“The heist took about 3 minutes and 40 seconds,” Mr. Durham says in the documentary. “When I was done, the police were there, and I was passing by with my getaway car. Took my ski mask off, window down, and I was looking at them.” 
 
 He adds: “I could hear them on my police scanner. They didn’t know it was me.” 
 
 Mr. Durham, in details that he shares for the first time, after years of claiming innocence, brags of doing “bank jobs, safety deposit and more spectacular jobs than this.” He says he targeted the museum not because of any interest in art but simply because he could. “That’s the eye of a burglar,” he boasts. 
 
 The works are of inestimable value because they have never been to market: “View of the Sea at Scheveningen” (1882) is one of only two seascapes van Gogh painted during his years in the Netherlands, and “Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen” (1882-84), showing the church where the artist’s father was a pastor, was a gift to the artist’s mother. 
 
 (Prices for van Gogh landscape paintings at auction range from about $10 million to about $70 million.) 
 
 But Mr. Durham did not know the historical background of the paintings. He said the paintings were the smallest ones in the gallery he targeted, and closest to the hole through which he entered. He stuffed them into a bag, and escaped by sliding down a rope he and his accomplice had put in place. When he hit the ground, he came down so hard that he smashed the seascape, chipping the paint. He left behind a black baseball cap. A security guard called the police, but she was not permitted to use force to try to stop the burglars. ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 Two Vincent Van Gogh paintings have been recovered by police in Italy 14 years after being stolen, officials said Friday. 
 
 Police in Naples said the works — described as being of "priceless value" — were discovered during a crackdown targeting the Naples-based Camorra crime clan, The Associated Press reported. 
 
 "View of the Sea at Scheveningen," which was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1882. 
 
 They were taken from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2002 and “appear to be in relatively good condition,” according to a news release announcing the discovery. 
 
 Thieves used a ladder to reach the roof of the attraction and broke into a building through a window. Dutch art thief Octave Durham, nicknamed "The Monkey," and an accomplice were jailed in 2004 for the crime but the paintings remained missing, The New York Times reported. 
 
 "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuene" and "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" are both from the 1880s — relatively early in Van Gogh's career. 
 
 They were found during an investigation by a specialized team within the Italian Public Prosecutions Department, the museum said. 
 
 "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" was painted by Vincent Van Gogh in 1884 and 1885. 
 
 It was not immediately clear when they would be returned to the Netherlands. 
 
 “The criminal case, in which the paintings will be presented as burdens of proof, is still to be held because the investigation is not yet fully completed,” the release said. 
 
 Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh Museum, thanked Italian authorities. 
 
 “The paintings have been found! That I would be able to ever pronounce these words is something I had no longer dared to hope for,” he said in a statement. 
 
 Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands in 1853 and died in France in 1890. ||||| Paintings stolen from Amsterdam museum have been recovered from house in stronghold of crime syndicate near Naples 
 
 Two Vincent van Gogh paintings that were stolen from a museum in Amsterdam more than a decade ago have been recovered by Italian law enforcement authorities in Naples after an investigation targeting a powerful organised crime syndicate involved in the cocaine trade. 
 
 The paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen, painted in 1882, and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, painted in 1884, were discovered after allegedly being hidden away in a house affiliated with an international drug trafficker based in Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. 
 
 Officials hailed the discovery as a major victory in the fight against organised crime. It also provided an insight into the inner workings of the Italian underworld, where precious works of art are seen as valuable currency. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, 1884. Photograph: Getty Images 
 
 The authenticity of the paintings has already been confirmed by an expert from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, from where they were stolen in 2002. 
 
 Axel Rüger, director of the Van Gogh museum, said he wasn’t sure when the paintings could be returned to the Netherlands, as they are likely to be needed as evidence in the ensuing trial. 
 
 
 
 “After so many years I didn’t dare to think they would ever return,” Rüger said. “We’ve waited 14 years for this moment and of course we’d like to take them straight home. We’ll need to exercise a bit of patience, but I am convinced we can count on the support of the Italian authorities.” 
 
 The frames have been removed and the seascape has a small patch of damage in the bottom left-hand corner, the museum said, but otherwise the paintings appeared to be in good condition. 
 
 
 
 The paintings were discovered thanks to a tipoff from Mario Cerrone, a suspected drug trafficker arrested in January who collaborated with the Camorra, a notorious Neapolitan crime syndicate made up of numerous clans. 
 
 The discovery was part of a broader investigation into the Camorra’s Amato-Pagano clan, which prosecutors said was one of the most dangerous and active gangs of drug traffickers operating in the region. Investigators came across the paintings in a building that they were searching after a judge last week ordered the seizure of the gang’s assets. They also seized a small plane. 
 
 “When we finally found them, we did not believe our eyes,” a local official told La Repubblica. 
 
