where you want to go.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So now the really expensive stuff is out of public view.
It's tucked safely away in an underground vault eighty five
feet below street level. Above it the gorgeous headquarters of
the Bank of France. So days and then weeks ticked
by investigators, they worked tirelessly to crack the case. They
needed to find the jewels, and they needed to arrest
(34:03):
the purpose for the spirit of the country, and the
public was desperate for answers. But they had another mystery
on their hands, one perhaps even more captivating than the heist.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Was it the Spanish?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
No, let's take a break, and when we come back
from these ads, I'm going to let you know what
turned everyone into amateur sleuths.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Oh yeah, Zar, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I I love your brooch, by the.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Way, thank you, it really catches the light. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Before the ad break, I told you that there was
this second mystery at hand. Something on top of this
amazing jewel heist at the world's most famous museum.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Was it the English? Was it the French?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
The French? Zarin? Close your eyes, I want you to
picture it. You are an ap photographer living in Paris.
You are talented. You've shot the Dakar Rally, the Tour
de Fronce, the French Open, lots of action work, but
(35:24):
also really wonderful slice of life stuff. You have an
eye for the unexpected and for compelling photos, images that
come to life for the viewer. Photography is your passion.
It's your greatest love. It's mid morning and you're making
coffee and scanning your emails, your phone rings.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's your boss.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Get down to the louver, she shouts. There's been a
jelized You've been crashing at your cousin's place. She inherited
her parents' apartment, who inherited it from their parents. There's
no way any of you could afford it now. It's
on Rue San Deni, just over a kilometer from the louver.
You can be there in five minutes. On your bike,
you race down the stone steps from the fourth floor apartment,
(36:05):
your fleet feet slapping on the cold stairs. You grab
your bike in the entryway, and burst out onto the street.
The street level store in your building, a charming place
called sex Shop Projection video hasn't opened up yet, its
menu displayed next to the metal roll up door, clamped
shut to protect the goods in off hours. You steady
(36:26):
your backpack and get on your bike under a sign
advertising gadgets laingerie, massage, oils, preservatives, zapping and poppers. You
pedal off into the street, barely missing the proprietor of
the Frog and Rosbuff at the corner. He shouted you,
and you raise your hand in apology. As you careene
(36:46):
down the streets, ringing your bell the move people out
of your way and dodging white work vands. You see
that the streets around the move have been closed to cars.
You pop up on the sidewalk and go as far
as you can before a crowd of people flogs it.
Jump off your bike and lock it to a nearby
bike rack. You take your camera from your bag, pull
your press pass from your front pocket, slinging around your neck,
(37:08):
and then begin to weave your way through the crowd
that is gathered. You approach a loading driveway to the museum.
It's iron gates are open, but the way is blocked
by police in their crisp navy blue uniforms and sharp
woolen side caps. You take a few steps back in
order to get a good shot of the cops. They're
handsome and imposing, with interesting faces and strong body language.
(37:30):
It'll make for a great snap for the articles about
whatever this turns out to be. You could hear people
in the crowd murmuring, sharing what little information they have, jewels,
a ladder, scooters. As you raise your camera to get
a picture of the cops, someone comes into view. He
begins to stride through the frame. So you get the
shot and then look down at your camera's display to
see what you have. What you have is pure gold.
(37:53):
When you look up to try and get another shot
of a man who walked through the frame, he's already gone,
but he lives on in your photo. All around you,
the crowd hums with excitement, but you are looking at
the photo. The two police officers lean against the front
of a patrol car. One stares directly at the interloper
in the picture. The other shoots the man a side eye.
(38:14):
Both cops have their lips pursed, and the man he
is the very definition of dapper. He wears a tweed vest,
a khaki workblazer with a short wool overcoat. It's satin
lining barely exposed. He carries a tartan umbrella, a sin
the elegant tie pin holds his blue striped tie in place.
His dress shirt is crisp starched. Atop his head is
(38:38):
a soft gray, almost fawn colored fedora with a warm
brown band. His eyes narrowed, he seems to be looking
through the crowd, observing his pout that of a man
on a quest. Who is this man? You lower your
camera and approach the officers. You ask who the gentleman
in the hat is that you need his identity? You're
an ap photographer. You lift your press pass for them
(39:00):
to view. As you scan the street again for the man,
He's nowhere. The cop on the left of the photos
shrugs ZIPA. He doesn't know. You look to the cop
on the right. He gives you a dismissive half shrug,
half sneer. He tells you. You dismiss them with a
wave and walk off in search of this other mystery?
Was that a detective, a sort of modern day Ercu Poirot,
(39:25):
Or was that one of the highest crew members lupin
gentleman thief. You don't know. All you know is that
this will be the photo that makes your boss's day.
You head deeper into the crowd, hoping for more breade shots.
Hell yeah, so Saron, this photo took the world by storm, Imber.
Remember it went viral, like, who is this guy in
(39:47):
the picture? Is?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Isn't that guy? Derek Guy? The guy always talks about
your outfit, break it down?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Can we take one moment to talk about how incredible
Derek Guy is. If you're not following him on social
media somewhere, He's on a bunch different platforms. He is
a genius men'swear like and I've learned so much from him.
And he's also he's kind of like the social media
apex predatory so that no one can come for him,
(40:14):
and he can take people down so beautifully and he's
like bulletproof King of this year. Yeah basically. Yeah, So anyway,
Derek Guy, He's incredible. Okay, so people wanted to know,
is this a detective? A lot of people thought he
was one of the detective Is he a dapper thief?
And then there was this rumor that he was a
I like added to the shot for extra interest. Yeah,
(40:36):
for the for the lesser intellect people. So everyone is like,
who is Fedor's also.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
His vibe was his outfit, but his vibe.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But he looked like he was like so smooth looking. Yeah,
so who's Fedora Man? Well the answer came before that
of who stole the jewels and where they could be? See,
Fedora Man was actually Pedro Elias Garzon Devo, a fifteen
year old from a town southwest of Paris.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Why does help with these French? He got thirteen year
old Henry James waxing eloquent. You got this guy dress
a more dapper than I've ever seen at fifteen.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
So it turns out he and his parents had intended
to go on a Sunday jaunt to the museum naturally,
only to find it was closed. According to NPR, Pedro
is quote a fan of Sherlock Holmes and Ercuil Poaro,
who lives with his parents and grandfather in Ramboulay, thirty
kilometers from Paris. His mother, Felicitaegarzon Delvo, grew up in
(41:34):
an eighteenth century museum palace, daughter of a curator and
an artist, and regularly takes her son to exhibits. His
father is a diplomat and quote prolific French storyteller.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
So he's got the money and the family provenance to
dress like a mid century literary detective.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
So the family they moved a lot when he was
growing up England, Spain, Bangladesh, Eastern France, and then to
this town outside of Paris. Pedro didn't see the photo
right away, like his pal sent him a screenshot this year,
and then Pedro found out that he was all over
TikTok and then in the New York Times, and now
(42:13):
he wasn't on TikTok, so he had no idea. But
he does read the New York Times every day. So
why was he dressed like that? Why he told the
ap quote, I like to be chich. I go to
school like this.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
I knew amazing everyday dress.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Well, it all started when he dressed up for a
costume day at school as Jean Moulin, hero of the
French Resistance during World War Two, and in that forties
era get up, he felt like he was his authentic self.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I had a friend who did that, dressed like the
forties all the time, Like I want to be wearing
heavy wool slides.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yes, and so he loved the suiting. He loved the
look of detectives and statesmen watch. And he wasn't a
stranger to fashion like this because he got his first
bespoke tailored suit when he was twelve while the family
was living in Bangladesh. So he's like lived all over
the globett of these things. And this is how he
explained it. Quote for me, it's important to dress classic,
(43:11):
and I like to dress like that because I love history,
especially the twentieth century for those of us who were
born in the nineteen hundreds. So from that dress up
day on, oh god, he dressed like some sort of
elegant time traveler.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
And so while he does dress down on occasion, he
does not own a pair of sweatpants. The fedora isn't
a daily thing, and that's special only for as he says,
quote weekends, holidays and museum visits.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Oh that was like when he goes into the city
museum visits.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I should note that he knows how to wear a fedora. Yes,
like he's not all I mean, it's it's he wears
it like a noir film star. So he did his
best to keep his identity as Fedora Man under wraps,
but eventually he had to go public. And so no,
he's not this dashing detective on the case of the
(44:05):
missing Crown Jewels. He's just Pedro, coolest kid in town.
