Kardashian heist suspects arrested
FRANCE: Seventeen suspects including a veteran 72-year old gangster and three women were arrested in France on Monday in connection with the robbery of the reality television star Kim Kardashian as a result of a DNA match from the crime scene.
Her lawyer said that judges may ask her to confront the suspects as part of the inquiry. Among the detained are five believed to be the armed masked men who robbed the 36-year-old of around €10? illion (NZ$15 million) worth of jewellery - including her €3.5 million engagement ring - after tying her up in her Paris apartment early on October 3. The gang had struck at around 3am inside the exclusive apartment block where Kardashian had been staying while attending Paris Fashion Week. Her bodyguard was out of the flat at the time. CCTV caught some of the thieves calmly arriving and leaving the building on bikes, some disguised as police officers.
After a three-month investigation, officers conducted a series of raids early yesterday in Le Raincy, in the northeastern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, in Vincennes to the east, as well as Rouen, northern France and Grasse - France’s perfume capital on the Riviera.
Paris prosecutors told The Daily Telegraph the robbers were a ‘‘mixed bunch’’, with the youngest aged 23 and the oldest 72. Three women were also detained for questioning. Most were known to police, who also recovered piles of cash during the raids.
Police sources said the group appeared to consist of individuals from the travelling community and a few old-school gangsters from the Paris suburbs who had ‘‘come together to pool their skills’’ in the daring heist.
The oldest had previous convictions for armed robbery, while the main protagonists, in their fifties, had an ‘‘impressive hit list’’ of previous illicit acts, from hold-ups to fake money and drug trafficking.
While the robbers appeared to be ‘‘true pros’’, they did leave at least one DNA print in the flat - on a clamp used to bind Kardashian. During his getaway on a bicycle, one of the robbers reportedly had a fall and dropped a plastic bag carrying the jewels. He hastily picked them up but forgot one diamond-studded pendant valued at €30,000, which a passer-by handed in hours later.
Forensic experts matched a genetic fingerprint on the clamp to a known criminal.
- Telegraph Group