Posted on 04/08/2005 4:58:38 AM PDT by nuconvert
Recent aArrests Could Bring Police Closer to Solving "The Scream" Heist
Thu Apr 7,2005
OSLO (AFP) - Norwegian police said that a number of recent arrests of Norwegian criminals could bring them closer to tracking down Edvard Munch's world-renowned masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" that were stolen from an Oslo art museum last August.
"We can't rule out that the recent arrests will give us a helping hand," Iver Stensrud, who heads the Oslo police organized crime unit, told AFP.
"The criminal underworld is limited in Oslo and in Norway and everyone works with everyone, everyone knows everyone," he pointed out.
On Wednesday, Spanish police arrested a Norwegian man believed to have been part of a gang that killed a policeman in a bank robbery a year ago in the southern Norwegian city of Stavanger.
Three of the suspects' Norwegian friends were also arrested in Amsterdam on Wednesday.
The four men's genetical makeup will now be matched with DNA samples found in the getaway car and on the gun used in the Munch heist, according to Stensrud.
"The Scream" (1893) and "Madonna" (1893-94) were grabbed last August 22 by two armed and hooded thieves who burst into the Munch Museum in broad daylight, threatening a member of staff with a gun as stunned tourists looked on.
Grabbing the paintings off the walls, the robbers fled the scene in a stolen black Audi driven by an accomplice.
Surprisingly simple in its execution, the heist took just a few minutes. But an ensuing controversy lasted for weeks when it was revealed that there were no surveillance images good enough to help investigators, perhaps a sign of the naivete in this country largely spared from violent crime.
Police have yet to make a single arrest directly linked to the case, and the two masterpieces remain missing.
"Hmmm.....according to this article a month ago, arrests had been made and "The stolen artwork was also in the hands of police, seized after a dramatic raid in Oslo Monday night."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1358287/posts
It's AP, so who knows what the truth is?
Maybe you can enlighten us?
I was wondering how long it would take to see Dean or Gore on this thread.
I think a large monetary award should be offered TO the thief who swiped that ugly-azz painting 'The Scream', for doing a public service. The thief should be offered incentives to go out and steal all the repro-prints and get THEM out of the public eye too, and if he'll burn them AND the original?
A definite candidate for Sainthood.
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