Two young veterinarians and the theft of priceless Mexican relics

Although in the last century a large number of robberies and colorful crimes that forever changed police operations and how we think about our security, if we go back several decades we will also find more than striking events.

That is the case of the robbery National Museum of Anthropology of Mexicowhen two veterinary students stole more than 100 jewels archaeological valued at million dollars. All this, on the night of Christmas.

The theft National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico

The robbery of the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico, also called “The robbery of the century in Mexico“was a theft of 140 archaeological pieces from the collection of said facility that occurred in the early morning of December 25, 1985. Carlos Perches Treviño and Ramón Sardina García, two veterinary students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, were the criminals.

They planned robbery a long time before, and went to the museum near fifty times for six months before December 1985. During these visits They studied the access to the roomsthey learned about the surveillance patterns, made sketches, and found out about the value of certain pieces to select the ones they would steal. Later it was discovered that they had taken photos of all the items in the loot.

Perches and Sardina arrived at the museum in a Volkswagen Sedanthey jumped over the dividing fence with Paseo de la Reforma and entered through a air conditioning tunnel to the Mayan Room of the museum. At the same time, eight guards at the Mexico City police museum were celebrating christmas in a single point of the museum drinking alcoholic beverages and did not comply with the current surveillance protocol. This was taken advantage of by the thieves to commit the robbery.

Later statements by Perches indicated that the doors of the rooms they were open and that they were able to remove the pieces from the display cases with relative ease. Perches and Sardina escaped from the place in the Volkswagen with the loot keeping it in one of their houses.

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What happened to the criminals

The theft was discovered in changing of the guard at 8 a.m. on December 25, quickly becoming a news of national impact and internationally and causing a scandal in the Mexican and Latin American cultural community. Among the stolen jewelry, the most important were:

• The grave goods of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal including the mask, necklaces, bracelets and rings
• The Breastplate of the Bat God
• The vessel known as the Obsidian Monkey
• The gold and turquoise chimalli from Tomb 7 of Monte Albán

The eight vigilante police officers were detained preventively. The Association of Friends of the National Museum of Anthropology offered a reward of 50 million pesos of the time for the person who gave clues to the whereabouts of the stolen pieces, thinking that they were dealing with a professional band.

By four years There were no results, and the authorities were increasingly frustrated with the incident. For their part, the two student perpetrators of the crime were resting at home very peacefully, and would never have been discovered if it were not for a carelessness of Perches.

He traveled to Acapulco to try sell some of the pieces and thus take advantage of the feat. There he forged dangerous friendships, reaching work for criminals. And this was precisely his big mistake. The circle he surrounded himself with in Acapulco and the conversations he had in those years gave the Prosecutor’s Office in charge a definitive clue to solve the scandalous robbery of 1985. The June 12, 1989 the arrest of the young people was published and recovery 111 jewels.