van Gogh Museum Heist
In 2002 it took thieves under 4 minutes to break into the van Gogh Museum, steal two paintings and vanish into the night. How did they do it? Where were the paintings? And, how did they ultimately get recovered? (Yes, we have a happy ending).
December 7, 2002
Late at night on December 7, 2002 a ladder was leant against the exterior wall of the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, housing the largest collection of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings and drawings in the world. Two thieves wearing ski masks quickly scaled the ladder and used a sledgehammer to smash one of the windows on an upper floor of the museum. They entered the building and snatched two paintings off the wall of a nearby gallery; View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (the thieves later said they chose these too because they were the smallest and closest to the door). They then rappelled down the side of the building on a rope (not sure why they didn’t just climb down the ladder) and disappeared into the night in a car.
Let’s talk about these two paintings for a second before getting more into the details here. Both were painted pretty early in van Gogh’s career, before he had developed his signature style. View of the Sea at Scheveningen is, predictably, a view of the sea and was painted during the artist’s time spent in the Hague. It’s praised for its deft use of paint as van Gogh had primarily only been drawing until that point. Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen depicts the church where van Gogh’s father was the preacher and he painted it as a gift for his mother after she broke her leg. It’s difficult to say the value of these pieces because they had never been on the open market before the robbery but experts estimate that combined they’re worth about $4 million.
Ok, back to the crime. Thankfully, there was a security guard on duty that night at the museum and he called the police as the thieves were rappelling down the building. Like I said, it took them only 3 mins and 40 seconds to execute this crime so he didn’t have much time to make the call. One casualty of this speed was that View of the Sea at Scheveningen was damaged when the thief landed on the ground a little too hard. Police got to the scene rather quickly but the thieves had a police scanner and drove right past them, after taking their ski masks off, so didn’t arouse any suspicion.
The Investigation
The police honed in on a few suspects pretty quickly, wiretapping the phones of Octave Durham and Henk Bieslijn. The two men were trying to sell the stolen art which, as we all know, is notoriously difficult.
One person who Durham tried to sell the works to was shot and killed the day before the meet was supposed to take place. The killing was unrelated to the stolen works. Another buyer was Raffaele Imperiale, the chief of the Camorra crime family, he reportedly paid €350,000 for the paintings in March of 2003. They were quickly sent to Italy after the purchase and Durham and Bieslijn blew through the money in three weeks. This spending is what really tipped off police about them being the thieves.
When police went to Durham’s house to arrest him, he escaped out a window and climbed the side of the building. This guy just can’t stop climbing things. They eventually caught up with him in December, 2003 in Spain and were able to match his DNA to a baseball cap found at the museum the night of the theft. He was cooked.
Durham was sentenced to 4.5 years in jail and ordered to pay the van Gogh Museum €350,000 but only served three years and only paid ⅕ of what he owed. The entire time he was inside he didn’t reveal the whereabouts of the paintings and continued to assert his innocence. I can’t find any information on what happened to Biesljin so maybe he got away clean. Durham was sent back to jail after his release following a failed bank robbery, you think he’d learn.
The Homecoming
In 2013, Durham approached the van Gogh museum and said that he was ready to help them bring the paintings home. However, this all fell apart when it became clear that Durham expected compensation for his contribution.
Also in 2013 something interesting started happening to our crime family buddy Imperiale. He found himself in some hot water and fled to the United Arab Emirates, where he still lives. This move has saved him from over 20 years of jail time that some prosecutors were trying to get him for in Italy. Maybe looking for some leniency he wrote a letter on August 29, 2016 to Vincenza Marra, the public prosecutor, saying that he had the van Gogh paintings.
In September 2016, the police raided Imperiale’s mother’s house as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking (though they had also been investigating him in connection to the paintings for a while). They confiscated more than $20 million in assets and there, between the walls, wrapped in cloth were the two missing van Gogh paintings. They didn’t have their frames but were otherwise unharmed.
The paintings were displayed for three weeks at the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples as a thank you to the Italian officers who found the paintings, before being returned to the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. After a brief restoration break, they’re back on public view where you can go and see them today.
Works Cited
Kaplan, Isaac. “How Two Stolen van Gogh Paintings Made It Home After A 14-Year Saga”. Artsy. 2017. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-two-stolen-van-gogh-paintings-made-14-year-saga
Smolenski, MaryKate. “Van Gogh Museum Theft: The Journey of Two Paintings”. Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture. 2021. https://cmsmc.org/opeds/van-gogh-museum-theft