So anyway, back to the heist. The working theory was
that the crew was working for an organized crime syndicate.
And then less than a week after the robbery, Saturday
October twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, police arrested two men
(44:25):
from a Paris suburb in connection with the heist. So
it seems that the cops had managed to link trace
DNA evidence on the inside of one of the display
cases to one of the suspects. I was wondering, Yeah,
then they tapped the guy's phone had him under surveillance.
Like this is fast, this is less than a week.
One of the suspects was picked up that Saturday night
(44:47):
at Charles de Gaulle Airport. He was trying to get
a flight to Algeria. Another guy was about to head
out to Molly when he was arrested.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
See I would take a boat across the night train
catch the airport.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Soon like everything starts to fall into place for the cops.
The third member of the crew got arrested while he
was waiting in line to get into a soccer game.
And the last guy got picked up because he told
his family all about what he did and then they
told others and that proved that you need to learn
how to keep secrets if you want to be a
successful corner like you guys. It was so crazy, and
(45:24):
then I dropped the crown and I stepped out of
my bootmarks around. So all four of the guys, they're
from this suburb of Paris called ober Viller, north of
the city. It's it's like a challenged mostly immigrant area,
Aerians a lot of Yeah. Once the investigators were able
(45:45):
to tie them to a place, then they poured over
CCTV footage from the neighborhood and then they hit the jackpot.
So they gathered in a parking garage after they made
off with the jewels, like they pulled the vanage and
then they got out and quote admired their loot and
above them a security camera. They're like, hey, look at this,
(46:06):
like holding it up to the light. So is this
a good angle? Yeah? So per Town and Country magazine,
who had like incredible coverage of this they really are. Quote.
Three of the men were old friends, Sliman an amateur
soccer referee, Abdoulie, a minor YouTube star known for motocross acrobatics,
(46:30):
and Rashid, convicted pimp who was licensed to drive flatbed trucks. Ayed,
who had immigrated from Algeria in twenty ten, was Slimmane's cousin.
So Laplesia newspaper said that Adboula was quote known on
social media as Dodo crossby Tune, a well known neighborhood
(46:53):
figure who had released numerous videos on YouTube and more
recently TikTok and Instagram. Some videos with the slogan's to
zum always closer to the tarmac show him performing tricks
on motorbikes in Paris and Abouvier near the Stad de
Fran sports stadium. Others offer muscle building tips. Oh so
(47:16):
neighbors told your neighbors told Laprizzia that he was quote helpful, decent,
and a man who wears his heart on his sleeve.
The New York Times reported quote, we consider him a
legend in the community because of how early he took
to the practice and because of the risks he took,
said the French urban motocross influencer al who goes by
(47:40):
the moniker we defall and whose YouTube channel has more
than three hundred and sixty thousand subscribers.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
French.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
You know what was in some of his Dudu cross
Betum videos A Yamaha Team Ax and that's the very
powerful megascooter that the thieves scooted off in my yeah,
Mondeu mon Dieu. So the New York Times had great
intel on this guy quote. As far as his friends
(48:08):
at the outdoor gym knew, the always cheerful thirty nine
year old man from the hard scrabble suburb of Paris
had left his past behind. He no longer talked much
about his years as a star of the city's urban
dirt bike subculture, a rider known as Dudu Crospy Too,
who made his name doing wheelie's up to chal Cites.
(48:29):
When asked why, his friend said, he told them he
had since had children and he didn't want them associated
him with that bad boy image. Weaving in and out
of traffic at high speeds on just one wheel and
so called urban rodeos was eventually deemed so dangerous it
was later made punishable by prison time. The friends described
him as kind and generous, often arriving to workouts with
(48:53):
fresh fruit to share, as well as pastries and a
birthday cake to celebrate one of the men's birthdays. Then
he would leave to go take care of his children.
They said, a.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Real kind, sweet at the community.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
He's a good guy, but he wasn't an angel. He
had quite the criminal record. So he had convictions for
possession and transportation of drugs, driving without a license, causing
danger to others. And then there was this whole thing
in twenty fourteen where he was convicted of robbing a
jewelry store.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Okay, that one's serious.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
The other whatever, well, okay, so per Town and Country quote.
All four suspects were known to police, but the heist
seemed out of their league, As State Prosecutor Laurie Beckeru remarked,
they were known for quote a polymorphous delinquency that one
doesn't associate with the heights of organized crime. How beautiful
(49:45):
is that put? Yeah, though the execution had been amateure,
the kit was sophisticated and the preparations meticulous. So Addoulay
not the mastermind. He told investigators that he was hired
by two two men quote with Slavic accents, and that
they paid him fifteen thousand euros for what they said
(50:06):
would be a routine burglary.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
You like doing daredevil stuff. We got a job.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
He thought it was going to be like in an
office building or something, not the most famous museum in
the world. I had also thought he'd be hitting up
an office building. He said that he was recruited just
a day before the heist by this mystery man known
only as Laser.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
You're kidding, No, I'm not kidding Laser.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Laser and it's like in all caps too Laser. So
probably according to Town and Country quote, he claimed that
the jewels were snatched from him as he stepped off
the ladder. The suspects wouldn't identify their paymasters or reveal
the jewels whereabouts, perhaps for fear of reprisals. How does
that line up, then, of them standing there looking at
(50:50):
the jewels on CCTV, if they were taken from them
as soon as they got off the ladder.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Maybe it was a matter of they had the lesser
jewels that they were looking at CCTV and the major
ones that they read wanted. The Laser and his boys
grab that laser. He's like you dropped the crown.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
So a month later, a thirty eight year old woman
was charged complicit and organized theft criminal conspiracy. A thirty
seven year old guy got picked up on the same charges.
They said they had absolutely nothing to do with it,
and they haven't been publicly identified. In late November twenty
twenty five, for more people got picked up as accessories.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
More like Algerians or Slavs.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
More Algerians, I believe, although they're not publicly identified.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Okay, so it could.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Be a little bit of both. Suspicions of an inside
job really started to bubble up because it turns out
the highest job was exactly like a scenario that had
been detailed in one of the security audits.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, this is how we could be hit guys.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
This is how they haven't they haven't figured it out yet.
So the charged individuals, they're now making their way through
the French courts. Despite all the arrests and interrogations, none
of the jewelry has been recovered, and the fear is
that it's been broken apart and melts it down. By
this time, and I do have a last minute update
for you. So there was a book written about the
(52:15):
heist A Grab at the Louver, and it came out
May twenty seventh, which happens to be yesterday for those
playing at home. Yes, this episode was recorded a little early,
which means that I wasn't able to read it and
get all the juicy details that the author's promise are
in it. They said, secret documents, explosive reports, sources with
intimate knowledge of the case.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
I want to know about the ringleaders, right.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
So No. Sooner than the book was released yesterday, a
movie deal was announced.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
Damn good book.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
Yeah. According to artnet News quote, development has started on
a still unnamed feature film immortalizing the now infamous robbery,
courtesy of Paris based production company Iconoclast, which has purchased
the rights to A Grab at the Louver. Any potential
cast for this forthcoming project is still under wraps as
it stands at the movies Helm. However, will stand French
(53:07):
film director Romain Gavras, who has directed music videos for
legendary bops. I love that they say in this bops
like MIA's Bad Girls and No Church in the Wild
for Jay Z and Kanye West. Yeah. So this has
hit theaters twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Eight, that's fast.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah. We got like five dms on Instagram about this,
like in succession, and Terry the assistant was like just
frantically forwarding for me and I'm like type type type.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
So that there's no script. Nobody attasked. They have a
book and now we can turn this into mod this
coming out in twenty twenty eight. Yeah, exactly, that's a
scare off competitive.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
No, there's another one that's also Yeah, but so I
think that, Yeah, I think they're trying to race it
and this has big.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, So there's that. So which brings me to this question, Zaren,
what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Laser?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Laser?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Who is he?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah? She Laser for absolutely everything.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
I do too. I'm like that Beza DJ or Abitha DJ.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
I don't trust them, and Laser didn't melt everything down.
