The Art Thief: The True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession , Finkel - B

             Stephane Breitwieser, "perhaps the most successful and prolific art thief who has ever lived" stole not for gain, but to "surround himself with beauty."  He was an unemployed freeloader who lived on the top two floors of his mother's house with his partner, Anne-Catherine. Those two floors were filled with a vast, magnificent $2B art collection. He was born in Alsace in 1971. The couple met in 1991, and immediately committed to each other. Three years later, he snatched a walnut pistol from a small museum, and thus began a career of consistent brazen thievery. He targeted small regional institutions, mostly in France and Switzerland, because their security was very light. One of the museums the couple stole from had a hidden security camera, and a Swiss art crimes inspector was soon on their trail. In France, a theft in Blois also attracted the attention of the authorities. They were arrested in Lucerne in May, 1997, but talked their way out of incarceration. His compulsion to constantly steal continues unabated, and he was arrested once again in Lucerne in late 2001. This time, the Swiss kept him in custody and obtained a search warrant for his house. When the authorities investigated his home, they found no art of any kind. His mother had  dumped the hard goods in a canal and burned the paintings. In Switzerland,  Breitweiser breaks down and confessed, and after a trial he was sentenced to four years in jail. He was tried in France in 2005. He was sentenced to two years, his mother a few months and Anne-Catherine was required to pay a small fine. Between the two countries, he served three years and seven and a half months.  Stephane picked up a handy $100,000 for collaborating on his story and seemed to be headed in the right direction when he was arrested for shoplifting at an airport. After a brief detention, he stole a Brueghel in Belgium and went to jail until 2015.  He eventually returned to thievery, this time for profit, and is currently under house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet.