Stéphane Breitwieser robbed nearly 200 museums to amass his secret art collection.

An amazing, if unhappy, story.

Hat tip: American Digest

The set of thefts he describes as the most exquisite of his career are a study in simplicity and sangfroid. They take place in Belgium, his beloved target, at the vast Art & History Museum in Brussels, which Breitwieser estimates employs 150 guards. There he and Kleinklaus spot a partly empty display case, with a laminated card inside that reads "Objects removed for study." Nothing in the case interests them, but Breitwieser has an idea and steals the card.

Breitwieser understands how security guards think. At age 19, he was employed for a month as a guard at the Historical Museum of Mulhouse, near his home. Most guards, he realized, hardly notice the art on the walls—they look only at people. Breitwieser's brashest thefts, like the Adam and Eve ivory, are spotted in minutes, but when he's furtive, hours often pass, and sometimes days, before anyone realizes what's happened.

In the Brussels Art & History Museum, he carries the "Objects removed" sign to a gallery with a display case of silver pieces from the 16th century. To break into this case, Breitwieser uses a screwdriver and levers the sliding door off its tracks. Other times, he carries a box cutter and slices open a silicone joint. For museums with antique display cabinets, he brings a ring of a dozen old skeleton keys he's amassed—often one of his keys is able to tumble the lock. Also handy is a telescoping antenna, to nudge a ceiling-mounted security camera in a different direction.

He selects three silver items, a drinking stein and two figurines; then he sets the "Objects removed" card in the case and re-attaches the sliding door, and they leave the museum. They're already at the car before he realizes he's forgotten the lid to the stein.

Breitwieser detests missing parts or any sign of restoration. The items in his collection must be original and complete. Kleinklaus knows this, says Breitwieser, and she abruptly removes one of her earrings and heads back to the museum, her boyfriend in tow. She marches up to a security guard and says she's lost an earring and has a feeling she knows where it is. The couple are permitted back inside. They return to the case and he takes the stein's lid and, why not, two additional goblets from another case.

Two weeks later, they're back. Kleinklaus has changed her hairstyle, and Breitwieser has grown out his beard and added a pair of glasses and a baseball cap. At the display case, the "Objects removed" card still there, he grabs four more items, including a two-foot-tall chalice so breathtakingly gorgeous that Breitwieser suspends his size-limitation preference and, with nowhere else to put it, stuffs the item up the left sleeve of his jacket, forcing him to walk unnaturally, his arm swinging stiffly like a soldier's.

On their way to the exit, they're stopped by a guard. They feign calm, but Breitwieser has a terrible feeling that the end has come. The guard wants to see their entrance tickets. 

Breitwieser, unable to move his left arm, awkwardly reaches across his body with his right to fish the tickets from his left pocket. He wonders if the guard senses something amiss.

A guilty person would cower and try to leave, so Breitwieser boldly tells the guard that he's heading to the museum café for lunch. The guard's suspicion is defused, and the couple actually eat at the museum, Breitwieser's arm held rigid the entire time.

They rent a cheap hotel room and wait two days and return yet again, newly disguised, and he steals four more pieces. That's a total of 13, and such is their level of euphoria that on the drive home they can't contain themselves and stop at an antiques gallery displaying an immense ancient urn, made of silver and gold, in the front window.

Breitwieser enters, and the dealer calls from atop a staircase that he'll be right down, but by the time he descends no one is there. Nor is the urn. They return to France plunder-drunk and giddy, and for fun, Breitwieser recalls, Kleinklaus phones the gallery and asks how much the urn in the window costs. About $100,000, she's told. “Madame,” says the dealer, “you really must see it.” He hasn't yet noticed it's gone.