With the convictions of the robbers who stole the famous work of Maurizio Cattelan, the employees of the Palace of Blenheim released the details of the gold toilet assault.
In the early hours of September 14, 2019, Eleanor Paice woke up startled by the glass sound from.
He lived in a functional apartment at the top of the Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire (southeastern England). And as a supervisor of attendance to the palace guests, Paice was used to hearing strange noises.
But when the Fire alarms began to soundshe knew something was wrong.
Paice began to leave quickly toward the central courtyard. Little did she know she was running toward the final moments of an audacious assault.
Five men had invaded the palace and stole a solid gold toilet Valued at £ 4.8 million (about € 5.7 million) and fled in a stolen Volkswagen Golf car.
The functional toilet was called America. It had been on display for only two days in that 18th century mansion.
Sanita was installed and connected to the pipe as part of an exhibition of Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. Now, more than five years later, Three men were convicted in relation to the robbery.
James Sheen It is from Oxford, England, and is 40 years old. He declared himself guilty of theft and transfer of criminal property in 2024.
Michael JonesAlso from Oxford, he is 39 years old and was considered guilty of theft by the Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday.
Fred Doefrom Windsor, also in England, is 36 years old and was convicted of criminal association for transfer of property. And Bora Guccuk, from western London, was acquitted of the same accusation. It’s 41 years old.
The crime intrigued art lovers, pleased the press and generated countless puns.
BBC has now obtained exclusive access to understand the assault and safety failures from the point of view of the employees of the Palace of Blenheim.
“We were robbed”
The night before the robbery, Blenheim’s executive chief Dominic Hare appeared to a glamorous launch party at the palace, promoted by Catlan himself.
That was the Sanita’s first exhibition America outside New York, in the United States, which created a stir on the site.
Hare remembers having abandoned the festivities, hoping to use Sanita, which was totally functional.
But when you found the line, you thought, “Okay, you don’t have to get in line. You can go back tomorrow and take a look.”
But a few hours later, his colleague Paice witnessed the final moments of the robbery, when the 98 kg work of art was being carried in a trunk. She remembers that The scene was quick and confused.
“They were just shadows and quick movements,” he says. “It just came to move toward the car, getting into the car … and the car, then simply accelerated and left.”
From the entrance of the thieves to his departure through the central courtyard, the bold assault took Only five minutes.
The police arrived shortly after. The employees only realized what had been stolen when they searched the palace.
“It was then that… I felt a cold in my stomach“, Parace recalls.” And I thought, this is something big. “
The chief executive was soon awakened by phone: “Gift, we were robbed.”
He said he needed a few minutes to realize that this was not a dream before running to the palace.
First, she was relieved to learn that her employees had not injured. But this sensation mingled with the horror of a flooded and destroyed crime scene.
“If the installed golden toilet seemed beautiful, perfect, majestic and in perfect condition, it was now the complete opposite,” recalls Hare. “That was brutalized, destroyed. This is a palace. Palaces are not destroyed.”
When the palace was reopened, a day later, the controversy was treated with a theatrical flower.
Employees repused the police tape in the shattered cubicle, just meters from the place of birth of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Exhibited the crime scene as Part of Cattelan’s exhibition – Now, without the toilet.
Hare recalls that, despite the embarrassment, it was his anger that led him to keep the place visible. But he also realized that this could attract the audience.
And it worked. Paice says that, in the following days, the palace was “invaded” by crowds, which wanted to observe the destruction. “People were more interested in seeing where Sanita Dourada had been stolen than Sanita itself.”
Safety failures
Employees say they really observed the humor adopted by the press and the public when talking about the crime. But the robbery still disturbed them deeply.
Paice says Blenheim, for her, It was a calm and safe home. But the palace did not seem to “accommodate the same way” for a long time.
“There was always some anxiety,” he recalls. “If that happened, everything could happen.”
Hare claims that he was thrilled and grateful that no one has injured And it refers to thieves as “the most dangerous people who have ever visited the Blenheim Palace.”
“That toilet survived the New York. And if he survived the New York, he should have survived the Palace of Blenheim,” says the lawyer specializing in recovering artwork Christopher Marinello, highlighted by the insurer to examine the case.
For him, Blenheim’s security “failed completely.”
What is very clear in the interviews with the palace employees is that the Sanita de 18 carat gold It was not considered a safety risk.
A month before the robbery, the creator of the Blenheim Art Foundation, Edward Spencer-Churchill, told the Sunday Times that the golden toilet “will not be the easiest object to steal.”
“Firstly, It is linked to pipes And secondly, a possible thief will have no idea who was the last to use Sanita or what that person ate. So I don’t intend to be guarded. ”
Hare states that they were “much more concerned” with other controversial works of art, as a statue of a pope hit by a meteorBritish flags willing to go on and a statue of Adolf Hitler to pray.
He acknowledged that Sanita’s fame as such a peculiar art object overshadowed the fact that it was worth £ 2.8 million, only in gold.
In the hours when the palace was closed, the Sanita was kept without protection and without closed circuit cameras to monitor the cubicle door.
But the pack also explored other safety flaws that night, such as the absence of guards and gates that were easily broken into.
And even after the robbery, the employees took a long time to realize that Sanita was the target of the theft. Paice says he briefly imagined that the thieves would have come to steal the childhood strand of Winston Churchillwhich is part of the palace exhibition.
“It is no longer vulnerable”
In the weeks that followed, Dominic Hare was forced to reformulate the safety of the palace at the touch of cashier. He assumed all responsibility for the failures of that night.
“Defining a certain level of security is not a democratic decision, it was really mine,” he explained. “In this sense, I have become Blenheim vulnerable. And we are no longer vulnerable.”
The palace had its reformulated safety and “modernized very significantly.” And the incident also served as a warning to other British mansions.
The Stolen Gold It has never been recoveredbut the story will remain a curious footnote in the story of one of the UK’s most popular palaces.
“There is a large and serious history here, wars that have changed the course of the history of a continent,” says Hare. “Comparatively, this case is a small thing.”
“[Mas] in the stories of the normal people of Blennheim, who lived here and breathe their lives in this place, It was a very threatening moment.”
“I can imagine the guides 150 years from now. It’s the kind of story they can tell,” concludes Hare.
