Kim Kardashian’s Paris robbery trial: Everything you need to know
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets
• A gold and diamond Jacob necklace
• Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz
• Yanina earrings
• Three gold Jacob necklaces
• Little bracelets, jewels and rings
• A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace
• A necklace with six little diamonds
• A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds
• A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross
• A yellow gold Rolex watch
• Two yellow gold rings
• An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas
• Aomar Ait Khedache
• Harminv Ait Khedache
• Didier Dubreucq
• Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui
• Gary Mader
• Christiane Glotin
• François Delaporte
• Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
(R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
Puppetry has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years.
With the ability to tell political and philosophical stories, fairy tales and musical adventures, all with equal flair, puppeteers bringing the inanimate to life on stage is back in vogue.
A staple of the festive season, the year-round resurgence has been invigorated by hit West End shows including War Horse, The Life Of Pi, The Lion King and My Neighbour Totoro, boosting a craft that has been traced back as far as the ancient Greeks.
Pinocchio is this year’s Christmas show at Shakespeare’s Globe. Pic: Johan Persson
This year, puppets are centre stage at Shakespeare’s Globe, with Pinocchio their leading man.
The tale of a wooden puppet who dreams of becoming a real boy, Globe associate director Sean Holmes tells Sky News: “It seemed to fit, a boy made of wood in a theatre made of wood.
“There’s something about the kind of challenge of that storytelling, the theatricality, the magic, the puppetry, that really drew us to it.”
The performers – made up of actors and puppeteers – spent 18 months workshopping the show ahead of opening night, perfecting the challenge of skilled puppetry, acting and singing all on an open-air stage. It’s no mean feat.
The show features a range of puppets, including rod, table-top, and large-scale creations that fill the stage and marionettes – small puppets with big impact.
Puppeteer Stan Middleton is a marionette specialist. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Romeo the marionette on the Globe stage. Pic: Patrick Hutton
One of the show’s puppeteers, Stan Middleton, a marionette specialist, operates a marionette Romeo puppet in part of the performance.
He tells Sky News: “I think a lot of people are scared of marionettes because they think, ‘Oh no, they’re too difficult, we can’t do them’.”
He goes on: “It’s so nice to have the marionette moment in this show, because it gives people a chance to see how beautiful they are and how enchanting…
“They’ve got a sort of delicate charm and a sort of like inner silence which I think really captivates people.”
Despite their charms, the intricate skills required to both craft and manipulate long-string marionettes mean they are under threat.
While some puppets – including War Horse-style rod and Totoro-style body ones – are enjoying success on the stage, marionettes are critically endangered.
Globe associate director Sean Holmes. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Unlike dance or circus, puppetry is not recognised in its own right by Arts Council England and is instead grouped with theatre.
It means specialist puppet venues are competing for funding in the highly saturated market of theatre companies producing for children and families, with no special recognition of their craft.
Marionette-making was added to Heritage Crafts’ Red List of Endangered Crafts in 2023.
There are now calls for it to be added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) list too, after the UK officially joined earlier this year.
Puppets are big business, but as some types thrive, others are at risk of disappearing completely. Pic: Johan Persson/Patrick Hutton
Little Angel is one of the few UK theatres to have a marionette bridge. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Little Angel Theatre, a hub for British puppetry for over six decades, is one of a handful of UK spaces where puppeteers can perform with long-string marionettes.
Boasting not one but two marionette bridges, puppeteers can walk 360 degrees all the way around the upper part of the stage, working their marionettes from a hidden vantage point above.
Trained by some of the last remaining UK makers, including Little Angel co-founder Lyndie Wright, Little Angel Associate director Oliver Hymans is a central figure in the effort to save the craft.
Little Angel associate director Oliver Hymans. Pic: Patrick Hutton
Inspired by seeing old marionettes hung up at the back of the stage and intrigued by why they were not being used, he is now committed to re-establishing traditional marionette-making.
Hymans tells Sky News: “The marionette is a series of nine different pendulums all wired together. You’re having to work against gravity to keep it in control.
“But the thing about the marionette is you can hide the puppeteer. So, you can completely design and develop a world where there are only puppets and scenery and scenography.”
He says the majority of master marionette makers have retired or are nearing retirement, and warns there may be just a handful left in the country.
He explains: “With the onslaught of AI, we know it’s coming. Jobs where people use their hands are going to be vitally important, and if we don’t protect these crafts, they are going to die out.”
Me at Little Angel Studios. Pic: Ellie Kurttz
The Storm Whale at Little Angel Theatre. Pic: Northedge Photography
Putting their money where their mouth is, Little Angel is nurturing emerging talent, upskilling people in both the art of making and performing with marionettes.
