Octave “Okkie” Durham - The Dutch Lupin

On December 7, 2002, Octave “Okkie” Durham and an accomplice broke into Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, smashed a window and escaped with two paintings. The entire operation took around three minutes and forty seconds. No elaborate disguises or Hollywood-style gadgets—just a ladder, a hammer and a serious security problem.

The stolen works were View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884). DNA evidence helped identify Durham, who was arrested in Spain in 2003 and later imprisoned. He never revealed where the paintings were hidden.

The Van Goghs remained missing until 2016, when Italian police discovered them during a raid on a property linked to Raffaele Imperiale, a figure associated with the Camorra criminal organization. After fourteen years in the underworld, the paintings finally returned to Amsterdam.

Durham’s story took another turn when he began working with Dutch art detective Arthur Brand. In 2023, he helped facilitate the return of Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, stolen from the Singer Laren museum in 2020. The painting was delivered to Brand in a blue IKEA bag. Art recovery, apparently, doesn't always require white gloves.

Durham says he no longer steals art, instead using his underworld connections to help recover it. There’s a certain irony in a convicted art thief becoming an asset to investigators, but he knows how the stolen art world operates because he once worked inside it.

He stole two Van Goghs in under four minutes. Getting them home took fourteen years. These days, he seems more interested in opening doors than breaking windows.