Original subtitles

(soft orchestral music)

archeological site of La Mina on the northern coast of Peru

was looted until it virtually disappeared.

It was the site of the tomb of the Lord of La Mina,

a ruler of the ancient Moche culture.

Some said it was the biggest looting

of a Peruvian archeological site since the Spanish invasion

500 years earlier.

Among the stolen pieces from La Mina

was a startling gold headdress.

It was finally recovered as a result

of a feud between two of the most important figures

in the worldwide trade in antiquities.

But before that, this extraordinary headdress

went on a journey from La Mina to the Peruvian capital,

and then across the Atlantic to Spain, Germany, and England.

It left a trail of greed, deception, and murder.

It's no wonder that some in Peru

believe the headdress carries the curse of the Moche Lords.

(suspenseful music)

(wind blowing)

(peaceful music)

The deserts of northern Peru.

1500 years ago, the Moche, one of the most advanced

civilizations in South America, walked this land.

20 years ago, grave robbers discovered the tomb

of a Moche Lord, previously unknown to archeologists.

It was claimed that a goat herder first stumbled upon it

before the serious looters moved in.

They virtually emptied it.

What they took was priceless.

Ceramic figures and bowls,

but most valuable of all,

a stunning gold headdress.

(thunder booming)

From it shown the face of a sea God

with eight flowing Medusa like tentacles.

It was soon dubbed the Mona Lisa

of ancient South American art.

From that moment, the whereabouts of the golden headdress

was lost in mystery.

One that wasn't solved for nearly 20 years.

Peru is most famous for the high culture of the Incas

that dominated the civilization of the Andes

for over 300 years from 1200 AD.

Much less well known is the Moche culture

that existed nearly 1,000 years before the Incas.

The Moche inhabited the deserts and coast of northern Peru.

They were farmers and fisherman.

And 2,000 years ago, Moche civilization

turned this barren landscape into a fertile land

that supported one of the richest cultures in the Americas.

A series of river valleys crossed their land,

and they created elaborate irrigation systems

to support a thriving, rural economy.

The Moche were one of the great early civilizations

of the ancient Andes, if not the entire new world.

What we have in the Moche is a series of kingdoms,

or lordships, specifically based

within large valley systems.

We have only come to know about the Moche

in the last few decades as archeologists

have uncovered their remains.

Within the last 30 years or so,

spectacular excavations along the north coast of Peru,

we find tombs of rulers who would have been

very special members of their society.

The greatest tomb excavation

was at Sipan in 1987.

The site was rescued from grave robbers,

who had already begun looting the area.

15 years later, a lavish museum was built

to house the art and artifacts of the Royal Tombs of Sipan.

(Walter speaking a foreign language)

Through the Moche ceramics

we have learned that they were a culture

with extraordinary aesthetic qualities.

Each Moche ceramic object is an exquisite work of art

of the highest standard.

The beauty, the expressiveness, and their realism.

With no written language,

everything we know about the Moche

comes from their art.

It was a society based on religion, warfare,

ruling elites, and sacrifices.

The Moche were great craftsmen,

producing dazzling works of art,

painted ceramics, and extraordinary metal work,

like the missing golden headdress.

This is what a tomb of a Moche King might have looked like.

The mummified body surrounded by a store

of the most fabulous works of art.

And at its center, a golden headdress.

(suspenseful music)

In an area as vast as that which the Moche once ruled,

many grave sites have gone undiscovered by archeologists.

Others have been left unprotected.

And here in this remote region,

there are rich pickings to be had by looters

willing to supply an international market

worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

This grave robber agreed to talk to us

provided we didn't know his face.

(man speaking a foreign language)

I dug these goods from a grave

over there in that hole at a depth of a meter and a half.

I dug down and I found the mummy at the center,

so I pulled it out and took all of its belongings.

I took away all its things and then left the skeleton

where I found it.

The best thing I've ever sold was

a de court of copper breast plate.

It was Moche.

It was 40 cents meters high with drawings.

It had some monkeys at the sides

and some peanuts carved in relief.

It was all made of copper.