They plan to have a marionette show on stage next summer.
Also joining the fight for the overlooked craft, puppetry director Rachel Warr has organised a celebration of marionettes for the last three years, with the support of the Art Workers’ Guild Outreach Committee.
An industry-focused free event, it brings the puppetry community together – with particular relevance to those who work with marionettes – or who aspire to.
Puppetry director Rachel Warr (R) with Alicia Britt and Anna Smith. Pic. Tom Crame
Some members of the community appear in a forthcoming short documentary about puppets, Untangling, by filmmaker Hester Heeler-Frood.
Warr told Sky News: “People are often more affected by a puppet dying on stage than an actor pretending to die in character. It doesn’t have the artifice of getting up and walking away and getting on the tube at the end of the night.
“There’s something quite vulnerable about the puppet in that sense… We know that it’s not really alive, and yet we’re able to project on to it our own thoughts and feelings. It’s a blank canvas – a powerful tool.”
Meanwhile, as Pinocchio plays at the Globe, the theatre is running accompanying puppetry workshops, encouraging children to get involved in the craft – maybe inspiring future stars of puppeteering.
With their future hanging by a string, the training of the next generation is key to breathing life back into an overlooked craft, reinstating marionettes to their rightful place on the stage.
Pinocchio runs at Shakespeare’s Globe until Sunday 4 January.
The Storm Whale at Little Angel Studios runs until Saturday 24 January, and Me runs at Little Angel Theatre until Sunday 25 January.
Kate Winslet says she never set out to become a director – but after reading her son’s first screenplay, she simply “couldn’t let it go”.
In 2023, Joe Anders, whose father is director Sam Mendes, signed up to a screenwriting course at the National Film and Television School.
His mother read one of his assignments and insisted it was worth making into a film – so they did.
Anders created a story around adult siblings who reunite around Christmastime to say goodbye to their dying mother.
Abiding by Mark Twain’s phrase “write what you know”, it was inspired by the death of Winslet’s mother Sally Bridgers-Winslet from ovarian cancer in 2017.
Helen Mirren (left) as June and Kate Winslet (right) as Julia in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Speaking to Sky News, the Titanic actress says they learned “how to develop a completely new relationship” as colleagues”.
“I’m incredibly impressed by him and really proud of him, not least because he wrote this screenplay and started writing it when he was 19,” she says.
“But he had to adapt and learn very, very quickly that when you’re developing something, you take notes, you take feedback.
“Netflix became involved at some stage that they were also giving notes to, and then I was sort of playing the role of kind of protecting the project and also protecting him at the same time from things that, you know, may necessarily not have been useful, things that actually were great ideas.”
Winslet speaking to Sky News
Anders isn’t her only child to have got their start alongside their famous parent.
Mia Threapleton, who most recently starred in the Wes Anderson film The Phoenician Scheme, made her on-screen debut in the 2014 Winslet-led movie A Little Chaos.
They worked together again in the series I Am… which won Winslet a TV BAFTA award for best leading actress.
Goodbye June stars (L-R) Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Kate Winslet and Fisayo Akinade, among others. Pic: Netflix
An actor’s director
Winslet has starred in some of the biggest films of all time, with Titanic, Avatar and Sense And Sensibility, to name a few.
She says it’s that experience in front of the camera that helped her tailor the on-set experience to help its actors explore their emotions and creativity.
“We know what works for us as actors from a director,” she says. “We know what does not work, and we also know what’s actively destructive and sometimes that can mean the environment, the working environment.
“Film sets are very busy places it can often be frantic, sometimes it’s hard to kind of follow what’s going on or what you’re doing next, and it mattered to me enormously that everybody always felt extremely safe, completely informed, and very free.”
Read more from Sky News:
Actors demand AI protections
Celebrities who died in 2025
Oscars set to leave ABC
(L-R) Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, Kate Winslet and Timothy Spall in Goodbye June. Pic: Netflix
Winslet adds: “In this country, we’re not necessarily so good at processing, especially when it comes to talking about grief.
“And so hopefully through this film, which is also very funny, hopefully through this film, people might see something of themselves and connect with it in that way.”
Timothy Spall, next to co-star Toni Collette, says it is not surprising Winslet is such a good director
‘One of the greats’
Co-star Timothy Spall says “it’s not surprising she’s such a good director” – and calls her “one of the great actresses in the world.”
“I worked with her when she was 20. She was impressive then, just before she got Titanic… and she’s paid attention. She’s listened. She’s a great actress,” Spall says of Winslet.
“She knows how it works, and she helps other actors to do the best they can. And she’s all over the crew. She’s great with them. She’s paid attention in every department.”
Goodbye June is out on Netflix on 24 December
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment3 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024