Louvre robbery suspects will be caught, expert predicts, but France

Paris- French authorities may be able to track down and arrest the thieves who carried out a daring theft of the royal crown jewels from Paris’ iconic Louvre museum, but they are unlikely to recover the national treasures, a criminologist told News themezone on Tuesday. The robbery took place on Sunday, in broad daylight and with tourists in the museum, but no one was injured.

“We will catch them,” Alain Bauer, a criminology professor at France’s National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, told News themezone.

But he added: “I don’t think we can capture the jewels.”

• See the jewels the Louvre thieves got away with…and one they didn’t

Bauer said the thieves left a lot of DNA at the scene, including Empress Eugenie’s crown, which the thieves left behind as they fled on motorcycles.

French police also recovered a large crane used by thieves to access an upper-floor window of the 230-year-old museum, along with an electric saw, gloves, a walkie-talkie and a gasoline can. Authorities have said the criminals may have intended to use the gas to burn their tools, but they ran out of time.

The criminals entered through the back of the Louvre’s main building on Sunday, away from the main entrance with its famous glass pyramid, before breaking through a window using the electric lift and saw. They then headed straight to the Galerie d’Apollon, the grand hall that housed the crown jewels.

If the thieves were professional criminals, it is very possible that the police know them, since the information is available in French law enforcement databases, Bauer told News themezone.

But “if they are amateurs, or in the middle, under control or outsourced to someone else, it can be a little more complicated,” he said.

How much are the jewels stolen from the Louvre worth?

The stolen French crown jewels are priceless in historical terms, but experts have told News themezone they would still be worth millions of dollars if they were broken up and sold on the black market.

The stunning theft was the most spectacular theft at the Louvre museum since the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911. Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting was located in Italy and returned to the Louvre several years later.

Sunday’s robbery has been described as a tragedy and a national shame for France.

“You know, you think, at the Louvre, of all places, don’t they have the best security on the planet?” a stunned American tourist told the French news agency News shortly after the robbery, calling it “crazy.”

But security experts say the Louvre’s security vulnerabilities were extensive. A recent security audit found that 35% of the rooms in the Denon wing, where the jewelry was kept, do not have security cameras, according to a Radio France report.

French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters on Monday that the country had fundamentally failed to protect its national treasures.

“I know that we cannot completely secure all the places. But the truth is that we failed, because someone was able to place a crane truck, in the open air, on the streets of Paris, so that people could come up for a couple of minutes and take away priceless jewels and give France a deplorable image,” lamented Darmanin.

Duarte Days and Emmet Lyons contributed to this report.

In:

• Jewel
• Paris
• France
• The Louvre
• Heist