(peaceful music)

One place where the grave robbers

can sell their loot and tourists can buy it

is the local witchcraft market.

Here no one seems to ask questions about

where it all comes from.

(man speaking a foreign language)

This is a Moche ceramic

from the Moche culture of La Mina.

It's at least 1500 years old.

These ceramics are usually for shamans

to perform the healing.

This one represents a woman.

You can also find some that represent the man.

This one is used to clean the woman

when she is feeling down or in a bad way.

This one is from the Moche culture.

(peaceful music)

Doctor Walter Alva agreed

to take us to the site of La Mina,

where it's believed the headdress was looted

nearly 20 years ago.

It's 400 miles north of the Peruvian capital, Lima,

and an hours drive from the nearest main town.

Today there is nothing in this bleak landscape

to indicate the splendor of the original tomb.

(man speaking in foreign language)

We are climbing to the area

where the tomb used to be located,

as you can see in the hills opposite the valley.

In the upper part you can see a group of rocks.

And as I said, the place doesn't give any sign

of having construction on the surface

or the remains of monumental architecture.

The idea was always that the tomb blend in

with the landscape,

so it remains hidden within the hills.

It gives us the same impression

as the Valley of Kings in Egypt.

When rumors first began to emerge

about the looting at La Mina,

Doctor Alva had set off with his wife

and a local policeman to investigate.

What they found was shocking and dangerous.

(man speaking in foreign language)

They noticed our presence.

A group of people left running and jumped into a car,

a pick up truck.

Between them, there was a man armed with a shotgun.

They obviously escaped when they saw us.

The idea of grave robbers carrying weapons

makes Doctor Alva apprehensive to this day.

It may seem extraordinary, but many

of the archeological sites remain unprotected.

Doctor Alva takes no chances.

He always carries a hand gun on his belt.

Finally we arrived at the site where the octopus headdress

was once hidden.

(man speaking a foreign language)

This is exactly the place

where in 1988 a fabulous funerary chamber was looted.

The tomb belonged to a Moche Lord

and he was buried with gold objects.

We will never be able to know the exact

quantity and variety.

But nothing had prepared Doctor Alva

for the devastation he saw.

When we inspected the place,

we realized that we were in front of the tomb

that had been completely looted.

Around it we could see terrible destruction.

As if a bomb had exploded.

Everything was broken and we noticed

fragments of copper objects and of wall paintings.

From the fragments that remained,

and his knowledge of other Moche tombs,

Doctor Alva tried to build a picture

of what had been at La Mina.

Today, the looted tomb at La Mina

has been covered again and left unmarked in the desert

in the hope that its anonymity will protect it

from further looting.

But what happened to the octopus headdress?

In the months after the robbery,

there was no trace of any of the priceless looted objects

and few clues about who was now in possession of them.

The tomb raiders may have been at the bottom

of the trafficking food chain,

but they surely knew the significance

of what they had plundered in the desert.

And they would have known where to take it

to realize its value on the international market.

(peaceful music)

(upbeat music)

This was almost certainly the first destination

for the headdress after it was dug from the ground.

Lima, the capital of Peru, is a metropolis

of almost nine million inhabitants.

Like many great South American cities,

there is much poverty, but also great riches.

Among the wealthy are the great collectors

of ancient Peruvian art.

Some would pay a small fortune to own an object

as rare and as beautiful as the

octopus headdress from La Mina.

One of the high profile buyers of Peruvian art at Lima

was Raul Apesteguia.

His private collection was immense.

(man speaking in foreign language)

In Lima, everybody knew

that Raul Apesteguia was a consultant

for collectors and of people

linked to the study of art.

He also moved within a circle of intellectuals.

(upbeat music)

Although Raul Apesteguia was well respected

in the artistic and academic world,

there was suspicions that he might have known something

about the 1988 looting at La Mina,

though he was never interviewed by the police.

(peaceful music)

Four years after the robbery, in 1992,

the world saw the headdress for the first time.

Stunning photographs of some of the pieces

looted from La Mina were published in a book

called, Gold from Ancient Peru.

Most startling of all, the octopus headdress

from La Mina was featured on the front cover.

