Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: Those two really were in love with one another, and that,
Speaker 2: as we know, can make you do crazy things.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. This episode isn't about a typical true
Speaker 1: crime story. There's no murder, but there doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be to make it a wild story. This is about manipulation, tragedy,
Speaker 1: and obsession, lots of obsession. Author Michael Finkel documented it
Speaker 1: in his book The Art Thief. Why do you think
Speaker 1: this book became a New York Times bestseller? You know
Speaker 1: this is not a traditional true crime book in that way?
Speaker 1: What is it that attracts readers to it? Do you think?
Speaker 2: I mean? Who doesn't go through a museum? Right? My
Speaker 2: wife and I love to go to museums and we
Speaker 2: will stop in front of a painting that we both
Speaker 2: love and we sort of look at each other and
Speaker 2: we're like, Oh, wouldn't that just look fantastic over the
Speaker 2: couch or something like that. Breitweiser, Stephan Breitweiser, who is
Speaker 2: the protagonist my book. He's the art thief if you
Speaker 2: cut away all the moral decrepitude. He lived this sort
Speaker 2: of amazing like dream life where he filled his bedroom
Speaker 2: with an estimated two billion dollars worth of art just
Speaker 2: to enjoy them. And who wouldn't be sort of interested
Speaker 2: in knowing? More like, is this guy a bastard? Is
Speaker 2: this guy a decent guy? Can I relate to him?
Speaker 2: Or am I completely disgusted by his behavior? It opens
Speaker 2: up a whole treaty of questions.
Speaker 1: Well, what's interesting to me about Stefan is how much
Speaker 1: his personal life plays into this. His mother and his girlfriend. Right,
Speaker 1: do we start from childhood or his relationships? Where does
Speaker 1: it make the most sense to give us context to
Speaker 1: how he ended up doing what he did.
Speaker 2: Breitweiser, Stefan the art Thief, was born in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: so all of everything we're about to talk about it
Speaker 2: is not only true, it's fairly current. He's French, grew
Speaker 2: up in the Alisaus region, which is where France, Switzerland
Speaker 2: and Germany sort of meet, had a pretty well did
Speaker 2: you upbringing. His parents divorced when he was a teenager.
Speaker 2: Father left the family, The mother, after the divorce settlement,
Speaker 2: bought this tiny little house in the suburbs of a
Speaker 2: kind of a not the prettiest of French cities, a
Speaker 2: town called Mulouse, and Breitweiser and his girlfriend moved into
Speaker 2: the attic of his mother's house. These two Stefan and
Speaker 2: An Catherine, people that were in their young twenties when
Speaker 2: they started. They stole more art at a quicker pace
Speaker 2: than really has ever been recorded. Breitwiser was like a
Speaker 2: little bit of a little bit of a delinquent, a
Speaker 2: couple of shoplifting episodes in his youth, always sort of
Speaker 2: a loner, a difficult child according to both of his parents,
Speaker 2: and then a person according to all those who knew
Speaker 2: him as a kid that was always obsessed with objects
Speaker 2: and collecting. Liked objects more than people, found beauty not
Speaker 2: in others, but in pieces of art that appealed to him.
Speaker 1: Did he have a good dynamic with his mother when
Speaker 1: he's in his twenties or does he continue to be
Speaker 1: difficult as he gets older?
Speaker 2: Oh, mother son relationships swear? Do we even start? So?
Speaker 2: I spent eleven years on this project to write a
Speaker 2: very short book. As a matter of fact, one of
Speaker 2: the advantages of spending a lot of time is that
Speaker 2: you have the opportunity to build up a lot of trust.
Speaker 2: And I reached such a level of trust with Stefan
Speaker 2: Breitweiser that he actually gave me signed written permission to
Speaker 2: read his psychology reports. So I did get a lot
Speaker 2: of insight into what was going on. So there's basically
Speaker 2: a triangle here, right, Wiser, his girlfriend A'm Catherine, and
Speaker 2: his mother, And remember he and his girlfriend lived in
Speaker 2: his mother's house. Breitweiser was a full time art thief.
Speaker 2: He committed over two hundred separate heists for three hundred
Speaker 2: works of art. But I mentioned that he didn't sell them, so,
Speaker 2: in other words, he might have been a full time artief,
Speaker 2: but really, that's just a very kind way of saying.
Speaker 2: He was an unemployed freeloader. He lived in his mother's basement,
Speaker 2: didn't even pay rent, and lied to his mother about
Speaker 2: where he was acquiring all this art, said, you know
Speaker 2: these are from yard sales or they're knockoffs. I just
Speaker 2: want to make the attic look beautiful. And at first
Speaker 2: I believe the mother believes it. But soon the whole
Speaker 2: triangle is involved in these thefts, and as things get
Speaker 2: crazier and crazier and this sort of inevitable breaking.
Speaker 1: Point, when does this all begin? What year are we
Speaker 1: talking about, sometime in the nineties, and where does he
Speaker 1: get the balls to make this first heist.
Speaker 2: Of his So it starts in nineteen ninety four. Breitweiser
Speaker 2: graduated from high school I believe in ninety one, so
Speaker 2: he was about twenty years old when he started. A
Speaker 2: couple things you should probably know before we get into,
Speaker 2: like how does someone get away with not just one
Speaker 2: to ten twenty fifty, but two hundred different heights? Like
Speaker 2: what kind of a master thief is this person? Or
Speaker 2: how did he do it? The start was really a
Speaker 2: few pieces of background. One one of Breitweiser's first jobs
Speaker 2: out of high school was as a museum security guard,
Speaker 2: and I mentioned how much he loved looking at works
Speaker 2: of art that appealed to him. And he quit this
Speaker 2: job after about a month, but really learn firsthand in
Speaker 2: a way that would be almost impossible through just observation,
Speaker 2: how security works in the museum, what are the limits
Speaker 2: of human observation, how do those cameras work, what's going on?
Speaker 2: And he also worked another job in a high quality
Speaker 2: art framing shop, ostensibly learning how to put frames on
Speaker 2: valuable paintings, but really learning how to take them off.
Speaker 2: After his father leaves, how his father inherited this wonderful
Speaker 2: collection of oil paintings, ivories, antique weapons, watches, things like that.
Speaker 2: After the divorce, the father gread inherited this took everything
Speaker 2: with him, and Breitweiser felt this acute, even though he
Speaker 2: was a teenager at the time, not just the sense
Speaker 2: of abandonment, but really missed these inanimate objects and pretty
Speaker 2: much the father leaves, the girlfriend enters the scene. They
Speaker 2: move into the mother's attic, and Catherine also has this
Speaker 2: like aesthetic eye. He Breitweiser spoke so lovingly of his
Speaker 2: girlfriend she was the one who sort of guided his
Speaker 2: love of art. The first piece they stole, they're walking
Speaker 2: through a small town museum. Now a lot of the
Speaker 2: museums Breitweiser stole from where these little local museums that
Speaker 2: are dotted all over Europe, though he also stole from
Speaker 2: huge museums almost the size of the Louver, as well
Speaker 2: as auctions and art galleries. But really mostly his main
Speaker 2: source of acquisition, shall we say, was from these small
Speaker 2: museums that are poorly guarded and have amazing works of art,
Speaker 2: but usually not the high tech security at a place
Speaker 2: like the Louver House. He sees this antique pistol in
Speaker 2: a display case in a small town museum, immediately thinks
Speaker 2: of the collection that his father had taken from him,
Speaker 2: and he says, oh my gosh, this reminds me of
Speaker 2: something my father had, except a heck of a lot nicer,
Speaker 2: a ton more valuable. And this is like the thing
Speaker 2: that one of the things I miss most that used
Speaker 2: to be in my house. And his girlfriend and Katherine
Speaker 2: basically looks at our boyfriend Steffan and says, we'll take it.
Speaker 2: I mean again, I'm telling you, this is a small
Speaker 2: town museum. They didn't even have a lock on the
Speaker 2: display case in this place. He basically slides it open.
Speaker 2: He's wearing his school backpack, puts this beautiful antique pistol
Speaker 2: in this backpack, and they run out of the museum,
Speaker 2: which he soon realized was probably a bad idea. Anybody
Speaker 2: running out of the museum that's now missing an item,
Speaker 2: it's pretty suspicious. They were panicked, and now it was
Speaker 2: sort of like a dare or a spontaneous moment of craziness.
Speaker 2: They're driving back to their apartment and thinking we're going
Speaker 2: to hear sirens at any minute. This is like the
Speaker 2: dumbest thing ever. They get home, they're like, do we
Speaker 2: just return at the museum? We throw it out the window?
Speaker 2: What do we do? And they like wait a few days.
Speaker 2: They're looking at all the newspapers. They're like, why haven't
Speaker 2: the police come? Is that? Could we really have gotten
Speaker 2: away with that? Is that even possible? And this panic
Speaker 2: sort of fades into maybe like acceptance, and then this
Speaker 2: like sense of elation and thrill starts going on. They
Speaker 2: have this amazing pistol in their attic chamber and they're like,
Speaker 2: let's take something else and you know, we got a
Speaker 2: lot of blank walls around us. Let's see what we
Speaker 2: could do about it. And from there and Katherine and
Speaker 2: Klin Class and Stefan Breitweiser embark on this ridiculous, extraordinary,
Speaker 2: illegal mission.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cross their minds that this would be good
Speaker 1: to sell luck on the black market somewhere. They literally
Speaker 1: have no intention of selling anything that comes later on.
Speaker 2: Just every real art thief, literally, like ninety nine point
Speaker 2: nine nine percent less than one in a thousand art
Speaker 2: thieves care at all about art. If if you're gonna
Speaker 2: name any famous art crime, it probably the Isabella Stewart
Speaker 2: Gardner Museum in Boston. By the way, it's unsolved from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety, more than thirty years ago. Those guys not
Speaker 2: only came in the night, attacked the night guards, bound
Speaker 2: their faces with duct tape, handcuff from the pipes in
Speaker 2: the basement. Already right, Wiser never used violence, or so
Speaker 2: much as the threat of violence to steal. But really,
Speaker 2: what these Gardner thieves did next is what Breitwiser hated most. Ball.
Speaker 2: They took a knife and they stuck it into a
Speaker 2: Rembrandt oil painting and cut the painting out with a knife. Basically,
Speaker 2: even if this painting has ever found, it will never
Speaker 2: be whole. Brightwiser, unlike almost every other art thief, stole
Speaker 2: because he loved these works and had these whack of
Speaker 2: doodle ideas about museums being prisons for art. Rightwiser described
Speaker 2: to me precisely what he wanted to do in front
Speaker 2: of work of art that just tickled all of his
Speaker 2: esthetic nerve endings. The first thing you want to do
Speaker 2: when you're seeing a work of art is sit in
Speaker 2: a very comfortable chair. Already, museums don't have like sofas.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would like to drink a glass of wine.
Speaker 2: You sort of want to run your fingers along the
Speaker 2: edge of it to feel the ridges of the paint.
Speaker 2: If you tried to do any of these things in
Speaker 2: the museum, I think they would frown upon it. So really,
Speaker 2: there are dedicated police forces in twenty different countries, including
Speaker 2: the United States, which has the FBI's Art Crime Team,
Speaker 2: twenty full time officers who are researching art in antiquities crime.
Speaker 2: But almost all the arrests are made when the thief
Speaker 2: tries to monetize the work, tries to sell it. That
Speaker 2: is the weak spot. When the art changes hands. It's
Speaker 2: not necessarily taking out of the museum, which is difficult
Speaker 2: onto itself. But museums, if you've been in them, you
Speaker 2: know those security guards are often senior citizens. They're not armed.
Speaker 2: That's not the hard part. The hard part is monetizing it.
Speaker 2: And by not even being interested in selling anything right
Speaker 2: wise was able to get away with things far long
Speaker 2: than almost anybody could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: So we have the pistol. What happens next. Does he
Speaker 1: make us switch to paintings at some point or do
Speaker 1: we have more weaponry from the past first, So the.