Laser is just walking around wearing the jewels.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
And are they going to go back to get the
crown they dropped because I think that's what they wanted.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Want because these these are jury and kids. It seems
like they were hired to throw this cent off of
whoever is the real criminals and who are not of
the same community. Not of the same connections, and that
the police are corrected. These are this is above their
pay grade, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
We should probably read a grab at the lose.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
Probably, I just want to know who's laser. But about.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
That's my take. Yeah, And on that note, David Dave
Dave Reo, I need to talk back.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Oh god, I love you.
Speaker 4 (55:06):
Hi, team, my name is Diana, and I wanted to
let you know that. On the day that I listened
to the episode, and you'll know which episode, I drove
through an amber light and I said, in my normal,
regular voice, Viva la France. But last night I was
driving and went through an amber light with my husband
in the car and had to do it in my head.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
So today when I.
Speaker 4 (55:26):
Went through an amber light, I said it loud and proud,
Viva la France.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Thanks, tem love you. It's a perfect time. I love it.
First of all, I really love and relate to you
hitting all the amber lights, the yellow lads just keep going. Girl,
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
This is so good that brilliant. Would your husband be
upset not about you driving through yellow lights, but only
about you saying villa la France? And is it because
they're French?
Speaker 5 (55:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (55:56):
I think it's just keep yourself.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Do you share it with me?
Speaker 5 (56:00):
And now.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's amazing so much. That's it for today. You can
find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also
at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're
on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email us
at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and then please
leave a talkback download the free iHeart app leave a
(56:23):
talkback reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Inspector Dave Cousten
of The Big French Booty Inspector squad Our. Ridiculous Assistant
is Toddler in a tuxedo Terry Maldonado. Pong Research is
by home smelter Marissa Brown and disinterested security guard Jabari Davis.
(56:48):
The theme song is by guy wearing a diamond tiara
on the Paris Metro Like It's no Big Deal Thomas
Lee and guy carrying a jewel encrusted sword along the
banks of the Sein Like It's no Big Deal. Travis
Dutton wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Producer Dave
Cousten's wardrobe is by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest
hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers
(57:10):
are two Eastern European gangsters who both go by the
the street named Laser Ben Bollen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Reds Crime Say It One More Times Crime Ridiculous Crime
is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts My heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Heiser, Why Hello, Elizabeth, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:06):
I'm doing well, just hanging out with the interns in here.
We were just having like a cuddle puddle of puppies
and me, fun fun LHR.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
We'll make sure to tell them. Do you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I do?
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
So my hero, Willie Nelson, my favorite living philosopher, is
ninety three years old. He just turned ninety three on
April twenty ninth. He was born in nineteen thirty three.
And I found a story I'd never heard about him.
And I've read his autobiographies. I have multiple of his
books that are not autobiographical but have some autobiographical sketches.
You've interviewed him, I've interviewed him hung out on his
tour bus and like we had a great time. He
(00:43):
stalled his show so that he and I could finish
our conversation and smoke a joint. Yeah, but uh, fantastic
guy like hit it off. Is great when you actually
meet a hero and they exceed your expectations, and you
already had high expectations anyway. So this story is about
him and Dennis Hopper. Now Dennis Hopper was hanging out
in Taus, New Mexico, because that's read shot part of
Easy Rider. Yeah, and he started living there basically part
(01:03):
time in the seventies. And apparently he got a little
sideways Dennis Opera style in the seventies. And I'll just
let Dennis Opper tell the story. Quote. I hadn't got
a clue how Willie knew I was in jail in
Taos at the time. I couldn't imagine how Willy Nelson
even knew who I was. In Taos. I had gotten
real drunk and proceeded to win a lot of acid
in a poker game. So I swallowed the acid, and
(01:25):
I saw a weird, dangerous going on, man, and I
pulled my pistol out of my boot and I shot
up the plaza. And I was ranting and raving in
the jail. People were out to get me.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And here Kim the sheriff, saying Willie Nelson had come
and paid my bail and was waiting outside. I was
free to go with him.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I freaked. Now, Willie Nelson, come on, man, who do
you think you're a kidding? You're gonna lure me out?
And yelled, jail break and blow my ass away, But
I thought, hey, be cool, you are, after all hallucinating
all of this. So I walked out of jail and
I got into Willie's Mercedes with him and his wife
Connie and his golf pro Larry Trader. We drove across
(02:06):
the desert towards Las Vegas. Willie and Trader and I
nearly drove Connie crazy man with our laughing and shouting.
Connie is an angel, but we were too much, and
at one point Connie said, I'm going to stop the car.
Either you guys get out or I'll get out. Who
do you think has the best chance of hitching a
ride in the middle of the desert. There you go, Wow,
(02:29):
right in the top that Hunter s Thompson. You want
a Las Vegas story? There it is right.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I love that Willy is traveling with his gollf pro. Amazing,
He's full of surprises.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
That guy is that ridiculous? Ridiculous? There you go.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I'm here for it.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Classic heist and mystery for Doras. This is Ridiculous Crime
(03:15):
a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. HAYSI cons it's
always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
Damn right, I am always damn right. I have a
real corker for you today, all timer. Yeah, see, a
while back you told us about the time someone stole
(03:35):
the Mona Lisa from the Louver Museum of Arts in Paris. Yes,
I did, audacious, totally.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
No, one's not coming.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, and it's it's sort of what put the Mona
Lisa on the map.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
That's why it became valuable.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, the world famous, but people were already familiar with
the Louver.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
The Louver is perhaps the most famous museum in the.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
World, hands down, and I think the biggest.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, well there, did you know there were nine million
visitors in twenty twenty five. I did not know that
they run some like thirty k thirty thousand people a
day consistently through the air. You've been there, right, Yes.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's you cannot see even the tenth of it in
one day.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
You got to be like running through.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Just do multa days and divide it up. Yeah. But
so it didn't start out as a museum in eleven
ninety talking King Philip the second had a castle built
inside the Paris city walls. Yes, and it was like
basically this defensive military installation. The purpose was to stop
the Viking attacks. You love this part.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
I love this part.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
They're coming up on the Seine. And they also they
needed a place to store like the royal treasury and
the archives because Philippe was off on the crusades all
the time, right, like, let's keep everything safe. Mid thirteen hundreds,
we've jumped forward to there. King Charles the fifth, Charles
sonk he had it turned into a fancy palace. Yeah,
(04:56):
and so gone are the battlements, income the gardens, the spirals, aircases,
and then it also it had one of the biggest
private libraries in Europe at the time, and it's like
forty books illuminated manuscripts for days sun. Yeah, with like
forty books. Charles eventually died, as we all do, and
the royal court moved elsewhere. And then in the early
(05:19):
fifteenth century, Henry the fifth of England he crashed there
for a while, but then he moved on. You know
who moved in, No wolves, Yeah, there was like a
pack of wolves that moved in, and which is Rome
in the.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Center of Paris.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, yeah, why not in fifteen forty six, from Sis
the first took over. He kicked the wolves out boo,
and he had the old structures demolished boom. So he
built this new modern palace in its place, like modern
for fifteen forty six, Francois. It was also the king
(05:52):
who brought Leonardo da Vinci to France in fifteen sixteen,
and it's his work, the Mona Lisa, that's the big
star at the current. Yes, so, Francois, he got all
sorts of Italian Renaissance works added to the royal collection
and he basically set the stage for everything to come
(06:13):
with the Louver. Yeah. So the Mona Lisa entered into
the French royal collection round fifteen eighteen, that early. Yeah,
and it stayed in royal possession until the Revolution made
it public property. Oh right, yes, So over the years
the Louver expanded, it developed out. Louis the fourteenth hit
the scene. And this is kind of funny because you
(06:35):
did on Tuesday a French.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Story about Louis the fourteenth.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Cycles have once again say I don't know how we
do that. I really don't, because we have no idea
what the other is going to talk about?
