He Stole 239 Masterpieces and Never Sold a Single One

[00:00:00]Did you know a man's stole over 200 priceless artworks and never sold a single one?

[00:00:05]Stéphane Breitwieser wasn't after money.

[00:00:07]He was after beauty. For 6 years the French thief moved through museums across Europe like a ghost. He slipped paintings off walls, tucked sculptures under his coat, and carried them home to his mother's attic in Alsace.

[00:00:19]There, surrounded by Flemish masters and Renaissance treasures, he built his own private world. He never sold a piece, not one. Then in 2001, Swiss police caught him stealing a bugle from a museum in Lucerne. The walls were closing in. What happened next was worse than the theft itself. His mother, Mireille Stengel, panicked. She fed irreplaceable canvases through a wood chipper and dumped sculptures into a nearby canal. Nearly 1.4 billion dollars in cultural heritage destroyed in a single weekend. Not to protect herself, to protect her son. Stéphane got 3 years. His mother got more. He loved the art too much to sell it. She loved him too much to save it.

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