by Scott Selby
“As a policeman you have to regard a person as neutrally as possible,” he said later, explaining why he didn’t simply confront Notarbartolo with the evidence against him. “You have to keep in mind that a person might be innocent. On the other hand, you have to be realistic. . . . If you have all kinds of evidence like that, and you have somebody who’s saying ‘I don’t have anything to do with it, I’m an honest businessman who did one and a half years [of business] in Antwerp’—which we didn’t find any [record] of—and who has a background of twenty years of burglary, well, we’re not judges; we’re just seeing what we have as evidence. And after a while, you realize that you are dealing with the right guy.”
Peys had gotten as far as he was going to with this line of questioning. Notarbartolo was unusually self-possessed, so the detective decided to try to rattle him to elicit a reaction. Since it was clear to Peys that Notarbartolo had no idea the police had been looking for him when he was apprehended at the Diamond Center earlier that night, Peys figured that Notarbartolo did not know that the police were also onto some of his accomplices. And so, in the middle of some light banter, the detective dropped Finotto’s old police mug shot in front of Notarbartolo. “Look, what do you think about that guy?” Peys asked as he planted the photo on the table. “Who is he?”
Even a detective as seasoned as Peys, who makes his living tracking down scam artists and con men, was surprised by Notarbartolo’s reaction. “He didn’t move a muscle,” Peys recalled, still impressed by the Italian’s poise years later. “He just acted as if he’d never seen the person. . . . Imagine that, a week after the burglary we show him a picture of one of the accomplices and say ‘this is the guy.’ I would really fall from my chair if you had that evidence during an interrogation. And he didn’t do anything. I can remember it so well because afterwards it seems so illogical and so unreal.”
In fact, Notarbartolo held his act together so well that Peys momentarily doubted that Finotto was involved. “We were absolutely not sure that Finotto was involved in that crime,” Peys said. “Okay, Finotto was involved ten years ago [in the failed bank heist] and Finotto, according to the information from the Italians, knew Notarbartolo, but that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, [the School of Turin] is perhaps fifteen, twenty, twenty-five people who only work together when it’s necessary. Afterward, we knew Finotto was involved, but at that moment I didn’t know.”
After that, it was clear Notarbartolo wasn’t going to slip up and accidentally divulge anything of importance. Peys played his last remaining move, telling Notarbartolo directly that the detectives believed he was involved in the crime. Just as Peys suspected, it brought the interrogation to an abrupt halt.
“He said very politely—because he was always very polite—he said, ‘Okay, I’m not going to say anything anymore, you do whatever you like,’” Peys recalled. “And since then he hasn’t spoken another word regarding the case with us.”
Investigators had more luck talking to Falleti, who was eager to convince police of his innocence so that he could take his wife and daughters home. Before his questioning, the detectives had allowed the family to share an awkward meal, finally eating the food they’d brought from the Netherlands in the police lunchroom under the watchful eyes of an officer. They were all nervous and scared and barely spoke. Falleti was then forced to leave his children in the cafeteria with a cop while he and his wife were taken away for questioning.
Interviewed separately, Falleti and Zwiep both maintained their innocence, telling the detectives they were only in Antwerp to enjoy a farewell meal with old friends. They claimed to know nothing of the heist beyond what they’d seen in the news; they said they knew nothing whatsoever about Notarbartolo’s involvement in it.
The detectives weren’t entirely clear on how this couple fit into the crime but assumed that at the very least they were accessories after-the-fact who were at the apartment specifically to rid it of evidence. Falleti had been caught holding the rug that, on close inspection back at the forensics lab, yielded the tiny emeralds the thieves had accidentally dropped while tallying the loot. And they had been accompanying Crudo, who was carrying a striped shopping bag and a large purse containing a cordless drill, three flashlights, the small purse with the hole cut out for Notarbartolo’s video camera, and a used vacuum cleaner bag. This last item was filled with dirt, dust, and “very small ‘glass fragments,’” according to Peter Kerkhof, the forensic technician who collected and examined evidence in the case. When he later examined these glass fragments more closely, he realized they weren’t glass at all. Instead, he labeled them as “possible emeralds.”