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Show up there you go.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
So it's France week, France week. So okay, Louis the fourteenth,
he shows up, but he moves everything to Versailles, and
once again the Louver falls into disrepair. So revolution there's
this call to create a public gallery that would be
open to all citizens. On the tenth of August seventeen
ninety three, the revolutionary government opened the Mouse Sanchoil des
(07:13):
in the Grand Gallery of the Louver. And so the
inaugural collection was made up of five hundred and thirty
seven paintings and then one hundred and eighty four other objects,
most of it from like confiscated royal, aristocratic and church property.
Admission was free. And then Napoleon Bonaparte, he transforms it
(07:34):
more dramatically than any ruler since Francois. At first he
renamed it the Mouse Napoleon for starters, you know, throw
your name on it. And he started buying up art
like a drunk cast member of the Real Housewives buys
up designer handbag. Okay, I don't even know if that's true,
but what I believe, let's say they do. That was
(07:55):
horrible anyway, So French armies. They're working their way through Italy, Spain,
as you said, Egypt, Netherlands, Prussia, Austria, and like as
they'd swoop in, they would grab up all the valuable
art they could find, ship it to Paris, and at
its peak the collection had around like five thousand confiscated works.
(08:17):
It was the largest art collection ever assembled under one
roof at that time.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The largest art heist of one time.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yes, so Napoleon's defeated exiled eighteen fifteen. The Allied powers
compelled France to return the majority of the looted works
majority to their countries of origin. And then in the
nineteenth century we see the louver grow through like purchase,
excavation and then what we'll gently call colonial acquisition aka looting. Yes,
(08:47):
so they do that. On the eve of World War Two,
the curator orchestrated one of the most remarkable logistics operations
in museum.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
History lock it Down movie.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Over three days in August of nineteen thirty nine, the
entire collection, that's thirty six almost thirty seven hundred paintings,
hundreds of sculptures secretly evacuated by truck to chateau across
France Mona Lisa made five separate moves during the war.
They kept moving that lady around.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
That's why Herman Gering never got his hands on it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
That's right. Not a single major work was captured or
destroyed by the German occupation.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
It's not like they weren't trying.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
That's very true. Nineteen eighty one, President Francois Meteriro he
launched the Grand Louver as one of his Grand treveaux,
the great public works projects that would put architectural monuments
all across Paris. And so he gets the Chinese American
(09:48):
architect Yoming Pei for this project. And so his proposal,
this like huge glass and steel pyramid coming up from
the center of the curl Newpole, yeah, above a vast
underground entrance hall, was controversial, yes, because you know, like
the French like to keep it French.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah, and it's not. It's like a glass pyramid in
the center of the plaza exactly, and it's inverting because
like there's a whole empty the pyramid underneath.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah. So the public was like, you are desecrating a
national treasure. That meter unbothered, He's like, for whatever, you
guys just don't have vision.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
You love to complain.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So the structure was inaugurated on March twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty nine. The underground hall Napoleon opened the public entrance
to all three wings simultaneously, and so visitor flow just
was transformed overnight. The Richelieu Wing was open to the
public in nineteen ninety three, and that was like the
(10:48):
final piece, the whole project was completed.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
So it's crazy you go past the excavated castle. I mean,
it's like beautiful.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah. So the museum now there are eight curatorial departments
across three wings. They display more than thirty five thousand
works across about sixty thousand square meters of exhibition space,
and the permanent collection is estimated to come in at
over five hundred and fifty thousand objects, most of them
(11:17):
in storage. So you have this massive trove of priceless
works of art in antiquity. So, I mean it should
come as no surprise that it's the target of thieves,
both in film and real life. Sure, and there's the
Mona Lisa theft you told us about, but there have
been others, such as nineteen seventy six the museum got hit.
The crooks use this metal scaffold to reach the museum's
(11:40):
second floor. They climbed the scaffolding, they smashed a window.
Then they broke into some cases, and they stole the
diamond studded sword used in the coronation of King Charles
the Tenth in eighteen twenty four. That case unsolved.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Who doesn't want a diamond studied sword?
Speaker 2 (11:57):
No one ever found, No one I do. No one
ever found the sword missing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Who doesn't want to? You can move that thing so easily.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Buddy, So authorities are pretty sure it was taken apart
and everything melts it down.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
What.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, the gems could be anywhere. The gems could be
absolutely anywhere. In fact, one of them could be in
that handsome diamond and pearl statement necklace you're wearing right now,
zerin thank you for noticing it could be from the sword.
July nineteen ninety thieves cut a small painting renoirs portrait
of a seated woman from its frame, stole it in
(12:32):
broad daylight from a third floor gallery.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Bold, And it should be noted that like July nineteen
ninety was a particularly bad year for thefts of Impressionist works.
There were three paintings stolen from different French museums on
the same.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Day, same day. Yeah, do you think they were coordinated?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Probably? So. The Renoi theft triggered an inventory, and that
inventory showed that a dozen pieces of ancient Roman jewels
had also been taken sometime before then. And so yeah.
The Louve director at the time called it a quote crisis, like, oh,
you don't say, and so he said that the crisis
(13:12):
would be used to increase museum security measures. He wanted
to raise the budget by about one point eight million dollars.
He wanted to hire a quote super specialist to recommend
policy changes. And as to the loot, that painting and
the Roman jewelry never recovered.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
They don't recover much, they really don't.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I'm really hoping that the painting turns up on BBC's
Fake or Fortune soon.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh right, your favorite and Philip.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
They would be beside themselves.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah, I'm going to check it. You keep telling me.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Maybe they'd call in our buddy Bendor Rosner and the
flying squad who knows the girl can dream. Okay, But
so when I say louver heist to you today in
twenty twenty six, yes, I'm guessing one thing comes to
mind French rise. Yes, let's talk about the history of
French hose. I'm talking about that incredible twenty twenty five heighs.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Of course, the most recent, the audacious.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, the most so. We were positively flooded with messages
dms about it when it happened.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, rude dudes were losing their.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Minds and we were losing our minds, and the rude
dudes kept asking us tell the story. Tells the story,
but we had to wait a little to see it
play out some And I think the time is right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Oh do you It.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Hasn't fully resolved itself, but it's pretty darn tootin close.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, the French judicial system will take its time. I think,
yes it will.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So let's start by talking security at the Love Oh please,
So the museum. They did security audits twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Wait, three different ones.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah, and all of them determined that the louver was
not in any way able to fend off clever thieves.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
It's like, I want a new audit. Yeah, like, nope,
still the case.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
They're like, it's going to take us eight years of
upgrades to get the place secure.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
You have to build a new cast.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
As of twenty twenty four, only thirty nine percent of
the rooms in the museum had CCTV cameras. That seems odd,
and that's just the start of the problem.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
It's not like those things are expensive these days.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
No, you get a couple ring cams, a blank cam.
I don't know, put them in there. So a new
museum director came in, Laurent des car and she came
on board in twenty twenty one. No one ever told
her about the findings of the audits.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
What how How is that not the first thing? Like, hey,
by the way, everything you're supposed to protect is not
able to be protected. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
According to the New York Times quote, the sad irony
is that the process for beefing up security had begun
and several companies had put forward bids to do the
work just four days before the thieves rolled up. Oh
so like she doesn't know like the depth of it
with the audits, but she knows like, oh god, we
got to tighten this up.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Walking around, she's like, there are no bars.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
She resigned earlier this year.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
By the way, oh right, I saw that headline.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So it's important to note vibe in the run up
to the twenty twenty five heist, which happened on October nineteenth,
twenty twenty five. So starting in September of that year.
Last year, there were a cluster of burglaries at French
museums and they all followed similar patterns. They targeted something
other than paintings and sculptures. They went after stuff like jewelry,
(16:22):
coins or like things with high historical value. There was
the hit on the National Adrian Debouchet Museum in Limoge.
These made off with three Chinese porcelain objects like dishes
and a oz worth about nine point five million euro.
These were classified as national treasures.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
You can see why.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Then a crew hit the Natural History Museum in Paris.