Raul Apesteguia was one of the contributors.

(suspenseful music)

Then three years later in 1995, a second book was published,

containing yet more photographs of the octopus headdress.

Once again, Raul Apesteguia's contribution was credited,

along with an extensive list of other notables,

included the Nelson Rockefeller Foundation.

The list also included a German industrialist

and collector called Anton Roeckl.

He knew Apesteguia and would later have a key role

in the continuing search for the gold from La Mina.

(Walter speaking a foreign language)

The strongest possibility

is that a local trafficker who acquired the pieces

acted as a middle man and sold 'em

to Raul Apesteguia, if he had them, which we have to assume.

Raul Apesteguia had the international contacts

and was an expert, a consultant, and art collector in Lima.

He probably offered them or established the contacts

for the pieces to be sold in Europe.

(airplane taking off)

But to what extent Raul Apesteguia

was implicated in the looting of the octopus headdress

we may never know.

And Mr. Apesteguia isn't saying.

(peaceful music)

On January 26th, 1996, Raul Apesteguia was dressing

for a family party in his 15th floor apartment in Lima.

At 8:00 p.m. two men walked in the front entrance

of the apartment building and took the elevator

to the 15th floor.

Before he finished putting his shirt on,

Raul Apesteguia heard a knock on the door.

(suspenseful music)

The two men attacked Raul Apesteguia

and ransacked the apartment, leaving him for dead.

The killers got away clean.

Journalists were soon alerted to the murder.

Garcia Panta left his office and rushed

to the scene of the attack.

(Garcia speaking a foreign language)

We are at the residence

in San Felipe where Raul Apesteguia lived.

Some suspicious people arrived here by car.

Mr. Apesteguia's apartment was on the 15th floor,

that's where the crime occurred.

His mother lived on the 13th floor,

and that's where they were going to have a dinner party

for his father-in-law.

When they came down, the lift stopped on the fourth floor.

The doors opened and there was a woman staring

straight at them.

They thought they had already reached the ground floor.

After they realized their mistake,

they quickly pressed the button for the ground floor,

but the lady jokingly told them,

hey, it's not Halloween yet.

It's only January.

Why are you dressed as a mummy?

This woman was a prime eye witness

in the case.

She told the police that the two men

were carrying a box stuffed with what appeared

to be ancient artifacts.

(man speaking a foreign language)

His son went upstairs to see

why his father was taking so long.

And found him lying in a pool of blood.

The man was already dead.

(suspenseful music)

Lima was shocked by the brutal death

of this well known resident.

Publicly, there was no obvious motive for the murder,

but some had their suspicions.

The revenge of the Moche Lords.

(man speaking a foreign language)

In relation to the death

of Raul Apesteguia, it was said that there was

a Moche curse behind it.

Anyone who would dare touch the tomb

would have the curse fully upon them.

And something bad would happen to them.

It's a popular belief.

But as the investigation unfolded,

police began to receive information that the murder

was a different kind of revenge altogether.

One inflicted by traffickers of archeological treasures.

It also emerged that the well respected expert

on Peruvian antiquities had a less than unblemished past.

(man speaking a foreign language)

In 1971, Raul Apesteguia was caught

with a group of tomb robbers in Nazca,

250 miles south of Lima.

He was indicted as a trafficker and went to jail,

but only for a short period.

In Peru these activities are quite common.

But people like Apesteguia wouldn't do the field work.

He would have some rural workers from the area

doing this for him.

At the time of his murder,

it was not clear if the golden headdress from La Mina

was part of Raul Apesteguia's collection or not.

But 10 months after the murder and nine years

after the octopus headdress was looted,

there was a surprising development 6,000 miles away

on another continent.

(choir singing)

News came that a golden octopus headdress

had turned up in Spain.

It was on the back cover of a catalog for a new exhibition.

For the curators, the gold octopus headdress

was the centerpiece of their display.

(Mariano speaking a foreign language)

This particular piece

I was fascinated to exhibit.

With great pleasure I would exhibit it again

if I had the chance because I believe it's a great object.

