Olivia: The average art thief gets away with it for a few months, maybe a year. But what if I told you the most successful art thief in history stole over 200 masterpieces, worth two billion dollars, and his biggest problem wasn't the police... it was where to store it all in his mom's attic. Jackson: Hold on, two billion with a B? And he just… kept it at his mom’s house? That sounds less like a sophisticated criminal mastermind and more like a teenager hiding contraband from his parents. What was he doing, stuffing Rembrandts under his mattress? Olivia: You’re not that far off, actually. And it’s all laid out in Michael Finkel's incredible book, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a $2 Billion Collection. Jackson: Michael Finkel… I know that name. He’s a fantastic journalist. Olivia: Exactly. And what makes this story so unique is that Finkel got exclusive access—he was the first American journalist Breitwieser ever spoke to. This gives us this unprecedented, and frankly unsettling, look inside the mind of a compulsive, yet strangely principled, criminal. Jackson: Okay, 'principled' is a strong word for a guy stealing two billion dollars worth of art. I’m already skeptical. Let's start at the beginning. How does someone even start a career like that?

Olivia: Well, that’s the paradox of Stéphane Breitwieser. He wasn't in it for the money. He claimed he was in it for love. To understand his mindset, you have to look at one of his most audacious heists, which he pulled off with his girlfriend and accomplice, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus. It was February 1997, at the Rubens House museum in Antwerp, Belgium. Jackson: The actual home of Peter Paul Rubens? That feels like a pretty high-stakes place to start. Olivia: It is. And their target was a stunning 17th-century ivory sculpture of Adam and Eve, small enough to conceal but priceless. Now, you’d expect a complex plan with lasers and rappelling from the ceiling, right? Jackson: At the very least! Like something out of a movie. Olivia: Breitwieser’s method was far simpler, and far more terrifying. He and Anne-Catherine just walked in as tourists on a busy Sunday. They bought tickets. They blended in. Breitwieser had scouted the museum weeks earlier and noticed a critical weakness: the guards rotated for lunch, leaving certain rooms under-monitored for brief windows. And there were no security cameras on the sculpture. Jackson: You’re kidding me. He just waited for the guards to go get a sandwich? Olivia: Essentially. Anne-Catherine acted as the lookout, coughing softly if a guard or another tourist came near. Meanwhile, Breitwieser stood in front of the plexiglass case, pretending to admire the art. And with a simple Swiss Army knife, he slowly, patiently, began to unscrew the case. Jackson: In the middle of a crowded museum? The nerve on this guy is unbelievable. I would be sweating through my shirt. Olivia: He had this philosophy, which Finkel quotes in the book. Breitwieser believed, "It isn’t action... that usually lands a thief in prison. It’s hesitation." So when his moment came, he didn't hesitate. He lifted the sculpture, slid it under his overcoat, and just… walked out. Calmly. No running, no sudden movements. He met Anne-Catherine outside, and they drove off. Just another Sunday afternoon. Jackson: Wow. That’s… chillingly simple. But it also gets at this idea of him being a "gentleman thief." He didn't smash the case or threaten anyone. It was almost surgical. Olivia: That’s the image he cultivated for himself. He despised violent art thieves. He was horrified by the infamous 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in Boston, where the thieves brutally slashed two Rembrandt paintings right out of their frames. To Breitwieser, that was sacrilege. He saw himself as a rescuer, an art liberator. Jackson: An art liberator? Come on. He’s a thief. Isn't that just a high-minded excuse to justify what he’s doing? I know the book has faced some criticism for potentially glamorizing him, and I can see why. It’s easy to get caught up in the romance of it all. Olivia: You’re right to be skeptical, and Finkel does a good job of presenting both sides. Breitwieser genuinely believed museums were "prisons for art." He wanted to live with these objects, to touch them, to wake up to their beauty. He never sold a single piece. He just took them home to his attic room, which he and Anne-Catherine called their "kingdom." Jackson: So his attic was like a private, illegal Louvre? Filled with two billion dollars of art that no one else could see? Olivia: Exactly. And he would spend his mornings just admiring his collection, like the ivory Adam and Eve on his bedside table. He wrote, "Could anything offer a more stirring start to each day than the ethereal glow of an ivory collection?" For him, the crime was the means to an end, and that end was a deep, personal, and possessive love for beauty. Jackson: That’s a fascinating, and deeply disturbing, psychology. But it feels like a delusion that can only exist with help. He wasn't doing this alone. You mentioned his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine. Olivia: And that’s where the story gets even more complicated. His philosophy completely falls apart when you look at the people who enabled him.

