The narrative opens by contrasting well-known, highly orchestrated museum heists with the practical challenge thieves face afterward: unique artworks are hard to hide or sell. Examples include Vincenzo Peruggia’s Mona Lisa theft—ultimately foiled when he tried to sell it—and other elaborate capers whose loot was mostly recovered. Myles Connor Jr. stands as a rare repeat art thief.

In April 1995, a month after Gruyères, Stéphane Breitwieser and Anne-Catherine return to Switzerland. At Solothurn’s Fine Arts Museum, Breitwieser swiftly takes a sixteenth-century Saint Jerome icon and escapes before the theft is noticed. He believes refined attire and discretion make them indistinct in witnesses’ memories; indeed, reports cannot agree on the culprits’ number or appearance. The pair collect every article in a scrapbook and see no sign investigators have connected their crimes.

Practicalities underpin the spree. They dress frugally via Emmaüs shops and live on support from grandparents, his mother, unemployment benefits, and Anne-Catherine’s salary. Weekend thefts fit her work schedule. Anne-Catherine’s caution sets size limits and gauges surveillance, complementing Breitwieser’s focus on vulnerabilities. He occasionally steals alone despite higher risk, once waddling out with a heavy wooden lion-and-lamb carving concealed under his coat.

One museum visit illustrates their improvisation: lacking tools, Anne-Catherine supplies a nail clipper whose handle helps loosen screws on a plexiglass cover; her smaller fingers slide out a charcoal drawing, which Breitwieser carries away. Concluding that teamwork is safer, they mostly wait for weekends and, through spring and summer 1995, range across Switzerland and France, maintaining distance between targets.

Their haul grows rapidly: a seventeenth-century war-scene oil, engraved and decorative weapons, a sixteenth-century portrait, a floral dish, and a brass pharmacy scale with weights. By summer’s end they have completed a dozen thefts. Breitwieser seeks to surpass his father’s collection and adorn their attic with beauty, yet the compulsion leaves an inner emptiness unfilled.