that of a gold toilet of six million dollars

The history of latrocinio is almost? as old as that of humanity itself, but few chapters have left as delusional, unexpected and embarrassing as the one that was lived more than five years ago in Blenheim Palacethe luxurious residence of Oxfordshire (United Kingdom) in which in 1874 the Premier Winston Churchill. The reason is very simple: in September 2019 a band of thieves took from there neither more nor less than a heavy toilet of almost one hundred kilos.

Of course, it was not any toilet. The toilet in question was a work of art elaborated with solid gold of 18 carats and valued in six million dollars.

To understand what happened in Oxfordshire in 2019, it is necessary to go back a few years ago and look to the other side of the Atlantic, to New York. There, in 2016, the controversial artist Maurizio Cattelan He decided to elaborate a piece with which he intended to offer a satire about the excesses of the American art and sleep market. He called her ‘America’ and the work itself (exact!) consisted of A gold toilet.

Something more than a sculpture

The most striking thing is that Cattelan not only manufactured his famous gower with 18 carat gold, which explains that the piece coasts the whopping of six million of dollars. That was provocative, but not enough for Maurizio Cattelan, author of Performance as controversial as ‘La Nona Ora’a sculpture that shows John Paul II hit by a meteorite, or the most recent ‘comedian’, a banana attached to the wall with adhesive tape that in 2024 was auctioned by 6.2 million.

No. The most curious of ‘America’ is that it was a toilet Fully functionalthought so that people could use it just like the toilet of their home or any bar. Hence, the piece ended up installed in one of the sinks of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, where about 100,000 people They queued to see it … and experiment how it was to relieve solid gold.

The performance liked it so much that in 2019 it ended up crossing the Atlantic to expose itself as a loan in the Blenheim Palaceone of the most solemn places in Oxfordshire County and throughout England. After all, it is one of the best examples of baroque architecture in Great Britain, is considered a World Heritage for UNESCO since the late 80s and is the place where Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born in November 1874.

If in New York the work had caused sensation, in Oxfordshire things were not different. Between both place there was a crucial difference: those responsible for Blenheim They underestimated the risks that someone could take the toilet. “It won’t be easy to steal,” assured In 2019 Edward Spencer-Churchill, of the Blenheim Art Foundation. “It is connected to the network. And a potential thief would have no idea who used it for the last time or what he ate.”

In summary, the toilet was connected to the piping and drains of the palace, weighed almost one hundred kilos and also people used it to leave their debris there. In addition, it was an avant -garde work of art, which eclipsed in some way its strictly material value. So … who would want to steal it? In Blenheim the idea sounded so far -fetched that surveillance had a weak point at night. When the palace closed its doors, the bathroom cubicle was left without supervision, outside the closed circuit of cameras.

Crassus error. ‘America’ was art, but also gold, kilos and more kilos of 18 carat gold. It is said that only metal cost about those dates some 3.6 million of dollars. And that represented a caramel too appetizing for thieves.

Result? It happened that it was expected. On the night of September 14, 2019, shortly before five o’clockA, a band of criminals broke into the farm of the palace, raided the building, the toilet started, loaded it in the trunk of a car and came out whistling. All in just five minutes. The ajar and close with an eye that left the security of the enclosure or the police without margin to react.

‘America’ has only two days on exhibition in Oxfordshire.

Almost six years later, the recordings of the cameras and the investigations of the agents themselves allow us to better understand how the famous blow of the Váter of the six million dollars was given. The band, composed of five peopleused two stolen vehicles To sneak in the farm hours after the last guests left, then they broke a window and used decks and levers to start the lyric of the toilet and separate it from the palace pipe system. Once the task was completed, they loaded the piece in one of the cars and escaped.

Recently Eleanor Paice, employee of the palace and slept that night in an apartment for Blenheim staff, related to the BBC How he lived that night more than five years ago: he woke up startled when he heard the noise of broken crystals and ran to the main courtyard when he felt the alarm. Once there I just gave him time to see the outcome of the robbery. “There were shadows and quick movements. I saw them approach the vehicle, get on … and go shot,” he recalls.

At first the team did not know what thieves had taken. The first thing Paice thought for example was in a churchill relic. Only when examining the stays they realized what had happened and that the thieves had caused a small flood. “If the golden toilet that was there was beautiful, perfect, majestic and immaculate, this was the opposite. It was shattered,” confesses The executive director of the Palace, Dominic Hare.

The institution knew how to react after the disaster. The staff covered the burst with police tape and decided that, in the absence of the famous solid gold toilet, that crime scene became part of the exhibition. The claim attracted the number of visitors who crowded the palace during the following days to see something “better” than a gold latrine of six million: the scene of the theft of a gold latrine. Ironies apart, Hare assumed the responsibility that Bleheim Palace was “vulnerable” and decided to take measures to correct it.

As for the thieves, although at first they sneaked with the loot, the police soon found at least part of the band. The first to fall was a 40 -year -old man from Oxford with a history, the alleged leader. Two days after the robbery I was already offering gold to 25,500 pounds The kilo. In addition the agents found remains of your DNA In an abandoned deck in the palace and a stolen truck and identified small fragments of gold in their clothes.

He was not the only one to fall. Last March, the Oxford Crown Court declared two other 39 and 36 -year -old men guilty. To the first for theft. During the trial it was discovered that before the coup he had dedicated himself to visiting the palace to examine in detail Cattelan’s works, try the famous toilet and take photos of, among other issues, the lock of the bathroom door.

The other man was convicted of conspiracy to transfer assets of illicit origin, although his grief It ended up suspended In May, considering the judge that the rest of the robbers could take advantage of their good will. The reason: he did not get “no personal benefit” and his role in the coup was very limited.

And the gold toilet? ‘America’ may be already part of the history of British art (and crime), but has not been able to recover. Not even the toilet. Not the gold. It is believed that Cattelan’s piece ended dismantled and sold. Now that there is a sentence, the controversial artist Wait at least that they stop swarming the theories that ensure that he is “the brain” of what happened and that Blenheim’s theft is actually another of his controversial performance. “That this verdict clean my name.”

Images | Wikipedia and Anna Fox (Flickr)

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