A Monet for a move: art thief locates best place to steal art

A thief who has admitted stealing $26 million of art says he will return paintings if he can choose where he is tried.

By contrast, the Netherlands, where the crime occurred, has a record of relative leniency for art thieves. In 2004, Octave Durham, nicknamed ‘The Monkey’, and his accomplice Henk Bieslijn were convicted of robbing the Vincent Van Gogh Museum of two paintings: View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Exit From the Church at Nuenen (1884). They received four-and-a-half years.