Gold bars made from melted down ancient Celtic coins that were stolen in a museum robbery have been found by police in Germany. Four suspects have been arrested.
The thieves stole 483 pieces from the Celtic Roman Museum in Manching after midnight on November 22, 2022. The suspects severed several fiber optic cables, which caused the internet and telephone connections of 13,000 homes to be cut for several hours. About an hour later, the museum was broken into and the suspects forced open two locked doors to flee with the gold coins.
The Ingolstadt prosecutor’s office and art investigators from the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office took over the investigations and recovered two blue crowbars, pruning shears and wire cutters from the vicinity.
Police found a trace of DNA on the recovered items and searched a national DNA database and neighboring countries, which alerted investigators to a series of eight similar thefts in Germany and Austria since 2014.
“The perpetrators were always equipped in the same way during the burglaries,” police said. in a report translated from German. “They wore black coveralls with balaclavas and each had identical crowbars, screwdrivers and an angle grinder with several cutting discs.”
By reviewing the incidents of the crime spree together, investigators were able to identify the first suspect, a 42-year-old man from Schwerin, who was allegedly involved in a burglary in April 2018. Through him, police identified a second suspect described as a 46-year-old German.
Investigators eventually found two other suspects, a 50-year-old man from Schwerin and a 43-year-old man from Berlin, police said. The four men were arrested on Tuesday and brought before investigating judges on Wednesday.
Police say the 43-year-old man from Berlin was carrying 18 gold nuggets in a plastic bag when he was arrested. Forensic analysts identified the composition of the material as having levels of gold, silver and copper that matched the composition of the stolen coins.
Prosecutors charged the men with aggravated robbery in combination with damaged property and disrupted telecommunications systems.
The museum hailed the “significant success” of the investigation in a brief statement on Facebook.
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