Transcript of Heist at the Louvre Episode 1: Inside the Glass Cases

Hi, I'm James Longman, ABC News Chief International Correspondent. I want to tell you about my new podcast, Heist at the Louver. It's a thrilling new series from ABC Audio, and I really think it's unlike anything you've heard before. On October 19th, 2025, just about a year ago, the Louver Museum was robbed. Now, $100 million worth of jewelry, which was once owned by French royalty, is missing, and the most famous museum in the world has become a crime scene. In this new series, I'll be looking into the investigation of the heist. I'll be diving deep to explore the Parisian criminal underworld and the international hunt for the Crown Jewels. Plus, I'm going to explore what this heist has revealed about a museum and a nation known around the world for its priceless art. And we'll be sharing new episodes right here in the 20/20 feed weekly on Fridays for the next few weeks. You can also listen early by searching for Heist at the Louver on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can listen ad-free on Apple Podcasts when you subscribe to 20/20 True Crime Plus. Click the link in the description to learn more.

Now, here's episode 1 of Heist at the Louver. For me, it all began with the film Mission: Impossible. In the mid-'90s, when that movie first came out, It was instantly burned into my brain.

Good morning, Mr. Phelps.

This is your mission, should you choose to accept it. Now, you might think Mission: Impossible is a spy movie, but there's this moment where Tom Cruise kind of goes rogue. If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. He breaks into a locked vault, he hacks into a CIA computer, and right then it suddenly becomes my ultimate heist movie. That scene with the rope and the light-up floor and the bead of sweat. Yeah, it's just as good today as it was then. Now, if you haven't seen it, you kind of don't need to. You know the heist formula already. The good guys are the rebels forced to steal, cheat, lie, and even kill, but all for the right reasons. And they look good doing it. Everyone has that one heist movie they can watch over and over again and never get bored. From The Italian Job, You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off! To Ocean's Eleven.

We're just supposed to walk out of there with $150 million in cash on us without getting stopped? Yeah.

Heist movies can be classic, emotional, violent, but in all of them, we get to live a little of our Robin Hood fantasies, just for a couple of hours. But what if fantasy became an ugly reality?

An urgent investigation is underway in Paris after a daring jewel heist at the Louver earlier this morning.

Authorities say 3 people made off— This story we're about to get into, it could have been a Hollywood screenplay. On October 19th, 2025, someone broke into the most famous museum in the world and stole some of the most famous jewels in the world. We're gonna tell you how this heist happened and track down some people closest to those suspected of being responsible. Then we're joining the international hunt for the jewels. Which takes us closer to home than you'd think. And we'll be exploring a whole world of heists from real life that might help us understand this one a little bit better. But even though this heist could have been created by a Hollywood screenwriter, it was all too real for the people who were there that day. In this episode, we'll talk to the people who saw it all unfold in real time. Because while those characters in the back of the shot in Ocean's Eleven ceased to exist after the cameras turned off, these people didn't, and what they experienced will stay with them for a long time. What they saw was a brazen heist carried out in one of the busiest museums in the world, in broad daylight.

From ABC Audio, I'm James Longman, and this is Heist at the Louver. Episode 1: Inside the Glass Cases. As ABC News's chief international correspondent, I travel a lot. War zones, international summits, sites of natural disasters. I have more stamps in my passport than I can count. And I've been to Paris many, many times. I go for work, but I was also raised in a French-speaking household. I've been surrounded by French culture for as long as I can remember. So for me, going to Paris kind of feels like going home. For lots of people though, going to Paris is the trip of a lifetime. Hello.

Hi, James.

Hi.

Hi, everyone. This is Jake and Holly Barker. Holly is a middle school Spanish teacher and Jake is an environmental engineer. They live with their 2 dogs in Indianapolis, Indiana. How would you describe Indiana in one sentence?

It's a great place to live. If you love to travel.

That's so funny. I've never heard anywhere described like that. It's the best place to live if you want to leave quickly.

You understood it exactly as I intended.

Jake and Holly have been together for around 12 years, and it was Holly who gave Jake the travel bug.

I really outkicked my coverage when I started dating and married Holly. She introduced me to this whole world of travel and Having experiences, uh, that I never dreamed I would ever have. And so, she's my best friend, and I get to explore this whole new world with her.

Holly's family had taken her abroad when she was a kid, including to Paris. And last year, Holly's 70-something-year-old parents decided they wanted to go to France again. They dreamed of visiting World War II historical sites, and they wanted company.

When they asked if we would have any interest of going with them and kind of being the chaperones, essentially, you know, driving them around, I was, uh, I hopped on board and I said, you know, I will plan everything. I love to plan vacations and trips. I just, I love it.

