All language subtitles for Historys.Greatest.Mysteries.S07E04.The.Theft.of.the.Mona.Lisa.Case.Closed.1080p.HULU.WEB-DL.H264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Tonight, the most famous
painting in the world

stolen in a brazen heist.

Everyone wants to know

how a Leonardo da
Vinci masterpiece

could simply disappear from
the wall of the Louvre.

She's hanging on
the wall at 7:00 AM

and by 8:30 she's just
gone without a trace.

A renowned detective
swings into action.

Louis Lépine is like the
French Sherlock Holmes.

If there's anyone who can
crack this case, it's him.

Sure enough, when they
dust the glass for prints,

something turns up.

The hunt is on for
this priceless portrait,

but more than one suspect
seems to have a motive.

He and his fellow robber
barons spend their fortunes

amassing the finest art
of Europe's history.

Pablo Picasso was
the perfect suspect.

The incriminating evidence
was painted into his work.

Now we'll explore
the top theories

in the two-year investigation
for the missing masterpiece.

Police are on the
search for a genius thief

from the higher
echelons of society.

Nothing about
this case played out

like the public expected.

Who stole the Mona Lisa?

On Tuesday, August
22, 1911, around 9:00 AM,

artist Louis Beroud
arrives at the Louvre

and makes his way to one of
the museum's most famous rooms,

the Salon Carré.

Beroud makes his living
copying the old masters.

Today he's working on a painting

that features
Leonardo da Vinci's

400-year-old masterpiece,

La Joconde, known to English
speakers as the Mona Lisa.

The woman in the painting

most likely represents
Lisa Gherardini.

She is the wife of a prosperous
Florentine wool merchant

named Francesco del Giocondo.

Leonardo begins her portrait
in approximately 1503.

Art historians believe

that it was da Vinci's
favorite painting.

Leonardo da Vinci dies
in 1519 in France,

and the king of
France, Francis I,

buys it from da Vinci's estate.

And then a couple
centuries later in 1797,

the Louvre, which had
been a royal palace,

is converted into the world's
largest museum at the time,

and that is where the
Mona Lisa remains today.

By 1911, the Mona Lisa
is not the most famous

or the most expensive
painting in the Louvre,

but there's something unique

and mesmerizing about
the smile of La Joconde.

It's what draws Beroud
to be so excited

about including it
in his latest work.

But when he gets to the Salon
Carré on that Tuesday morning,

he's in for a huge surprise.

Instead of
seeing that familiar face

looking back at him,

Beroud sees only a
blank stretch of wall

and four empty pegs.

He expresses his concern
with this missing painting,

but the guard reassures him

that there's nothing
to worry about,

that the painting has
undoubtedly been taken

by one of the museum
curators to be photographed

and cataloged for the museum.

And so he checks in with
the photography department

and makes a grave discovery.

Le Joconde was never taken
off the wall for that purpose.

Turns out she's been stolen.

Panic
ensues at the Louvre

and the museum reaches
out to the chief

of the Paris Police for help.

His name is Louis Lépine.

Louis Lépine is like the
French Sherlock Holmes,

a master of deduction.

If there's anyone who
can crack this case,

it's Louis Lépine.

Lépine and his army of
men arrive under two hours

after discovery that
the painting is missing.

They shut the museum down

under the guise of
a broken water pipe

and launch an
investigation for any clues

as to what could have
happened to the painting.

After
an hour of searching,

police finally
uncover some evidence:

Mona Lisa's heavy frame
and protective glass casing

have been discarded
in the dark corner

of a service stairwell.

What they deduce
is that the thief

must have lifted it off the wall

and then kind of scurried away
into one of these stairwells,

stripped off the
covering and the frame

and discarded it and
made off with it.

If you were stealing a
painting that was on canvas,

for example, you could
take it out of its frame

and roll it up, potentially
hide it inside a cloak.

But the Mona Lisa is painted
on a white poplar panel.

It has a heavy
Renaissance-style frame.

