It was in the early hours of October 19 when two masked thieves, armed with angle grinders, tripped a security alarm inside the Louvre gallery.
The world-famous museum in Paris had just opened to a heaving crowd of visitors in search of an unmissable cultural experience.
In broad daylight, the thieves parked a stolen movers' truck on the side of a busy road outside the south end of the Apollo Gallery, placing traffic cones around the vehicle to fool onlookers into thinking they were doing authorised repairs.
Then two members of the heist quartet rode up an electric ladder to the second storey, where they forced open a window and entered the gallery housing France's crown jewels.
As luck would have it, their presence went unnoticed by the only camera monitoring the area, which was pointing away from the balcony that the thieves climbed over to break in.
But the pair did trigger an alarm at the security control room, alerting a staff member that something was amiss.
By the time that employee was able to warn command centre members about the intruders, the thieves were already on the move, crossing the floor to the middle of the room.
They used disc cutters to crack open two display cases holding the crown jewel collection, before lining their pockets with eight artefacts.
The criminals then left the same way they came in: out the window and down the electric ladder before fleeing the scene on the back of scooters driven by two accomplices.
In their haste to escape Louvre agents, the group left behind a stolen crown, equipment, and a slew of bewildered gallery goers and staff.
Less than two weeks later, three of the four-man gang believed to have carried out the heist are in custody.
Two of the men are thought to have snatched the jewellery, and the other, officials believe, was one of the two men who were waiting outside with the getaway scooters.
"This is not quite everyday delinquency … but it is a type of delinquency that we do not generally associate with the upper echelons of organised crime," Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told franceinfo radio.
A series of missteps shows the theft in the Louvre was far from a sleek operation.
Instead, French authorities believe the theft was executed by petty criminals whose profiles are not typical of organised crime professionals.
And in the end, the biggest clues were found not in what the thieves took, but in what they left behind.
The appearance of an organised, professional crime
Experts initially believed that the speed and professionalism of the Louvre heist showed it was a well-planned crime, carried out by highly skilled perpetrators.
"They knew exactly where they were going," French Culture Minister Rachida Dati told ABC News America last month.
"It looks like something very organised and very professional."
The incident brought recollections of similar jewellery heists over the years, including one carried out in the German city of Dresden.
In 2019, thieves broke into a museum and made off with 21 pieces of 18th-century jewellery from the royal house of Saxony after smashing through a window.
The perpetrators "targeted" a display cabinet filled with accessories in the Grünes Gewölbe's Jewel Room and fled within minutes after starting a fire nearby to cut the power supply to street lights outside the museum and surveillance videos.
In Paris, the daylight robbery at the Louvre seemed almost as if it was designed with a pop culture audience in mind, setting social media alight with the limitless meme potential of a crime with no immediate human victim.
The thieves quickly became known as criminals with a "better work-life balance" than the rest of society, given the reasonable hours in which they chose to rob the famous museum.
The quartet clearly knew what they wanted, targeting jewels that can be torn apart and converted to cash as opposed to world-famous paintings that cannot be sold.
All possibilities, including whether it was an inside job, were initially on the table.
But in the weeks since the heist, it has become increasingly clear that parts of the operation did not go according to plan.
The clues left behind
It is not known how much of the crown jewel collection the thieves intended to take with them, but they left with less than half of the 23 pieces on display in the Apollo Gallery.
The estimated worth of the haul is upwards of 88 million euros ($154 million).
Among that loot is an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon I gave to his second wife, Marie Louise, and a tiara, necklace and single earring from the sapphire set that belonged to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense.
One of the most precious items from the collection was dropped and left behind at the scene.
Empress Eugenie's crown, made of gold, emerald and 1,300 diamonds, including a diamond-encrusted cross on top, was found outside the Louvre shortly after the heist.
It had been "crushed" by the thieves when it was taken out of its protective glass case, but repairing it will be "possible," said Laurence des Cars, the president and director of the Louvre.
French media have since speculated that the thieves were amateurs, with the missing crown not the only evidence of a scheme that did not quite go to plan.