They used a blow torch and a grinder to steal
raw gold nuggets.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Oh like a stegosaurus.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
No I wish, I mean, as long as you're in there,
crap one. And so this was just a few metro
stops away from the loof Mind you right. A few
days after the heist, according to Reuter's quote, prosecutors said
they had charged a Chinese born woman over the theft
of six gold nuggets worth about one point five million
euros from the Museum of Natural History in Paris. She
(17:15):
was arrested in Barcelona while trying to dispose of some melted.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Gold, trying to sell or dispose throw it in the river.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I don't know. I hate when that happens when I'm
in Barcelona, like I get busted trying to get.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Rich, trying to dispose gold again.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Act okay, So the House of Enlightenment and lawned that
was broken into and thieves stole two thousand gold and
silver coins two thousand. So the museum opens the next
day and the workers are like, oh, that display case
is smashed, and apparently the coins were selected with quote
great expertise, A statement to French media from the local
(17:49):
authority set so the stolen coins dated from around seventeen
ninety to eighteen forty. They were part of the city's
private collection. They'd been discovered in twenty eleven during renovation
work at the building that now houses the museum.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
So they've already been lost and they got discovered.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Well yeah, they were like buried.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Somewhere, like, oh, we should put these out.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So just a few days before the loop job, four
men broke into the Jacques Sharrock museum in Saram. The
first incident was October twelfth, twenty twenty five. Still like,
this was straight up armed robbery during open up.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Oh really, they.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Came in shotguns, knives. It's late morning. They hit the
like the gift shop, and they emptied the cash register
for Yeah, they just took all the cash registers, so
they just wanted dru Okay, fine, But then the next night,
same museum gets hit again, this time under cover of darkness.
They broke in and stole more than a million euros
(18:49):
worth of watches and jewelry. And it was all stuff
that like dignitaries had given Sharrock while he was President
of France.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Okay, so like are we talking like rolexes.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
And yeah, there are like five thousand diplomatic gifts in
this museum that he got.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
He's like, look at my swag.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, check all this out, gift bags galore, and so yeah,
it was probably like a rollie and like some other stuff.
I don't know some who knows a challenge coin. So anyway,
if the Research Section of LIMOGE and the Central Office
for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property, they kicked
off an investigation. They worked quickly, and so even though
(19:29):
the thieves escaped that night, they were arrested just a
couple days later. So whether the crimes across all these
museums are connected remains unclear. Or maybe the French just
had heist fever. Do you know who has heist fever?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Me?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Is it's this Galmy?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, I can see it's me.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Let's take a break and when we come back, I'm
going to tell you about the main event. Yeah, Zarenza, Okay,
(20:14):
where are we? Sunday, October ninth, twenty twenty five, Paris.
In just seven minutes, a heist crew made history in
seven minutes. So this crew October nineteenth, twenty twenty five.
They get to the louver at nine thirty in the morning.
The museum had just opened a visitors a half hour before,
(20:35):
so they got four people. They're wearing masks. They showed
up to the museum with a vehicle mounted mechanical ladder,
Like that's some serious business.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Vesical mechanical ladder. So it's an extension ladder on top
of a van. Well.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, The thing is it's sort of like a common
sight in Paris because stairways and buildings are often narrow
and if people are moving furniture in, they can't carry
it up.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
They have a lot of these Yeah, movers need to.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Use these ladders to move things in through the way
they done so it wasn't out of place.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
No, And it's like a very common construction site.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah. And so to add to the blending in they
put construction cones up, so probably just look like a
crew moving some big piece of art into or out
of the museum. Here's a fun fact though about the ladder.
The company that made the ladder was this German place
called Bucker machine Werk, and when word of the heist
got out, they just like didn't miss a beat. According
(21:32):
to the Associated Press quote, it didn't take long for
the Germans to seize on the marketing opportunity. By Monday morning,
Baker's company had come up with a social media post
featuring a photo of the freight lift, which is typically
used for furniture and construction, and a slogan in German
that translates to when something needs to be done quickly.
The post also touts the ability of the Baker Agilo
(21:55):
to transport up to four hundred kilograms that's eight hundred
and eighty two pounds of quote your treasures at a
speed of forty two meters or forty six yards per minute,
and it moves quote whisper quiet thanks to its two
hundred and thirty volt emotor.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
The post says, who says the Germans aren't funny, you know?
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And so here they are. Okay, So they've got this
this lift. Two of them got on it to get
up to a balcony that sort of overlooked the river
set and from there they got into the Gallery d'Apollon
the Gallery of Apollo.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Oh, not the Gallery of Chicken.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Now that's Poule, Okay, there it is, yeah, okay. So
the thieves, right, they use grinders to get in a window,
metal grinders, like they were going to steal a catalytic converter,
but instead they got in the windows. They're smart, and
this of course set off an alarm. But they were
on a roll at this point. So they ran into
(22:52):
the Gallery of Apollo, headed right for the glittery goods,
and they were after the collection of royal jewels and
crown diamonds sitting in display cases throughout the gallery. So
this room, the Apollo Gallery, is said to be one
of the fanciest most ornate rooms in the whole place
is gilded up the wazoo, massive Baroque paintings on these
(23:16):
high domed ceilings, incredibly detailed and over the top molding.
Here's what author Henry James had to say about it.
Quote D.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Henry James, D.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Henry James quote the wondrous gallery Dapoulon drawn out from
me as a long but assured initiation, and seeming to form,
with its supreme coved ceiling and inordinately shining parquet, a
prodigious tube or tunnel through which I inhaled, little by little.
That is, again and again a general sense of glory.
(23:49):
The glory meant, ever, so many things at once, not
only beauty and art and supreme design, but history and
fame and power, the world in fine raised to the
richest and noblest expression. I really need to point out
here that Henry James wrote that in eighteen fifty six,
when he was thirteen years old.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Your kid is special?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Thirteen people? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Thirteen damn yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Back when people had literate society.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yes, yes, so for all the gold and polished woods,
and isn't that crazy? And like gleaming light. There's one
thing missing. The windows were in no way reinforced, and
you know, as we heard, they're very accessible from a
second floor balcony. So we got two thieves inside now
(24:41):
armed with power tools, and that was enough to scare
the guards because apparently the guards who are unarmed, they're unarmed,
they're so freaked out when they see these guys running
at them with power tools that they ran away.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Paid well, they're.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not really doing a whole lot to counter the stereotype
of the surrendering French guys. So it was not which
is just it is. It's a it's not true.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
They kicked a lot of butt for many centuries.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
So it was now nine to thirty four am, So
this is like four minutes minutes. When the authorities they
watched the CCTV footage of the heist, they calculated that
it took them four minutes to get in, get the loot,
and get out. They knew exactly what they were doing,
where they were going, what they wanted. Here's what they wanted,
wantbe thank you. According to France's Ministry of Culture, here
(25:30):
are the stolen items tiara and brooch belonging to Empress Eugenie,
wife of Napoleon the Third, an emerald necklace and a
pair of emerald earrings from Empress Marie Louise, wow tiara
necklace and single earring from the sapphire set that belonged
to Queen Marie Amalie and Queen Hortense, and then a
(25:53):
brooch known as the Reliquary Brooch according to the BBC.
Between them, these pieces are adorned with thousands of diamonds
and other precious gemstones. Thousands of diamonds, so.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
They're just gonna pop all those out and.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah, exactly make a necklace for you. They did forget
one thing. One of them dropped Empress Eugenie's crown. What Yeah,
you dropped the tiara. It was a straight up crown
bro it like the little spotted fur and stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, it was fat dropped that. I don't know. It
was found on their escape route. It was all bent
and bashed up from being dropped. It was a real
fine baby doll of a crown. I call it that
because I went to an auction once and the auctioneer
kept referring to things as a real fine baby doll,
like a quilt or a rifle. Oh, we got us
a real fine baby doll here. I don't know, but
(26:43):
I love that intricate crown one and fifty four diamonds,
fifty six emralds, soft gold crushed underfoot, underfoot. So the
thieves they jump back out the window, climb down. The
ladder took off with the other two members of the
hest crew on like scooters mopeds. H.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
They're waiting on the ground floor on scooters, yeah, like
zoom zooms.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And they had them all set up seven minutes total.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
You're never finding them in Paris.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
No, it would have been a little faster. But the
remaining crew members tried to set the ladder truck on fire,
but they couldn't get it to light, and then the
museum staffer stumbled upon them and was like, hey, knock
that off.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
A lot of people think that you can just light
gasoline on fire. You gotta light and it's a whole thing.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I've thrown matches, a puddles of gasoline, nothing lafter. It
just puts the match up.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I know, it's sad for you, I know. So in
a scene like something right out of a movie, the
four crooks raced along the banks of the scent on
their motor scooters until they reached this suburb of Ivaiser.
