The aircraft slowed, levelling out about a mile above ground. Up ahead, like a fairy tale fortress, the Viennese castle glowed. Gerald Blanchard looked down when the pilot gave the thumbs-up, tested his parachute straps and jumped into the darkness. For a second, he plunged, then pulled his rope, slowing down to a lovely fall toward the tiled roof. It was early June 1998 and there was a warm evening breeze. Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that housed the Koechert Diamond Pearl if it kept cooperating. He was steering his parachute towards his target.
Blanchard had seemed to be yet another twenty-something on holiday with his wife and her rich father a couple of days ago. Three of them took a six-month grand tour of Europe: London, Rome, Barcelona, Vienna, the French Riviera. The Austrian version of Versailles, when they stopped at Schloss Schönbrunn, the VIP status of his father-in - law gave them a special glimpse of a highly coveted piece from a private piece.Collecting. And there it was: a delicate but sparkling 10-pointed star of diamonds fanned around a monstrous pearl in a cavernous space, in an unsettling case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal. Blanchard realized, five seconds after he had laid his eyes on it, that he would try to take it.
The instructor started explaining the past of the Koechert Diamond Pearl, best known as the Sisi Star, one of many similar pieces made especially for Empress Elisabeth to be worn in her beautifully long and elegant braids. Sisi was murdered, as she was affectionately called, 100 years ago. Just two stars are left, and 75 years have passed since the public had a glimpse of ...
There wasn't Blanchard listening. The motion sensors in the corner, the form of screws on the case, the big windows nearby, he noted. He has a savant-like ability to analyze security vulnerabilities in order to hear Blanchard say it, like a criminal Rain Guy who involuntarily sees danger probabilities at every turn.Collecting. And there it was: a delicate but sparkling 10-pointed star of diamonds fanned around a monstrous pearl in a cavernous space, in an unsettling case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal. Blanchard realized, five seconds after he had laid his eyes on it, that he would try to take it.
The instructor started explaining the past of the Koechert Diamond Pearl, best known as the Sisi Star, one of many similar pieces made especially for Empress Elisabeth to be worn in her beautifully long and elegant braids. Sisi was murdered, as she was affectionately called, 100 years ago. Just two stars are left, and 75 years have passed since the public had a glimpse of ...
There wasn't Blanchard listening. The motion sensors in the corner, the form of screws on the case, the big windows nearby, he noted. He has a savant-like ability to analyze security vulnerabilities in order to hear Blanchard say it, like a criminal Rain Guy who involuntarily sees danger probabilities at every turn.Collecting. And there it was: a delicate but sparkling 10-pointed star of diamonds fanned around a monstrous pearl in a cavernous space, in an unsettling case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal. Blanchard realized, five seconds after he had laid his eyes on it, that he would try to take it.
The instructor started explaining the past of the Koechert Diamond Pearl, best known as the Sisi Star, one of many similar pieces made especially for Empress Elisabeth to be worn in her beautifully long and elegant braids. Sisi was murdered, as she was affectionately called, 100 years ago. Just two stars are left, and 75 years have passed since the public had a glimpse of ...
There wasn't Blanchard listening. The motion sensors in the corner, the form of screws on the case, the big windows nearby, he noted. He has a savant-like ability to analyze security vulnerabilities in order to hear Blanchard say it, like a criminal Rain Guy who involuntarily sees danger probabilities at every turn.And the numbers were good enough for a star. Blanchard realized that the piece he heard the guide claim was worth $2 million and couldn't be fenced. Nevertheless, he found the matter fascinating and the challenge irresistible.
He immediately began working, videotaping every detail of the chamber of the star. (He also coyly shot the "No Cameras" sign near the jewel case.) When the workers went on to the next room, he unexpectedly used a key to loosen the screws, unlocked the windows and decided that the motion sensors would allow him to move inside the castle, although quite slowly. To get a sense of its scale, he stopped at the souvenir shop and bought a replica of the Sisi Star. The armed guards posted at every entrance and patrolling the halls were also noted by him.
But the roof was unguarded, and so it happened that skydiving was one of the abilities Blanchard had gained in his already long criminal career. A German pilot who was a game for a mercenary sortie and would help Blanchard acquire a parachute had also recently befriended him. Blanchard was making his descent to the roof just one night after his visit to the star.
However, aerial approaches are a risky business, and Blanchard almost overshot the castle, slowing himself by skidding along a pitched gable just enough. Sliding down the tiles, arms and legs flailing for a grip, by grasping a railing at the roof 's edge, Blanchard managed to save himself from dropping four floors. He lay motionless for a moment. He took a deep breath, unhooked the chute, pulled a rope out of his pack, wrapped it around a column of marble, and lowered it to the side of the house.
Carefully, through the window he had opened the previous day, Blanchard entered. He realized that there was a chance to communicate with the guards. But Schönbrunn Castle was a big place, with over 1,000 rooms. He liked those chances. He thought if he could hear the guards, he would vanish behind the huge curtains.
As Blanchard approached the show slowly and removed the already loosened screws, the surrounding rooms were silent, carefully using a butter knife to keep in place the two long rods that would activate the alarm device. The real trick was to make sure the spring-loaded mechanism on which the star sat did not record that the weight above it had shifted. He had that covered, too, of course: he reached into his pocket and deftly replaced the bejeweled hairpin of Elisabeth with the fake gift shop.
The Sisi Star was in Blanchard 's pocket within minutes, and he was rappeling down the back wall toward the garden, taking the rope with him as he fell from the ground. Blanchard returned to watch visitors marvel at the sheer elegance of a cheap replica as the star was dramatically revealed to the public the next day. And when his parachute was discovered in a garbage bin later on, no one linked it to the star, since no one realized it was missing yet. It was two weeks before anyone knew the jewelry was gone.
Later, the Sisi Star rode back to his home base in Canada, inside the respirator of some scuba gear, where Blanchard would organize what investigators later called the Blanchard Criminal Enterprise for lack of a better term. Blanchard became a criminal mastermind by building on his encyclopedic knowledge of surveillance and electronics. The star was the heist that turned him from a competent and seasoned thief into a criminal virtuoso.
"As one prosecutor would term him," Cunning, smart, conniving, and imaginative, "Blanchard eluded the police for years. But he did make a mistake finally. And that error will take two officers from Winnipeg, Canada, a small police department, on a crazy ride of high-tech capers across Africa, Canada , and Europe. One of those Winnipeg investigators, Mitch McCormick, says, "We've never seen anything like it before."
