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Thieves who broke into Blenheim Palace in England were able to steal a $6 million gold toilet in just five minutes, according to new court testimony. The fully-functional 18-carat gold toilet, named “America” was created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan as a piece of satirical participatory art. The toilet was on loan to Blenheim Palace from the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum at the time of the theft.
CCTV footage showing the moment the thieves walked away with the solid gold toilet was shown in court to jurors on Tuesday. In the video, two vehicles can be seen driving across the Great Courtyard at Blenheim Palace, parking, and then several hooded individuals appear carrying sledgehammers and a large crowbar.
Just five minutes later, these same hooded individuals can be seen returning to the vehicles with pieces of the 18-carat gold toilet, which weighed approximately 216 pounds, then placing the pieces inside the vehicles and speeding away. The sledgehammers were reportedly left at the scene of the theft.
“The burglary was carefully planned and swiftly carried out,” Prosecutor Julian Christopher KC told the court, Sky News reports.
“The men, five of them it appears, drove through locked wooden gates into the grounds of Blenheim Palace shortly before 5 a.m. in two stolen vehicles, an Isuzu truck and a VW Golf. They drove across a field, up to the front steps and smashed and broke in through a window.
“They knew precisely where to go, broke down the wooden door to the cubicle where the toilet was fully plumbed in, removed it, leaving water pouring out of the pipes, and drove away. All in all they spent just five minutes in the building.
“Clearly such an audacious raid would not have been possible without lots of preparation.”
The fate of the stolen $6 million gold toilet is unclear. Theories abound, including that it has been melted down or that it has been hidden somewhere close to Blenheim Palace. Richard Jackson, a gardener, said he thought it was still on the palace grounds believing the robbers may have thrown it off a bridge into one of two lakes on the property because, as he said, “It ain’t going to rust, is it? You could wait a year, then get it out.”
Blenheim Palace is a country house in Woodstock, Oxfordshire where Sir Winston Churchill was born and has been the home of the Churchill family since Queen Anne gifted it to John Churchill in 1704.