It all started with a watch, or more precisely, with over 106 rare European timepieces. One piece alone, made especially for ill-fated French queen Marie Antoinette, was valued at a whopping $30 million. On a quiet Friday evening in 1983, the collection disappeared from Jerusalem’s Museum of Islamic Art. It wasn’t seen again for a quarter of a century. The biggest art theft in Israel’s history left the police scratching their heads. When the timepieces gradually resurfaced a quarter of a century later, the enigmatic thief was dead and his widow Nili Shamrat from LA shares his and her story, for the first time.
Alongside policemen, lawyers and curators who shed light on the mystery.