Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [157]
Still, it had been a disturbing experience, one that the marquis was determined to avoid a second time: “The next trip, we decided, there must be no chance for recriminations. We would steal — -actually steal — the Louvre Mona Lisa and assure the buyer beyond any possibility of misunderstanding that the picture delivered to him was the true, the authentic original.” 6
Of course, he never intended to sell the real painting. “The original would be as awkward as a hot stove,” he told Decker. The plan would be to create a copy and ship it overseas before stealing the original. “The customs would pass it without a thought, copies being commonplace and the original still being in the Louvre.” 7 After the Mona Lisa had been stolen, the imitation could be taken out of storage overseas and sold to a buyer who was convinced he was getting the missing masterpiece.
“We began our selling campaign,” recalled Valfierno, “and the first deal went through so easily that the thought, ‘Why stop with one?’ naturally arose. There was no limit in theory to the fish we might hook. Actually, we stopped with six American millionaires. Six were as many as we could both land and keep hot.” 8 Chaudron then carefully produced the six copies, which were in due course sent to America and kept waiting for the proper time to be delivered. Valfierno said that an antique bed made of Italian walnut, “seasoned by time to the identical quality of that on which La Joconde was painted,” was broken up to provide the six panels that Chaudron painted on. 9
Now came what Valfierno thought was the easy part: “Stealing La Joconde was as simple as boiling an egg in a kitchenette,” he told Decker. “Our success depended upon one thing — the fact that a workman in a white blouse in the Louvre is as free from suspicion as an unlaid egg.… [It] was a uniform that gave [the thief] all the rights and privileges of the museum.” 10 Recruiting someone — Perugia — who had actually worked in the Louvre was helpful because he knew the secret rooms and staircases that employees used.
Perugia did not act alone, Valfierno said. He had two accomplices, needed to lift the painting and its heavy protective container and frame from the wall and carry it to a place where it could be removed. Valfierno did not name them, but anyone familiar with the case might have remembered the Lancelotti brothers, whom Perugia had briefly implicated in the heist when he was questioned in Florence.
The one hitch in the plan was that Perugia had failed to test beforehand the duplicate key Valfierno had made for the door at the bottom of the small staircase that Perugia used to make his escape. At the moment he needed it, the key failed to turn the lock. While he was removing the doorknob with a screwdriver, the trio heard footsteps from above, and Perugia’s two accomplices hid themselves. The plumber named Sauvet appeared and, seeing only one man in a white smock, had no reason to be suspicious. He opened the door and went on his way, soon followed by Perugia and the other two thieves. At the vestibule, luck was on their side again, for the guard stationed there had abandoned his post temporarily to get a bucket of water to clean the floor.
An automobile waited for the thieves and took them to Valfierno’s headquarters, where the gang celebrated “the most magnificent single theft in the history of the world.” 11 Now the six copies that had been sent to the United States could be delivered to the purchasers. Because each of the six collectors thought he was receiving stolen merchandise, he could not publicize his acquisition — or even complain should he suspect it wasn’t the genuine article. It was, indeed, the perfect crime.
“Chaudron almost died of joy and pride when he learned the prices his work had brought,” Valfierno said. “He… -retired to a country place near Paris and only occasionally does a piece of work for some really great worker in the field of fake-art