The theft of the gold toilet from Blenheim Palace
Oxfordshire, England, 2019
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
On September 12, 2019, Blenheim Palace, the house where Winston Churchill was born, opened an exhibition by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. The most talked-about piece was “America”, an 18-karat gold toilet weighing about 98 kg, connected to the plumbing and open for visitors to use. In the early hours of September 14, at around 5 am, a gang smashed through the wooden gates with a stolen truck and car, crossed the lawn, broke a window and a door with sledgehammers and ripped out the toilet in about five minutes. The ruptured pipe flooded part of the building.
The artwork was insured for 4.75 million pounds, and the gold alone was worth about 2.8 million. At the trial in Oxford, in 2025, the prosecution showed that one of the defendants had visited the palace the day before and photographed the installation about 17 hours before the theft. Messages from the mastermind's phone, using the word “car” as a code for the gold, revealed the attempt to sell the cut-up metal to a London jeweler. The gold was never recovered.
Sources
In the game
Key in the Water
Oxfordshire, Saturday, September 14, 2019, 8 am. At Ashmoor Palace, a Baroque house open to visitors, director Cressida Hollins steps into a hall flooded to the ankles.
The mastermind, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 4 years in prison; the scout, to 27 months; and a middleman who tried to sell the gold received a suspended sentence. The game borrows the gold toilet connected to the plumbing, the quick break-in at night and the scouting visit the day before. Characters, place, evidence and outcome are fiction.
