The Mother Who Burned the Monets
Rotterdam, October 2012. At 3:07 in the morning, a Romanian crew breaks through a side entrance of the Kunsthal museum. They know the layout. They know which walls. They know exactly what to take. In a hundred and eight seconds — under two minutes — they lift seven paintings off the walls and disappear: a Picasso, two Monets, a Matisse, a Gauguin, a Lucian Freud, and a Meyer de Haan. An estimated one hundred to two hundred million euros.
The thieves were arrested within weeks. The paintings, however, led Romanian police to a village in the country's east — and to the home of the ringleader's mother, Olga Dogaru. She told investigators she had burned all seven works in her wood-burning stove to protect her son. Forensic testing of the ash found canvas fibres and pigment traces consistent with old masters.
Maren and Ellis walk through the fastest high-value heist in European history, and the slower, sadder investigation into what may now only be ash.
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