The Vault

The Vault by Crimes from Europe
  • 0.0 (0)
  • TRUE CRIME

The most valuable things in Europe keep disappearing. True crime stories about lost art. Art theft, museum heists, and stolen treasures, the stories behind Europe's most dramatic cultural crimes. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to Nazi looted art, told with the warmth of an art historian and the precision of a detective. New episodes every Wednesday.

  1. 5D AGO

    The Just Judges

    Ghent, Belgium, the night of 10-11 April 1934. One panel of twelve, cut out of a fifteenth-century altarpiece in Saint Bavo's Cathedral. Never recovered. The single most famous unsolved art theft in northern European history. The altarpiece is the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb — known as the Ghent Altarpiece — painted between 1426 and 1432 by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Twelve hinged oak panels. One of the foundational works of Northern Renaissance painting. By 1934 it had already been looted by Napoleonic France (1794) and would later be looted by Nazi Germany (1940). All those have been recovered. Except this one panel: the Just Judges, the lower-left of the open polyptych, depicting mounted figures in fifteenth-century Burgundian dress. For six months a series of typewritten ransom letters signed D.U.A. negotiated with the Bishop of Ghent. The companion John the Baptist panel was recovered as a sign of good faith from a luggage locker at Brussels North Station. The Just Judges was not surrendered. On 25 November 1934 a respected Belgian businessman named Arsène Goedertier had a heart attack at a public event, called for his lawyer, and confessed before he died that he was the only person who knew where the panel was hidden — and that the location was identified in his desk drawer. The drawer contained carbon copies of the ransom letters and a single line: "the Just Judges rest in a place where neither I nor anyone can fetch it without attracting public attention." That line has been studied for ninety years. The cathedral itself has been searched repeatedly with ground-penetrating radar. No retrieval. The panel is now replaced by a 1945 reproduction. Maren and Ellis on the deathbed and the desk drawer.

    10 min

  2. 5D AGO

    The Schiphol Diamond Heist

    Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands, 4 AM on Friday 25 February 2005. Two men in KLM uniforms, in a stolen KLM cargo van, drive through a perimeter gate of the cargo terminal. The single guard with a clipboard waves them through — the uniforms are correct, the van logo is correct, it is a routine pre-dawn cargo movement. They drive across the tarmac to a holding bay where a sealed shipping container is waiting to be loaded onto a 6 AM KLM flight to Tel Aviv. The container holds approximately a hundred and eighteen million dollars in uncut industrial diamonds. They hold up the bay guard at gunpoint. They tell him to lie face-down and count to three hundred. They load the three-hundred-kilo container into the van. They drive back out the same gate. The same guard waves them through. He notices the van is riding lower on the way out. He does not regard the difference as significant. The guard at the bay reaches an emergency phone. Within an hour, the abandoned van is found in a wooded area near Halfweg. The diamonds have been transferred to a second vehicle. They have never been recovered. The two men in the van have never been publicly identified. Multiple KLM employees were investigated for the inside leak. None was successfully convicted. This is, in absolute monetary terms, one of the largest single thefts in modern Dutch history. Maren and Ellis on the heist that did not circumvent security at all — that walked through the front door, in the right uniform, in the right vehicle, past the right guard, at the right time.

    9 min

  3. 5D AGO

    The Hatton Garden Heist

    London, Easter weekend 2015. A small group of British career criminals — average age 62, the eldest of them 76 — drilled their way into a safe-deposit vault below the central London jewellery district over a four-day Bank Holiday closure. They climbed through a lift shaft, assembled a 75-kilogram industrial diamond core drill in the basement, and cut three overlapping circular holes in 50 centimetres of reinforced concrete. They emptied 73 of the 195 boxes. Walked out the front door with the haul packed into wheelie bins, in daylight, on a London pavement. They returned for a second night. Estimated total take: between £14 million and £20 million in cash, gold and gems. They were caught because the Met placed audio surveillance on a Pentonville pub called The Castle, where the men met to divide the proceeds. The recordings ran for weeks. Brian Reader, the 76-year-old, had a previous gold-bullion conviction from 1983. Convictions came in March 2016. Most of the haul has never been recovered. The Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, which had operated continuously since the 1950s, never reopened. Maren and Ellis on the largest successful burglary in English legal history — a last commission, by retired specialists, in central London at Easter.

    9 min

  4. 5D AGO

    The Caravaggio

    Palermo, Sicily, the night of 17-18 October 1969. A heavy rainstorm has emptied the streets. Two men force the front door of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo, a small Baroque oratory in the centre of the old city, walls entirely covered in Giacomo Serpotta's seventeenth-century white stucco. They walk past everything except a single painting hanging above the altar. It is Caravaggio's Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. Painted in 1609, in the last year of his life. Fourteen square metres of canvas, dramatic chiaroscuro, the holy family attended by two saints, the Madonna's red robe in the lit centre. It has hung in the oratory continuously for 360 years. They do not remove the heavy gilded frame. They cut the canvas out of the frame with a sharp blade, along the inner edge of the moulding. They roll it. They walk out into the rain. By morning the frame is empty. The painting has not been seen since. Multiple Mafia informants over the decades have offered conflicting accounts — that it was kept in barns, damaged by rats and pigs, kept rolled in carpets, cut into pieces, eventually burned around 1980. The Italian Carabinieri's art-theft division has investigated for over 55 years. The case is still officially open. A high-quality reproduction now hangs in the original frame. Maren and Ellis on the most famous unsolved art theft in southern European history, and the empty frame that waited 32 years for an answer.

