Do you have anything of value? Will thieves come after your stuff? Here are some of the strangest thefts in recent times.
Luxury items come in every shape and form. Do you think it would be more enjoyable to sit on a golden toilet when you need to relieve yourself? Are you interested in art, but the pieces you want to see, have disappeared? Wealthy people collect some crazy and strange items of value, but many of the items they collect are pretty typical, including supercars, designer clothes, and rare diamonds.
Here are some of the strangest thefts to give you a bit of a chuckle.
The toilet has value
This item is truly like flushing money down the drain. An 18-carat gold toilet worth $6 million was stolen from Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, in 2019. The theft took less than five minutes to pull off, which seems a bit crazy. Footage of the theft shows two vehicles driving across the Great Courtyard before figures with sledgehammers and a crowbar, wearing hoods, broke into the palace and took the toilet. That’s pretty brazen, especially since the thieves were caught on camera. The toilet was an art piece meant to poke fun at America, which is its name. It was believed, at the time of the trial, that the toilet was cut into pieces and sold for the gold value.
Going underground for art
You can probably think of a movie or at least a cartoon depicting criminals breaking into a museum or bank to steal valuable items. In 2002, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Asuncion, Paraguay, showed an extremely important exhibition. A group of thieves rented a vacant storefront only 80 feet from the Museum. They hired a staff for the store, which was pretty normal for a store. During the time the store was open, thieves were 10 feet under the store, digging an underground tunnel to the Museum. This was one of the strangest thefts in recent times, and many of the stolen paintings were not recovered.
Stockholm under attack
Another art theft that seems right out of Hollywood took place in the year 2000 when three men sporting ski masks walked into the National Museum with a machine gun and a couple of handguns. The security staff was caught off-guard, and so were the police. In addition to the armed robbery, two car bombs went off in different parts of the city while these masked men grabbed nearly $36 million worth of artwork. The getaway vehicle added to the story that would make a great movie; it was a motorboat that was parked outside the museum, giving the thieves a great way to escape. Within five years, all the paintings were returned, and ten people were arrested during the initial year.
Act like you belong
Would you question anyone dressed as a police officer in a museum? Probably not; you would likely think they were there to provide added security. In one of the strangest thefts in recent years, two men dressed as police officers robbed the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston. They took 13 pieces valued at more than half a billion dollars. This was the biggest art heist in the history of the United States. Empty frames hang where the art pieces once hung.
The quiet scream
In 1994, burglars entered the National Gallery Museum in Oslo and stole one painting. They were in and out of the gallery in less than a minute after breaking a window and cutting the protective wires with wire cutters. The only painting stolen was Edvard Munch’s The Scream. These quiet and somewhat polite thieves got away with an iconic painting in less time than any other art heist. The thieves left a note, “Thanks for the poor security,” which could be thought of as polite, but it really poked fun at the lack of security.
Jewelry, the target in the Green Vault
The Green Vault in the Royal Palace in Dresden was robbed in 2019. Two people broke in through what was supposed to be a secure window. This led investigators to believe the theft was an inside job. This smash-and-grab job took a lot of planning; the thieves started a fire at a nearby electric panel, which disarmed the alarms. They smashed through the displays with their ax and took nearly 100 pieces of 18th-century jewelry that once belonged to the ruler of Saxony. This was one of the strangest thefts in recent history, with damages and stolen goods valued at more than a billion dollars.
Emily Thompson