On October 2, 2016, Kim Kardashian went through something horrible. The man who took her physical and mental health hostage armed robbers stormed her opulent Paris home, pistol-whipping her. At the time, Kardashian was 35 years old and had recently returned from attending Paris Fashion Week events. A group of armed robbers, with Yunice Abbas at the head of the pack, broke into her apartment. They bound her and her daughter and made off with millions of dollars worth of jewels including her now famous engagement ring.
The robbery occurred in the luxury Hôtel de Pourtalès as Kardashian lay in bed. The armed gang, dressed as cops, kicked in her door. Since the robbery, several reports have indicated that Kardashian’s security guard left her alone in the room while the incident occurred. This approach left her vulnerable to the armed assailants.
Yunice Abbas and his henchmen were looking for some very specific things from Kardashian during the robbery.
“They kept on saying: the ring, the ring! And I was so startled that it didn’t compute for a minute,” – Kim Kardashian.
The robbery included the thieves making a perfectly executed getaway. She had said that Kanye West had given it to her for her 33rd birthday. Besides the ring, they stole €1,000 in cash and a bunch of other valuable jewels.
She was able to overcome her bindings and escape even while hogtied. She immediately started calling for her sister Kourtney and stylist Stephanie. When they failed to respond, the urge was to panic, and fast. She tried to call 911, only to find out that our emergency number doesn’t work while outside the United States.
In the aftermath of the life-altering traumatic incident, Kardashian did give a statement to French police shortly after the incident at the disgusting hour of 4 a.m. By dawn, she was back in the United States—shaken but committed to keeping her long haul of a story alive.
It would take until early 2017 for authorities to arrest Yunice Abbas and many of his alleged accomplices, some three months after the brazen robbery occurred. The probe revealed that the violent gang was hardly staffed with master criminals. Instead, it was about a band of geriatric crooks in dire straits.
His daughter Patricia Tourancheau, a journalist who reported on the case for years, said that the gang’s modus operandi had no sophistication whatsoever.
“These are a group of elderly down-and-out thieves, they’re always broke, they’re forever involved in convoluted plans… and they’re facing a huge celebrity and they don’t even know who she is,” – Patricia Tourancheau.
Read more about their tactics here but take special note of how their disguise as police officers was meant to evade detection.
“When they dressed up as police they thought ‘that’s it, nobody will be able to recognise us’,” – Patricia Tourancheau.
Tourancheau pointed out an important miscalculation the robbers made in light of recent developments in forensic science.
“They didn’t take into account the progress made by police techniques, which can now find micro traces of DNA anywhere,” – Patricia Tourancheau.
With a high-profile victim at the center of the case, media coverage was intense. It captured national attention because of the sensational nature of the crime. Cynics noted that the robbers’ ignorance of Kardashian’s identity struck a strange note. In Tourancheau’s words, the ignorance of who they had in their sights was seriously lacking, saying that,
“They’re facing a huge celebrity and they don’t even know who she is.”
From the very beginning, chaos reigned over the investigation. Law enforcement immediately connected the dots and arrested Abbas and his co-conspirators. Legal hurdles, although technical, quickly became insurmountable and they unintentionally dropped the ball on other possible suspects connected to the bank robbery.
Arthur Vercken, one of the lawyers working on the case, emphasized that many aspects of the investigation were based on presumptions. He stressed that these were not supported by hard evidence.
“Since the start the case was built on assumptions, theses, theories – but no proof [of Madar’s involvement] was ever found,” – Arthur Vercken.
Michael Madar, an associate of everyone else involved in the case, asked how the robbery could have happened if no one was outside on lookout duty.
“Five men did this. You don’t think one of them was keeping an eye on who was coming and going from her hotel?” – Michael Madar.
Leave a Reply