Speaker 2: Whole emotional rollercoaster from panic that they're about to be
Speaker 2: arrested to confidence that they should steal something else took
Speaker 2: nine months, which both seems like a long time and
Speaker 2: it is, and most are thieves steal once twice three
Speaker 2: times in a career. But nine months later they go
Speaker 2: to another museum, this one in a beautiful castle in Switzerland,
Speaker 2: and they take a crossbow, which, by the way, is
Speaker 2: a very large item, and in fact, you had to
Speaker 2: work it out of a window and drop it into
Speaker 2: these bushes and go around the outside of the museum
Speaker 2: and collect it. Yeah, so the crossbow. Nine months later,
Speaker 2: again sort of go through the whole cycle of panic,
Speaker 2: are we going to get caught? Oh my gosh, this
Speaker 2: is great hanging on the wall. I'm in ecstasy, hop
Speaker 2: into the four poster bed, and then think we need
Speaker 2: something else. And this time, this time, it was just
Speaker 2: a couple of months and then they yes, like you mentioned,
Speaker 2: they go to another museum in Swissend they finally steal
Speaker 2: a beautiful oil or trip from the seventeenth century, worth
Speaker 2: millions of dollars. Not that Breitweisers particularly cares about the price.
Speaker 2: He really cared about the esthetic reaction. I've been in
Speaker 2: museums with Brightweiser. Part of the time we spent together,
Speaker 2: and we spent lots of time together after trust was
Speaker 2: built up. You know, I saw that Brightwiser would go
Speaker 2: by ninety nine different paintings and just sort of nod
Speaker 2: and be laconic, and then he'd see something that he
Speaker 2: really loved in his entire mien, his entire attitude would change,
Speaker 2: his eyes would go wide open. He even described it
Speaker 2: to me as like an electric current was completed between
Speaker 2: him and the art. So they steal this painting. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons why the gardener thieves cut the canvas
Speaker 2: out of the rembrands they stole. Is that paint frames
Speaker 2: make it very unwieldy to steal a painting, like how
Speaker 2: do you walk out of a museum with us ending
Speaker 2: on a frame? So this is why Breightwiser would detach
Speaker 2: the frame. Almost all the paintings he stole were say
Speaker 2: the size of a pizza box or smaller. They could
Speaker 2: fit on the small at the small of his back.
Speaker 2: He liked to steal in cooler weather. He would wear
Speaker 2: a long overcoat and he would cover it. He would
Speaker 2: be very careful to protect the painting from scratches, warbage, dust,
Speaker 2: anything like that. So after stealing this painting, it was
Speaker 2: like a new level of euphoria in the attic room.
Speaker 2: And then Brightwiser and Anne Catherine after that, it's like
Speaker 2: without any sort of like practice or just pure happenstance,
Speaker 2: they became an unstoppable criminal team and for the next
Speaker 2: eight years they averaged one art theft every twelve days,
Speaker 2: which is an unimaginably fast pace and by some estimates,
Speaker 2: the value by the end of the incredible crime spree,
Speaker 2: the amount of art that was all over the walls
Speaker 2: of their attic chamber was more than two billion dollars
Speaker 2: worth of art.
Speaker 1: So what does mom think about all this? She's obviously
Speaker 1: been up there is there some sort of evolution in
Speaker 1: the way his mom thought about what was going on
Speaker 1: with Stefan and his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: Yes, at first I think the mom believes her son's lies,
Speaker 2: that these are just flea market finds, then gets a
Speaker 2: little bit suspicious, and then after a certain amount of time,
Speaker 2: realizes what's going on as much as she wishes that,
Speaker 2: you know, this wasn't the case. And then she's in
Speaker 2: a real bind. This is her only child, She's now complicit.
Speaker 2: There's a pile of stolen goods. What's going to happen
Speaker 2: if the police come in? So I believe that the
Speaker 2: mother until the very end was torn between basically having
Speaker 2: her throwing her son in prison for who knows how
Speaker 2: long could be extremely long time, and protecting him. And
Speaker 2: I feel sort of as a parent myself to three kids,
Speaker 2: I feel very much the agony or the anxiousness that
Speaker 2: this poor mother had to go through, like deciding like
Speaker 2: you want to tell your son quit, you got to
Speaker 2: stop this, you got to return this, you know. I
Speaker 2: feel like the only people that really knew Brightwiser while
Speaker 2: he was thieving was his girlfriend, his mother, and his
Speaker 2: mother's parents, his maternal grandparents, and all of them sort
Speaker 2: of knew what he was doing. And bizarrely, there was
Speaker 2: no parental figure here. Bizarrely, nobody really pulled him aside
Speaker 2: and said, hey, this is not the way an adult acts.
Speaker 2: You are not allowed to do this. They were all
Speaker 2: sort of overwhelmed with this guy's esthetic sensibility or his
Speaker 2: just pure bratishness. But there was this weird enabling that
Speaker 2: was going on.
Speaker 1: What are we talking about in the nineties in France,
Speaker 1: what would the penalty have been? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 1: I mean how long? How many years?
Speaker 2: This would have been Until very recently, and some of
Speaker 2: some international laws have changed because of Stefan Breitweiser. Until
Speaker 2: very recently, the method you used for stealing was more
Speaker 2: important than what you stole. For example, I mentioned that
Speaker 2: Breitweiser stole during the day without violence. He got into
Speaker 2: museums the same way we do, by buying a ticket.
Speaker 2: He paid for his and cash didn't want his credit
Speaker 2: card down. He would literally take paintings off the wall,
Speaker 2: remove the frame, leave the empty frame, as his calling card,
Speaker 2: walk out with it under his back, very carefully, very controlled.
