She is out on bail, and no charges have been filed, said a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles District Attorney's office. At age 19, he was employed for a month as a guard at the Historical Museum of Mulhouse, near his home. He muddles away a couple of years, the bare walls of his apartment a kind of slow-drip torture, until, as it must with a mania like his, the deep-seated desire breaks through. His father left and took his possessions with him, and Breitwieser and his mother tumbled down the social ladder, re-settling in a smaller place, the antiques replaced by Ikea. He aches for what he once was—“a master of the world,” as he puts it—and he weeps for what will never be again. All of this in a matter of months. 17, 15 June 1906. They travel from Belgium to Luxembourg to Germany to their home in France without incident, just another young, stylish couple out for a jaunt. Christmas comes and goes without even a holiday card. Still, he did live by his own law: “Rob only those who are worth robbing.”. Later, in February 2001, at a hilltop castle, he removes a monumental 17th-century tapestry, larger than ten feet by ten feet, assuming ridiculous risk to steal it. Lupin shares distinct similarities with E. W. Hornung's archetypal gentleman thief A. J. Raffles, whose stories were published from 1898 to 1909. Stealing art for money, he says, is stupid. They go to a spot where the waterway runs plumb straight through a quiet, rural area, bordered on both sides by sheltering trees, the trail alongside it often busy by day with cyclists and joggers. They take place in Belgium, his beloved target, at the vast Art & History Museum in Brussels, which Breitwieser estimates employs 150 guards. Behind a dealer's back, quick as a cat, he steals a spectacular goblet, filigreed with silver and gold, from the 16th century. The number becomes 25 if the 1923 novel The Secret Tomb is counted: Lupin doesn't appear in it, but the main character Dorothée solves one of Arsène Lupin's four fabulous secrets. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, Lon Perry was what most would consider a model citizen. Eventually, he went to prison for tax evasion and later died of a heart attack in a barber chair. He tries to decipher the anxious expression on her face as the police car pulls to a stop behind him. For museums with antique display cabinets, he brings a ring of a dozen old skeleton keys he's amassed—often one of his keys is able to tumble the lock. He had discovered it during a visit to the museum two weeks previous. Among such rough-and-tough company, Whitcomb was considered the moral compass of his posse and often pointed out the good characteristics in what seemed like deplorable men. They're already at the car before he realizes he's forgotten the lid to the stein. A mask would have cramped his style, so he demanded the money with his face totally exposed. He has no cash—just to get here, he'd borrowed gas money from his mother—and out of habit he notes the positions of the cashier, the security guard, the customers. During the week, while his girlfriend is working, he visits his local libraries. Then he heads to the exit, through the gift shop, where the museum catalog is sold, with a photo of the ivory and a story of its theft. It must be very late, Breitwieser believes, when they drive to the canal. He plans to keep going and going. Even the FBI referred to him as the “Debonair Bandit.”. Even in these panicked, angry actions, Breitwieser sees a filament of love—his mother, in some way, is trying to protect him, to hide what he's done. A guilty person would cower and try to leave, so Breitwieser boldly tells the guard that he's heading to the museum café for lunch. The Alsace region of France, where Breitwieser grew up, sits in the northeastern corner of the country, along the borders of Germany and Switzerland. He has an idea that he'll launch a career as a museum-security consultant, but he's the only one who doesn't find this a joke. Some of his most famous marks were Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, and Sophia Loren. His eyes widen, his forehead scrunches—the look on his face a jumble of awe and distress. And then, according to Breitwieser's version of these events, the officer pulls out a huge stack of photos, and Breitwieser realizes it's checkmate. Occasionally, he was thoughtful enough to leave poems behind—Wells Fargo was not amused. He takes detailed notes. In it, an aged Holmes meets a young Lupin for the first time. There will be no good rest until the object is his. The officers enter the house, climb the stairs to the hidden lair, and open the door. The couple are permitted back inside. According to legend, he was also the first to say “put your hands up, and nobody gets hurt.” These types of thoughtful acts earned him the nickname “the Gentleman Bandit.”. With the painting hanging in his apartment, suddenly there's joy in his life. For this theft, Breitwieser has arrived with his girlfriend and frequent travel companion, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, who positions herself near the only doorway to a ground-floor exhibition room and coughs softly when anyone approaches. It's now, Breitwieser presumes, that his girlfriend takes his mother upstairs to their hideout. There, French authorities allegedly discovered Roman coins and other objects that police say may have been taken from museums in France and Germany. “I don't want any friends.” Kleinklaus, he claims, feels the same. The three 17th-century coppers are found by a logger, who brings them home and hammers them onto the roof of his henhouse, which had been leaking. Not so much as the trace of a picture hook. Those endearing words refer to a known robber who had a 45-year criminal career. Breitwieser, circling around the outside of the building, watches her progress as she appears in one window, then another. Bill Carlisle was one of the last great train robbers of the American Old West, a career he took up on something of a whim. They never wanted to appear as if they were fleeing. From award-winning writing and photography to binge-ready videos to electric live events, GQ meets millions of modern men where they live, creating the moments that create conversations. Motivated by the large reward money, a posse caught him in May 1916, and Carlisle was sentenced to life in prison.