A member of the group tried to set fire to the movers' truck before they got away, but they were thwarted by a museum worker.
The thieves also left behind tools, including a glove, a helmet, a yellow vest similar to those worn by construction workers, and their genetic material.
Police have collected 189 pieces of evidence and processed 150 forensic samples in the weeks since the incident, according to Ms Beccuau.
The forensic samples were analysed in Paris crime labs and later compared with a criminal database.
That turned out to be a boon for investigators.
Three suspects were matched to DNA found on equipment used at the scene, including a scooter used in the getaway, one of the glass cases where the jewels were displayed, and the movers' truck.
All three people reportedly had their DNA on file because of their criminal histories.
"I am convinced that we would not have found these people if the DNA that was found at this theft hadn't matched with this database," Gaëtan Poitevin, a criminal lawyer in Marseille, whose master's thesis was on France's DNA database, told The New York Times.
Traces of the DNA of a woman believed to be connected to one of the men were also found in the movers' truck but Ms Beccuau said it may have been transferred by a person or an object later put into the vehicle.
Having escaped on their getaway scooters on an otherwise unremarkable Sunday morning, it was feared the quartet had immediately fled the country to parts unknown.
But it turned out they were much closer than was thought.
Unmasking the suspects
Four suspects in the Louvre heist have been handed preliminary charges, with three believed to be members of the team who took part in the theft.
The first of the suspects to be detained was an unnamed 34-year-old Algerian who has lived in France since 2010.
He was apprehended by police as he tried to board a flight to Algeria at Charles de Gaulle airport and has since told investigators he is unemployed but used to work as a garbage collector and deliveryman.
Next was a 39-year-old identified by justice officials as Abdoulaye N. He was arrested at his home, and French media reports he is a social media star known as Doudou Cross Bitume.
He gained a following performing motocross stunts and reportedly worked as a security guard at the Pompidou centre.
Both men live in Aubervilliers, a low-income suburb in northern Paris, and are facing charges of organised theft and criminal conspiracy.
Ms Beccuau said they had given "minimal" statements and "partially admitted" their involvement.
Purported mugshots of two "Louvre suspects" have since circulated on social media.
"It is so French of them to both be this hot," activist and actor Jameela Jamil wrote on one of the composite photos in circulation.
But the mugshots are fake, with fact checkers tracing one set of photos back to a satirical Facebook post.
One of the viral mugshot posts does not feature a criminal but Gossip Girl actor Chace Crawford, who was not connected to the heist.
Two other suspects, a 37-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman, were arrested on October 29 and later charged.
The pair, who have denied any involvement in the heist, are in a relationship and have children together.
Ms Beccuau said the man was believed to be part of the four-man group that carried out the Louvre theft. The woman is accused of being an accomplice.
The fourth member of the group that performed the heist is still on the run.
And authorities have not ruled out others being involved. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said investigators are still looking for whoever might have ordered the crime.
When Ms Beccuau was asked whether she found the profile of the suspects unusual, she replied: "I don't find it that surprising.
"What we are seeing now is that people with no significant association with organised crime are progressing relatively quickly to committing extremely serious crimes," she added.
What about the missing jewels?
One key part of the heist has remained elusive in the weeks since the incident: the fate of the looted treasures, estimated to be worth millions.
Ms Beccuau said the investigation had yet to uncover any of the items that were stolen.
"As we've said from the beginning of this theft, if the jewels are not recovered in the first 48 hours, they are most likely broken up into smaller jewels and gems and sold in the marketplace," Christopher Marinello, chief executive of Art Recovery International, a private company that specialises in locating looted artworks, told ABC News America.
Authorities were initially optimistic the items could be recovered but have since rebuffed questions about how close they are to finding the jewels.
"We are examining all the possibilities on the parallel market for selling this jewellery, which I hope will not happen any time soon," Ms Beccuau said on November 1.
"It could be used for money laundering, it could be used for trade; all leads are being explored."
Since the Louvre theft, security at the museum has been tightened and its most precious jewels have been transferred to the Bank of France.
The incident is a national embarrassment in France, casting an unflattering light on the security apparatus inside a treasured cultural institution.