Speaker 2: You know. Sometimes the police would literally be running in
Speaker 2: while he was walking out, and he always had this
Speaker 2: very air of casual and he would be holding hands
Speaker 2: with his girlfriend. He didn't seem suspicious. And to steal
Speaker 2: things from display cases rather than being like a master
Speaker 2: lock picker, he's simply His only tool that he used
Speaker 2: was a Swiss army knife, and he would if you're
Speaker 2: following me here, he would take the sharpest blade of
Speaker 2: his Swiss army knife. And if you picture a display
Speaker 2: case in the museum, usually like a big plexiglass cube,
Speaker 2: and have his little sliding door that's well locked to
Speaker 2: get things in and out. But he would just go
Speaker 2: to where there was a seam between two panels, and
Speaker 2: these are usually glued with silicon glue, and he would
Speaker 2: go to a corner of this box and he would
Speaker 2: just use this knife to slice the silicon glue vertically
Speaker 2: horizontally and on the third dimension and peel the panels apart.
Speaker 2: If you're following me, just sort of separate the panels
Speaker 2: by cutting the seal, peel them apart, slide his hand through,
Speaker 2: take what he wanted and then push the panels back together,
Speaker 2: and that's the way they want to be forced back together.
Speaker 2: And he would sometimes then move around the other things
Speaker 2: in the display box because he wanted it to seem untouched.
Speaker 2: He knows from working as a security guard. The security
Speaker 2: guard just sort of scan the rooms and if there's
Speaker 2: not an obvious blank spot, they're not counting, Oh there's
Speaker 2: eleven objects in there, there's only ten. Now they're just
Speaker 2: looking no big blank spot, no black spot on the wall,
Speaker 2: and onto the next room and he would just push
Speaker 2: the box back together. It would just remain that way.
Speaker 2: The lock has never been touched. And he has the say,
Speaker 2: a beautiful ivory carving at the smallestpacony walks out.
Speaker 1: So there is no your singular painting that you're looking,
Speaker 1: you know, on the wall, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the frame that you would notice. He's
Speaker 1: doing it strategically where there are other things in the case,
Speaker 1: and you would have to know the inventory to know
Speaker 1: something's missing. And did they not have curators walking around
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 2: Now, Sometimes when he stole a very prestigious item or
Speaker 2: a painting from like literally he stole some from like
Speaker 2: the entrance rooms to museum, like the most spectacular painting
Speaker 2: in a museum. Once or twice this was noticed within minutes,
Speaker 2: off in seconds. But sometimes he calculated it'd only take them,
Speaker 2: for example, twenty seconds to walk out a door. And
Speaker 2: he was very wise about spotting every security camera and
Speaker 2: sort of had this innate knowledge about where the lens
Speaker 2: would record him, and he was able to skirt this
Speaker 2: I'm talking for years, just walk out carefully. Other times
Speaker 2: this is even more absurd and yet also true. Bytherwiseer,
Speaker 2: I had this thought that whatever an art thief would
Speaker 2: never do is something that he should consider doing. For example,
Speaker 2: he would take a painting off a wall, or an
Speaker 2: item that he could hide at the small of his
Speaker 2: back or sometimes in an Catherine his girlfriend's purse, and
Speaker 2: when the police would be coming within seconds and maybe
Speaker 2: the museum locked down. More than once, stefan And and Katherine
Speaker 2: went to the museum cafe with the stolen object on
Speaker 2: them and casually got themselves some lunch. Now that seems
Speaker 2: like the most absurd thing to do after an art crime,
Speaker 2: but just think about this. The police are running in
Speaker 2: the last people they are going to suspect have a
Speaker 2: stolen object of the ones casually eating lunch in the cafe,
Speaker 2: they're going to run right by them. And it was
Speaker 2: sort of this ability to subvert expectations, this sort of
Speaker 2: san foi cold bloodedness, this way to appear calm at
Speaker 2: all times, to make these lightning fast strikes where people
Speaker 2: sometimes he stole walk literally where guards or other tourists
Speaker 2: were in the room. He could take it. He could
Speaker 2: put it under his jacket and walk out so casually
Speaker 2: that nobody noticed for enough time for him to either
Speaker 2: go to the museum cafe, walk out the door and
Speaker 2: onto the streets. Anyway, because he did this non violently.
Speaker 2: If you steal a chocolate bar with a gun, in
Speaker 2: the eyes of the law, until very very recently, that
Speaker 2: seemed like a worse thing to do than stealing the
Speaker 2: mona Lisa without using violence. It was it wasn't the value,
Speaker 2: and you could sort of see that it wasn't the
Speaker 2: value of the thing you stole. It was the methodology.
Speaker 2: And so and again they've now started doing these sort
Speaker 2: of like cultural Treasure's laws. But this was like back
Speaker 2: in the you know, in the late nineties and early
Speaker 2: two thousands, so bright Wiser even after he's eventually caught,
Speaker 2: does not get punished in any remotely any sort of
Speaker 2: punitive fashion that you would think would be just just
Speaker 2: like four years in prison. And he gets out, and
Speaker 2: what's the first thing he does when he gets out?
Speaker 2: He immediately starts stealing art again.
Speaker 1: Now I want to know what this psychological evaluation was,
Speaker 1: what it revealed that he allowed you to look at.
Speaker 1: Is there a diagnosis that sounds to me like, because
Speaker 1: I write a lot in the eighteen hundreds, it sounds
Speaker 1: like monomania is what they would call it. The obsession
Speaker 1: is that sort of what people are saying was going
Speaker 1: on with him.
Speaker 2: So I got to see a couple of full reports
Speaker 2: and at least excerpts from five different psychologists, and psychologists
Speaker 2: struggled to say what is exactly wrong with him? I mean,
Speaker 2: it might be easy to shout kleptomaniac, and he didn't
Speaker 2: at all fit the de finistion of kleptomania, which is
Speaker 2: someone who really likes to steal, doesn't really care about
Speaker 2: what they steal. And the hallmark of kleptomania is after
Speaker 2: you've stolen something, it's always followed by a letdown, steeped
Speaker 2: in like shame and regret. You're sort of ashamed about
Speaker 2: your obsession. Well, Brightwahers is completely the opposite. He cared
Speaker 2: very much about what he stole, He never felt any
Speaker 2: guilt about it, and he exalted and celebrated his crimes
Speaker 2: rather than felt guilty. So there was no great diagnosis
Speaker 2: except for this sort of theory by a couple of
Speaker 2: psychologists that temptation, something about Brightwisher's inability to control this
Speaker 2: temptation like maybe a drug addict who knows that they
Speaker 2: shouldn't be doing more but can't stop it, like an addiction,
Speaker 2: And it was sort of that level. If you know
Speaker 2: any collectors, there is that sort of sense of addiction.
