National Gallery of Athens Theft
Honestly, this is a pretty interesting case. We have a heist called “the theft of the century” to talk about and then we can dive into a little more of what the police have found out and come all the way up to (almost) today and see where the pieces are now.
The Original Theft
Alright, so we’ll go back to the beginning. On the night of January 8, 2012, in Athens, there was one security guard on duty (along with many security alarms) at the National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum. At 9:00 pm he heard beeping coming from one of the alarms indicating that a balcony door had been opened. He went to check it out but saw nothing and resumed his shift as usual. About 20 minutes later he heard the same sound, and then again a few minutes later, and then again, but each time he checked everything seemed normal. This caused the guard to chalk the sounds up to a technical problem with that alarm and he shut it off so it would stop bothering him. Nothing else happened that was unusual until around 4:00 am the following morning when the guard was notified of tripped motion sensors in one of the galleries. He ran directly there and upon seeing a man holding two paintings and a drawing he yelled “Stop! Thief! Stop!” Of course, the thief didn’t obey this command and escaped from the museum, running away and not looking back.
The police were called and they arrived on the scene where they noted that three artworks were stolen in the heist; Woman’s Head by Picasso, Stammer Mill by Mondrian, and a pen and ink drawing by artist Guglielmo Caccia from the 16th century. Initially, they had no leads, the guard had not seen the thief well enough to identify them and since the alarm had been turned off the police didn’t arrive fast enough to catch them.
Years went by and the police continued to work the case with no luck. People were starting to believe that the paintings were never going to be recovered. They were especially sad about the Picasso work because he had dedicated it specifically to the people of Greece to honour their resistance to Nazi Germany in WWII. He wrote on the back of the canvas “For the Greek people, a tribute by Picasso”.
Fast Forward to 2021
I guess we can assume that the police were still working through the investigation but nothing had really happened and I think people had either forgotten about this heist or had assumed that the paintings were gone forever. But then, on June 30, 2021, news broke that the Greek police, acting on a tip they had received, had arrested a man in connection with the 2012 burglary. The man in question is 49-year-old construction worker George Sarmatzopoulos.
As soon as the police had him in custody he confessed to the crime. Like, immediately. According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, Sarmatzopoulos said “I want to tell you something else that I did many years ago, and it weighs on my conscience and I cannot sleep. In 2012, I went into the National Gallery and took three paintings. I will tell you everything in as much detail as I can remember” (Stoilas, 2021). This is the story that he tells about the crime and how everything unfolded.
For years before the heist ever took place, Sarmatzopoulos said that he would sit in the gallery for hours looking at the artworks. He said that he sat there for so long that he became so familiar with the artworks and the space that he started believing that one of them could be his. These thoughts, of taking and coveting one of the paintings, tormented him for years and eventually led to him committing the heist in the museum. For six months leading up to the night of the heist, he said he sat in the gallery, as usual, looking at the paintings but also looking at the security guards, their shift changes and patterns, the alarm system, where there were windows and cameras, etc. He would also hide outside the museum all night in the bushes and watch for any activity inside so that he knew exactly when guards made their rounds, when they changed shifts, and how many would be inside the museum at any given time.
Then it came time to actually execute the heist. In preparation, he bought all black clothes, and a black bag and packed a few tools from his construction work; a chisel, a hammer, and a knife. He told police that the day of the robbery was random but on Sunday, January 8, 2019, he took the subway to the museum and went into a wooden warehouse on the property to change into his black outfit and wait for 9:00 pm, when the museum was closed. After 9:00 he approached the building and found a balcony door that was unlocked, but as he pushed it open he could hear the beeping of an alarm. He knew that this would alert the one security guard on duty so he quickly left the balcony and went to smoke and think about his options. 20 minutes later he went back and opened the door again, causing it to beep again (does this sound familiar?). That’s when he hatched his plan to get around the alarms. He kept opening and closing the door over the next number of minutes and then hiding until the security guard shut off that alarm, thinking there was a problem with it.
He waited for a while, until just before 4:00 am, and he made his way into the gallery. He crawled into the main space with his bag and snuck up the stairs until he found himself in front of Woman’s Head by Picasso. He grabbed it from off the wall and placed it at the edge of the stairs while he retrieved Stammer Mill by Mondrian, and the pen and ink drawing by Caccia. He tried to stuff these into his bag but the frames didn’t fit so he ended up cutting them out. At this point, unbeknownst to him, he had triggered a silent motion alarm which caused the guard to come running towards him shouting. In a panic, Sarmatzopoulos ran out of the museum with the Picasso and Mondrian in his bag and the Caccia drawing in his hand. He told police that when he got outside and on the sidewalk, he realized that he had cut his hand and wiped the blood on the Caccia drawing and stuffed it in his pocket. He hid in the wooden warehouse that he had changed in prior to the heist and then when there were fewer police officers, emerged to take a taxi home.
Once he got home, he hid the Picasso and Mondrian inside some furniture in the largest bathroom in his house. The Caccia drawing was less lucky since it had blood on it, and therefore evidence, he ended up flushing it down the toilet and it’s never been seen again. Over the next few days, he disposed of all the tools he used and clothing he wore during the heist.
“The theft was planned and carried out exclusively by me. There was no accomplice,” he told police. “I did not intend to sell the paintings nor did I ever make any such effort. At one point I confessed to a girl I had a relationship with in England that I had the paintings," Sarmantzopoulos added, "but she didn't believe what I said” (Stoilas, 2021).
In May of 2019, there were some reports in the news that Greek police were close to catching the thief. These reports spooked Sarmatzopoulos and caused him to move the paintings from a warehouse where he had been hiding them to a ravine, storing them behind a large dense bush wrapped in plastic.
When Sarmatzopoulos was arrested and questioned (and told police this whole story) he took them to the spot where the paintings were hidden and low and behold there they were. Surprisingly there wasn’t too much damage done to them and they were restored to the National Gallery-Alexandros Soutsos Museum where they belong.
So why did he do it? Sarmatzopoulos told police that he was motivated by his intense love and passion for art (he even had the Twitter handle ArtFreak). He just wanted to have these paintings that he loved so much and that he was only intending to take one work but in the heat of the moment ended up stealing three. His lawyer argues that this must be the case because he made no effort to sell these paintings when he could have at least tried. Sarmatzopoulos also claims that he is extremely remorseful about what he did, saying “When I heard the policeman say that they found the package [holding the paintings]… I burst into tears and fell to the ground in thanks. That's how much I longed to return them. I am deeply regretful. I declare my complete remorse. I know I will be punished but I ask for leniency” (Stoilas, 2021). He currently is in custody awaiting trial.
Works Cited
McGreevy, Nora. “How a Self-Professed ‘Art Freak’ Pulled off a Bold Heist at Greece’s National Museum”. Smithsonian Magazine. 2021. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-self-professed-art-freak-pulled-off-bold-heist-greece-national-museum-180978092/
Stoilas, Helen. “The Biggest Mistake of my Life: 49-year-old ‘art freak’ Confesses to Stealing a Picasso and Mondrian from National Gallery in Athens”. The Art Newspaper. 2021. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/06/30/the-biggest-mistake-of-my-life-49-year-old-art-freak-confesses-to-stealing-a-picasso-and-mondrian-from-national-gallery-in-athens