Nearly 10 years after one of the most publicized thefts in modern celebrity history, Kim Kardashian returned to a French courtroom this week to recount the event that changed her life and retrieved her from relative anonymity as a reality television star and socialite to controversial megastar and would-be lawyer. The reality television star and business entrepreneur offered a gut-wrenching testimony as she described the frightening evening when gun-toting masked burglars ransacked her Paris hotel room during Fashion Week in 2016.
With a quiet but palpable gravity in her voice, Kardashian detailed what happened in the early hours of Oct. 3, 2016, at the No Address Hotel. She had traveled to Paris for Fashion Week, a city she once identified as a place of charm, flair, and late-night hot chocolate at cozy cafés.
“I always felt safe,” she said to the court. “It was magical.” But that feeling of security was destroyed when she mistook the armed robbers for police officers, only to realize what was coming when she saw the hotel porter handcuffed and heard the raiders shouting for one thing: her jewelry.
Among the stolen items was a $4.5 million ring given to her by her then-husband, Kanye West, which is part of a haul that French media outlets now say adds up to $10 million.
“They zip-tied me. They gagged me. They filled a bathtub with water and put me in it,” she remembered testifying. At one point, she was afraid she was about to be sexually assaulted, a particular terror that deepened the trauma of the night. “I have babies, and I need to get home to my babies,” she remembered begging her captors.
It was a pause wavering between fear and disbelief. “At that moment, I thought, ‘They’re just going to shoot me,’” Kardashian said. “Then I said a prayer for my family, mom, sister, and best friend. “But I was definitely under the impression that I was going to die.
Earlier in the day, her former stylist, who was also staying at the hotel, testified, remembering the blood-curdling screams he heard coming from Kardashian’s room.
Now, nine years later, 10 men, most now in their 60s and 70s and known as the “grandpa robbers” in the French news media, are finally on trial for the audacious, meticulously planned stealing. It is claimed the gang prepared for the robbery meticulously, taking advantage of security setbacks in the hotel and Kardashian’s well-documented penchant for flaunting her jewelry on social media.
“I didn’t even get that it was about my jewelry at first,” Kardashian said, noting that she spent the early hours of her day tracking news of terror attacks worldwide. “I was still in such shock.”
Kardashian, who has a higher profile than most of us in terms of fame and fortune, is now delivering a very human story of fear, survival, and susceptibility to the whole world. The trial is ongoing in Paris, but for Kardashian, the night of the robbery continues to be fresh in her memory.
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