Speaker 2: And this is not just a collector, but a collector
Speaker 2: who has extraordinarily competent skills of beaving things from museums.
Speaker 2: So you know, he told me because of people like
Speaker 2: the Isabella Stuart Gardner thieves, that he did not like
Speaker 2: to be called an art thief, though he never denied
Speaker 2: a single one of his crimes. Who went over all
Speaker 2: two hundred of his crimes piece by piece, and I
Speaker 2: double checked it with police reports and reconfirmed every time
Speaker 2: that there was a disagreement between the police report and
Speaker 2: his report, and we would sort of sort of fill
Speaker 2: in the blanks. But he never felt guilty, never felt
Speaker 2: like he had enough that he always sensed this, like
Speaker 2: any true collector, that he must have more. He didn't
Speaker 2: want to be called an art thief. He really liked
Speaker 2: to be called an art collector, perhaps with an unorthodox
Speaker 2: acquisition style, but really he felt himself like a collector.
Speaker 1: Well, paint the scene for me. We've got this attic
Speaker 1: that's full of about three hundred you said, different pieces
Speaker 1: right over this eight year period. What I am curious
Speaker 1: about is how two people come together. You know, you
Speaker 1: have one who has this obsession. Does on Catherine take
Speaker 1: it on or is there part of her personality that
Speaker 1: could have predicted that she would be an accomplice or
Speaker 1: even an instigator to all of this. It just seems
Speaker 1: unlikely to have two people with this level of obsession
Speaker 1: over artwork.
Speaker 2: I think you completely correct. It's not just unlikely, it's
Speaker 2: perhaps historically unprecedented. Poor On Katherine, she falls in love
Speaker 2: with a thief, she liked these pieces of art. She
Speaker 2: wasn't She didn't have this crazy obsession like her boyfriend did.
Speaker 2: But I also think that there was this sort of
Speaker 2: frision of oh, you know, there's the thrill of the crime,
Speaker 2: the Bonnie and Clyde. But after a while, after a
Speaker 2: couple of crimes, after a dozen crimes, and Katherine already
Speaker 2: was like, what's the end game here? Like, what do
Speaker 2: you do? The police are not going to like stop
Speaker 2: looking for you after a couple of weeks, because you have,
Speaker 2: you know, you have so much stuff. So like she
Speaker 2: started getting logically increasingly panicked, like what do we do here?
Speaker 2: What did I get myself into? And even if she
Speaker 2: left right wiser behind, suddenly she's still an accomplice. So
Speaker 2: it all dawns on her that what may have started
Speaker 2: out as a sort of crazily daring Bonnie and Clyde
Speaker 2: ish Chahn becomes all too real where I'm Katherine. She
Speaker 2: at first is like, hey, man, let's cool this down,
Speaker 2: let's not steal so much, let's wear gloves. He didn't
Speaker 2: even wear gloves. And the problem is, at the same
Speaker 2: time that a Katherine with every theft and Catherine keeps
Speaker 2: getting more and more and more nervous thinking they're about
Speaker 2: to get caught, the exact opposite is happening with Stephan
Speaker 2: Brightways or her boyfriend. He's getting more and more confident.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh my god, this is so easy. I
Speaker 2: can steal bigger pieces, more often from more heavily protected museums,
Speaker 2: and so you know there's inevitably going to be a
Speaker 2: fissure in the relationship.
Speaker 1: Well what ends up happening. So she is growing more nervous,
Speaker 1: he is becoming more emboldened. The mother is trying to
Speaker 1: avoid it. Sounds like all of this and pretending like
Speaker 1: it's not happening, And any moment the police in France
Speaker 1: could come knocking on the door and say, we've followed you,
Speaker 1: somebody spotted you, we can identify you. What is the
Speaker 1: breaking point for all of this? Is it one particular
Speaker 1: piece of art or is it Katherine probably just having
Speaker 1: a big breakdown over it.
Speaker 2: So obviously the pressure is building. Breitwiser keeps coming home
Speaker 2: with more art, and Katherine eventually is like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I really don't want to be a part of this anymore.
Speaker 2: But she wants to leave him, but she's also in
Speaker 2: love with him, so everything is you know. The mother,
Speaker 2: of course, can only bury her head in the sand
Speaker 2: for so long, so you can really, I can imagine
Speaker 2: this sort of everything coming to a boil. Finally, and
Speaker 2: Catherine makes like these rules to contain her boyfriend. And
Speaker 2: one of the rules and Katherine worked a part time
Speaker 2: as a nurse's assistant in a hospital, and she brings
Speaker 2: home these surgical gloves and she's like, that's it. You
Speaker 2: have to start wearing surgical gloves from now on. He
Speaker 2: just like leaving fingers at prints everywhere. She's just like,
Speaker 2: she knows she can't stop her boyfriend. She knows she's
Speaker 2: like kind of attached to him by the binds of
Speaker 2: criminal bonds and also this ridiculously unhealthy but undeniable love affair.