It's 21 by 30 inches wide.

So with its protective frame,

the actual Mona Lisa
weighs 90 pounds.

You can't stick it under
your coat and walk out.

One of the police
officers notices right away

that there is a doorknob missing

from this door in the stairwell.

They assume that this is the way

that the thief got out of the
building with the Mona Lisa.

Unfortunately,
Lépine soon discovers

that whoever stole the
painting has quite a headstart.

The museum's maintenance
supervisor says

the previous day on Monday,
when the museum was closed,

he was walking through
the Salon Carré

and saw the Mona Lisa
hanging in her usual spot

around 7:00 AM.

By 8:30 AM, when he returned,

the painting was
not there anymore.

At the time, this
didn't raise any alarms.

He also assumed
that the painting

was probably being photographed.

So Lépine is pretty upset

because at this point
the thief could be

at least 24 hours ahead of them.

Within hours
of the theft's discovery,

the story breaks
in the Paris press

and news services
from around the world

begin converging on the Louvre.

Officers take to the streets
in search of witnesses.

They're in luck.

The police begin
questioning businesses

that are around the Louvre,

and a department store
employee describes seeing

a man with a bulky
package under his arm.

He also says he saw
the man toss something

into the Louvre gardens.

So they send police to
go look in the bushes.

Lo and behold, what did
they find? The doorknob.

The first eye witness says

that he saw someone carrying
a package under his arm.

This was a middle aged man of
trim build and average height,

clean-shaven.

The second eye witness, however,

saw someone at the train station
carrying a bulky package,

but this person is revealed
as a tall, heavy-set gentleman

with a big mustache.

Two competing ideas of what
the perpetrator looks like.

So Lépine sets up roadblocks

and starts
investigating every car

and truck leaving the city,

all the way to the
borders of France,

but nothing is coming up.

Lépine has done
everything that he could.

One thing that he does know is

that the frame when
discarded is not marked up.

So clearly the painting
had been removed

by someone that knew
what they were doing.

So Lépine realizes that
whoever stole the Mona Lisa

has real experience handling
fine art and working with it.

He begins to suspect that
the theft of the Mona Lisa

is an inside job.

Lépine decides to
set up an experiment.

He has a replica of
the Mona Lisa made

and hung on the four
pegs on the wall

where the original
would've stood.

And first he has a couple
of his police officers

try to remove the painting
and exit the building.

As the police officers
went in and began fumbling

and trying to remove the
painting from the wall,

Lépine kept time

and it ended up taking
about five minutes

for the two police officers
to get the wires adjusted

and remove the painting
and exit the building.

He then asks a museum
employee to do the same thing.

That museum employee very
skillfully removes the wires

and has it off the
wall in seconds.

This experiment
confirms to Lépine

that the thief isn't just
knowledgeable about museum work.

They also know the
Louvre intimately.

Though the Louvre is closed
to the public on Monday,

it is still a workday
for much of the staff.

Lépine, thorough as ever,

requests a full
list of everybody

who had access to the
museum on that day

and who came in and out.

Nobody is above suspicion.

As Lépine's investigators go
through this cadre of people,

they come across the plumber
by the name of Sauve.

Sauve happened to be
in the very stairwell

where the painting frame was
recovered on that morning.

Sauve says that he encountered
somebody by this back door

who asked to be let out

because the doorknob had
been removed from the door.

This person, whoever it was,
was wearing the white smock

that all members of
the Louvre staff wore.

So Sauve's impression was that
this was a museum employee

who got locked inside.

So he said, "No big
deal, I'll let you out."

Sauve says he
didn't see the frame

or the glass on the floor
or any large object,

but he does admit
that it's possible

the man could have had it
hidden under his smock.

The pressure on
Lépine is already intense,

but fortunately,

the renowned detective has
a cutting-edge technique

at his disposal.

Lépine was a forward-thinking
police commander.

In fact, in Paris, he
was one of the first

to start examining fingerprints.