    9 min

  5. 5D AGO

    The Singer Laren Van Gogh

    The Netherlands, 30 March 2020. The third week of the first European COVID lockdown. The streets of the small wooded village of Laren, thirty kilometres east of Amsterdam, are emptier at three in the morning than they have been at any point in fifty years. A single man approaches the locked front door of the Singer Laren Museum with a sledgehammer. The doors give. He walks through the entrance hall, turns left at a specific corridor, walks past three other paintings without pausing, and arrives at the wall where Van Gogh's "Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" — on long-term loan from the Groninger Museum — is hanging. He lifts it from its hooks. He turns around. He walks back out. Total time inside the museum: three minutes and twenty seconds. The date is Vincent van Gogh's birthday. For three years the painting is missing. In April 2023 it is delivered, anonymously, in a small package, to the Amsterdam art detective Arthur Brand — who has spent a long career recovering high-profile stolen artworks through informal negotiation. The painting is intact. It is returned to the Groninger Museum within hours. The convicted defendant, Nils M., had been in custody on a separate Frans Hals theft since 2021 and was tied to the Singer Laren by DNA from the door frames. Whoever returned the painting has never been publicly identified. Maren and Ellis on a Van Gogh stolen on Van Gogh's birthday from a country that, that night, was as quiet as it has ever been.

    8 min

  6. MAY 2

    The Spider Man Of Paris

    Paris, the night of 19-20 May 2010. Vjeran Tomic — a career thief and climber the French press would soon call the Spider-Man of Paris — works for an hour on a window of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Loose bolts on a removable iron grille. He climbs in. He has come for one painting: a Léger he had identified on previous visits as a paying tourist. He plans to be inside for under five minutes. He smashes a glass case to take the Léger. Nothing happens. No alarm. No movement of guards. No response of any kind. The motion-detection system, the inquiry would later establish, had been broken for eight weeks. The contractor responsible had filed three written reports identifying the fault. The reports had been received and filed. The repairs had been authorised. The repairs had not been carried out. Tomic stands in the silent gallery. He moves, room to room. Picasso, "Le Pigeon aux petits pois". Matisse, "La Pastorale". Modigliani, "La Femme à l'éventail". Braque, "L'Olivier près de l'Estaque". He cuts each canvas from its frame. He rolls them. He climbs back out. Total time inside: between five and ten minutes. Total estimated value: a hundred million euros. Not one of the five paintings has ever been recovered. Tomic was convicted in 2017. He was a competent climber, not a supernatural one. The paintings left the Musée d'Art Moderne not because of his brilliance, but because of an unread email. Maren and Ellis on the night that Paris lost five masterpieces because somebody had not followed up on a contractor's report.

    9 min

  7. MAY 2

    The Boat Heist

    Stockholm, 22 December 2000. Fifteen minutes before the Nationalmuseum closes for the Christmas holiday, two car bombs go off in central Stockholm. Six hundred metres from the museum at one location, a kilometre away at another. They are not large bombs. They cause significant property damage. There are no fatalities. They are, by the planners' subsequent admission, diversions. While fifty Stockholm officers are diverted across central Stockholm to respond, three men in masks walk into the Nationalmuseum through the front entrance with handguns visible. They order staff and visitors to lie face-down. They walk up the marble staircase. They go directly to a small gallery on the second floor. They take three paintings. Renoir, "Conversation with the Gardener". Renoir, "Young Parisian". Rembrandt, "Self-Portrait", 1630. Total time inside the gallery: three minutes. They leave through a service door at the rear. Onto a small dock on the harbour. A motorboat is waiting with the engine running. They climb in. The boat pulls away. By the time the Stockholm marine unit can get on the water, they are gone. The convictions came in 2001. The paintings did not. Recovery took five years and two FBI sting operations on two continents. The Renoir came back in 2001. The Rembrandt was recovered in a Copenhagen hotel room in 2005. The second Renoir in Los Angeles, also 2005. All three are home. Maren and Ellis on the cleanest exit strategy in the history of European art theft — a small boat at a back dock, on a harbour, in a city built on water.

    9 min

  8. MAY 2

    The Big Maple Leaf

    Berlin, 27 March 2017. At 3:45 in the morning, three men cross a regional railway track at the rear of the Bode Museum on Museum Island. They place a ladder against the back wall. They climb to a second-floor window — left ajar by staff for ventilation — and they climb in. They walk to a glass case in a numismatic gallery. They smash the case with an axe. Inside the case is a single coin. The Big Maple Leaf. Issued in 2007 by the Royal Canadian Mint. Fifty centimetres in diameter. Three centimetres thick. One hundred kilograms of pure four-nines gold. Worth approximately 3.8 million euros at melt value, considerably more as a numismatic object. They have brought a hand-trolley. They wheel the coin to the window. They lower it eight metres on ropes. Onto a wheelbarrow waiting on the railway track below. They climb down. They wheel the coin three hundred metres along the track to a vehicle. They drive off. Total time: under twenty minutes. The Bode Museum thieves were members of the Remmo clan — the same Berlin-based extended family that, two years and eight months later, would walk into Dresden's Green Vault with axes. The Bode Museum theft was the rehearsal. The coin was almost certainly broken up and melted within days. Of the five Big Maple Leafs ever issued worldwide, by the end of 2017 there were four. Maren and Ellis on the wheelbarrow at the rear of one of Europe's largest numismatic collections — and the family who, in 2017, were learning.

    8 min
See All (19)

About

The most valuable things in Europe keep disappearing. True crime stories about lost art. Art theft, museum heists, and stolen treasures, the stories behind Europe's most dramatic cultural crimes. From the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to Nazi looted art, told with the warmth of an art historian and the precision of a detective. New episodes every Wednesday.

Information

  • Creator
    The Vault by Crimes from Europe
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Crimes from Europe
  • Show Website
    The Vault