He is an accomplished, acrobatic burglar, one referred to here as “Spiderman.” But all Vjeran Tomic needed to break into this city’s Museum of Modern Art in the spring of 2010 and pull off a near-perfect heist were a few tools, a couple of plungers, pliers and a lucky star.
Before dawn that day, he had loaded his Renault with five masterpieces from Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Léger and Modigliani, worth over 104 million euros, or about $112 million. All he left behind were empty frames, leaning against the museum’s walls.
“It’s one of my easiest and biggest heists,” Mr. Tomic told reporters on Friday outside the courtroom where he and two men accused as accomplices were on trial for the thefts. Mr. Tomic has been likened in news articles here to Arsène Lupin, a fictional thief of the early 1900s who terrorized well-heeled Parisians. He has made a living robbing luxurious apartments of their masterpieces, sometimes using an arbalest, ropes, snap hooks and a harness to scale facades and gain entry. In 2000 he stole works by Renoir and Braque from two Parisian apartments, which earned him one of his 14 convictions to date.
Born in Paris, Mr. Tomic, 49, grew up partly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then part of Yugoslavia, where he learned the art of theft, he told reporters. By the age of 11, he was back in Paris and scaling walls near Père Lachaise Cemetery, leapfrogging his way from one tomb to another across the graveyard. He later perfected his climbing skills in the French Army. Continue reading from The New York Times.
The French Job – Paris Art Theft Carried Out by Lone Robber (The Guardian)
The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generation’s Biggest Art Heist (The New Yorker)
'Spider-Man' Art Thief Jailed Over Paris Heist (The Guardian)
What Happened to Vjeran Tomic, The Spider-Man of Paris? (Esquire)
How the Spiderman of Paris Vjeran Tomic Pulled off 100 million Euro Art Heist (Manchester News)