 The FBI considered the 2002 heist one of the “top 10” art crimes, according to its website. The thieves entered the Van Gogh museum from the roof of the building, which allowed them to get past security and cameras undetected, even though their entry did trigger alarms. They had used a ladder to climb up to a window and then smashed 
 
 Two men, Octave Durham, an art thief who earned the nickname The Monkey for his ability to evade police, and his accomplice Henk Bieslijn, were eventually convicted of the theft in 2004 after police discovered their DNA at the scene of the crime. They were handed four year sentences, but authorities were never able to track down the stolen works. 
 
 View of the Sea at Scheveningen is one of Van Gogh’s early paintings and depicts the beach resort close to The Hague. It was the only work in the museum’s collection from Van Gogh’s two years in The Hague and one of just two Dutch seascapes the artist made. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Detail from Vincent van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Photograph: Getty Images 
 
 Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen is a smaller work that Van Gogh painted for his mother in 1884, and depicts a church in Brabant where his father Theodorus was attached as a preacher. After his father’s death in 1885 Van Gogh revised the painting, adding figures of women wearing black shawls used in mourning. 
 
 Dario Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, said the discovery was extraordinary and “confirmed the strength of the Italian system in the fight against the illicit trafficking of works of art”. 
 
 John Dickie, a historian and expert in organised crime in Italy, said the reason the country was known for its expertise in following the illicit trade of art was the extent to which that trade existed in the first place. 
 
 “Italy also has the best mafia police in the world, because it has the most powerful mafia networks,” he added. 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Axel Rüger (left), director of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and Naples prosecutor Giovanni Colangelo shake hands in front of the recovered Van Gogh painting Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen. Photograph: Ciro Fusco/EPA 
 
 The town of Castellammare di Stabia, about 19 miles south-east of Naples, where the paintings were found, has long been known as a Camorra stronghold. It was the home of Assunta Maresca, known as Pupetta, who was a former beauty queen, convicted murderer, and Camorra boss described as a trailblazer and suffragette in the syndicate. 
 
 Unlike the highly organised Sicilian mafia, the Camorra is an “archipelago of gangs”, Dickie said, with some branches being more sophisticated than others. 
 
 “It is easy to say the Camorra did it and then jump to the conclusion that the Camorra is moving into the art market,” Dickie said. 
 
 He said the discovery and the alleged involvement of the Camorra reflected the opportunistic nature of the Neapolitan syndicate. Its members spend a lot of time in prison and are part of a vast underworld network in which illegal goods are sold and traded. 
 
 “I don’t think we need to conclude that it’s the Camorra boss who is putting this art on his mantelpiece. A lot of times these people don’t have a lot of class [and] they wouldn’t necessarily be impressed by having this,” Dickie said. 
 
 Federico Varese, an expert in criminology from Oxford University, said it was unsurprising that the discovery exposed a link between Amsterdam and the Camorra, given the Dutch city’s reputation as a major drug hub. Cross-border investigations dating back to the 1980s had found the presence of the Camorra in Amsterdam. 
 
 “What I know for sure is that a lot of camorristi are in Amsterdam, not because they want to be rooted there or deal in racketeering of shops or that kind of thing, but because they are there to buy drugs. Amsterdam is a hub for the buying and selling of illegal goods,” Varese said. 
 
 The Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, informed his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, about the police operation before the funeral in Jerusalem of the former Israeli leader Shimon Peres. Renzi also tweeted a message of thanks to Italian law enforcement, saying he was proud of their work.
– "I'm a born burglar," says Octave Durham, per the New York Times, which looks at a new documentary about Durham's notorious theft of two Vincent Van Gogh paintings. Set to be broadcast Tuesday on Dutch TV, the 45-minute special by filmmaker Vincent Verweij gets the inside scoop on the 2002 heist Durham says took less than four minutes and nabbed him two works the Times deems "of inestimable value": Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen and View of the Sea at Scheveningen. Durham, who was convicted for the burglary in 2004 and spent just over two years in prison, says he passed cops in his getaway car and brags that he'd pulled off "more spectacular jobs than this"—after years of denying he had any involvement in the theft, per Versopolis.com. In one reveal that may insult art lovers everywhere, Durham notes he didn't run off with the Van Goghs because of any particular love for the great master, or for art in general: He did it because it was an opportunity for a big get. "That's the eye of a burglar," he says. Per NLTimes.com, Durham told a Dutch paper over the weekend he'd wanted to steal two other Van Gogh paintings—Sunflowers and The Potato Eaters—but one was too big to slip out and the other was under heavy security, so he and partner Henk Bieslijn settled on the other two. The Times notes the Van Gogh Museum is still "furious" with Durham, who didn't get paid for the film, and refused to help Verweij. The filmmaker defends his choice of cinematic subject, noting, "You never see documentaries or articles about art theft from the perspective of the thief." (The Van Gogh Museum was pretty stoked when the paintings were recovered.)