Lépine brings in an expert

to analyze the frame
and the glass looking

for any telltale sign of
fingerprinting or smudging.

After examining the frame,

he finds a fingerprint halfway

up the left side of the glass.

He applies a fine
graphite powder

and he's able to actually
lift the fingerprint

off the frame.

Lépine and his men
compare the fingerprint

that's found on the glass case

to the fingerprints
of the Louvre staff.

256 staff members who were there

between Sunday evening
and Tuesday morning.

That takes a long time.

Determined
to uncover a lead,

Lépine also orders
interrogations

of all the museum's employees,
including Sauve, the plumber.

Sauve is asked to look at
a couple hundred photographs

of Louvre staff,
employees, contractors.

He doesn't recognize the man
he saw in the service stairwell

among any of those photographs.

Meanwhile, news of the
disappearance of the Mona Lisa

has reached the press and
there is public fury over this.

Why hasn't this priceless
painting been found?

In the days following
the Mona Lisa theft,

police interrogations
of museum employees

lead to a dead end.

But Paris detective Louis Lépine

still believes it
was an inside job

and continues questioning staff.

For many in the media, Lépine's
process isn't fast enough.

The press is going crazy:

The Mona Lisa is a national
treasure that has been stolen.

And Lépine, who is this
world-famous detective,

doesn't seem to be
able to solve this.

So the papers start really
taking him to task for this.

On the one hand, you have
the official investigation

happening within the
Paris Police department,

but then you start
seeing the media

start doing their own sleuthing.

A wire story
coming out of the United States

turns the spotlight
on a new suspect.

His name is Eddie Guerin,

a notorious thief
with a huge rap sheet

on both sides of the Atlantic.

He is a guy who is known
for committing big crimes

and for getting away with it.

He's been a huge critic
of the French government

and according to one friend,

he's even confessed
to the crime.

The theory was a little
convoluted as reported,

but the idea was that
Guerin had promised

this wealthy
Philadelphia businessman

that for a million dollars he
would sell him the Mona Lisa.

And such
a claim would not be

out of character for Guerin,

who pulled off
some daring heists

and became a career
criminal at a young age.

Eddie Guerin is born
in 1860 in London,

but his family moves to Chicago
when he's at a young age

with the dream of
striking it rich,

but his father dies and his
mother is left to struggle.

So Eddie gets his first
job delivering telegrams,

and he realizes
that's a good way

to start picking up little items

that people maybe
don't know are missing.

And he eventually builds up
to bigger and bigger thefts.

And before long, he's
already doing time.

By age 16, Guerin is in
and out of detention centers.

This kid has become a
thief in his own right,

but more importantly,

each time he goes to one
of those prison settings,

he learns the craft
from the experts.

Soon after Guerin

hones his thieving
skills behind bars,

his crimes evolve

into high profile
thefts around the world,

making him a prime candidate

in the case of the
missing Mona Lisa.

By the time he's
in his early 20s,

he's traveled all
over the East Coast

and also throughout Europe,

pulling off bank robberies

with a bunch of
criminal associates.

In 1888, in France, he had
robbed the Credit Lyonnais bank

to the tune of $2
million in today's money.

And in 1901, he robbed the
American Express office in Paris

to the tune of $8
million in today's money.

When he's
finally caught and convicted,

French authorities sentence
him to life on Devil's Island.

Devil's Island is a really
treacherous penal colony

off the coast of French
Guiana in South America,

and it's a place where
conditions are so bad

that life sentences usually
don't last that long.

Incredibly, in 1905, Eddie
Guerin becomes the second

of only two people ever to
escape from Devil's Island,

and he does so by carving
out from a log a boat

which he paddles 200 miles from
Devil's Island to the coast.

Once he gets to French Guiana,

he bribes a government agent

to help get him
out of the country.

So Eddie Guerin becomes
the stuff of legend

around the world.

After Guerin's escape
from Devil's Island,

he fades out of the
news for a while,

but after this audacious
theft of the Mona Lisa,

his name suddenly bubbles
back up to the surface.

