Hundred-Million-Dollar Questions

Heist at the Louvre

The episode investigates the October 19, 2025 heist at the Louvre where thieves stole an estimated $100 million in jewels using brute force. Former FBI Art Crime Unit head Tim Carpenter and criminology

Key takeaways

• Former FBI Art Crime Unit head Tim Carpenter characterized the October 2025 robbery as an amateurish 'smash and grab' rather than a masterfully executed crime.
• Investigators collected 150 DNA/fingerprint samples from abandoned items like angle grinders, helmets, and walkie-talkies left at the Apollo Gallery scene.

Main topics

• Louvre heist investigation
• museum security vulnerabilities

Notable quotes

"In terms of a crime, there wasn't anything super sexy or unusual about this crime. It was just a brute force attack."

Conclusion

The episode underscores how institutional neglect and historical legacy

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) There's something so spooky about being in a place that's normally crowded with people and finding it almost empty. You feel like a big kid doing something you're not meant to. Speaker 2 (0:11) Are you hearing me okay? Speaker 7 (0:13) I'd heard about the heist hours after it happened on the morning of October 19th, 2025, and I was soon on the train to Paris. Now, you know a story's big when you overhear conversations about it all around you. I remember really clearly an elderly couple near me on the train discussing whether they thought it was an inside job. When I arrived in Paris, the Louvre was still closed to tourists, but I was allowed inside. Speaker 6 (0:38) It is extraordinary to be inside the Louvre. It is completely deserted, no visitors, and that is the Apollo Gallery. Speaker 7 (0:44) A makeshift barrier had been put over the gallery doorway to prevent anyone from going in. And I can see right through into the main area. It's a huge vaulted gallery, incredible gilded Speaker 5 (0:57) ceilings that came in through the window at the far end. Speaker 7 (1:00) At the time, we knew the basic outline of the crime, according to police. The window they entered through, the jewels they stole, their getaway on motorbike. But exact details of what happened inside that room, well, they wouldn't be seen by the public until months after the heist. That's when security footage surfaced. Video from inside the room that morning in October. It had no sound and only a couple of angles, but it showed two people standing next to two display cases. each of them using an angle grinder and cutting into the glass. Both cut most of the way in and then slammed their elbows and shoulders into the glass until eventually it gave way. They were in. They grabbed the jewellery and stuffed it into a small pouch. The crime took minutes. The repercussions would last a lot longer. Almost immediately after the thieves left, the investigation began. In the gallery and the street outside, investigators looked for clues to track down the jewels and the people who took them. We're going to talk about what they found at that crime scene. But the scrutiny didn't end there. Attention focused on the museum itself. Speaker 3 (2:21) New shocking revelations about the security at the Louvre, or lack thereof, according to ABC News. Speaker 7 (2:27) In this episode, what that scrutiny revealed. historical problems, visible vulnerabilities and mistakes at the most famous museum in the world. From ABC Audio, this is Heist at the Louvre. Speaker 7 (2:45) Episode 2 $100 million questions. Speaker 7 (2:52) Within days of the robbery, some in the French media were calling it cas du siècle, heist of the century. Tim Carpenter disagrees. Speaker 4 (3:02) In terms of a crime, there wasn't anything super sexy or unusual about this crime. It was just a brute force attack. Speaker 7 (3:11) Tim is the former head of the FBI's Art Crime Unit. Since 2004, according to the FBI's own statistics, This unit has chased down over 20,000 pieces worth over a billion dollars. They found a Norman Rockwell painting stolen from a private home in New Jersey 50 years ago, thanks to an anonymous tip. They tracked down a Monet looted by the Nazis during World War II, and that ended up in an auction in Texas in 2024. Now, a lot of people don't know that the FBI has an art crime unit. In fact, when he first joined the agency, Tim Speaker 4 (3:48) didn't even know. So imagine my surprise, you know, when I learn about this team. And of course, I'm jumping up and down and kind of pushing everybody out of the way. You know, I want to be on that team and part of that program. The reason Speaker 7 (4:02) Tim was so excited about this unit, long before he was an FBI agent, he was a budding teenage artist. But instead of going to art school, he joined the military. And most of his career, he was a bomb technician. Speaker 4 (4:15) People really had a hard time reconciling, well, you got this guy that's doing all this weapons of mass destruction, explosives and IED stuff, and then he's the art nerd over here on the side. Speaker 7 (4:26) Tim worked in the art crime unit for two decades until he went into the private sector a few years ago. Now he advises museums on how to improve their security systems. Tim says this wasn't the heist of the century. It was a smash and grab. Speaker 4 (4:41) You give them Speaker 7 (4:42) credit for Speaker 4 (4:42) doing their homework and having a great plan, but their execution was amateurish. So they made some mistakes. And frankly, they knew it. I think as they were leaving, their adrenaline's high. They're in a panic. They're trying to get out of their loop. I think as they got down the road, they already knew that they had screwed up. Speaker 7 (5:02) We don't know what doubt filled the minds of our thieves as they sped away into the Parisian streets, or if they had any doubts at all. What we do know is that they left a lot of clues behind them. Speaker 7 (5:16) Now, the ongoing investigation in Paris is top secret. All the details of how French police approached the case, they might never be made public. But Tim says he thinks he knows the first steps they would have taken. He says immediately there were signs that looked promising for investigators. The thieves had left items behind. Police said there was a walkie-talkie, a blanket, a glove. a helmet and a couple of angle grinders. From those items and the crime scene, investigators said they were able to get 150 samples of DNA and fingerprints. Now, they have likely been run through a database similar to the CODIS system in the US, where DNA from convicted criminals is stored. From that, investigators would be able to see if the thieves were previously known to French police. But investigators aren't just looking at physical evidence. The Louvre investigation looked closely at cell tower data in those early days too. If he was running this investigation, Tim said he'd be contacting every cell phone tower operator in range of the Louvre that day and asking for their data. Speaker 4 (6:30) Say we want to know every device that connected to that tower in the last 72 hours. At that pulse, you might imagine that's probably a pretty big list, and then you've just got to do investigative work. Speaker 7 (6:42) Finding the data that came from the thieves' phones, among the noise of tens of thousands of Lourdes visitors, is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. But Tim says it's possible if you know how to look. Speaker 4 (6:54) It's about establishing patterns. Which of these devices have been in the Louvre multiple times in the last month? Okay, which of those are staff? So if I know that the subjects, in this case, they came in on a scooter and I'm doing camera coverage and all of these things, right, then I can maybe establish a line of direction. It's an onion. You just start peeling the layers back. Speaker 7 (7:18) Finding out where the thieves came from might reveal their identities, and finding out where they went might reveal where the jewels had gone. And in cases like this, that's what Tim says he really cares about. I Speaker 4 (7:31) would always tell people, like an art theft case, our objective is probably not, primarily not, the arrest of the subject. We want to do that. We want to hold people accountable and charge the criminals. But our primary concern in a theft case is the safe recovery of the artwork. And so in that way, it's a lot like a kidnapping investigation. Speaker 7 (7:58) Investigators would have to follow the clues to find the kidnappers. Then they'd have to get them to talk, to reveal where the jewels had gone after they left the Louvre. And they would have to hope that they weren't too late. This has been a lot of work for French investigators, and they've been under a lot of pressure to get to the jewels before they're lost forever. Their investigation, as we'll find