Santiago is famous as a destination

for pilgrims.

The exhibition was held first in the university,

but it proved so successful that it transferred

to the huge church of Santo Domingo

in the heart of the city.

(choir singing)

(Carlos speaking a foreign language)

It wasn't only a success,

but from the information I remember,

at its time it was the most visited exhibition in Spain

after the Prado Museum.

In the search for the looted headdress

from La Mina, the exhibition in Spain was problematic.

Although the octopus headdress in the exhibition catalog

was similar to the one from La Mina,

it was not quite the same.

This one had 12 tentacles.

La Mina's had eight.

But the Spanish exhibition was not quite a dead end.

A year later, in 1997, a huge coffee table book

on ancient art from the Americas was published.

And there next to the 12 tentacled octopus

from the Spanish catalog was the eight tentacled version

from La Mina.

The book had been brought together

by the men who also assembled the exhibits

for the Spanish exhibition.

Leonardo Patterson.

Leonardo Patterson is a well known collector

of ancient artifacts.

He is a great sportsmen, playing polo

with the rich and famous.

He was born in Costa Rica, lived in the United States

during the seventies and eighties,

before moving to Germany.

(Mariano speaking a foreign language)

The image Mr. Patterson gives

is of a spontaneous man who gets personally involved

with the pieces he holds.

I don't know if he has any other activities.

So did Leonardo Patterson known

where the headdress was?

In London, there was an art collector who was convinced

that Patterson knew exactly where the headdress was.

But this was no ordinary collector.

His name is Michel Van Rijn.

He admits that he once a trafficker

and looted antiquities.

He says he gave it up 15 years ago to work

for the other side.

He know claims he uses his knowledge and contacts

to retrieve stolen historic works and return them

to their country of origin.

Among the works he has recovered were these

fantastic mosaics looted from an orthodox church

in northern Cypress.

In 2000, Van Rijn eventually came across

Leonardo Patterson's book with the photograph

of the octopus headdress.

He believed the book contained pictures

of stolen Peruvian art.

I saw the Patterson book.

It's not a catalog, it's a book.

I mean it's a coffee table book,

but full of incredible looted works of art

from, especially from Peru.

And there's all these golden pieces,

so I blew everything wide up.

Since 2000, I kept on hammering on them, hammering on them.

(upbeat music)

Van Rijn launched a ferocious

personal campaign against Patterson over the Internet.

(upbeat music)

I'm going to show you the Patterson specials

and the Peru specials.

And he has been on the menu ever since.

He has his own icon on my website

where everything is translated in Spanish.

So he has the doubtful honor to have many hits

on my site.

Patterson's icon on the website

is the golden headdress from La Mina.

Van Rijn makes a series of allegations against Patterson

and his alleged links to looted antiquities.

We asked Leonardo Patterson to give us an interview

to discuss what he knew about the looted octopus headdress.

He declined to comment directly,

but instructed his lawyer in London to speak on his behalf.

(upbeat music)

Mr Van Rijn has a number of campaigns

against all sorts of people.

You've only got to look at his website

to appreciate that.

I think personally he got the wrong end of the stick

and assumed that Mr. Patterson was the owner of this

and a number of other Peruvian artifacts.

In fact I don't think that was the case at all.

What had happened was that Mr. Patterson

had put on an exhibition in Spain in 1997.

And I think a number of pieces have been wrongly attributed

to him when in fact they were the property

of other collectors.

So Patterson denied any wrong doing,

but that didn't stop Van Rijn publishing allegations

against him, some at least from reputable sources.

The Patterson file, famous lawsuits.

His publication of the Journal of Field Archeology.

And winter 1984.

A recent arrest in Boston has called attention

to the existence of fake Maya frescoes

on the international market.

The accused, art dealer Leonardo Patterson, was charged

with wire fraud for attempting to sell

a supposed Maya fresco.

While the piece was accompanied by two letters

of authentication and other documents,

it is now identified as a fake.

Well that's only one, the time that he was arrested.

He was arrested another time and he did worse.

Once more, in July 2001,

the legal authorities in Mexico issued a press release.

