Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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The world's biggest museum, a symbol of France, now a crime scene.
Over the weekend, a group of thieves staged a remarkable heist at one of the world's most famous museums. Officials in Paris say the masked crooks used a basket lift and cutting tools to just break into a gallery. Stealing some of the most precious and culturally significant jewels in Europe, in the middle of Paris, in broad daylight.
It's like a scene from a film.
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Chapter 2: What happened during the Louvre jewelry heist?
He's just sawing away. What we have been told by the chief Paris prosecutor who is in charge of leading the investigation into this is that these are seasoned. They think that they're part of a gang. They clearly knew what they were coming for. They were pretty precise and fast. And they didn't seem panicked at all. But all this was, you know, fairly quick.
Our timeline shows that they arrived outside the building at 9.30. They got up to that window on the top of the mechanical ladder. Four minutes later, they broke in and they were out within four minutes and down and gone. Amazing. That's pretty fast. I mean, I know in terms of heists, it's not the fastest. There have been many faster.
People who study this stuff say it's not crazy fast, but it was fast enough that they escaped and they have not been found.
So, okay, let's talk about that escape. I'm trying to imagine it. What does it actually look like?
You know, they jump out the window that they came in. They go down the same bucket ladder to the bottom. We understand also that they at this point attempt to set fire to the truck, to the bucket itself. We don't know why. There's been lots of speculation they were trying to remove any kind of DNA or fingerprints, basically.
And at this point, what we know is that some security guard or guards come chasing towards them on the ground. They drop a couple things, including one of their security vests and the bottle that they were using to spray gas onto the body. this cherry bin to light it on fire. And they jump on the back of two waiting motorcycles and speed away.
One, you know, very juicy detail is that they dropped one of the nine things they originally grabbed. Right, I read that. And it was this incredibly precious crown, an imperial crown that was made for the last empress of France who was married to Napoleon III. Right. I can tell you a little bit about it. I have been learning a ton about these type of things.
You're like the world's expert in crown jewels now.
Well, not before this, but I have become one. Hold on. So this crown had eight golden eagles on it, 1,354 regular diamonds, and then 1,136 rose-cut diamonds, as well as 56 pretty sizable emeralds.
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Chapter 3: How did the thieves execute their plan?
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So I want to ask just about the reaction to some of this. If the assumption is that these thieves are going to break these things down, maybe melt down the gold, sell it for parts, make as much money as possible, how are French people responding to that possibility? It is the history of this country that could be disappeared, right?
I think the predominant reaction has been shock and not that at the idea of these things being melted down per se, but just at the whole of what happened on Sunday morning. The fact that these people could that easily get into the Louvre has caused a lot of different kinds of emotional reactions. There's been anger. People are stunned. Some people are quite emotional about it.
The country's justice minister, he said that this is a certain sign of a failure. We have failed. It has been politicized. There's been people, particularly on the right wing of the spectrum, blaming the government for not putting enough money into security. There's been questions about what is the security of the Louvre.
And there's just been sort of people bemoaning the fact that this could happen in the center of the city. in the most famous, most visited, most coveted, most protected museum in France and likely the world.
Right. The reaction that you're describing sounds like it's one of a sense of self-questioning that's happening because of just how highly trafficked this area was. How could this possibly occur?
Right. Yeah, there's that sense and also just the sense of tragedy. This country watched the Notre Dame almost burn down and people lined the banks of the Seine with tears in their eyes, you know, many of them kneeling watching it. I think French people living here, they are... very critical culturally. They're people who like to strike. They like to complain.
They're pretty critical, but they love their history. If you go into a French bookstore, like one out of every four books is a history book. People know their history. They visit the museums. This is like a very important cultural place in French people's hearts. And I think people are appalled, shocked, and really grieving to a degree.
The thing that's really interesting is that, you know, France doesn't actually have a huge amount of royal jewels like this because of the revolution.
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