On
August 24th, 1911,

newspapers all over the
United States run a story

that points the finger
squarely at Guerin.

A rumor circulates that
Guerin has had a forgery

of the Mona Lisa made
that he plans to sell

to a wealthy
Philadelphia businessman,

but when the businessman
begins to suspect

that something fishy
might be going on,

Guerin has no choice

but to break into the Louvre
and steal the real thing.

In an interesting
twist to this story,

that government agent

that helped Guerin
escape Devil's Island

later reports that he actually
received a letter from Guerin

days before the theft
of the Mona Lisa,

in which Guerin says,

"I am going to take something
from the French government

that they'll never get back,"

indicating that this would be an

incredibly satisfying
moment for him

to punish the government
that had punished him.

The French public is following
this story of Eddie Guerin

and his purported connection
to the theft of the Mona Lisa,

and each day it sells
more and more newspapers

because everyone wants to
know what happened next.

So an investigator
tries to find Guerin,

and eventually does.

He's working in London,
he's gone straight,

and he's working in a
men's furnishing store.

His alibi seems pretty solid,

but Guerin's a sneaky character.

It's possible he could
have spent all this time

building up an alibi so that
he could sneak into France

and sneak back without
anybody noticing.

On
Tuesday, August 29th,

exactly one week after the
Mona Lisa was declared missing,

the Louvre reopens
to an enormous crowd.

Thousands of people
swarmed the museum

and head to the Salon Carré
to stare at the vacant wall

where the painting once hung.

They weep openly
in front of it,

people bring
flowers and letters.

It's a mob scene.

Up until the heist,

the Mona Lisa was best
known among art critics

and kind of insiders
in the museum world,

but this heist made her an
international superstar.

People who in a million years

would've never visited a museum,

are there to see the
site of the crime.

In the
wake of the theft,

the floundering investigation

is becoming a public
embarrassment

for the Paris Police,

and Detective Lépine is
running out of suspects.

The newspaper,
the "Paris-Journal,"

announces its own investigation

and says that it will
give 50,000 francs,

which is nearly $2
million in today's money,

to whoever returns the
Mona Lisa to their offices.

No questions asked.

The news
of this reward

for the return of the Mona Lisa

brings a lot of people
out of the woodwork

and suddenly the newspaper
offices are flooded with tips

that might lead them
to the Mona Lisa.

The same day
that the museum reopens,

the Paris-Journal runs a
shocking front page story

about a brazen thief who
responded to their request

for the Mona Lisa's return.

This man described
as "in his early 20s

and with a certain American
chic."

Admits in an anonymous letter

that he has been stealing
priceless artifacts

from the museum for
the last four years,

including ancient busts.

Now, the letter writer doesn't
say he has the Mona Lisa,

but he does say he's willing
to return some of these busts.

So to exchange for what is
about a thousand dollars a day,

the thief returns a small statue

and makes a full
confession to the paper.

The paper publishes
his confession verbatim:

It was March, 1907 that
I entered the Louvre

for the first time,

a young man with time to
kill and no money to spend.

A single guard was
sitting motionless.

I suddenly realized
how easy it would be

to pick up and take away almost
any object of moderate size.

The thief
goes on to detail

a number of other objects
he's stolen over the years,

including a pair
of Iberian busts

he sold to a friend
in the art world.

This guy is bragging about
lifting stuff from the Louvre

just like someone would
collect shells from the beach.

Because this anonymous
letter writer talks

so openly about how easy
it is to steal things

from the Louvre,

the public begins to wonder
if this person is the same one

who took the Mona Lisa.

The next day, on August 30th,

the paper reports on a second
encounter with the thief

and he writes in a letter that
he's not a career criminal.

He just wandered into this life

because of financial
difficulties,

and he signs the letter
Baron Ignace Dormeson.

That same day,

the bust he turned
over is authenticated

and put on display in the
"Paris-Journal's" front window.

