Naaman Diller

In 1983, the costliest theft in Israel’s history saw 106 timepieces worth millions of dollars disappear from a Jerusalem museum. Included in the timepieces was a pocket watch made for Marie Antoinette which is valued at more than £19m ($30 million).

At the time, evidence at the scene led to speculation that it had been committed by at least four burglars. The case remained unsolved for almost 25 years until 2006 when a Tel Aviv watchmaker told police that he had paid some $40,000 to an anonymous person to buy 40 items including Marie Antoinette’s pocket watch.

Forensic experts examined the clocks and detectives questioned the lawyer who negotiated the sale. The trail led to an Israeli woman in Los Angeles named Nili Shamrat who police identified as the widow of Naaman Diller who was a notorious criminal in the 1960s and 1970s.

When Israeli police and US officials arrived at her home to question her they found more stolen clocks. Shamrat then told the police that her husband who she had recently married confessed to her just before he died that he had committed the heist. Diller had acted alone after discovering that the museum's alarm system was not working and the guard was posted at the front of the building. Behind the cover of a parked truck, Diller used a crowbar to prise apart the bars on a rear window. Items he could not remove in one piece were dismantled. Diller stashed many of the stolen items in safety deposit boxes in Europe and the USA, before settling in Los Angeles. He then advised his wife to try and sell his collection after his death.

The Marie Antoinette watch was actually self winding and was ordered in 1783 by one of her admirers and was to be made by the famous Swiss watchmakers Abraham Louis Breguet. The order specified that gold should be used wherever possible instead of other metals and to make it the most spectacular watch possible. The watch was finally finished in 1827, 34 years after Marie-Antoinette was guillotined and four years after Breguet’s death.