Speaker 2: So she says, you must wear gloves. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to join you. I'm not even going to service. Lookout,
Speaker 2: Please don't steal anymore. But she knows that he can't
Speaker 2: help herself. He comes home with this amazing bugle, old
Speaker 2: plated owned by Wagner the composer, like this historical amazing bugle,
Speaker 2: and he starts telling his girlfriend, who comes home from
Speaker 2: her job at the hospital, this stylish crime where he
Speaker 2: had to climb on a radiator and hook unhook these
Speaker 2: knots tying the bugle to the ceiling and sort of
Speaker 2: leap down and couch a very stylis acrobatic athletic theft
Speaker 2: by Breitweiser, who's a skinny, short, sort of whippity guy
Speaker 2: that both used his mind and his sort of gymnastic
Speaker 2: like physique to steal things in incredibly ways that I
Speaker 2: tried to document a couple dozen of them in the book. Well,
Speaker 2: the only question An Catherrine has he doesn't really care
Speaker 2: about the stylist, that they've already stolen two other bugles before.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't need anything else. The room is full,
Speaker 2: they're living in, you know, the most amazing thing anymore,
Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, tipping over into Junkyard rather
Speaker 2: than in the room of the louver. She says just
Speaker 2: one question to him, did you wear those gloves? And
Speaker 2: she could tell immediately by the look on his face.
Speaker 2: He's like, oh, honey, honey, I'm so sorry. I needed
Speaker 2: apps dexterity, and she is infuriated, and it's sort of
Speaker 2: like this little breaking point where she's like, the one
Speaker 2: fing thing I asked you to do he didn't do,
Speaker 2: and she's getting furious and bright Weiser's like, I'll make
Speaker 2: it good. I'll make it good. I'll drive back to
Speaker 2: the museum and erase my prince. She's like, let's go
Speaker 2: together and erase the prince. So they drive back to
Speaker 2: the museum from which he had just stolen a beautiful bugle.
Speaker 2: The one time in Breitweiser's life, literally that he had
Speaker 2: no intention of stealing, just wanted to cover up the
Speaker 2: tracks of his crime. The one time he's going back
Speaker 2: to the seat of a crime, the person who's working
Speaker 2: the front desk notices that this is the same guy
Speaker 2: in the jacket that just stole the freaking bugil is back,
Speaker 2: and it is this moment this chin to appease his
Speaker 2: It's just girlfriend's fault, you know, trying to appease his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: going back to the scene of a crime that causes
Speaker 2: his arrest. But most fascinatingly, when the police arrests Breitweiser,
Speaker 2: they did not know that he was with his girlfriend
Speaker 2: and three and he's not arrested. She gets away, and
Speaker 2: so there's this moment where Breitweiser is cuffed hands behind
Speaker 2: his back and he realizes that the police don't know
Speaker 2: about I'm Catherine, and he looks up at her and
Speaker 2: she looks up at him. They're both like, have this
Speaker 2: crazy panic look on his face. And that's the last
Speaker 2: time he sees his girlfriend for years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So Bridbrush gets arrested. He is completely making contact with
Speaker 2: his girlfriend or his mother. His greatest fear, of course,
Speaker 2: is that the police are going to come into his
Speaker 2: house and go up into the attic, and so like
Speaker 2: he's trying to make up these stories. It's the only
Speaker 2: thing I ever stole. He admits to stealing the bugle.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'll bring it back to you unharmed. And
Speaker 2: he's like writing these letters to his mother and his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: like please bring that bugle back. You know it's in
Speaker 2: the basement. Wink wink. You know he doesn't want him
Speaker 2: to say that it's in the attic. He doesn't hear
Speaker 2: any response. He's being held by the police in Switzerland
Speaker 2: where he stole the bugle, under restrictive custody. He's increasingly panicked.
Speaker 2: He he knows that, you know, the world is about
Speaker 2: to end. It takes the Swiss police about three weeks.
Speaker 2: That's a long time to be in jail without having
Speaker 2: any information to get an international search warrant. Two Swiss
Speaker 2: police officers join up with two French police officers. They
Speaker 2: go to the mother's house in the suburbs of Mulus,
Speaker 2: knock on the door. They have a search warrant, so
Speaker 2: the mother has no option but to let the officers in.
Speaker 2: They walk up this narrow stairway. There's a doorway to
Speaker 2: the attic, and they open the doorway to the attic
Speaker 2: and inside is nothing. A four poster bed and blank walls,
Speaker 2: not so much as a picture hook. They look like
Speaker 2: they've been freshly painted, and everything is gone.
Speaker 1: So the police go in and there's three weeks to
Speaker 1: cover all of this up. Is there now a collusion
Speaker 1: or what's happening? Who is implicated in all of this
Speaker 1: at this point?
Speaker 2: So yeah, so Bredwiser's you know, he's arrested, he's held
Speaker 2: in jail. What design Catherine do? She gets into their
Speaker 2: car that they had just driven to the museum to
Speaker 2: try and erase the fingerprints. So what does Don Cathrine do?
Speaker 2: She presumably drives back to the mother's house and says
Speaker 2: to the mother, Uh, you know, all that stuff in
Speaker 2: the room, every bit of it is stolen. Now while
Speaker 2: breit Weiser's in jail. The whole story that you've read
Speaker 2: up to the changes in which the girlfriend who is
Speaker 2: sort of this first willing and then unwilling and then
Speaker 2: sort of a victim of like you can almost call
Speaker 2: it emotional abuse from her boyfriend, and then the mother,
Speaker 2: who is seemingly like sort of trapped. The two women
Speaker 2: eventually take matters into their own hands and become almost
Speaker 2: the like the second half of the book's real criminals.
Speaker 2: While Breitwiser's locked up, these two come up with their
Speaker 2: own scheme, and that's why the attic is empty, and like,
Speaker 2: what happens to three hundred works of art worth two
Speaker 2: billion dollars? Where did they all go? And that's sort
Speaker 2: of that's sort of where the story speeds to.
Speaker 1: But what is the manipulation that we're talking about? What
Speaker 1: is Stefon trying to do in Switzerland to influence any
Speaker 1: of this from happening? You mentioned emotional abuse, which seems
Speaker 1: like a huge jump from this sort of charming thief.
Speaker 1: We're going to have sex in front of some Renaissance
Speaker 1: paintings to somebody who obviously is trying to save his
Speaker 1: own skin. What was that transition like for on Catherine
Speaker 1: and for the mother, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I know that on Cathrine wanted there to be
Speaker 2: like some sort of ending to the crime spree, and
Speaker 2: I suppose the mother did too, and whether that's the
Speaker 2: one they planned, that's the one they got now that
Speaker 2: Brightwater was in prison. So bright what he was doing
Speaker 2: on his end was begging one of his either his
Speaker 2: girlfriend or his mother, to just bring this stolen piece back,
Speaker 2: show the Swiss authorities that this is he made a mistake.