Hundreds of people jammed the
paper's office for a glimpse.

The Louvre confirms

that these small
prehistoric carved bust

from the Iberian Peninsula
are indeed missing

from their collection.

Now there's added pressure
to have these new objects

returned to the Louvre as well.

So this so-called

becomes a public spectacle.

Could this be connected
to the Mona Lisa as well?

And the paper runs with this.

People are eating it up,

and they are ridiculing
the museum and the police

because the paper is
doing more than the police

in their eyes.

Lépine and
his men are not amused.

They're convinced the
thief could now be

smuggling the Mona Lisa
out of the country.

Officers from the Paris
Police bust into the offices

of the "Paris-Journal"

and they tell them to reveal
anything that they know

about the man who
sent these letters,

but citing professional ethics,

the arts editor refuses
to reveal their sources,

and this only further
frustrates investigators.

The police carry
out their own search

of the public records

to find any reference to
a Baron Ignace Dormeson.

There's no one in
France by that name,

but they find out
that it is the name

of a fictional character

in an award-winning collection
of stories in France.

As for the man
who wrote those stories,

he is celebrated writer
Guillaume Apollinaire.

Apollinaire is a
true renaissance man.

He's a poet, a
playwright, an art critic,

and he's even credited with
coining the term surrealism.

He was born in Italy

and grew up speaking
French, Italian and Polish,

and he emigrated to
France as a teenager

where he took up the
pen name Apollinaire.

The authorities start
to look a lot more closely

at Apollinaire's
background and his writing,

and they realized that just
three days after the theft,

he had written about how
beautiful the Mona Lisa was

and was condemning the Louvre.

The Mona Lisa was so beautiful

that her perfection has come
to be taken for granted:

But what shall we
say of the guard

that watches the
gates of the Louvre?

Apollinaire comments on the
lax security of the Louvre.

The paintings aren't
padlocked to the walls

the way they are at
most other museums.

Anybody could just go and
take the thing off the wall.

He refers to the
situation as careless,

indifferent, even negligent.

Apollinaire once
signed a manifesto

condemning the old
institutions of the arts,

saying they should be abolished.

While
Apollinaire's writings

are largely symbolic,

they sound alarm bells
for the detectives

on the Mona Lisa case.

Police quickly
realize that he is part

of a whole community of artists

who are trying to turn
French artistic tradition

on its head.

As Lépine begins to learn
more about the artists

who move about in
Apollinaire's circle,

he starts to suspect
that maybe Apollinaire

didn't act alone.

Exactly two weeks after
the Mona Lisa was stolen,

the case has taken a new
turn with investigators,

who now wonder if the
theft was a political act

carried out by modern artists

with a grudge against
traditional institutions.

Detective Louis Lépine
theorizes that the thief

who triggered the
affaires des statuettes

could be part of a larger gang

that's holding the
painting hostage.

The heat is on to
identify the thief

who wrote to the "Paris-Journal"

and his entire
band of associates.

On September 6th,

the Paris-Journal
publishes a shocking story.

The two Iberian busts

that had been purchased
from the baron

were returned to the
newspaper the day before.

This leads the police

to go to Apollinaire's apartment

and they bring him
in for questioning.

They are determined that
they're gonna find out

what's happened to
these statuettes.

And they say that
an anonymous source

has linked Apollinaire
with the fictional baron

who has admitted to stealing
all of these artifacts

from the Louvre.

So Lépine is convinced that
there is a direct connection

between the theft
of Iberian busts

and the theft of Mona Lisa,

and that Apollinaire
is the ringleader

behind the gang that made
both of these thefts happen.

The police begin
to wonder if perhaps

they're dealing
not with one thief,

but a whole network of
organized criminals.

Lépine and his men
spend hours

grilling Apollinaire.

They tell him,

"If you don't reveal to us
the identity of the baron,

we are going to charge you
with harboring a criminal,

with possession of stolen goods,

and with interfering with
a police investigation."

