Art Heist of Cellini's Saliera: Part V Finale

In which the thief is finally caught.

Author’s Note: The following is Part V (the finale) of the true story of the theft of Cellini’s Saleria—a $65 million table sculpture—from the Vienna Art History Museum in 2003. I am publishing this extraordinary true story as a summer divertimento for our paid subscribers. Readers who are just now seeing this story should first read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Focal Points. For just $5 per month, you can support us in our effort to research and report intriguing stories in the realms of public health policy, current affairs, organized crime, and—in this case—high culture. Because the former Vienna Chief of Police, Ernst Geiger, is a close friend, I was able to access information and documents that were not available to other reporters.

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Part V (finale): In which the thief is finally caught.

The register recorded that the SIM card had been purchased at 5:01 P.M., but because it wasn’t certain that the time recorder on the video perfectly corresponded with the time recorder on the register, Braunsperger and his men analyzed the video segment between 5:00 and 5:02. In that two-minute frame, six people passed by the check-out counter, and five were fairly easy to eliminate from their age and sex—elderly people and a young girl. The stand-out was a man who appeared to be about forty, wearing beige jeans and a black v-neck sweater over a t-shirt. He was slender and handsome with a finely cut face, and his athletic physique was well-suited to vaulting through a window and scrambling down a scaffold. He grinned, displaying bright white teeth.

“That’s our man,” said Braunsperger. The check-out attendant remembered him. He’d been a friendly customer, had spoken German without a foreign accent, and had paid for the SIM card with a 100 Euro note.

How to find him in a city of 1.6 million people? All they had was an image. The only thing to do was to show it around and hope that someone would recognize him, but Chief Geiger knew that it was going to be a tricky business. The object was to find someone who recognized him before a reporter caught wind that the police were showing around a picture of the suspected Saliera thief. From the Jack Unterweger investigation in the early nineties, Geiger knew all too well how an intelligent criminal will monitor the press, looking for signs that the police were closing in. It was critical that Cerveza continue believing that the cops remained as clueless as Kottan, standing around scratching their asses.

They started their search at the Art History Museum under the pretense that the man in the photograph was wanted for dealing bogus art objects. When no one at the museum recognized him, they broadened their search to other museums, galleries, and antique shops. They also posted observers at bars and cafés near each of the points from which Cerveza had sent an SMS, and because he had such pretty, straight white teeth, they showed his picture around to every reputable dentist and orthodontist in town. Negative.

At the same time, other investigators tried to figure out the significance of the date on the cross, 1986, which Cerveza had instructed Mr. Zed to note. Best case scenario was that it was the number of a safe containing the Saliera. Records of every known safe in the city were obtained, but none had the number 1986.

Meanwhile, just as Geiger had feared would ultimately happen, a reporter called Braunsperger and said he wanted to talk about “a big story.” They met at a place where they were certain of being alone, and the reporter laid a photograph of the Saliera on the table.

“I know,” he said. Braunsperger begged him not to run the story.

“If this guy learns we are on his trail, he may cover his tracks and flee the country, and if we are going to get the Saliera back, we must not only grab him, but also obtain more evidence that he is the thief. Unless we can show him that we have proof, he will deny it and never tell us where the Saliera is hidden. It’s also conceivable he will carry out his threat to melt it down.”