Paris – The ring shone in Instagram publications. So did the diamond necklace and the luxury direction of Paris. For Kim KardashianSharing online was a second nature, an extension of its fame. But in the early hours of October 3, 2016, that opening turned against it.
Five masked men who got through police officers He assaulted the residence where he stayed during fashion week. They tied her with adhesive tape and plastic ties, locked her in the bathroom and fled with an estimated $ 6 million in stolen jewels.
The theft sent shock waves far beyond Paris. It was the last moment that exposure to celebrities, fueled by updates of social networks and glamor at exhibition, collided with the risk of the real world.
The late fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld offered a Evaluation characteristically overwhelming On the days that followed. In statements to Associated Press, he criticized Kardashian’s hyper-visibility in an era in which fame can come with serious vulnerabilities.
“(She is) too public, too public: we have to see what time we live,” he said. “You can’t show your wealth and then surprise you that some people want to share it,” he added, asking why he was in a hotel without security.
On Tuesday, Kardashian Take the position In a trial that began last month, almost a decade after theft. Finally, he will face the men accused of carrying out one of the attractive of the most bold celebrities in the modern history of the French.
What caused the robbery to be extraordinary was not only his high -profile victim, but how researchers believe it was attacked. Kardashian had published real -time updates since his hotel suite. She showed a 20 carat diamond ring, endowed by her then husband Kanye Westhours before he was stripped of his hand.
The attackers did not use digital trackers or piracy tools. Instead, the researchers believe that Kardashian digital bread crumbs (images, time marks, geotags) followed and exploited them with criminal methods of the old school.
It was, some suggested at that time, a plan built from their own transmission.
The men dressed as a policeman, only spoke French and dominated the janitor, who was forced to act as a translator during the robbery.
“I thought they were terrorists,” Kardashian told a French magistrate in 2017. “That they were going to kill me.”
The theft forced Kardashian to consider how he lived, published and protected. His brand had been built on access, his life transmitted to millions. But that strategy had collapsed.
“I learned to be more private,” he said later. “It is not worth risk.”
Kardashian improved their security detail by hiring people with a history in elite protection services, according to reports, including former members of the United States and CIA secret service. She stopped publishing her location in real time. Gifts and luxurious jewels almost disappeared from their diet.
“It was definitely materialistic before … but I am very happy that my children understand me,” he reflected on Ellen Degeneres show in 2017.
Later, Kardashian acknowledged that the constant exchange had turned her into a goal.
“People were looking at,” he said. “They knew what I had. They knew where it was.”
His retirement triggered a domino effect in Hollywood and the fashion world.
The Gigi Hadid model increased its private security detail in the months after the robbery. He was seen in the fashionable parades of Paris flanked by multiple guards. According to the reports, Kendall Jenner, Kardashian’s sister, took similar steps before the 2016 Secret fashion show in Paris, following new protocols on personal protection and digital discretion. Publicists and managers began advising customers to delay publications, eliminate location labels and think twice before flashing luxury online.
Visibility remained currency, but for some the rules had changed.
Surveillance images helped the French police reconstruct the timeline of the robbery, but the advance came from a DNA trace that remains in the plastic ties used to tie Kardashian.
He combined Aomar Aït Khedache, a veteran criminal whose DNA was in the national database. Telephone taps and surveillance brought police to others, including Yunice Abbas and Didier Dubreucq, known as “Yeux bleus”. Most defendants have long criminal records.
Later, Abbas said he was not aware of Kardashian’s identity during the robbery.
But researchers say that men acted with detailed planning and discipline. Prepaid phones were activated the day before the robbery and were abandoned immediately after. But in the end, it was not enough.
Kardashian, once mocked by some of the French press as a secondary show of reality, is now in the center of a case with a deep cultural resonance.