Apollinaire
finally cracks

and identifies the
thief as Gery-Pieret,

a struggling Belgian artist

who'd been living in
Apollinaire's apartment

and working as his secretary.

Having come clean,

Apollinaire assumes
now he'll be free.

Not so fast.

Instead, he's taken to prison
and interrogated once again.

Lépine is relentless.
He is pushing him.

I want the names. I
want your associates.

Who else was
involved in the theft

and who purchased these statues?

Apollinaire is just digging
himself deeper and deeper

as the investigation goes on.

He admits that on
the day of the heist,

he had actually bought Pieret
a train ticket to Marseille

and urged him to get out of
town as quickly as possible.

A day after the papers
published the news

of Apollinaire's arrest,

the "Paris-Journal" gets
another letter from the baron,

who's now identified as Pieret.

He's in Brussels far out of
the reach of the Paris Police,

but he insists that his old boss

had nothing to do with
the thefts of the busts.

Apollinaire swears up and down

he has nothing to do with
the theft of the Mona Lisa,

but Apollinaire as a foreigner

makes a convenient scapegoat.

Lépine doesn't believe
Apollinaire's story.

He tells him that if he
doesn't reveal the name

of others who have
bought these statuettes,

that they will go after
all of his friends

in this community of artists.

Eventually Apollinaire breaks

and identifies the man who
bought the bust from Pieret

as an up-and-coming artist
named Pablo Picasso.

Like Apollinaire,

the young Spanish
painter is a foreigner

who's called for the
destruction of the Louvre.

Both men are part of a
group of artistic firebrands

known around town as
the Wild Men of Paris.

Lépine now believes
that this group of artists

is a gang sophisticated
and motivated enough

to steal the Mona Lisa.

Two days after
Apollinaire is arrested,

police show up at
Picasso's apartment

and arrest him as well.

Inside the apartment,

Picasso was working
on a new painting

with large scale female
nudes all painted

in a very abstract manner.

Picasso was actually using

these prehistoric
Iberian statuettes

as an inspiration for
the faces of the women

in this monumental painting.

If the police had taken the time

to really examine Picasso's
new work in progress,

they would've realized
that the evidence

was staring at them
in plain sight.

Picasso is literally
shaking with fear

as he's brought to
the police station

and brought before
the magistrate.

There he sees a Apollinaire
similarly disheveled and broken.

Picasso denies that he's
ever had anything to do

with the theft of the
statuettes or anything else.

Beyond that, he says,

"I have never even seen this
man, Apollinaire, in my life."

Both men
endure several more days

of intense interrogation

before finally appearing
before a judge.

Apollinaire and Picasso
are both said to have cried

and apologized profusely for
stealing any of the artifacts

from the Louvre.

But they both insist that
they had nothing to do

with the theft of the Mona Lisa.

As much as Lépine thought
he had cracked the case,

judges failed to
find any evidence

that links definitively
Apollinaire, Picasso,

or Gery-Pieret to the
theft of the Mona Lisa.

Eventually they're released

and the trail once
again goes cold,

and the Paris Police have to
come up with some new ideas.

As
days turn to weeks,

investigators looking
into the Mona Lisa heist

are chasing leads
that go nowhere.

Eventually, the Paris
Police are forced

to look deeper at
Louvre insiders.

They continue to fingerprint
the Louvre employees

and contractors,

but they've come
up empty-handed,

and the French public
is getting impatient

with their methods.

After Lépine had exhausted

all of the traditional
forms of evidence,

he still was at ground zero.

And so he decided
that he would look

into the newest form of
behavioral evidence, profiling.

And as he did that, he
started to recognize again

and reevaluate and
then re-theorize

based on the things
that he knows about,

that the person had
intimate knowledge

about the painting.

Lépine and his
forces ascertained

that this criminal
must be educated,

must be in the know,
must be wealthy.

This clearly had to be
someone either as a buyer

that was a lover of art,

or the thief themselves
was stealing this painting

to keep in their own
personal collection.