Holly planned a vacation for the 4 of them for the middle of October 2025.

They would drive around Normandy, see the famous Mont Saint-Michel, and at the end, Holly and Jake would have a few days in Paris Jake had never seen Paris before, so that's why I allotted like 4 days for the 2 of us to go do all the, you know, the Paris things.

When they got there, they spent a few days working their way down a list of Paris must-dos. You know the kind of thing, a boat tour of the Seine River, seeing the Eiffel Tower. And on their last full day, Sunday, October 19th, they planned to spend all day at a museum.

The Louver.

Holly, again, was the one who figured it all out.

I was like, we are getting a 9 AM tour and booked on our little itinerary, you know, at least 4 to 5 hours there. I know you cannot see everything in the Louver in one, in one trip, and let alone one day. So, so yeah, I was like, well, we'll do what we can in the 4 to 5 hours. that I allotted for.

Now, Holly's right. The Louver is enormous. The main building is arranged around 3 sides of an interior courtyard where a large glass pyramid juts out of the ground. This pyramid now rivals the Eiffel Tower as a must-see tourist photo opportunity, but it's also a skylight revealing that the museum stretches 2 stories underground. It's a warren of galleries and escalators. The museum has been described as a city within a city. With nearly 9 miles of exhibition rooms and 35,000 objects of art on display. Everything from Renaissance paintings to Stone Age carvings, it's got it all. According to their own figures, the Louver had just under 9 million visitors in 2024. For comparison, the Metropolitan Museum in New York says they pulled in around 6 million visitors in 2025. On busy days at the Louver, the lines can be so long that they extend out of the building and around that glass pyramid. One of the reasons the wait can be so long? Security. Every visitor goes through a metal detector. Big bags have to be left in lockers while you walk around. According to their 2024 report, over 1,000 security staff guard the Louver 24 hours a day.

They watch the entrances and galleries for visitors' suspicious behavior. But on Sunday, October 19th, As Jake and Holly arrived at the Louver, neither they nor the security staff working that morning had any idea that a heist had already begun. Genieße vollen Kaffeegeschmack mit Tchibo Feine Milde entkoffeiniert.

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So you're aware of the tape? Yes.

We're gonna be just like Scream till the 4-5-1. I'm telling Cassie's family, she's gonna die.

There should be no odds.

Against killing people.

I've been doing true crime 25 years or so. I thought I had seen everything until I encountered this story.

I'm never gonna forget it.

These 2 boys stabbed this girl 30 times and are videoing their glee. Just killed Cassie.

This is a real shocking piece of video. I've just never seen anything like this.

If you're okay with talking about it, why did you Make that video. The Scream Murder, a true teen horror story. An all-new podcast coming October 6th wherever you get your podcasts, or subscribe to 20/20 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen early and ad-free.

Terms apply.

So what did your family think when you said you got a job at the Louver?

Oh, it was awful. Oh, because— yes, yes, because, uh, it was awful because, um, My parents probably were dreaming something better for me.

This is Frédéric Serrier. He's part of the security team at the Louver, one of the many uniformed agents standing watch. Frédéric's in his early 40s now, and as far back as he can remember, his parents were always taking him to museums and exhibitions. They're both doctors. They raised their kids with a knowledge of high culture. And in fact, Frédéric studied history at the Sorbonne, which is a prestigious Parisian university.

But I was a very, very, very bad student, so that's why I didn't get any diploma.

Around the time that Frédéric was dropping out of the Sorbonne, he had a friend working at the Louver. He helped Frédéric find a job there, just something temporary until he figured out his next steps. Frédéric became a security guard.

It was 17 years before, and I'm still there.

On the morning of October 19th, 2025, Frédéric was working the opening shift.

I like working on Sundays because it's, uh, it's very peaceful.

Frédéric's day starts long before the visitors arrive. At the start of his shift, he grabs his radio and keys and starts walking those hallowed halls. He's alone, but he's surrounded by famous faces.

The Venus de Milo, a painted Napoleon on horseback, an ancient Egyptian Sphinx, It was an honor to walk in the museum in the morning, especially in the morning. So you're walking alone. You feel the weight of history on you when you're alone in the galleries of the museum, when you're in front of Mona Lisa alone in this room. Yes, that's something.

I can see you're smiling, wide smile, thinking about that.

Because, er... that's history.

Talking to Frédéric, you can see how important the Louver is to him. Even if he says his parents don't approve, this is more than just a job.

I have a lot of sympathy for the building because it's so familiar to me. It's part of my family.

It's like an old grandmother.

Yes, exactly, it is.

Exactly.