It said, according to the information provided by

INTERPOL Switzerland, Mr. Patterson had a record on theft

and trafficking in animals, art works,

and archeological pieces.

In the United States of America, as well as in Europe.

I haven't seen the evidence.

If he is hounded by INTERPOL,

why is he still at liberty?

I mean if he has committed so many crimes,

why hasn't he, why isn't he imprisoned?

I mean it's very easy to blacken someone's name

and to cast expressions on them,

but where at the end of the day is the hard evidence?

And I have to say when it comes to Mr. Patterson,

there's a lot of allegations, but I haven't seen

an awful lot of hard evidence.

(suspenseful music)

One man with hard evidence of Patterson's past

was an officer in the U.S. Customs Service,

Charles Kosczka.

Leonardo was a character.

I mean if you met him once, you would remember him.

He doesn't blend in with the general population.

I know he has two felony convictions

from the United States to date.

The first one had to do with fake art,

which was being sold to somebody who didn't know

it was a fake.

And that he plead guilty to.

The second offense involved bringing

rare turtle eggs into America.

Patterson didn't go to jail for his first offense,

but the charge or smuggling endangered species

broke his probation and Officer Kosczka

was sent to arrest him.

I wanted to arrest him so I contacted

his probation officer.

And I said, when is he due to report to you next?

And it was about a week or so later.

And I was waiting for him.

And when he showed up, I arrested him.

He was embarrassed obviously having handcuffs put on him.

I let him cover his handcuffs with a hat

or something like that.

I felt no physical danger, even though I was

armed with a 357 Magnum on my hip.

I walked him, instead of putting him in the car,

I walked him two blocks through the street of New York.

For this violation of parole,

Patterson served a short prison sentence in the mid 1980s

in a Texas Penitentiary.

(peaceful music)

Michel Van Rijn traveled repeatedly to Lima

trying to persuade the authorities in Peru to take action.

He met Walter Alva and together they went to the police

with their allegations.

Then Alva, Van Rijn, and the Chief of INTERPOl

in the Peruvian capital posed for the photo

that was published the next day by newspapers.

To Van Rijn's surprise, time went by and nothing happened.

With the Peruvian authorities dragging their feet,

Van Rijn decided to take action against Patterson himself.

(upbeat music)

Publication of Leonardo Patterson's past

by Michel Van Rijn intensified the feud

between the two men.

The allegations on the website are pure nonsense,

absolute rubbish.

But they are deeply unpleasant to anyone

that's subjected to them.

I think these are allegations that have been

promoted by Mr. Van Rijn and if you repeat a lie

often enough, it becomes the truth.

By 2004, Leonardo Patterson

had grown tired of the insults and claims

that Van Rijn was publishing on his website.

Patterson's German lawyer issued a writ to gag order.

This really is the amends to refrain from publishing,

make available, or otherwise put any statements

of any legal, defamatory, offensive, racist,

insulting, or libelous nature with regard

to Mr. Patterson.

This implies in particular to statements

that Mr. Patterson is a thief or a robber.

Mr. Patterson is a driving force in the illicit trade

of Columbian artifacts.

Mr. Patterson bribes persons.

And I signed Micky Mouse to the lawyer.

Van Rijn didn't take the writ seriously.

He simply published it on his website,

alongside all the other allegations.

But six months later, a German court issued

an injunction against Van Rijn,

which once again he laughed off.

Mr. Patterson had been vilified by Mr. Van Rijn

on his website or a period of about three years

prior to that.

In 2004, he managed to get an injunction

from the German courts to stop Mr. Van Rijn

defaming him and libeling him in that fashion.

But Mr. Van Rijn had taken absolutely no notice

of it whatsoever.

And I think he was just very keen to explore

any other way in which he could have his name

removed from the website.

Van Rijn thought that once Patterson

realized that the gag order hadn't worked,

Patterson would have to come up with a different way

of persuading him.

He approached me by phone.

He tried to you know persuade me in all kind of ways.

First bullying, and when that didn't go anywhere,

then he was trying to entice me in accepting

something from him to get it off the website.

He was offering all kinds of things.