Although Leonardo
da Vinci left behind

thousands of drawings,

he only left behind
fewer than 20 paintings.

And the Mona Lisa
is so emblematic

of the Italian Renaissance,

a painting like this
would be the crown jewel

of any art collection.

Even Napoleon was enamored
by the woman in the painting

and he took the
painting from the Louvre

and hung it in his private bed
chambers from 1800 to 1804,

A little
over 100 years later,

investigators wonder
if another powerful man

took the portrait for himself.

Around the time of
the Mona Lisa theft,

American entrepreneurs are
traveling around Europe

and buying art at a frenzied
pace throughout the continent.

And among those collectors
is John Pierpont Morgan,

J.P. Morgan.

This is a former
railroad tycoon

who works in the upper
echelons of not just industry,

but also politics.

J.P. Morgan is responsible
for the formation

of major multinational
corporations,

like General Electric
and U.S. Steel.

He also has a hand as a
major investor in companies

like Western Union and Aetna.

He's also one of the
most active art collectors

in America at that time.

He has an absolutely
incredible collection

of more than 20,000 items.

He has Raphael's
Colonna Altarpiece.

He has several rare
paintings by Vermeer.

So he is someone who
might have the wherewithal

to pull off something
as bold as the theft

of the Mona Lisa
from the Louvre.

No one else had
that kind of money,

and appreciation
for European art,

and that level of
unchecked greed.

When the search
for the stolen Mona Lisa

peters out in France
in the fall of 1911,

many observers speculate that
she could already be hanging

in one of Morgan's mansions,
or could be headed there soon.

Suspicion only grows
when it's discovered

that Morgan was on
vacation in Italy

at the time of the
Mona Lisa theft.

The thought is that he
actually had the painting

delivered to him
while he was there.

There's a growing belief
amongst the French populace

that only an
American millionaire

could have pulled off this heist

and had so much money
to enlist the help

of professional thieves

to acquire this
national masterpiece

for their own private enjoyment.

It wouldn't be
the first time J.P. Morgan

had been caught with
a stolen art treasure.

J.P. Morgan actually
did have a stolen item

in his collection.

He had one of the vestments
of Pope Nicholas IV,

but upon realizing that
this was a stolen work,

he returned it to Italy.

Months
into the case,

the investigation
is unsuccessful,

but the speculation over
J.P. Morgan's involvement

is very much alive.

In 1912, Morgan goes to
France for a spa vacation

and the tabloids go berserk.

They're like, "That's it, he's
here to get the Mona Lisa.

He's here to meet mysterious men

who he is gonna get this
piece smuggled to him

for $1 million."

It's a wild theory

that doesn't actually
have any basis in fact.

But Morgan at this
time is just catnip

for conspiracy theorists who
are going after him harder

than police have gone
after any actual suspect.

Morgan denies any
connection to this heist

and says, "I actually wish
I was somehow involved,

'cause I would buy it and
give it back to the Louvre."

Not everyone believes this,

but in the absence
of any evidence,

the police and the French public

are forced to turn their
attention elsewhere.

Mona Lisa remains a
top international headline

until April 14, 1912,

when the sinking of the Titanic

actually knocks it
off the front pages.

By this time, many people
accept that the Mona Lisa

is never coming
back to the Louvre,

and in fact, the Louvre
itself removes the painting

from its official catalog.

Many people believe
that the Mona Lisa

is now far away from Paris
and may never be seen again.

It's 1913.

Nearly two years have passed
since the Mona Lisa was stolen.

The case has gone stone cold,

but that changes

when a prominent art
and antiques dealer

receives a mysterious letter.

An art dealer by the
name of Alfredo Geri

is running advertisements
in Italian newspapers

stating that he's
willing to pay top price

for high quality works of art.

Early in December,
he gets a letter

with a Paris postmark
from a guy named Leonard

who says that he has
stolen the Mona Lisa.

