The thieves who snatched millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry in a daring daylight heist at the Louvre museum on Sunday left behind numerous DNA samples.
Investigators found “more than 150 DNA, fingerprint and other traces” at the scene, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told French news site Ouest-France on Thursday.
These came from a helmet, angle grinders, gloves, a vest and other items used and abandoned by the four burglars, Beccuau said.
“The analyses take time, even though they are a priority for the labs. We are expecting results in the next few days, which may provide us with leads, particularly if the perpetrators were on file,” she said.
The hooded and masked thieves clambered up an extendable ladder onto a Louvre balcony on Sunday and broke into the first-floor Apollo Gallery, home to France’s remaining crown jewels.
This archive picture shows crown jewels on display in the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, where thieves broke in and stole eight piecesImage: Jim Hollander/IMAGO
They made away with eight pieces of jewellery once owned by French queens and empresses worth an estimated €88 million ($102 million).
Louvre thieves reportedly bungled initial attempt to open display case
But the thieves initially failed to open the jewelry display cases with angle grinders, Le Parisien news site reported on Wednesday, citing museum surveillance footage.
The perpetrators finally managed to break small openings in the cases with other tools and pull out the jewelry by hand, the paper said.
According to Le Parisien, the CCTV footage also shows that the internal alarm systems worked perfectly and immediately.
The first alarm went off at 9:34 am (0734 GMT) on Sunday when the burglars used a power tool to destroy the window of the balcony door.
Two museum employees tried to chase away the burglars before they could break open the display cases, the footage shows, Le Parisien said. But the footage shows the staff retreating, possibly out of fear that the burglars were armed.
Louvre Museum reopens after brazen jewel heist
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Gaps in CCTV coverage of Louvre’s outer walls
The Louvre’s director, Laurence des Cars, on Wednesday admitted that the thieves had taken advantage of a blind spot in the security surveillance to scale the museum’s outside walls.
Speaking to the French Senate, des Cars said she would push for a police station to be set up inside the Louvre and restrict parking around the Louvre to stop vehicles parking directly next to the museum.
She also pledged to upgrade the CCTV network of the world’s most visited museum.
Despite the CCTV failings at the museum, prosecutor Beccuau noted on Thursday that public and private security cameras elsewhere had allowed detectives to track the thieves “in Paris and in surrounding regions.”
She said she hoped that, with all the media attention on the robbery, “the robbers will not really dare move with the jewels.” “I want to be optimistic,” she said.
Edited by: Roshni Majumdar