Frédéric used to be a gallery guard in the individual rooms where the art is displayed. He says he likes watching the visitors, seeing how different nationalities interact with the museum in different ways. Like the grand rooms that Napoleon used to live in.

It's the oh my God rooms, because you can, you can, you can hear all the Americans say, oh my God, oh my God. That's very funny. That's very funny.

Frédéric isn't mocking. He loves it. He loves the enthusiasm. He loves to see people engaging with the building that he is so fond of. He's not in the galleries anymore, though. He works at the entrance to the Louver, that same entrance that Holly and Jake arrived at that Sunday morning in October of 2025. We can place all 3 of them there just after 9 AM. But by the time Jake and Holly got there, it was quickly becoming less peaceful.

It went from 3 people standing in line, quiet. I got a picture, or we each got a picture in front of the pyramid, you know, by ourselves, no one else. And then the line, this, that just started wrapping around.

So it was, it was buzzing at that entrance. I mean, there were just masses of people. So it was Sunday, it was raining in Paris on that particular morning. It was a perfect morning for visiting the museum.

Still, thanks to Holly's organizing, they got through security in a matter of minutes. And once they got inside, Jake says they had their route all figured out. From where they entered, under the pyramid, they planned to turn south, heading up 2 flights of stairs until they reached the 2nd floor. They were headed for the Denon Wing, where some of the most famous works of art live in adjoining rooms. And Jake wants people to know, He had been doing some research for the trip too.

I don't just sit around here on my hands all day, you know what I mean?

He'd been listening to a podcast made by a local tour guide about what to do in Paris.

And he had a few episodes about the Apollo Room specifically at the Louver, and, and that was— that's what I was most excited about. So—

Really?

Exactly, yeah.

Because that is not normally what people are most excited about.

Yeah.

It's time to talk about the most famous item in the most famous museum in the world. A portrait of a woman not much bigger than a kitchen cutting board. As Jake and Holly entered the Denon Wing, they arrived at the Louvre's largest gallery, where she lives.

Holly had been to the Louver. She'd seen the Mona Lisa, and the whole time she's like, you're gonna— you're not gonna be impressed.

I mean, it's impressive, but like everybody, it's not nearly as big, you know, as people make it out to be.

But that's—

we're joking a little bit because obviously the first place we stopped was the Mona Lisa.

80% of the visitors of the Louver want to see the Mona Lisa. And that's—

you look very upset about that.

Yes. Yes.

Your whole body has just shrunk at the mention of the Mona Lisa.

Yes, because— no, the problem is it creates— how can you say that in English? Un déséquilibre.

It's unbalanced.

Yes, exactly.

Because of the number of visitors, the security of the Mona Lisa compared to the rest of the Louver is also unbalanced. She's a target for environmental activists, terrorists, and thieves. She's guarded by climate-controlled glass. Tiny sensors monitor any movement of her frame. Thousands of visitors crowd her room but can't get too close. Multiple cameras watch for anyone who breaches the barrier that surrounds her. She is, in some ways, a perfect diversion. Everyone watches her while other parts of the museum are far less noticed. Holly and Jake grabbed a quick selfie in front of the portrait, but were eager to get to their planned destination just a short distance away. They moved away from the Mona Lisa room, through a gallery and up a grand staircase, guarded by the winged statue of Samothrace, a 2,000-year-old marble figure bathed in light from a window above. Within minutes, they were at the entrance to the Apollo Gallery.

Jake kept saying, like, if we can't go to Versailles, we have to go to this room because it's supposed to be— like, he called it like a mini Versailles.

Did it live up to expectation?

Oh yeah.

I mean, it is absolutely stunning of a room.

The Apollo Gallery is long and narrow and sits in total contrast with the Mona Lisa Room in several ways. For one, it attracts a fraction of the visitors. For another, there are far fewer security measures. But the decor— that's what really sets it apart. 400 years ago, it was designed to show off the wealth and power of France. It still does. Every surface of the walls and ceilings are either covered in shiny gold leaf or paneled in the kind of murals you might see in the Sistine Chapel.

It's gorgeous. It's this gorgeous room full of, yeah, these glass cases, right? Like, anything in a glass case is special. And so this room is just lined with glass cases.

Inside each of those glass cases were jewels— diamonds, sapphires, emeralds— arranged in different ornate jewelry pieces. Many were owned by French royalty. And even in a room made of gold, these jewels cannot be upstaged. There was just one problem.

It is, um, in the front of the Seine River with 5 or 7 windows in this, uh, in the front of the street. Yes, that's, that's a bad choice. Yes, of course.

