French authorities raced against the clock Tuesday, intensifying their hunt for the priceless royal jewels stolen from the Louvre, and the thieves whose brazen daylight robbery left the nation reeling.
The thieves made off with nine items of jewelry belonging to members of France's erstwhile royal families. A crown studded with more than 1,300 diamonds was found damaged shortly after the theft on the escape route the four culprits took on a pair of scooters along the bank of the River Seine.
That leaves eight royal jewels that police and investigators are searching for, though experts in art security told NBC News it could already be too late to recover them.
“They stole items that can be easily taken apart, melted down, recut, and sold on the legitimate market with it being very difficult to trace them,” said Erin Thompson of John Jay College, the only full-time professor of art crime in the United States.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said in an interview with RTL radio on Tuesday that the stolen items are worth an estimated 88 million euros, or approximately $102 million.
More than 60 investigators have been drafted in to work on the case, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said in a television interview Monday night. The prosecutor’s office said it had security camera footage of the four thieves arriving outside the Louvre before their rapid robbery.
According to a new timeline laid out by prosecutors, they spent just four minutes inside the world's most-visited gallery.
A vest and equipment left at the scene have been sent for analysis and investigators are examining a bottle of liquid, some of which was spilled in the truck used to position an extendable ladder against a wall of the museum, prosecutors said late Monday.
Checks are also continuing on the functioning of the alarm systems.
Art security expert Anthony Amore speculated that the thieves may be biding their time, but noted the police needed to act fast.
“They are probably waiting to see what the museum’s response is going to be because they would probably want to know what all their options are in terms of monetizing what they’ve successfully stolen," Amore said.
"I think right now the pieces are probably intact, one hopes they are, and it’s up to the museum and the French authorities to act properly in this critical first couple of days,” Amore added.
The Louvre is always closed Tuesdays but was set to reopen Wednesday, a piece of good news for the thousands of foreign visitors who have the iconic attraction on their itineraries.
American Jacob Barker told NBC News he was in the Galerie D'Apollon when the thieves broke in. He said he heard a banging sound followed by the high-pitched, piercing sound of a saw.
“We didn’t know if there was one chainsaw-wielding robber behind that window, or if there were 100 mass terrorists, but we knew that we didn’t want to stick around to find out,” Barker told NBC News.
Several French newspapers have called the theft the “heist of the century,” leaving the already beleaguered French government with another major headache.
French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin told France Inter radio Monday that "we have failed" and that the heist gave a “negative” and “deplorable” image of France.
“The French people all feel like they’ve been robbed,” Darmanin added.
The heist has fueled questions about the security of major cultural sites, after a spate of similar robberies.
And it has left many in the country reeling at a time when the national conversation was already dominated by social unrest and political gridlock.
Claudine Hemingway, who runs tours of Paris and the Louvre, compared her feelings to the 2019 fire at another Parisian landmark, the Notre Dame cathedral.
"I think in a way I’m still in shock. You cannot believe that this happened," Hemingway said.