Sent there they jumped into a white Citrum van they'd parked,
(27:53):
so the four of them they ditched the scooters, hop
in the van, take off, and after that they're just
one of like innumerable white cruising around western Paris. So
just thirty seconds after the scooters took off, cops and
security guards were standing in the Gallery of Apollo staring
at the broken display cases. That's a pretty good response time, right, Yeah,
(28:16):
they would have been there earlier, but museum staff weren't
exactly helpful.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
I thought maybe they stopped for espresso.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Well, it could be too like smoking cigarettes side. Well, no,
this is this is terrible. So per the New York
Times quote, museum staff gave officers the name of the
long narrow room where the jewelry was held, but didn't
specify which end of the gallery to go to. As
a result of the staff's mistake, police officers headed to
the wrong side of the building and had to turn
(28:44):
around when they realized the error. Class Like, the gallery
is huge. You got to be specific people, you know, It's.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Like, what, maybe run with them?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
There's that maybe run with them. It's because you had
the guards.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Who ran on the witnesses. You know exactly where it
was good at running.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
So I mean, but this is like what I've read
about calling nine to one one that before you tell
them what's the matter, you're supposed to tell them your location.
Like first thing you relay, you're like, I'm at whatever
your addresses and I need an ambulance, police or whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Then you start saying.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Because that gets a moving quickly, that's a pro tips aron,
thank you, I'm going to I want you to keep
that in your pocket. So there are the cops and
the security guards nine forty five or so in the morning.
Now they're looking around the wreckage. There's two angle grinders,
a blow torch, gasoline, gloves, walkie talkie, blanket. Yeah, the
(29:40):
crown they draw.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I still can't believe that.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Backup outside, they keep.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
A car on your on your belt.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Did you have I have an apron for when I'm
in the garden and i'm and I'm harvesting right and
it loops up and you just fill it was stuff
and the clips. I could walk around with a big
old pouch of tomatoes.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Weren't they wearing like workmen's clothing.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
They got garden pouches on. It's very French.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
When I was a house painter, I used to cover
it the French and the German overalls, like are the
greatest work.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
I'm saying, yeah, come on, come on, come on, if
you're going they did. They had they found a safety
vest like the mesh yellow kind that the someone dropped there.
They had warned them to disguise themselves as workers, and
I guess you know one dropped because they had to
like take them off before they got on the scooters.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Once again, when I was a house pain I sud
always tell my guys. I was like, look, we would
make the best heist team. No one looks at us twice.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
The best act like you know tactic construction or maintenance.
Like I've seen videos where guys put on vests and
like a hard hat. One'll have a ladder and the
other as a clipboard, and they get into all sorts
of places that they should.
Speaker 3 (30:57):
Just make sure you got workshoes on.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That's another pro tips there. I want you to keep
that in your pocket. So initially, the museum's director said
that the thieves had quote entered undetected because a key
security camera had been facing the wrong way.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
But then later on down the line, like a couple
months after the heights, the museum officials had to testify
in front of the French Senate and they had to
admit that, yeah, you know, the cameras were actually facing
the right way and they were recording.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
At them.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
No.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
See, Apparently the problem was that, you know, per the
New York Times quote, it took too long, up to
eight minutes for security guards in the museum's control room
to switch to the live feed. By that time, the
thieves were already making their getaway. What happened was that
the security control room in the louver has limited screens.
(31:52):
They can't broadcast every camera feed simultaneously, and the guards
had to manually switch back and forth between various cameras.
So while the guards are on duty that day, they
could have been watching the whole thing unfold in real time,
but the only things up on their screens were the
main entrances. So like, was this whole not enough screens
(32:16):
thing addressed in the security audits probably metcha that it
was time three times. So not only were there not
enough screens, yes, not all of the cameras work, of course,
so the inspector who led the investigation, he told French
senators quote, of the two cameras near the scene, only
one was operational, but it was sufficient, despite its poor quality,
(32:38):
to allow for preparations for the burglary to be seen.
So they could have watched these guys like get up
on the balcony with the angle grinder.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Yeah, with the one camera they had pointed in the
right direction that was on.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
And they're like, should we get the crown?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, get the crown too.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
So closing the gate after the cows had already set.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
They also already had eyewitness guards like, who are they
going to send scaredy cats?
Speaker 2 (33:01):
I guess I don't know. The museum then decided, okay,
we're immediately moving our most valuable jewels out of the building.
It's a little late. Yeah, they sent them for safe
keeping in the Bank of France. I mean, maybe it
does make sense because there had been this spate of heist.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You have to make double dip, right, and.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
There wasn't anywhere near enough time to get security up
to snuff. Remember, it's like an eight year project.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
They put like a piece of wood in the broken
out window.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Do you think so put a blue tarp flapped. I
think it actually probably would have been the perfect time
to strike. Now that I think a dang.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
You hack like you're a cop and another person's construction,
you point them out where you want to go.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
So now the really expensive stuff is out of public view.
It's tucked safely away in an underground vault eighty five
feet below street level. Above it the gorgeous headquarters of
the Bank of France. So days and then weeks ticked
by investigators, they worked tirelessly to crack the case. They
needed to find the jewels, and they needed to arrest
(34:03):
the purpose for the spirit of the country, and the
public was desperate for answers. But they had another mystery
on their hands, one perhaps even more captivating than the heist.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Was it the Spanish?
Speaker 2 (34:15):
No, let's take a break, and when we come back
from these ads, I'm going to let you know what
turned everyone into amateur sleuths.
Speaker 5 (34:22):
Oh yeah, Zar, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
I I love your brooch, by the.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Way, thank you, it really catches the light. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Before the ad break, I told you that there was
this second mystery at hand. Something on top of this
amazing jewel heist at the world's most famous museum.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Was it the English? Was it the French?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
The French? Zarin? Close your eyes, I want you to
picture it. You are an ap photographer living in Paris.
You are talented. You've shot the Dakar Rally, the Tour
de Fronce, the French Open, lots of action work, but
(35:24):
also really wonderful slice of life stuff. You have an
eye for the unexpected and for compelling photos, images that
come to life for the viewer. Photography is your passion.
It's your greatest love. It's mid morning and you're making
coffee and scanning your emails, your phone rings.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It's your boss.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Get down to the louver, she shouts. There's been a
jelized You've been crashing at your cousin's place. She inherited
her parents' apartment, who inherited it from their parents. There's
no way any of you could afford it now. It's
on Rue San Deni, just over a kilometer from the louver.
You can be there in five minutes. On your bike,
you race down the stone steps from the fourth floor apartment,
(36:05):
your fleet feet slapping on the cold stairs. You grab
your bike in the entryway, and burst out onto the street.
The street level store in your building, a charming place
called sex Shop Projection video hasn't opened up yet, its
menu displayed next to the metal roll up door, clamped
shut to protect the goods in off hours. You steady
(36:26):
your backpack and get on your bike under a sign
advertising gadgets laingerie, massage, oils, preservatives, zapping and poppers. You
pedal off into the street, barely missing the proprietor of
the Frog and Rosbuff at the corner. He shouted you,
and you raise your hand in apology. As you careene
(36:46):
down the streets, ringing your bell the move people out
of your way and dodging white work vands. You see
that the streets around the move have been closed to cars.
You pop up on the sidewalk and go as far
as you can before a crowd of people flogs it.
Jump off your bike and lock it to a nearby
bike rack. You take your camera from your bag, pull
your press pass from your front pocket, slinging around your neck,
(37:08):
and then begin to weave your way through the crowd
that is gathered. You approach a loading driveway to the museum.
It's iron gates are open, but the way is blocked
by police in their crisp navy blue uniforms and sharp
woolen side caps. You take a few steps back in
order to get a good shot of the cops. They're
handsome and imposing, with interesting faces and strong body language.