The room that held some of the most precious jewels in France faces a busy street. And it has big windows. When Holly and Jake arrived shortly after 9:30 in the morning, they began making their way along the display cases running down the center line of the room.

And at 9:32, I'm at the very front glass case staring at this teapot with a horse-unicorn-mermaid body kind of thing, jewels, and I'm And I take a picture of it, and I'm trying to get Holly to, like, come look at this silly, like, teapot thing. And she's already looking at the crown jewels, which are in the middle of the room.

Yeah, I'm halfway down by now.

When do you notice something's up?

So, I'm looking at the green emerald necklace, I remember.

Holly's talking about a necklace from the 1800s that once belonged to Napoleon's wife. It's dripping with 10 huge green gems. It is beautiful. But Holly's gaze was interrupted.

I hear these bangs, and my first instinct is it's got to be construction. So I look kind of in the direction of where the noise came from, and it's down the end of the room. And it looked like the windows, it looked like they were kind of starting to be like shoved open, like forcefully. And that's when, during those bangs, I think on like by the third one, I'm kind of looking around like, where's Jake? Then like after those 3 bangs, it was the saw sound. And that's when it was just like, I don't think this is construction.

When I heard that saw, I knew nothing good was gonna come from that. I wasn't sure if somebody at that point was trying to bust out of the Apollo room or bust in, but I knew that it wasn't well-intentioned. And I knew if we didn't act fast and, you know, leave, that it would not be in our best interest.

According to investigators, at 9:30 AM, thieves arrived on the busy street outside the Apollo Gallery in a flatbed truck. On the back was a furniture lift. It kind of looks like a motorized ladder. Investigators say that after parking outside, the thieves used the lift to go up to the 2nd-floor window and began trying to break in. Holly told me she remembered that there was a security guard in the Apollo Gallery and that as the banging noise continued, she saw that security guard run down the length of the room toward the windows where the noise was coming from.

She knew something, that this was not construction. And so when she ran that way, that's when I started to double back.

Holly went to find Jake, who was standing closer to the entrance of the room, still next to the jewel-encrusted teapot.

We immediately came together, grasped hands, and kind of waited for, for instruction.

Jake and Holly think there were around 15 people inside the gallery at that moment. No one seemed to know what was happening, but a horrible thought crossed Jake's mind.

I thought that it was probably a terrorist attack, and I know that's sad, and I think it's very American of us to jump to that conclusion. We were waiting for the gunshots. That's what we were thinking was, once the gunshots start happening, how do we get out of here?

Holly and Jake didn't stay to find out. So they didn't see what investigators later described. 2 men standing on the balcony outside the gallery windows using an angle grinder to cut into the glass. And those men, according to authorities, would soon be inside. Within moments, the security staff in the gallery put a call out over the radio.

C'est urgent, c'est urgent. À la Galerie d'Apollon, il y a une intrusion par la fenêtre. Il y a une intrusion par la fenêtre.

And in English?

It's urgent, it's urgent, it's in the Apollo Gallery. Somebody's trying to get into the gallery from the window.

Frédéric said that, like Holly and Jake, many of his colleagues also assumed it was a terrorist attack. But not Frédéric. There'd recently been a theft at the Science Museum in Paris, and for some reason, it had been playing on his mind just the day before.

And I was thinking, yes, it's possible. It's possible to happen in the, in the Louver. So I have to be, to be ready for that psychologically.

Psychologically, he was. When the call came over the radio, somehow Frédéric knew exactly what to do.

When I heard that, I ran like I've never run.

You ran?

Yes, yes, I ran.

It's important to say here, Frédéric has no weapons. Security guards at the Louver are unarmed. Now, he's a big guy, tall and serious-looking, but he's more of a gentle giant. And he told me he is always watching for security lapses, but a lot of what he does is just help tourists— welcome them in, find their spouses who've gotten lost in the galleries. And he says, There's an order of what guards are supposed to protect in situations like this. Visitors and staff first, building and the art only if they can.

Really, we are not, we are not police officers. We are—

And yet you felt this kind of urge to go towards it.

Why? I think it was my duty.

Frederick didn't run towards the Apollo Gallery. He ran towards where the thieves had come from, outside the windows. But remember, the Louver is huge. To get from where he was to the street outside the Apollo Gallery, Frédéric ran about a quarter of a mile. All he had on him was his flashlight, which he thought could come in handy if he needed to defend himself, and his phone.

Maybe I won't stop the, the thieves, but I will have to to take a photo of them, uh, for, for the investigations later. Uh, um, but I was too late.

