Three Minutes
Cases unlock in order, like levels. This is case 119 of 200.
An art museum on a major avenue in central São Paulo, a Saturday in December, 10 a.m. On Thursday at 5:09 a.m., someone raised the steel entrance door with a hydraulic jack and smashed the glass door with a crowbar.
In three minutes, two paintings came off the second-floor wall: "Woman with a Fan" by a European master and "Harvest in the Hills" by a Brazilian painter. Together they are worth more than the whole building.
The museum has no alarm in the galleries and no insurance. The thieves came in right at the guards' shift change and went straight to the right wall, without searching.
Three people know this door and this schedule from the inside. One of them opened the way.
The lobby of a concrete-and-glass museum before dawn. A bent steel door and two empty hooks.
Suspects
Neusa PradoHead guard of the night shift, 54
Otávio LemosAssistant curator of the museum, 41
Cláudio RibeiroOutsourced maintenance metalworker, 44
The real case
The theft of the MASP paintings
São Paulo, 2007
Read the real case