Jackson: Right, because no one operates in a vacuum. What was Anne-Catherine’s role in all this? Was she as obsessed as he was? Olivia: Not exactly. Their relationship is a classic case of what psychologists sometimes call a folie à deux—a madness for two. She was drawn to his "scoundrel side," as her lawyer later put it. He was exciting, and their life of crime was an adventure. But she was also the more pragmatic and anxious one. Jackson: So she was the lookout, the getaway driver, the one keeping him grounded? Olivia: She was his partner in every sense. The moment their relationship tipped from romance into a criminal enterprise is so telling. They were in a small museum in 1994, and Breitwieser became infatuated with an 18th-century flintlock pistol. He saw the display case was unlocked, no guards were around. He looked at Anne-Catherine, hesitant. And she just said, "Go ahead. Take it." Jackson: Wow. So she pushed him over the edge. Olivia: She gave him the permission he needed. From that point on, they were a team. He would spot the opportunity, and she would give the signal. He trusted her instincts completely. But the most shocking enabler wasn't Anne-Catherine. It was his mother, Mireille Stengel. Jackson: His mom? I thought he was just hiding the art in her attic! You’re telling me she knew? Olivia: The extent of what she knew is debated, but the evidence is damning. Finkel describes a home video they made on Christmas Day in 1995. Anne-Catherine is filming and playfully asks Breitwieser for his New Year's resolution. He looks straight into the camera and says his resolution is to steal millions of dollars worth of art. Jackson: No way. He said that on camera? Olivia: He did. And then he turns to his mother, who is sitting right there in the living room, and asks, "Did you hear my speech, Mom?" And what does she do? She says nothing. She just turns up the volume on the music. Jackson: That silence is louder than any confession. That’s willful ignorance on a whole other level. She’s providing the safe house for a two-billion-dollar crime spree. Olivia: Breitwieser himself described it perfectly: "She knows, and she doesn’t know. She buries her head in the sand." She loved her son, and perhaps this was her twisted way of keeping him close and safe, by allowing his secret world to flourish under her own roof. She cooked his meals, did his laundry, and never, ever went up into the attic. Jackson: This is so much darker than a simple story of a charming art thief. It’s a story of deep family dysfunction. He’s a narcissist, enabled by a codependent partner and a mother who refuses to see the truth. A run like this can't last forever. How did it all come crashing down? Olivia: With a story like this, the downfall is always inevitable. And it came, as it so often does, from one moment of pure hubris.

Jackson: So after years of successful heists, what was the one mistake that finally did him in? Olivia: It was a bugle. A four-hundred-year-old, ornate bugle from the Richard Wagner Museum in Lucerne, Switzerland. This was in November 2001. By this point, he and Anne-Catherine had been arrested once before in Switzerland and were banned from the country. They had a set of rules to keep them safe: always wear gloves, and absolutely no more stealing in Switzerland. Jackson: And I’m guessing he broke both of those rules. Olivia: He shattered them. He went to the museum alone, on an impulse. He didn't wear gloves. He stole the bugle, which he didn't even particularly want—he had a better one at home. It was a pure act of compulsion. When he told Anne-Catherine, she was furious. The anger in her eyes, he said, was "of a voltage he’d never seen." Jackson: I don’t blame her. He put their entire world at risk for a bugle he didn't even want. Olivia: Exactly. She knew his fingerprints would be all over the display case. So, in a desperate attempt to save them, she decided to go back to the museum herself with a cleaning cloth to wipe away the evidence. She told him, "Stay in the car. I’ll be right back." Jackson: This sounds like a terrible idea. Olivia: It was. While she was inside, a retired journalist who had read about the theft spotted Breitwieser loitering near the museum and recognized him from a witness description. He called the police. Breitwieser was arrested on the spot. He didn't even have the stolen bugle on him. His luck had finally run out. Jackson: And that was it? The whole empire crumbled because of one stupid bugle? Olivia: That was the beginning of the end. But the real tragedy, the true climax of this story, happened while he was in jail. He had no contact with the outside world. He didn't know what was happening. And back home, his mother, Mireille, panicked. Realizing the police would eventually come to her house, she entered what she later called a "destructive frenzy." Jackson: Oh no. Don't tell me... Olivia: She went up to the attic—that secret, two-billion-dollar kingdom—and she destroyed everything. She took priceless silver chalices, ivory carvings, and other small objects and threw them into the Rhône-Rhine Canal. She took dozens of Old Master paintings, including the Cranach and the Brueghels, drove them to a forest, and set them on fire. Jackson: She burned them? She burned Renaissance paintings? I… I have no words. That’s an unbelievable cultural catastrophe. Olivia: It’s one of the greatest losses of art in modern history, all happening in a single night of rage and panic. Breitwieser only found out weeks later, watching the news from his jail cell. He saw divers pulling his treasures from the murky canal. He saw images of the charred remains of the paintings. His entire world, the very core of his identity, had been turned to ash and mud. Jackson: Wow. So in the end, the art wasn't liberated. It was executed. That’s so much more heartbreaking than him just being a thief. The art itself is the ultimate victim. Olivia: That’s the devastating irony. He stole the art to "save" it from the prison of museums, only for it to be utterly destroyed because of his actions. His obsession didn't preserve beauty; it annihilated it.

Jackson: This whole story is just… it’s a vortex of obsession. It pulls everyone in and destroys them. Breitwieser, Anne-Catherine, his mother, and ultimately, the art itself. Olivia: Exactly. In the end, Breitwieser's story isn't just about art theft. It's a profound tragedy about the nature of possession. He thought he was 'liberating' art, but he just moved it from one prison to another—from the public prison of the museum to the private prison of his attic. And when that private prison was breached, the art didn't go free. It was lost forever. Jackson: It really makes you think about our own collections, our own obsessions, even on a much smaller scale. When does a healthy love for something—whether it's art, or sneakers, or stamps—curdle into a destructive need to own it, to control it? Olivia: That’s the question at the heart of the book. Breitwieser’s love for art was undeniably real, but it was a possessive, selfish love. It wasn't about sharing beauty; it was about hoarding it. And the story is a brutal reminder that beauty, when hoarded, can become an incredibly ugly thing. Jackson: It’s a fascinating and deeply cautionary tale. It’s one of those stories that will stick with you long after you hear it. Olivia: It really is. It forces you to look at art, crime, and love in a completely different light. It’s a story that’s as beautiful and as tragic as the masterpieces he stole. Jackson: It’s a powerful question to leave our listeners with. What do you all think? When does passion become a prison? We'd love to hear your thoughts on our community channels. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.