The thieves had entered the gallery at 9:34 AM. By the time the radio call went out and Frederick had raced around to the street, it was 9:38 and they were already gone. All that was left were the devastating aftereffects of the biggest heist that had ever happened at the Louver. Between the call going out over the radio and Frédéric's arrival outside the gallery windows, a lot had happened. According to investigators, the thieves entered the gallery and used their angle grinders to cut into the glass display cases Authorities said they managed to grab 9 pieces of Napoleonic-era jewelry, and investigators would later place the value of what was stolen at over $100 million. By the time Frédéric arrived, he said he saw the truck and the ladder still extended toward the gallery windows, but the thieves were gone.

I was, I don't know, like 10 seconds too late.

The entire thing, from beginning to end, took 7 minutes. Authorities said that after leaving the gallery through the same window they'd arrived through, the thieves had shimmied back down to the street and escaped on motorized scooters. The act was clearly premeditated, and it seemed like everything had gone according to plan. Almost everything. They'd left in a hurry.

They had left everything, the tools, their helmets, everything.

And that wasn't all. Frédéric says the thieves had poured gasoline all over the furniture lift.

I was feeling a little bit dizzy at the time because, yes, it was very, very strong smell, very strong smell.

The thieves had likely intended to set fire to the furniture lift, according to investigators, along with all the other equipment, but they were seemingly interrupted by the arrival of Louver staff. If they'd been successful, it could have made a bad day even worse. Frédéric told me, the Apollo Gallery is made of wood. If the thieves had flung a lit match, the entire room could have caught the blaze. Instead, the thieves had left behind crucial clues for investigators. Because of the quick thinking of Frédéric's colleagues, there was something to look for— fingerprints and DNA. Police arrived moments after Frédéric did. Sirens blared. Frédéric stood on the street trying to stop members of the public getting too close to the crime scene when something caught his eye.

On the pavement, uh, I saw something shiny.

That shiny object was in a light well below street level, and Frédéric I realized that it was a piece of jewelry. It wasn't just any piece of jewelry. It was a crown once worn by Princess Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. Encrusted with over 1,000 diamonds and 8 solid gold eagles, the crown was lying crushed and deformed in the corner of a Parisian sidewalk. It seemed that the thieves had dropped it on the way down from the balcony. It meant that investigators were now looking for 8 items stolen from the Apollo Gallery by thieves who seemed like they knew exactly what they had gone there to steal: the Crown Jewels of France. Now this is where the movie normally ends. We cut to our handsome heisters on the motorbikes speeding away from the Parisian police, the sirens fade, the guy gets the girl, And the credits roll. But what we call a heist in a movie has another name: theft. Heists are exciting, thrilling, made for the screen. Theft has lasting consequences. Holly and Jake Barker aren't actors, and the day wasn't nearly over for them. While the investigators began to piece together what had happened outside, Holly and Jake were trapped inside, not knowing what exactly they just witnessed.

They watched as panic spread through the crowded halls.

I tend to freak out easily on things and not— like, again, just waiting for that sound of a gunshot when not quite sure what was going on, where to go, and also just the, like, 15 people in that room are running. But then when you get out of the Apollo Room and into like another little area, now hundreds of people are running.

There was nowhere to go. And over an hour later, Holly and Jake said they still hadn't been told anything apart from to stay where they were. At around 11 AM, Jake said he spotted something— an open door— and other tourists escaping through it. They joined a crowd that was pushing out into the museum courtyard, not knowing if they were supposed to or not. As they left, they overheard some American tourists talking about a robbery in the Apollo Gallery, and that was how they learned that the Crown Jewels had been stolen. And soon that news would spread all over the world.

Crowns, necklaces, earrings, and more estimated to be worth more than $100 million. We have learned a short time ago that officials did recover one piece.

Investigators say they're still trying to determine if a source inside one of the world's most popular art museums was involved.

Now we join the investigation, tracing the journey of the thieves from the moment they left the Louver. I said, how in the world How in the world did the thieves get into these cases? And he said, well, it was easy. And the hunt for what they took with them, some of the most dazzling pieces of jewelry in the Western world. And later, we'll find out what happened inside the gallery from the perspective of one of the suspected thieves. Is there anything you think your client, if he was here now, what would he like us to know?

Believe me? I guess.

Heist at the Louver is a production of ABC Audio, hosted by me, James Longman. Produced by Madeleine Wood, Emily Schutz, and Ayesha Elhamar-Castano. Edited by Nora Ritchie. Our supervising producer is Suzie Lu. Mixing by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Katie Dendas, John Kapodinais, Indra Dele-Sahan, Iman Varoqua, Michelle Margulis, and Suzanne de Cunto. Josh Cohan is our director of podcast programming. Eamon McNiffe is our executive producer.