The detectives’ real score was their discovery of two SIM cards in Crudo’s purse, one labeled mio (“mine” in Italian), and the other labeled non mio. Detectives loved to find SIM cards on their suspects, since they were full of information, such as the dates, times, and phone numbers of calls sent and received, as well as where the cell phones had been used.
As if the possession of these items wasn’t incriminating enough, Falleti had admitted to the police on the scene that he intended to throw the rug away, which suggested to them that he knew he was disposing of evidence.
If in fact Falleti and Zwiep were the cleaners, they were woefully unprepared for the job and incompetent to boot. While the suspects were being interrogated, De Bruycker and a team of forensic specialists were going over every inch of the dreary Charlottalei apartment. They found all sorts of valuable clues, but also evidence that the “cleaners” hadn’t had time to clean a thing. Falleti and Zwiep had left their fingerprints all over the place, including Falleti’s on a grappa bottle and a glass. Detectives also found a used tissue in the apartment that was later revealed to have his DNA. The couple had showed up in Antwerp to perform their alleged role in the heist without any bleach, gloves, disinfectants, or other cleaning supplies but with their young children in tow. It was an odd scenario, to be sure.
Falleti and Zwiep tried to convince the police that they were simply helping Crudo at a time when she was concerned about her husband’s welfare. When she asked them to take out some trash on their way downstairs, it didn’t occur to them to question her. “Everything went so fast, I was not curious why I was needed to help carry everything downstairs,” Falleti told detectives.
It was a reasonable story, but the police weren’t buying it. They decided to hold the couple, so their DNA could be compared with samples from items from the trash at the Floordambos and recovered from the vault. Plus, their statements to police differed in one critical way that made the detectives question the rest of their story: when asked where he was on Sunday night, February 16, Falleti said he had been at a friend’s birthday party while Zwiep said they had been at home that night.
Crudo also had a lot to explain since her baggage was filled with suspicious items, and she admitted being the one who suggested gathering everything up and fleeing the apartment. She told the police that she had panicked when she learned from Falleti that police were questioning Notarbartolo, presumably in connection with the diamond heist.
It was no secret that her husband had a long history of problems with the police and she told the detectives she didn’t want to risk leaving anything in the apartment that could give investigators the wrong impression of a man she described as honorable and law-abiding. She too was held over for additional questioning.
All four of the suspects were placed in solitary confinement cells in the basement of the federal police building. Zwiep was unable to reach a relative in the Netherlands to come for their children, so they ended up as prisoners of a sort as well. The police took them to Paola Kinderziekenhuis, a children’s hospital. The girls spent the night standing at the window, hoping someone would appear to take them home.
The next day—Saturday—the prisoners received a quick schooling in the arcane features of the Belgian judicial system. They were driven separately to the justice building—an imposing old brick and stone facility—for questionin
g by someone known as a Preliminary Investigations Judge, or an examining magistrate, who was part of the prosecutor’s office.
Falleti later described the subterranean holding cell at the justice building as resembling something from feudal times, lacking only a hay mattress and shackles on the wall to perfect the image. There wasn’t even a toilet. He spent four hours alone there before being led through a maze of narrow corridors to the magistrate’s office where, in addition to the judge, there were a stenographer and two police officers.
Falleti sat and waited in silence, the only sound the ruffling of papers as the magistrate read the police reports of his initial interrogation. When he was questioned at last, it was along the same lines as before: Why was he in Antwerp? Why was he trying to throw away evidence? What did he know about the heist?