The letter goes on to say that
in exchange for 500,000 lira,

approximately 3 million
US dollars today,

he will bring the
painting back to Italy,

where it rightfully belongs.

The letter is actually
pretty articulate

in its love of Italy.

It says that,

" The stolen work of Leonardo da
Vinci is in my possession.

It seems to belong to Italy
since it's painter was Italian.

My dream is to give
back this masterpiece

to the land from which it came

and the country
that inspired it."

Whoever this Leonard is,

he's operating
under the impression

that Napoleon stole the Mona
Lisa from its native Italy

and brought it to France,

but that's actually
not the case.

Initially, Geri
suspects the letter is a hoax

and holds off on
notifying the authorities.

In the ensuing two years,
Europe has been wracked

with Mona Lisa fever.

Countless claims
of its whereabouts

or fakes being issued and
being immediately dismissed

are rampant.

And Geri doesn't want
to be taken for a fool,

but something in this
letter piques his interest.

In the letter,
Leonard talks about

some of the details on the
backside of the wooden panel

of the Mona Lisa,

and Geri worries that
it actually might

have some truth to it.

Geri invites
the man to his gallery

for a clandestine meeting
on December 10, 1913.

Geri is waiting, and in
walks a thin younger man

who insists that he
has the real Mona Lisa.

And the reason he knows this is

because he stole the
painting himself.

Geri isn't convinced,

but he does agree to
meet the letter writer

with the director of
Florence's famed Uffizi Museum.

He's there to authenticate
maybe the Mona Lisa.

The
man pulls a trunk

from under the hotel room's bed.

This looks like just
an ordinary trunk,

and when he opens it, Geri
is immediately disappointed.

It's just discarded
items, but it has a secret.

It has a false bottom.

So he pulls the false
bottom from the trunk,

and there is a
solid plank of wood,

And the
Mona Lisa smile emerges.

The painting is real.

Geri immediately
alerts the authorities.

Leonard is arrested,

and name is discovered
to be Vincenzo Peruggia.

Peruggia is an
Italian national

who had moved to France
hoping to become an artist,

but instead he became a laborer

working in the Louvre from
October, 1910 to January, 1911.

So as Lépine had suspected,

he had worked at the
Louvre as a subcontractor,

manufacturing the
protective glass boxes

that held artwork
like the Mona Lisa.

Interestingly,
the Paris Police

had already interviewed
Peruggia more than once,

but he was so calm and
cooperative-seeming

that they had neglected
to even fingerprint him.

The whole time
the French police

were inside his dingy apartment,

the Mona Lisa was hiding
right there under his bed.

At trial,

Peruggia's simple but
effective plot is revealed.

He enters with the crowds
on a Sunday afternoon.

He hides in a closet.

When it opens Monday,
the closed day,

he steals a white smock,
looks like an employee,

because he fabricated the piece,

he knows how to take it off,
takes it off immediately,

and then heads to the stairwell.

Peruggia said
he'd stolen a key

to open that door to the
stairwell, but it didn't work.

So he tried to
use a screwdriver,

but all that happened was
the doorknob fell off.

By the time that
plumber came along,

he'd managed to safely tuck
the painting under his smock

to make that getaway.

The defendant insisted
that he had done this

all out of national pride

because Mona Lisa
belonged in Italy,

the home of Leonardo da Vinci.

To immense fanfare,
France's national treasure,

the Mona Lisa, is returned
on January 4, 1914.

Peruggia pleads guilty,

but the court finds him
guilty of the theft,

but for the right reasons,

they claim that he was
acting under a patriotic duty

and he's sentenced
to only one year.

Peruggia serves
only eight months

for stealing the Mona Lisa.

Once the Mona Lisa
returns to the Louvre,

it becomes more
famous than ever,

attracting over 100,000
visitors in its first two days.

Today, huge crowds still
vie for a firsthand look.

Few of them aware

of the international
mystery she sparked

more than a hundred years ago.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching
this "Case Closed" episode

of "History's
Greatest Mysteries."