But what exactly would it take

to get Van Rijn off his back

and what Patterson insisted were false allegations

off his website?

I went along with his game a little bit

because I thought that it was a great opportunity

to get one of the most spectacular Moche headdresses back.

Van Rijn thought he could come to a deal

with his adversary, Leonardo Patterson,

which would enable him to recover the priceless treasure

for the Peruvian authorities.

I let myself be enticed and drawn in.

I said, well, if you bring me one of the octopi

published in your book, then I'm willing

to sit down with you and to discuss it.

So it took a long time.

In the end, he gave in.

So that was the deal.

Van Rijn would remove all the allegations against Patterson

from his website if Patterson delivered

the gold octopus headdress to him

so that he could return it to its rightful place,

a museum in Peru.

Mr. Van Rijn wanted that piece.

Mr. Patterson duly set about procuring

that particular piece.

Leonardo Patterson flew to London

from his home in Munich.

He went to Van Rijn's Chelsea flat.

Van Rijn needed proof that Patterson had the headdress.

He thought he was setting a trap,

but would Patterson walk into it?

The two controversial art collectors chatted

for hours over a barbecue.

Eventually Leonardo Patterson made Van Rijn

the offer he could not refuse.

So he was sitting here.

He must have felt at home between my statues,

the Manifesto against the art world.

This craziness.

Then he produced the octopus.

And my son sneaked down at 15 and he took a photo

with his mobile.

So that was a bad, bad day for Leonardo

because my God he was like (mumbling sounds).

And boy was he shocked, believe me.

So we had him, check, photograph.

Evidence.

The circumstances were that they were having a barbecue.

It was the summer, very pleasant.

They reached this agreement at that meeting

and shook hands in front of Mr. Van Rijn's children.

And that was the moment which the deal was sealed.

I think he just felt, whatever it takes,

I want to sort this thing out and get myself

off this website.

After the meeting with Van Rijn,

Patterson flew back to Germany.

The question now was where exactly

was the octopus headdress?

Van Rijn for one had assumed it was in the possession

of his old adversary, Leonardo Patterson.

But was it?

Had Van Rijn got it wrong?

(suspenseful music)

In the last week of July 2006,

Patterson returned to London.

In his luggage was the gold octopus headdress.

Patterson met with Van Rijn at the offices

of Patterson's lawyer, Martin Bale.

He came with his German lawyer.

And we had a meeting here arranged in this office

for the 28th of July where we met

Mr. Van Rijn and his lawyer.

So the piece was brought to his lawyer's office.

I had a discussion with him off the record,

downstairs, outside of the lawyer's office.

Look, you know, lawyers upstairs,

but we are we.

Just take the mask and you have something very valuable

for your kids, et cetera, for you.

And you do whatever you want,

but take me off the website please

because you know it's harming me.

Mr. Van Rijn asked if he could see the piece.

It had come in a plastic bag wrapped up for safe keeping.

We got it out and unwrapped it,

and there it was.

(suspenseful music)

So when I was in the lawyer's office,

and I saw this piece in my hands,

I started literally shaking because it is magical

because it's cruel and beautiful at the same time.

And it absolutely talks to you.

(suspenseful music)

But before the meeting wound up,

Patterson produced a document to claim

to show the providence of the gold headdress.

It's contents were quite shocking.

Yes, I think that's it.

The document claimed to show

that the headdress had been legitimately imported

into Germany, but both the importer and the collector

were now dead.

It also stated that the headdress had been bought

in 1987 from another now dead man.

None other than Raul Apesteguia,

the Peruvian collector murdered in a Lima apartment in 1996.

(knocking on door)

(suspenseful music)

Van Rijn was not at all convinced that this document

legitimized providence of the headdress was genuine.

It was doctored in a hurry.

You could see the lines that he had taken

from another piece.

You know it was signed probably another piece

which was important in the past.

They put something together,

and it was like so obvious that the document was forged.

It was agreed that Van Rijn would

make contact again with Patterson's lawyer

in the coming days.

Meanwhile, the headdress would remain

in the safe keeping of Martin Bale.

