After days of tireless searching, police finally made a big move in the case of a robbery at a certain Paris museum.
Two suspects with connections to the unbelievable Louvre heist that took the world by storm last week have been arrested by authorities, CNN reported. The pair was part of a group that robbed the famed French museum’s Galerie d’Apollon in broad daylight and managed to get away with a treasure trove of rare jewelry worth an estimated $102 million—in just eight minutes.
In case you somehow missed any details about the robbery, it all started on October 19 at 9:30 a.m., when the burglars parked a truck with an electric ladder outside the Louvre. From there, two of the thieves slinked up the ladder to smash a window that leads to the Galerie d’Apollon on the museum’s second floor. The pair then broke into two high-security display cases, snatched various pieces of crown jewels on display, and scurried back down the ladder and escaped. No one was harmed in the incident, which, as we mentioned, took place in a whirlwind of eight minutes. That whirlwind extended to the world, where the event became a viral discussion that reached just about every corner of the internet.
The jewelry that were snatched also sparked plenty of discussion online, with everyone clamouring to see exactly what the thieves took. Those snatched pieces include a tiara and a brooch owned by Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie; a royal emerald necklace and matching earrings from the collection of Empress Marie-Louise, wife of Napoleon I, was also taken from the Louvre. Empress Eugénie’s crown, a piece adorned with 1,354 diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds, and 56 emeralds, was initially nabbed, too, but the thieves dropped the rare item in their escape.
The robbery has shined a sharp spotlight on security at the Louvre, placing the museum under scrutiny. Speaking to the French Senate, Louvre director Laurence des Cars referred to the robbery as a “terrible failure,” stating that there were no security cameras monitoring the balcony used by the robbers to break into the second floor, according to CNN. And even though two of the suspects are in police custody, authorities’ work certainly isn’t done as they race to find the other pair of thieves—and, hopefully, the jewelry in tact.
