Louvre robbery suspects will be caught, expert predicts, but France’s crown jewels likely lost forever

Paris- French authorities may well succeed in tracking down and arresting thieves who committed 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 CBS News on Tuesday. The robbery took place on Sunday, in broad daylight, 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 CBS News.

But he added: “I don’t think we will be able to capture the jewels.”

Bauer said numerous DNA traces were left at the scene by the thieves, including on Empress Eugenie’s crown, left by the thieves as they fled on motorbikes.

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

The criminals entered from the rear of the Louvre’s main building on Sunday – away from the main entrance with its famous glass pyramid – before cutting their way through a window using an electric elevator and a saw. They then headed straight to the Apollo Gallery, the large room that housed the crown jewels.

If the thieves were professional criminals, they could very well be known to the police, thanks to information available in French law enforcement databases, Bauer told CBS News.

But “if they are amateurs, or intermediaries, controlled or subcontracted by someone else, it can be a little more complicated,” he explained.

What are the jewels stolen from the Louvre worth?

The stolen French crown jewels are priceless in historical terms, but Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said tuesday their estimated value is 88 million euros, or 102 million dollars.

“The criminals who took these jewels will not gain 88 million euros if they had the very bad idea of ​​dismantling these jewels,” Beccuau said in an interview with French channel RTL. “Maybe we can hope that they will think about it and not destroy these gems without rhyme or reason.”

Experts told CBS News the jewelry would still be worth millions of dollars if broken and sold on the black market.

One of the stolen items was a tiara containing 212 pearls and nearly 2,000 diamonds, commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III to celebrate his marriage to Eugénie de Montijo in 1853. Also stolen: a sapphire and diamond tiara and necklace, a large diamond brooch, as well as an emerald necklace and earrings which were originally a wedding gift from Napoleon to his second. married Empress Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810.

This astonishing theft is the most spectacular theft committed at the Louvre museum since the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. The iconic painting by Leonardo da Vinci was found in Italy and returned to the Louvre several years later.

Sunday’s heist has been described as both a tragedy and a national embarrassment for France.

“You know, you think that at the Louvre, of all places, doesn’t we have the best security on the planet?” ” a stunned American tourist told French news agency AFP shortly after the theft, calling it “crazy.”

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

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

“I know that we cannot completely secure all the sites. But what is certain is that we have failed, because someone was able to put a crane truck, in the open air, in the streets of Paris, to make people walk for a few minutes and take priceless jewels and give France a deplorable image,” lamented Darmanin.