Speaker 2: He stole this bugle, but here it is in perfect condition.
Speaker 2: I've returned it, you know, give me a month or
Speaker 2: two in jail. Don't go searching through my house. You
Speaker 2: know I've returned, but I've stolen. You know, you have
Speaker 2: no other proof. That was his sort of desperate hope,
Speaker 2: and I think the hope of the two women was like,
Speaker 2: oh my goodness, we're all about to be imprisoned because
Speaker 2: of what my boyfriend slash or my son did. So
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of panic, I believe going on
Speaker 2: in the house. And rather the smartest thing in the
Speaker 2: world would be to let the police come give them
Speaker 2: all the works of art back so they could be
Speaker 2: returned to museums. They're all were kept in beautiful shape
Speaker 2: with a few minor exceptions, neither of the women would
Speaker 2: have gotten into severe trouble if they had just returned
Speaker 2: everything that they did the exact opposite of that.
Speaker 1: And what do you think that was? I mean, what
Speaker 1: led to that change? Where he was the one driving
Speaker 1: all of the emotion behind this. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that they went against him and made this sort of
Speaker 1: independent decision which we can all guess what was kind
Speaker 1: of what road we're going down here? Why did they
Speaker 1: not think that his plan was the better plan than
Speaker 1: what they decided.
Speaker 2: I don't think Brightweiser had a plan at all for
Speaker 2: getting caught. I think that he thought he was invincible.
Speaker 2: You know, at first the police figured, oh my goodness,
Speaker 2: you know, they obviously had this else safe plan in place.
Speaker 2: Breit Wiser knows the art thief that's in prison, he
Speaker 2: knows where all this art went. Had this you know, Oh,
Speaker 2: if I get caught, you hide it here and we'll
Speaker 2: get it later and we'll do this. That's what they thought.
Speaker 2: But in truth, bright Weiser had no idea what happened.
Speaker 2: He was as shocked as anyone. This is also again
Speaker 2: proven to be true when he finds out that the
Speaker 2: attic is empty. He doesn't know where his sixty nine
Speaker 2: paintings are, his one hundred pieces of silver as either,
Speaker 2: he has no idea. I think the women were tired
Speaker 2: of this rat in their lives, and I think there
Speaker 2: was a measure of relief when Breitwiser got arrested. I
Speaker 2: know for a fact that an Katherine wanted she needed
Speaker 2: to figure out how to wait to get out of this,
Speaker 2: and did that the trial and Katherine manages to make
Speaker 2: an amazing escape. She says that she really never helped
Speaker 2: out with the crimes. She didn't even know that he
Speaker 2: was stealing. She know there are videos here, there's video
Speaker 2: evidence that showing the exact opposite. There's home videos of
Speaker 2: her lounging in the four poster in the room saying,
Speaker 2: you know, this is my kingdom filled with stolen art.
Speaker 2: There's like videos of them. But yet none of these
Speaker 2: videos were shown during the trial. Like I said, I
Speaker 2: worked on this for more than a decade. Took it
Speaker 2: took years to unearth these these home videos, they weren't
Speaker 2: shown at the trial. And Catherine portrays herself as someone who, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't even know he was stealing. He was just
Speaker 2: bringing home these works of art and bride. Weiser, to
Speaker 2: his credit, wanting to like still in love with his girlfriend,
Speaker 2: says oh yeah, yeah, she didn't know it was all
Speaker 2: me and sort of protects her. She gets off and
Speaker 2: he is the one who's in prison. So it's sort
Speaker 2: of this very weird sort of switching of positions.
Speaker 1: So we don't want to ruin exactly what on Catherine
Speaker 1: and Stefan's mother do, but it sounds like eventually this
Speaker 1: all comes to a head. They get caught and he
Speaker 1: goes on trial, and you said that he essentially covers
Speaker 1: up for her and she gets to vanish into the night.
Speaker 2: Exactly that brid Wes is the one who goes to jail.
Speaker 2: The mother actually served a minor a jail sentence. I'm
Speaker 2: Katherine one night in jail. But again I'll fill in
Speaker 2: some more details because it'll help sort of enlighten so
Speaker 2: bright Weiss. By the time he comes to trial in France,
Speaker 2: first he's tried in Switzerland, spends a year in jail
Speaker 2: waiting for his French trial to start. This is the
Speaker 2: trial in which so bright Wester has tried by himself
Speaker 2: in Switzerland. Then he's tried with his mother and his
Speaker 2: girlfriend in France and he's defending his girlfriend the entire time.
Speaker 2: She didn't know she was using the bathroom when I
Speaker 2: stole that, or even once in a while she told
Speaker 2: me not to do it, and I ignored her. And
Speaker 2: she's going along with all of Breitweiser's testimonies to the police.
Speaker 2: It's all me, it's all me, but I believe that.
Speaker 2: I mean. The proof that she was thrilled to be
Speaker 2: out of this relationship is when he finally is released,
Speaker 2: not released. He's transported in a prison van. He's released
Speaker 2: from Switzerland, but he's immediately brought put in jail in
Speaker 2: France awaiting his trial, where he's going to serve the
Speaker 2: rest of his Swiss term plus his French term. After
Speaker 2: defending his girlfriend, I'm Katherine walks in and she's got
Speaker 2: a baby with somebody else. She starts a family, which
Speaker 2: she'd always wanted to do, and breit Weiser sees this
Speaker 2: and had no idea and tries to take back at
Speaker 2: his own trial at the last minute, like no, all
Speaker 2: this testimony and then is completely like caught, the truth
Speaker 2: suddenly makes no difference in its all emotion to the fore.
Speaker 2: Eventually he sort of acquiesces, and Catherine gets off. The
Speaker 2: mother serves the light sentence, he serves a longer sentence,
Speaker 2: and is finally released, a penniless to move back in
Speaker 2: with his mother.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, she took him back. Huh.