(37:30):
It'll make for a great snap for the articles about
whatever this turns out to be. You could hear people
in the crowd murmuring, sharing what little information they have, jewels,
a ladder, scooters. As you raise your camera to get
a picture of the cops, someone comes into view. He
begins to stride through the frame. So you get the
shot and then look down at your camera's display to
see what you have. What you have is pure gold.
(37:53):
When you look up to try and get another shot
of a man who walked through the frame, he's already gone,
but he lives on in your photo. All around you,
the crowd hums with excitement, but you are looking at
the photo. The two police officers lean against the front
of a patrol car. One stares directly at the interloper
in the picture. The other shoots the man a side eye.
(38:14):
Both cops have their lips pursed, and the man he
is the very definition of dapper. He wears a tweed vest,
a khaki workblazer with a short wool overcoat. It's satin
lining barely exposed. He carries a tartan umbrella, a sin
the elegant tie pin holds his blue striped tie in place.
His dress shirt is crisp starched. Atop his head is
(38:38):
a soft gray, almost fawn colored fedora with a warm
brown band. His eyes narrowed, he seems to be looking
through the crowd, observing his pout that of a man
on a quest. Who is this man? You lower your
camera and approach the officers. You ask who the gentleman
in the hat is that you need his identity? You're
an ap photographer. You lift your press pass for them
(39:00):
to view. As you scan the street again for the man,
He's nowhere. The cop on the left of the photos
shrugs ZIPA. He doesn't know. You look to the cop
on the right. He gives you a dismissive half shrug,
half sneer. He tells you. You dismiss them with a
wave and walk off in search of this other mystery?
Was that a detective, a sort of modern day Ercu Poirot,
(39:25):
Or was that one of the highest crew members lupin
gentleman thief. You don't know. All you know is that
this will be the photo that makes your boss's day.
You head deeper into the crowd, hoping for more breade shots.
Hell yeah, so Saron, this photo took the world by storm, Imber.
Remember it went viral, like, who is this guy in
(39:47):
the picture? Is?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Isn't that guy? Derek Guy? The guy always talks about
your outfit, break it down?
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Can we take one moment to talk about how incredible
Derek Guy is. If you're not following him on social
media somewhere, He's on a bunch different platforms. He is
a genius men'swear like and I've learned so much from him.
And he's also he's kind of like the social media
apex predatory so that no one can come for him,
(40:14):
and he can take people down so beautifully and he's
like bulletproof King of this year. Yeah basically. Yeah, So anyway,
Derek Guy, He's incredible. Okay, so people wanted to know,
is this a detective? A lot of people thought he
was one of the detective Is he a dapper thief?
And then there was this rumor that he was a
I like added to the shot for extra interest. Yeah,
(40:36):
for the for the lesser intellect people. So everyone is like,
who is Fedor's also.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
His vibe was his outfit, but his vibe.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But he looked like he was like so smooth looking. Yeah,
so who's Fedora Man? Well the answer came before that
of who stole the jewels and where they could be? See,
Fedora Man was actually Pedro Elias Garzon Devo, a fifteen
year old from a town southwest of Paris.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Why does help with these French? He got thirteen year
old Henry James waxing eloquent. You got this guy dress
a more dapper than I've ever seen at fifteen.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
So it turns out he and his parents had intended
to go on a Sunday jaunt to the museum naturally,
only to find it was closed. According to NPR, Pedro
is quote a fan of Sherlock Holmes and Ercuil Poaro,
who lives with his parents and grandfather in Ramboulay, thirty
kilometers from Paris. His mother, Felicitaegarzon Delvo, grew up in
(41:34):
an eighteenth century museum palace, daughter of a curator and
an artist, and regularly takes her son to exhibits. His
father is a diplomat and quote prolific French storyteller.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
So he's got the money and the family provenance to
dress like a mid century literary detective.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
So the family they moved a lot when he was
growing up England, Spain, Bangladesh, Eastern France, and then to
this town outside of Paris. Pedro didn't see the photo
right away, like his pal sent him a screenshot this year,
and then Pedro found out that he was all over
TikTok and then in the New York Times, and now
(42:13):
he wasn't on TikTok, so he had no idea. But
he does read the New York Times every day. So
why was he dressed like that? Why he told the
ap quote, I like to be chich. I go to
school like this.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
I knew amazing everyday dress.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Well, it all started when he dressed up for a
costume day at school as Jean Moulin, hero of the
French Resistance during World War Two, and in that forties
era get up, he felt like he was his authentic self.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I had a friend who did that, dressed like the
forties all the time, Like I want to be wearing
heavy wool slides.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yes, and so he loved the suiting. He loved the
look of detectives and statesmen watch. And he wasn't a
stranger to fashion like this because he got his first
bespoke tailored suit when he was twelve while the family
was living in Bangladesh. So he's like lived all over
the globett of these things. And this is how he
explained it. Quote for me, it's important to dress classic,
(43:11):
and I like to dress like that because I love history,
especially the twentieth century for those of us who were
born in the nineteen hundreds. So from that dress up
day on, oh god, he dressed like some sort of
elegant time traveler.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
And so while he does dress down on occasion, he
does not own a pair of sweatpants. The fedora isn't
a daily thing, and that's special only for as he says,
quote weekends, holidays and museum visits.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
Oh that was like when he goes into the city
museum visits.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I should note that he knows how to wear a fedora. Yes,
like he's not all I mean, it's it's he wears
it like a noir film star. So he did his
best to keep his identity as Fedora Man under wraps,
but eventually he had to go public. And so no,
he's not this dashing detective on the case of the
(44:05):
missing Crown Jewels. He's just Pedro, coolest kid in town.
So anyway, back to the heist. The working theory was
that the crew was working for an organized crime syndicate.
And then less than a week after the robbery, Saturday
October twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, police arrested two men
(44:25):
from a Paris suburb in connection with the heist. So
it seems that the cops had managed to link trace
DNA evidence on the inside of one of the display
cases to one of the suspects. I was wondering, Yeah,
then they tapped the guy's phone had him under surveillance.
Like this is fast, this is less than a week.
One of the suspects was picked up that Saturday night
(44:47):
at Charles de Gaulle Airport. He was trying to get
a flight to Algeria. Another guy was about to head
out to Molly when he was arrested.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
See I would take a boat across the night train
catch the airport.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Soon like everything starts to fall into place for the cops.
The third member of the crew got arrested while he
was waiting in line to get into a soccer game.
And the last guy got picked up because he told
his family all about what he did and then they
told others and that proved that you need to learn
how to keep secrets if you want to be a
successful corner like you guys. It was so crazy, and
(45:24):
then I dropped the crown and I stepped out of
my bootmarks around. So all four of the guys, they're
from this suburb of Paris called ober Viller, north of
the city. It's it's like a challenged mostly immigrant area,
Aerians a lot of Yeah. Once the investigators were able
(45:45):
to tie them to a place, then they poured over
CCTV footage from the neighborhood and then they hit the jackpot.
So they gathered in a parking garage after they made
off with the jewels, like they pulled the vanage and
then they got out and quote admired their loot and
above them a security camera. They're like, hey, look at this,
(46:06):
like holding it up to the light. So is this
a good angle? Yeah? So per Town and Country magazine,
who had like incredible coverage of this they really are. Quote.
Three of the men were old friends, Sliman an amateur
soccer referee, Abdoulie, a minor YouTube star known for motocross acrobatics,
(46:30):
and Rashid, convicted pimp who was licensed to drive flatbed trucks. Ayed,
who had immigrated from Algeria in twenty ten, was Slimmane's cousin.
So Laplesia newspaper said that Adboula was quote known on
social media as Dodo crossby Tune, a well known neighborhood
(46:53):
figure who had released numerous videos on YouTube and more
recently TikTok and Instagram. Some videos with the slogan's to
zum always closer to the tarmac show him performing tricks
on motorbikes in Paris and Abouvier near the Stad de
Fran sports stadium. Others offer muscle building tips. Oh so
(47:16):
neighbors told your neighbors told Laprizzia that he was quote helpful, decent,
and a man who wears his heart on his sleeve.