The other suspects were put through the same paces. Asked again why she had tried to empty out the apartment the night before, Crudo elaborated on her earlier statement, admitting that she had seen a small sparkling stone on the carpet. She said she was afraid that if the police searched the apartment, they might use the stone as a reason to implicate Notarbartolo in the heist, and so she had asked Zwiep to help her gather items to be removed from the apartment. When it was his turn before the magistrate, Notarbartolo said nothing.
The magistrate did not consider the explanations offered by Crudo or the other suspects to be credible. He ordered them all detained for an additional five days. Just as before, they were kept apart from one another to prevent them from sharing details of their interrogations or colluding on an alibi.
They were separately transported to the Prison of Antwerp, which looked like it had been designed by Edgar Allan Poe. Just like the Belgian justice system, the detention center was a holdover from Napoleonic times. As viewed from the street, it was a grimy brick and concrete edifice about three stories tall with arched parapets, flying buttresses, and tall narrow windows covered in iron bars. A tall brick wall around the building took up an entire city block. The prison complex consisted of several narrow interconnected cell blocks that enclosed separate outdoor areas where hundreds of prisoners awaited their days in court.
It was a notorious facility known for stark living conditions that not even the guards could endure. As such, the guards often went on strike to protest their working conditions. The prisoners had their own upheavals in order to bring attention to the facility’s dangerous level of overcrowding. The summer before the heist, the Prison of Antwerp had been the scene of hunger strikes and other inmate actions to protest their living conditions.
For Notarbartolo, the booking process must have been especially humbling. Only twenty-four hours before, he could have had the best that Antwerp had to offer, with his near limitless proceeds from the robbery. He could have stayed at the finest hotel, drunk the best champagne, and shopped at the most exclusive clothing boutiques. Now, though, like any other new arrival, he was stripped, deloused, and hosed off before he was thoroughly searched. He was given prison-issue sneakers, plain blue pants, and a blue sweater with a wide white stripe. Tea or industrial drip coffee—a foreign concept to Italians—was the best libation available. His accommodation measured thirteen feet by six and was bare except for a bed and a bucket to be used as a toilet.
During the initial five days of their incarceration, the four suspects weren’t allowed to speak with each other or to engage in any outside communication, except to try contacting lawyers. They were confined in their cells with no TV or radio and no access to the exercise yard. Notarbartolo did catch Falleti’s eye across the room during their initial processing, but they didn’t speak. Notarbartolo simply offered his old friend an apologetic shrug.
During his isolation, Notarbartolo puzzled over what the investigators might have against him. Throughout the interrogation, Peys had been careful not to tip his hand, though it was apparent that the detectives were convinced of Notarbartolo’s involvement. The questions were pointed and showed that, while Notarbartolo had been in Italy reveling in a job well done, they’d been busy snooping into every corner of his life in Antwerp. Notarbartolo knew that even with all of the planning, he and his compatriots had made a grave mistake at some point. He just had no idea what it was.
The ultimate irony of Notarbartolo’s situation was that the man who had stolen between 100 and 400 million worth of diamonds and cash had to appeal to the Office of Legal Assistance for a lawyer since he couldn’t pay with his pilfered loot without confessing to the crime. The attorney assigned to the case in turn referred him to an experienced defense attorney, Walter Damen. Notarbartolo also contacted his Italian lawyer, Basilio Foti.
Falleti had more trouble finding legal representation. He knew no one in Belgium except Notarbartolo and a sister who lived in Brussels. He only knew that he was in big trouble and he was scared. When he was sixteen, his father had been jailed for extortion and served six years in an Italian prison, missing a large chunk of Falleti’s life. He wanted to avoid anything like that happening to his own children, so Falleti had always lived a law-abiding existence with an honest job. He knew he was innocent, but being innocent wasn’t enough; he needed a good lawyer.