It was absolutely no where I could think of putting it

that would be safe, certainly in this office,

so it was left that I would actually take it home with me

and babysit it for the weekend.

(peaceful music)

I surprised my wife and family considerably.

I wrapped it on the kitchen table, showed them.

And it frightened the life out of my two daughters.

They called it the Peruvian scary thing.

And were very keen that at night I would shut the door

and not let this octopus out to get all of them.

So I looked after it and made sure nothing happened to it

and then brought it back to the office

on the Monday and then made some

obscure arrangements for it.

(peaceful music)

But Van Rijn was taking no chances.

Now he was certain that both Patterson

and the headdress were in England.

He called his contacts at Scotland Yard.

We received information to suggest that an object

that had been stolen abroad was in this country.

At that point, we have a duty to act.

But neither Scotland Yard nor INTERPOL

could act until they had positive confirmation

that the headdress had indeed been looted

from the tomb at La Mina.

Only one man could do that.

And his name was Doctor Walter Alva.

Van Rijn had sent him a photograph.

(man speaking a foreign language)

With the photo I received

through an email,

I immediately realized that we had an object

that came from La Mina.

A few days afterwards, the Peruvian police

asked me for a report in order to send it

to the British police so they could take action.

(suspenseful music)

I had both INTERPOL Peru already on notice

with Walter Alva years before these pieces were looted.

And Walter had confirmed it,

so why we had to wait and at the risk that

Leonardo might pull the mask from the lawyer's office,

it would have disappeared.

But days went by.

Patterson checked out of his hotel.

Had the headdress gone with him

or was it still in the possession of his lawyer?

Our real concern was to ensure that the object

remained where it was until such time

we could act upon it.

(suspenseful music)

It was a tense waiting game.

Detective Sergeant Rapley searched his emails

every few hours, but still no instructions came from Peru.

Was it too late to recover the ancient Peruvian treasure?

Had they missed their chance?

(suspenseful music)

(man speaking a foreign languge)

We exchanged information

with INTERPOL London.

And after receiving confirmation of the piece's origin

from Doctor Alva, it was concluded

that the piece was as much a headdress.

(upbeat music)

With INTERPOL finally giving the go ahead,

Scotland Yard handed the case to their undercover agent,

Michelle Roycroft.

She called lawyer, Martin Bale,

who was now on a family holiday in France.

She said that she understood that I had the gold piece.

I said that I did.

She told me that in her view and the view

of the British police, it was a stolen item.

It was claimed by the cultural heritage of Peru

and that she was very much wanting to come to my office

and come and get it.

What I said that I would do is get back to the office,

have a word with the client, give her call,

and thereafter we made an appointment.

On August 15th, 2006, Agent Roycroft

and a second officer set out for the London offices

of Patterson's lawyer.

Would they finally retrieve the golden headdress

20 years after it was looted?

We sent around two plain clothed female officers.

We don't carry guns.

It was not necessary to conduct surveillance

or observations.

It wasn't necessary to conduct a search of the premises.

I remember Michelle Roycroft meeting me.

She said, I will sit down outside of his office

until he is back in his office to seize this piece.

And I mailed her back and said, well I'm going to

bring you the chair to sit on.

Finally, Agent Roycroft and lawyer Martin Bale

met face to face.

She showed me one or two pieces of paper which she had.

When the object was asked for,

the gentleman kindly produced it from a safe.

I brought down the piece.

I showed it to her.

She put it to me quite simply that

this piece was claimed by the Peruvian authorities.

But as far as the British police were concerned,

this was a piece that had to be

handed over and restored.

I think they knew they had the object.

They knew it originated from Peru.

But it's the element of surprise of actually

having a police officer walk into your premises

and tell you that they know it's from Peru.

But that they also believe that it's been stolen.

It did surprise me that the British police

were taking an interest in it,

but of course once they did then I had no option

but to hand it over to them.

Roycroft was clearly taken aback when the object

was produced, but just the sheer beauty of the object

when it's opened in the office,

I mean it's a stunning object.

And then she was clearly very much impressed by it

and the delicate patterns on the gold

and just the fact this thing is so beautiful

could have been produced so many years ago.

