Louvre Thieves 'Surely Were Not Ocean's Eleven'

A brazen daylight raid on the Louvre last month was initially seen as a heist worthy of Ocean's Eleven, but prosecutors say the thieves weren't the criminal masterminds they initially seemed to be. The suspects, all from the northern suburbs of Paris and described by prosecutors as "small-time criminals," left behind a trail of blunders—including a glove, a truck that they attempted to set on fire, and the most valuable jewel of all: Empress Eugénie's diamond-and-emerald crown. Investigators say four people in custody, including three men believed to have been members of the four-person crew that carried out the theft, have no apparent links to organized crime, CNN reports.

DNA evidence and a history of previous convictions linked them to the crime, though authorities say a fourth member of the crew remains at large—"plus, no doubt, the person or persons who ordered the job." Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said two of the suspects were convicted in a 2015 theft case, the AP reports. She said a 39-year-old man in custody has 11 previous convictions, 10 of them for robbery, and a 37-year-old man has 15 convictions, two of them for robbery. Another suspect, a 34-year-old Algerian national, has a criminal history consisting mostly of road traffic offenses. Beccuau said their profiles don't match those "generally associated with the upper echelons of organized crime."

Beccuau said their criminal profiles are not surprising. "What we are seeing now is that people with no significant association with organized crime are progressing relatively quickly to committing extremely serious crimes." A 38-year-old woman in custody is the partner of one of the other suspects, investigators say. She has been charged with complicity in organized theft and criminal conspiracy. She was in tears during a court appearance Saturday and her lawyer said she was "devastated." Three other people arrested last week were released without being charged. In the Oct. 19 heist, which took just seven minutes, the thieves made off with jewels worth more than $100 million after using a truck with an extendable ladder to gain access to the museum's Apollo Gallery.

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"They surely were not Ocean's Eleven," Chris Marinello, head of Art Recovery International and founder of the Art Theft Register, tells the Telegraph. "In Ocean's Eleven, you don't get caught, you don't drop a crown, you don't leave DNA and you don't leave your tools behind. However, they did take on the Louvre, one of the most well-funded museums, in broad daylight. It's almost as if it were a glorified smash and grab." He says that French police did a "phenomenal job" tracking the suspects down but that it may be too late to recover the stolen crown jewels. "With jewelry, it's completely different to paintings," he says. "They can cut them up, break them up, and you'd never see them again."