A gang of thieves who stole priceless jewellery from the Louvre have been caught on camera making a painfully slow escape from the world famous museum in new footage.
The group scaled the iconic Parisian museum using an extendable ladder on a lorry and broke the windows using small chainsaws in a daring seven-minute heist at 9.30am on Sunday.
A new clip posted online shows two masked men, one wearing a high-vis jacket and the other a motorbike jacket, sliding down from the glass museum in slow-motion using a 90ft high basket lift mounted on a truck. The pair later fled the scene on motorbikes.
It emerged on Wednesday that the truck had been stolen from a car rental firm nine days before the burglary, according to the Telegraph. No arrests have been made.
The operation saw the gang of thieves enter the Galerie d’Apollon and steal eight pieces of jewellery worth £76 million.
The missing artefacts include:
- A tiara, necklace and a single earring from a set that belonged to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense
- An emerald necklace and a pair of emerald earrings from the Empress Marie Louise set
- A brooch known as the “reliquary brooch”
- A tiara belonging to Empress Eugenie
- A large corsage bow brooch of Empress Eugenie
The group also reportedly dropped the crown of Empress Eugenie (the wife of Napoleon III) on the pavement, causing it to break.
All of the items remain missing, with fears they have been sold for parts on the black market.
Security guards chased the thieves and were able to prevent them setting the furniture lift truck on fire, according to the museum’s director of public reception and surveillance.
The lift-mounted vehicle was stolen in the nearby town of Louvres days before the heist, a spokesperson for the vehicle’s rental service told theTelegraph.
The Mitsubishi Canter Fuso, which is fitted with a 90ft ladder, was given to a rental driver in the town of Val-d’Oise on 10 October.
But the handover of the vehicle was interrupted when two men arrived on a motorbike and threatened the driver, the rental firm said.
One of the men drove off in the truck while the other fled on a motorbike, but no weapon was used and no assault took place, according to The Telegraph. Speaking anonymously to the newspaper, the boss of the rental firm said he did not become aware that the vehicle was stolen until he saw the heist on the news and informed police.
The vehicle was painted grey to conceal the logos and the number plate was cloned from a 2018 model of an Isuzu Series N registered in the Paris region, days before the heist.
Investigators are examining a trail of clues which the thieves left behind, including a petrol container, scooter helmet, blowtorch, walkie-talkie, yellow vest and a blanket.
Laurence des Cars, president of the Louvre, told the French Senate culture committee hearing on Wednesday that the museum had been “defeated”.
“We are experiencing a terrible failure at the Louvre, for which I take my share of responsibility,” she said.
She admitted that the CCTV footage of the surrounding area was “highly insufficient”.
The Louvre reopened to the public on Wednesday with increased security presence.
