Three gunmen steal paintings from museum in Switzerland
This undated photo released Monday by the Swiss Police shows the room at the private museum E.G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich, Switzerland, from where gunmen stole four paintings by major artists Sunday. Mike Brown, The Associated Press
February 12, 2008
ZURICH, Switzerland – Three gunmen in ski masks and dark clothes burst into a museum just before closing time. After a quick run through the building, they hustled out the door and sped off with paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet valued at $163.2 million.
Authorities appealed Monday for any witnesses to help reconstruct the robbers’ getaway from the E.G. Buehrle Collection, a private museum of Impressionist works whose founder had his own troubled history with stolen art.
“This is an entirely new dimension in criminal culture,” police spokesman Marco Cortesi said, calling it the largest art robbery in Switzerland’s history.
The three robbers entered the museum a half-hour before its scheduled close Sunday. While one trained a pistol on museum personnel ordered to lie on the floor, the two others collected four paintings, police said.
Associated Press writers Bradley S. Klapper and Alexander G. Higgins contributed to this report
