The strangers only need nine minutes to steal hundreds of valuable gold coins from the Manchinger Museum. They may have already melted down the stolen goods. However, the investigators are optimistic that they will at least find the perpetrators.
After the gold theft from the Celtic Roman Museum in Manching, the investigating public prosecutor’s office is confident of being able to find the perpetrators. “All perpetrators boil with water and we already have our ways and means to counteract that,” said Ingolstadt’s chief public prosecutor, Nicolas Kaczynski. “I’m optimistic.”
The further procedure should be coordinated with the State Criminal Police Office (LKA). However, he did not want to say what specific measures are planned. “That would be going too far and is not yet intended for the public.” As it became known on Wednesday, it took the perpetrators just nine minutes to break into the museum and steal valuable gold coins from there. The investigators suspect that the sabotage of the telephone network, which led to a failure of the telephone, internet and the museum’s alarm system, is also connected to the burglary. “That’s a relatively obvious suspicion – without wanting to lean too far out of the window – that you have to investigate,” said Kaczynski. “Whether the connection actually exists or it is just a coincidence, that will ultimately have to be determined by further investigations.”
The case is “not a crime that you have on your desk every day. Especially with a public prosecutor’s office that may not be one of the largest in Bavaria,” he said. “It is all the more a great task for us to simply show what our colleagues can do and they will do it.”
The investigators are also looking for the perpetrators internationally. Art databases have been notified of the theft in case the coins turn up there. And according to the LKA, Europol and Interpol were also involved in addition to the Federal Criminal Police Office. The stolen historical coins have a commercial value of 1.6 million euros. Their pure gold value is around 250,000 euros.
The director of the Nuremberg City Museums, Thomas Eser, assumes that the crime will have consequences for the way exhibits are presented in the future. “With this particularly barbaric type of art theft – it’s not gentlemen’s art theft like we know it from Hollywood – it’s all about the material value. This will mean that we will be more cautious about the materiality in the future.” In other words, the signs will often no longer state that something is made of gold or silver.
(This article was first published on Thursday, November 24, 2022.)