Speaker 2: The poor mother doesn't even know what to do. And
Speaker 2: as I, as I hinted earlier, realizes that first of all,
Speaker 2: somebody with a criminal record that has no job experience
Speaker 2: isn't about to find a decent paying job. In fact,
Speaker 2: like he finds like the worst jobs and manner imaginable,
Speaker 2: like cleaning restaurant toilets on a Sunday. Like he's completely depressed,
Speaker 2: and he realizes almost being free was in some ways
Speaker 2: worse than being in prison. When he was in prison,
Speaker 2: he had no choice. It was just ugliness all around him.
Speaker 2: Now he's free and he does these blank wall without
Speaker 2: any works of art on it and no money, no
Speaker 2: means to get it, and he's like, all he wants
Speaker 2: to do is look at something beautiful. And he sort
Speaker 2: of has this mental tug of war between realizing that
Speaker 2: he just got out of jail and that he's only
Speaker 2: good at one thing, and only one thing makes him
Speaker 2: really happy. You know, women, friends, nobody can be trusted.
Speaker 2: Everybody will stab you in the back of the end,
Speaker 2: but painting, a beautiful painting will never, never, never let
Speaker 2: you down. And he goes and steals something else in
Speaker 2: the whole cycle, gains again, and it's like he's not
Speaker 2: doing it for money, but just for this aesthetic fulfillment,
Speaker 2: which makes some sense, no sense. But anybody who has
Speaker 2: been carried away by something beautiful again, whether sunset over
Speaker 2: the rocky mountains, a lover or a Picasso sort of
Speaker 2: understands this irrational connection that you can have with something beautiful.
Speaker 1: Where does it end for him? Though? So he does
Speaker 1: this after serving this time, and he comes out and
Speaker 1: he steals something, I mean, does he end up back
Speaker 1: in jail? Like, what's the end of your story?
Speaker 2: Like? So, as I mentioned at the outset, this is
Speaker 2: a modern story. This is not historical fiction. The last
Speaker 2: time I saw Breitweiser was at his trial in March
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty three. The book continues up to literally
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty three, and again the first half is
Speaker 2: this incredibly risky, ridiculously daring rise and then the wing,
Speaker 2: the wax wings melt. In the second half is this
Speaker 2: incredibly distressing, horrific crash, and so Breitwiser's right now as
Speaker 2: we're speaking, under control of the French penal system, and
Speaker 2: also at the same time he's on like a house
Speaker 2: arrest at this point. He kind of got lucky by
Speaker 2: the during the COVID pandemic, when non violent criminals were
Speaker 2: released from prisons, not just in France but also in
Speaker 2: the United States and elsewhere. Has been able to just
Speaker 2: avoid being imprisoned, and said has like an ankle monitor.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised if right now as we're speaking,
Speaker 2: he has unscrewed his ankle monitor and is in a
Speaker 2: museum now sizing up of art.
Speaker 1: How are we meant to think about him at the
Speaker 1: end of this I mean, I know that there are
Speaker 1: mixed feelings probably about on Catherine and the mother, But
Speaker 1: as a complicated character, what were you left with after
Speaker 1: you were done talking to him about this book? You
Speaker 1: probably know him better than most.
Speaker 2: What I hope other readers take away from this and
Speaker 2: what I took away with this Breitweiser, who if he
Speaker 2: wasn't a thief, he could have been the most amazing
Speaker 2: art professor of all time. I loved talking about art
Speaker 2: with him. I loved walking around a museum with him.
Speaker 2: I've never experienced someone. And even all his five therapists,
Speaker 2: despite really denigrating him, calling him like a cancer on
Speaker 2: society and incorrigible thief, all of them, all five of
Speaker 2: them agreed along with the police officers, that he truly
Speaker 2: was obsessed with these works of art. He did not
Speaker 2: try to monetize it. He truly was an esthete of
Speaker 2: like the most sensitive form, walking through museums and discussing
Speaker 2: art and showing me what he saw. When he encountered
Speaker 2: a work of art changed the way that I encounter
Speaker 2: works of art. I no longer walk through a museum
Speaker 2: the same way. Like this whole intellectualizing that people tend
Speaker 2: to do, I'm guilty at charged. Where you what do
Speaker 2: you see in this painting where if you're on a
Speaker 2: tour guard like, notice this balance of form and this,
Speaker 2: you know, point to lism and this, look at this
Speaker 2: thematic you know, look at all the symbolism in here,
Speaker 2: all that is not as important but should be shoved aside.
Speaker 2: And really everybody who made it a work, who makes
Speaker 2: works of art from now and back through time, they
Speaker 2: weren't trying to impress you intellectually. They were trying to
Speaker 2: impress you, fulfill you, change you, tweak you emotionally. And
Speaker 2: I hope that people who read this book you know
Speaker 2: you can, you can be, you can. You can shake
Speaker 2: your head at the ridiculousness of Breitweiser, but you really
Speaker 2: should listen to what he says about looking at art,
Speaker 2: and next time you go through museum, take some of
Speaker 2: his advice. Don't steal the painting for goodness sake, but
Speaker 2: encounter this in a much richer way. I really that
Speaker 2: is the thing that I will that I am most
Speaker 2: grateful about spending all this time in this project. It
Speaker 2: wasn't spending that time in Breitweiser's ridiculous world. But I really,
Speaker 2: as a wooz it sounds more tuned to the beauty
Speaker 2: in the world. And I really feel more emotionally raw
Speaker 2: when it comes to walking through a museum, and I
Speaker 2: love that. So that's really the kind of gift hidden
Speaker 2: between the pages of a really ridiculous true crime stories.
Speaker 2: It hopefully will change your esthetic sensibilities. I believe it will.
Speaker 2: I know it did for me.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by
Speaker 1: John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composed artwork by Nick Toga.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1: Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more
Speaker 1: Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you
Speaker 1: know of a historical crime that could use some attention
Speaker 1: from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at
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