Desperate, he stuck his head out his cell window and yelled to the prisoners lazing about on the exercise yard, pleading for someone to recommend an attorney. Amazingly, one of them responded. A prisoner sauntered over casually, so as not to alert the guards, and gave him the name and telephone number of an attorney named Jan De Man. Falleti scrawled down the information and banged on his cell door, asking the guard to contact the attorney for him. This unconventional shot in the dark worked: Falleti met the chain-smoking, dapper De Man three days later, and De Man in turn arranged to have one of his associates, Eric Boon, represent Zwiep.
Falleti tried yelling the names of his friends through his cell window to see if anyone could hear him, and Crudo eventually yelled back. She didn’t yet have a lawyer, she yelled to Falleti in their crude form of communication, and so Falleti arranged for De Man to find a lawyer for Crudo as well.
When they appeared before the magistrate again on February 24, all of them had representation, but that didn’t result in their freedom. They were ordered to be held for an additional two weeks while the detectives and prosecutors continued to collect evidence and build their cases.
Leen Nuyts, a spokesperson for the Antwerp Office of the Prosecutor, told reporters that the four defendants were “being held on suspicion of being co-authors in the theft.”
While the prisoners cooled their heels, police detectives crisscrossed Europe gathering evidence.
In Italy, it looked like the military had invaded Trana. Local uniformed police, detectives from the Turin Mobile Squadron, three of the Belgian diamond detectives, and platoons of forensic investigators overwhelmed the hillside village when Martino and his men went to collect the evidence from the Notarbartolo family safe and to thoroughly search the property for other clues.
The Belgian authorities had found proof positive of their primary suspect’s involvement in the Antwerp heist from the pictures the Italian police had taken of the safe’s contents. Of the seventeen diamonds found during the first search of Notarbartolo’s home in Trana, nine were in blister packs from diamond grading labs. Of these, one was a sure match to a stolen stone: a brilliant-cut, deep brown (known as “cognac”) diamond weighing 0.70476 carats. This stone was fatal to Notarbartolo’s pleas of innocence, as its certificate number was found on the list of goods reported stolen. It was only one stone, but it was damning evidence of Notarbartolo’s involvement.
When the authorities arrived to assume possession of the stone, the Notarbartolo sons were home—but the jewelry, cash, and diamonds Marco Notarbartolo had been ordered to keep were not. Marco Notarbartolo told Martino that two men, whom he hadn’t recognized, had come to the door one night and said they had instructions from Notarbartolo to remove some items from the family safe. They took everything and vanished in minutes. Marco Notarbartolo said h
e didn’t know where they had come from or where they went.
The detectives exploded at the discovery that the irrefutable proof of Notarbartolo’s guilt was gone, but the brothers did little more than shrug at the investigators’ bad luck. It would have been difficult for most people to remain composed in the face of the screaming red-faced tirade that ensued—first at the house and later in Turin at the police station while the men were relentlessly grilled—but Francesco and Marco Notarbartolo had spent their whole lives learning from their father’s example how to deal with cops. They were like disciplined soldiers who’d fallen into enemy hands, resigned to the consequences.
Police practically disassembled the house, looking everywhere from the flower gardens to the attic rafters for signs of a hidden cache. They found nothing.
Elsewhere, police were conducting a massive roundup of known School of Turin members in an effort to find out who else had been involved in the heist. Aware of the gang’s modus operandi, they knew there had to be more actors in this plot than the people they’d identified.
From the wiretap inside Aniello Fontanella’s Personal Chiavi locksmith shop—set up as part of a broader sting against the School of Turin codenamed “Magic Moment”—Italian detectives heard Fontanella and alarms expert Giovanni Spurgo discussing the diamond heist and then mentioning the failed 1997 bank job in Antwerp that Finotto had been convicted for. Police immediately arrested both Fontanella—“the Wizard with the Keys”—and Spurgo. Both men denied their involvement in the Antwerp heist and volunteered to give DNA samples to prove their innocence. In fact, the fifty-three-year-old Spurgo had the perfect alibi: he had been in jail during the heist weekend, nabbed on suspicion of pulling a job at a Turinese jewelry store.