The New York Times reported quote, we consider him a
legend in the community because of how early he took
to the practice and because of the risks he took,
said the French urban motocross influencer al who goes by
(47:40):
the moniker we defall and whose YouTube channel has more
than three hundred and sixty thousand subscribers.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
French.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
You know what was in some of his Dudu cross
Betum videos A Yamaha Team Ax and that's the very
powerful megascooter that the thieves scooted off in my yeah,
Mondeu mon Dieu. So the New York Times had great
intel on this guy quote. As far as his friends
(48:08):
at the outdoor gym knew, the always cheerful thirty nine
year old man from the hard scrabble suburb of Paris
had left his past behind. He no longer talked much
about his years as a star of the city's urban
dirt bike subculture, a rider known as Dudu Crospy Too,
who made his name doing wheelie's up to chal Cites.
(48:29):
When asked why, his friend said, he told them he
had since had children and he didn't want them associated
him with that bad boy image. Weaving in and out
of traffic at high speeds on just one wheel and
so called urban rodeos was eventually deemed so dangerous it
was later made punishable by prison time. The friends described
him as kind and generous, often arriving to workouts with
(48:53):
fresh fruit to share, as well as pastries and a
birthday cake to celebrate one of the men's birthdays. Then
he would leave to go take care of his children.
They said, a.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Real kind, sweet at the community.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
He's a good guy, but he wasn't an angel. He
had quite the criminal record. So he had convictions for
possession and transportation of drugs, driving without a license, causing
danger to others. And then there was this whole thing
in twenty fourteen where he was convicted of robbing a
jewelry store.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
Okay, that one's serious.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
The other whatever, well, okay, so per Town and Country quote.
All four suspects were known to police, but the heist
seemed out of their league, As State Prosecutor Laurie Beckeru remarked,
they were known for quote a polymorphous delinquency that one
doesn't associate with the heights of organized crime. How beautiful
(49:45):
is that put? Yeah, though the execution had been amateure,
the kit was sophisticated and the preparations meticulous. So Addoulay
not the mastermind. He told investigators that he was hired
by two two men quote with Slavic accents, and that
they paid him fifteen thousand euros for what they said
(50:06):
would be a routine burglary.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
You like doing daredevil stuff. We got a job.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
He thought it was going to be like in an
office building or something, not the most famous museum in
the world. I had also thought he'd be hitting up
an office building. He said that he was recruited just
a day before the heist by this mystery man known
only as Laser.
Speaker 3 (50:25):
You're kidding, No, I'm not kidding Laser.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Laser and it's like in all caps too Laser. So
probably according to Town and Country quote, he claimed that
the jewels were snatched from him as he stepped off
the ladder. The suspects wouldn't identify their paymasters or reveal
the jewels whereabouts, perhaps for fear of reprisals. How does
that line up, then, of them standing there looking at
(50:50):
the jewels on CCTV, if they were taken from them
as soon as they got off the ladder.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Maybe it was a matter of they had the lesser
jewels that they were looking at CCTV and the major
ones that they read wanted. The Laser and his boys
grab that laser. He's like you dropped the crown.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
So a month later, a thirty eight year old woman
was charged complicit and organized theft criminal conspiracy. A thirty
seven year old guy got picked up on the same charges.
They said they had absolutely nothing to do with it,
and they haven't been publicly identified. In late November twenty
twenty five, for more people got picked up as accessories.
Speaker 3 (51:27):
More like Algerians or Slavs.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
More Algerians, I believe, although they're not publicly identified.
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Okay, so it could.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
Be a little bit of both. Suspicions of an inside
job really started to bubble up because it turns out
the highest job was exactly like a scenario that had
been detailed in one of the security audits.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, this is how we could be hit guys.
Speaker 2 (51:53):
This is how they haven't they haven't figured it out yet.
So the charged individuals, they're now making their way through
the French courts. Despite all the arrests and interrogations, none
of the jewelry has been recovered, and the fear is
that it's been broken apart and melts it down. By
this time, and I do have a last minute update
for you. So there was a book written about the
(52:15):
heist A Grab at the Louver, and it came out
May twenty seventh, which happens to be yesterday for those
playing at home. Yes, this episode was recorded a little early,
which means that I wasn't able to read it and
get all the juicy details that the author's promise are
in it. They said, secret documents, explosive reports, sources with
intimate knowledge of the case.
Speaker 3 (52:36):
I want to know about the ringleaders, right.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
So No. Sooner than the book was released yesterday, a
movie deal was announced.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
Damn good book.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
Yeah. According to artnet News quote, development has started on
a still unnamed feature film immortalizing the now infamous robbery,
courtesy of Paris based production company Iconoclast, which has purchased
the rights to A Grab at the Louver. Any potential
cast for this forthcoming project is still under wraps as
it stands at the movies Helm. However, will stand French
(53:07):
film director Romain Gavras, who has directed music videos for
legendary bops. I love that they say in this bops
like MIA's Bad Girls and No Church in the Wild
for Jay Z and Kanye West. Yeah. So this has
hit theaters twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (53:23):
Eight, that's fast.
Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah. We got like five dms on Instagram about this,
like in succession, and Terry the assistant was like just
frantically forwarding for me and I'm like type type type.
Speaker 3 (53:37):
So that there's no script. Nobody attasked. They have a
book and now we can turn this into mod this
coming out in twenty twenty eight. Yeah, exactly, that's a
scare off competitive.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
No, there's another one that's also Yeah, but so I
think that, Yeah, I think they're trying to race it
and this has big.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Thing.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
Yeah, So there's that. So which brings me to this question, Zaren,
what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Laser?
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Laser?
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Who is he?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
Yeah? She Laser for absolutely everything.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
I do too. I'm like that Beza DJ or Abitha DJ.
Speaker 2 (54:10):
I don't trust them, and Laser didn't melt everything down.
Laser is just walking around wearing the jewels.
Speaker 3 (54:16):
And are they going to go back to get the
crown they dropped because I think that's what they wanted.
Speaker 2 (54:20):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
Want because these these are jury and kids. It seems
like they were hired to throw this cent off of
whoever is the real criminals and who are not of
the same community. Not of the same connections, and that
the police are corrected. These are this is above their
pay grade, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
We should probably read a grab at the lose.
Speaker 3 (54:40):
Probably, I just want to know who's laser. But about.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
That's my take. Yeah, And on that note, David Dave
Dave Reo, I need to talk back.
Speaker 3 (54:57):
Oh god, I love you.
Speaker 4 (55:06):
Hi, team, my name is Diana, and I wanted to
let you know that. On the day that I listened
to the episode, and you'll know which episode, I drove
through an amber light and I said, in my normal,
regular voice, Viva la France. But last night I was
driving and went through an amber light with my husband
in the car and had to do it in my head.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
So today when I.
Speaker 4 (55:26):
Went through an amber light, I said it loud and proud,
Viva la France.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
Thanks, tem love you. It's a perfect time. I love it.
First of all, I really love and relate to you
hitting all the amber lights, the yellow lads just keep going. Girl,
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
This is so good that brilliant. Would your husband be
upset not about you driving through yellow lights, but only
about you saying villa la France? And is it because
they're French?
Speaker 5 (55:56):
No?
Speaker 3 (55:56):
I think it's just keep yourself.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Do you share it with me?
Speaker 5 (56:00):
And now.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
It's amazing so much. That's it for today. You can
find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're also
at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're
on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. You can email us
at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com and then please
leave a talkback download the free iHeart app leave a
(56:23):
talkback reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton
and Zaron Burnett, produced and edited by Inspector Dave Cousten
of The Big French Booty Inspector squad Our. Ridiculous Assistant
is Toddler in a tuxedo Terry Maldonado. Pong Research is
by home smelter Marissa Brown and disinterested security guard Jabari Davis.
(56:48):
The theme song is by guy wearing a diamond tiara
on the Paris Metro Like It's no Big Deal Thomas
Lee and guy carrying a jewel encrusted sword along the
banks of the Sein Like It's no Big Deal. Travis
Dutton wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Producer Dave
Cousten's wardrobe is by mister Guy of Beverly Hills. Guest
hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers
(57:10):
are two Eastern European gangsters who both go by the
the street named Laser Ben Bollen and Noel Brown.
Speaker 1 (57:22):
Reds Crime Say It One More Times Crime Ridiculous Crime
is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts My heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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