After pleading in vain for reconciliation with Anne‑Catherine, Breitwieser is introduced to Stéphanie Mangin, a nurse’s assistant who resembles his ex. The bond is immediate; he moves into her Strasbourg apartment and imagines a hopeful future. A publisher pays him for interviews leading to Confessions of an Art Thief, which he expects to springboard into an art-security consulting career.

On June 29, 2006, arriving at Orly for meetings about his media tour, he impulsively shoplifts clothes for Stéphanie, himself, and his father, miscounting plainclothes guards. He is detained overnight. The fallout is swift: his father rebukes and withdraws; his friend Meichler ends their friendship. His mother forgives him, and Stéphanie stays after he promises therapy. Legally, he receives community service, but the October 2006 book launch collapses under ridicule; no one hires him for security advice.

Journalist Vincent Noce publishes a scathing account, doubting Breitwieser’s sincerity and motives. Breitwieser rashly threatens Noce, amplifying the portrayal of him as unstable. Work prospects dry up; he cleans restaurant toilets and becomes reclusive, wearing old disguises and sinking into depression inside Stéphanie’s bleak-feeling apartment.

In November 2009, craving relief, he drives to a Belgian antiques fair and steals a seventeenth-century Brueghel the Younger winter landscape. The theft brings him instant elation; he hangs it in their bedroom. But when he tells Stéphanie, she refuses complicity, ends the relationship, photographs the painting, and informs police. Authorities trace the work to his rented room in Strasbourg. Breitwieser is arrested and imprisoned again.