(peaceful music)

Martin Bale called his client,

Leonardo Patterson, to tell him what had happened.

(peaceful music)

I think he was surprised.

But I obviously spoke to him and I made the point

that if in fact it was stolen,

it would have to be handed over.

There's nothing that anyone could do about that.

So the bitter feud between

Michel Van Rijn and Leonardo Patterson

finally delivered up the Moche treasure.

But there were still questions about the headdress

that were left unresolved by the apparently fake

document produced by Patterson at the July meeting

with Van Rijn.

Who had owned it?

And where had it been?

Things became clearer when we arrived to interview

lawyer Martin Bale on behalf of Leonardo Patterson.

Martin Bale produced a second different document

that had been provided by Mr. Patterson

explaining the providence of the headdress.

Mr. Patterson procured it from a person,

fellow collector, in Munich by the name of Mr. Roeckl.

And he obtained it from him for the sole purpose

of bringing it to London to hand to Mr. Van Rijn

in pursuance of the deal that they'd reached.

As far as Mr. Roeckl is concerned,

he's given me a declaration confirming

that he's been very active in purchasing

Peruvian artifacts since the mid 1970s.

He's described how he purchased the Moche gold mask

from a Mr. Raul Apesteguia.

And since that date, the gold mask was in his possession

until the arrangement with Mr. Patterson

to hand it over to Mr. Van Rijn.

Anton Roeckl is indeed a well known collector

of antiquities.

Based in Germany, his name appears in the acknowledgements

of several books on Peruvian antiquities,

including the lavish addition published

by Leonardo Patterson in the wake of

the exhibition in Spain.

(peaceful music)

So this is what seems to have happened.

Very soon after the looting of the Moche tomb,

the headdress was acquired by Raul Apesteguia.

And within weeks it had been sold to Anton Roeckl.

He took it to experts at the University of Munich.

(peaceful music)

He first saw it in December 1987 in the apartment

in Lima belonging to Mr. Apesteguia.

And he then subsequently arranged for it to be

brought over to Germany where it was authenticated

by the University of Munich.

There are lots of fakes in antiquities,

as you can imagine.

The question was, was this an original piece?

And the answer that came firmly back

from the University was yes it was entirely original.

When he was satisfied as to its origin and bonafide,

he actually purchased it in January of 1988.

Mr. Roeckl was not available to film

an interview for this program,

but he told us that he supplied Leonardo Patterson

with Peruvian pieces for the Spanish exhibition.

Despite the retrieval of the headdress in London,

INTERPOL in Peru still have a warrant out

to question Leonardo Patterson

about other ancient artifacts.

(peaceful music)

In September 2006, the gold octopus headdress

of the Moche King made the long journey

back from London to Lima.

The National Museum is the oldest in all of Peru.

Besides its beauty, I see the most important value

for this piece in the social point of view

is this national identity.

It's very important,

and the other reason why you can find

long queues of people waiting to see this piece.

(peaceful music)

The museum is taking extra precautions

to ensure the headdress remains safe from robbers

in the future.

We have made a special vault.

It is a concrete room with steel reinforcement.

A steel door and armed guard 24 hours.

Night vision cameras.

Movement detectors.

Actually it's not that we think that this jewel

can be stolen again, but it's to discourage

the thief and to give an example how this kind

of treasure has to be handled.

(peaceful music)

The gold headdress may be back

where it should be, but the story

of the Moche Lords and their looted tombs

shows how vulnerable ancient and sacred sites are

to the greed of the 21st century.

(man speaking a foreign language)

I believe that there is

no such thing as a curse.

As there is not one single individual that

has been captured or put in jail.

What we have here in this loot is a group

of individuals who probably possessed the objects

of a looted tomb.

Traffickers who probably have made a lot of money

by exchanging the objects from the hands of the looters

to the hands of the collectors.

Perhaps one day the other gold items

that Doctor Alva believes were looted from La Mina

will be returned and sit beside the golden octopus headdress

that is now a national icon.

(peaceful music)

(suspenseful jazz music)