(mysterious music) - The Mona Lisa is simply the most important single painting in the world.

(mysterious music) - You have more than eight million visitors per year in the Louvre and more than half of them are there only to see the Mona Lisa.

(Jerome speaking in foreign language) (upbeat instrumental music) (Federico speaking in foreign language) (playful pensive music) - There are a lot of suspicions about the authenticity of the other paintings by Leonardo here in the Louvre.

For the Mona Lisa, it was always considered an original by the artist.

(upbeat instrumental music) - Leonardo da Vinci considered it one of his favorite paintings because he carried it around with him for so long.

She has been coveted and loved.

She's been written about.

She's been adored.

(pensive music) (light footsteps) (object clanking) (playful music) (door shuts) (upbeat instrumental music) - She had been taken.

She'd been kidnapped.

(light whooshing) - This was the greatest art heist in modern times.

(people screaming) - This painting had an iconic value, but it was the very fact of the theft that transformed it into the equivalent of a kind of global celebrity.

- Paris newspapers reported the theft under the headline of, "Unimaginable".

This was huge, huge news, all over the world.

- [Aaron] The police were virtually clueless how this had occurred.

- [Milton] What audacious criminal, what maniac collector, what insane lover has committed this abduction?

- It's somebody who's got some screws loose in their head.

- This masterpiece had been taken by an obscure individual.

- And it's amazing to think that for two full years or more, it was gone.

For two years, it was really gone.

(dramatic music) (magical music) (dramatic music) (light reflective music) (Celestina speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] I first learned about the daughter of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, in 2008, when I was Googling his name.

For me, this was an unbelievable discovery.

(pensive music) My name is Joe.

And for more than 30 years, I've been obsessed with finding out how and why a simple laborer named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the most famous painting in the world.

Now I had the chance to meet his only child.

So I took a film crew to see her.

(light upbeat music) Peruggia's daughter lives in Northern Italy, close to the Swiss border in a town called Dumenza.

It's where both she and her father, Vincenzo, were born.

(speaking in foreign language) So this was Celestina Peruggia.

She didn't seem like the daughter of a criminal.

She looked and acted like the little Italian grandmother I always wanted.

(speaking in foreign language) Celestina had lots of pictures of her father, like this well-known image from an old newspaper.

- [Justine] That's the original.

- [Joe] But she also had photos I'd never seen before.

He looked like a respectable, friendly, family kind of guy.

Wow.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) - [Letizia] It's the last picture of Vincenzo, before his death.

(reflective music) (Celestina speaking in foreign language) (music abruptly halts) - That's right.

She didn't know him.

Vincenzo Peruggia died October 8th, 1925, on his birthday.

Celestina was a toddler.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) (Interviewer speaking in foreign language) (Celestina speaking in foreign language) (upbeat folk music) - [Joe] As I wondered around Dumenza, I noticed there wasn't a Peruggia t-shirt or Mona Lisa refrigerator magnet for sale anywhere.

In fact, there was no sign the man had ever lived here.

No via Peruggia.

No piazza Peruggia.

Not even a pizzeria Peruggia.

(Valerio speaking in foreign language) When I met the vice mayor of the town, a Peruggia cousin, I asked him why there was no Memorial to Vincenzo Peruggia.

(speaking in foreign language) - They asked to do that.

- He explained the law prohibits Italians who have been on trial from having a street or statue in their honor, yet on a wall in the Village Square, you can see a memorial to another famous Italian, Mussolini.

(crowd cheering) Let's talk about the theft and why she thinks her father stole the painting.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) (reflective music) - Celestina believed that her father stole the Mona Lisa out of patriotism to return an Italian painting to its home country.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) I think the signora wants to know the truth, as much as we want to know the truth.

And there may be some things she won't like to hear about her father.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) - Good, okay, good.

I promised Celestina I'd spend the next five months finding out everything I could about her father.

And then I'd come back to see her.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) - That's all she wants.

- The truth.

- The truth.

- Eh?

- Yeah.

(reflective music) But how was I gonna find the truth?

There are only two people who know what really happened.

One of them's dead.

And the other doesn't talk.

- [Mona] Sh.

- [Joe] I had to do some real detective work.

Luckily, I knew a real detective.

- Something that happened in 1911, and there's no physical evidence anymore.

And the people who were there are dead.

Are there any writings anywhere?

(Italian folk music) - [Joe] That's what I needed to find out.

So I contacted two researchers in Paris who lived right across the street from the Louvre.

They hit every archive in the city and emailed me 1500 digital images of Louvre documents, police reports, and the actual mugshots from Peruggia's arrest for stealing the Mona Lisa.

Once I had all this original source material, I put together a team of volunteer translators.

(sped up whooshing) Over the next several months, their translations helped me piece together the real story of Peruggia.

I started at the scene of the crime.

(Italian folk music) (suspenseful music) The painting disappeared on a Monday, a day when the Louvre was closed for its weekly cleaning.

Most of the guards didn't notice the empty space on the wall, but the ones who did thought... (Jerome speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] On Mondays, the museum photographer often removed paintings to shoot them for postcards and catalogs.

(camera clicks) The next day, the museum reopened.

The Mona Lisa was still missing.

Around 11:00 AM, a Louvre guard stumbled on the painting's empty frame on a service staircase.

(Jerome speaking in foreign language) Museum director, Theophile Homolle, was on vacation.

(playful popping, whirring) He left one of his curators in charge.

(Jerome speaking in foreign language) (light giggling) (Jerome speaking in foreign language) (blows raspberries) (Jerome speaking in foreign language) The Prefect of Paris Police, Louis Lepine, the man newspapers called the greatest policeman in the world sent an army of detectives to search for the Mona Lisa.

(suspenseful music) (Jerome speaking in foreign language) Paris was rocked by the news.

(dramatic music) - Paris was the capital of world of Western art.

And so the theft of the Mona Lisa, from essentially a fortress in the center of the city, a lot of people were shocked and saddened.

Crowds showed up outside of the museum, laid flowers at the gates as though someone had passed away.

- [Joe] And everyone was thinking the same thing.

- Who is the plunker who has done this?

Is it one of the staff?

Is it one of the guards?

- Reports of suspects came from all over Europe.

Cops in Paris were alerted that the two men carrying two canvases were on a boat heading for New York.

Special agents of the secret service, customs officials, were alerted on various elements that turned out to be nonsense.

- [Joe] Police distributed 6,500 flyers with a picture of the Mona Lisa, so people would know it if they saw it.

- Mona Lisa, in 1911, is not the Mona Lisa now.

The Mona Lisa now is a global icon.

- [Joe] Even the venerable Washington Post got it wrong.

They published this picture as the Mona Lisa.

(pensive instrumental music) - Paris newspapers began offering a reward of 40,000 francs.

No questions asked.

And what this meant was essentially anyone could write a letter to their newspaper editor blaming their neighbors or their rivals at work.

They wrote letters by the thousands.

It was quite a mess.

(pensive instrumental music) (Italian folk music) - [Joe] Then nearly two and a half years after the theft in Florence, Italy, (dramatic music) the Mona Lisa suddenly reappeared.

It was turned in by the man who stole it.

- Peruggia was taking the Mona Lisa home.

He expected bands.

He expected medals.

So he was really kind of shocked when he was jailed immediately.

(reflective music) (suspenseful music) - To make such a particular theft, to engage in such a particular venture, there have to be other reasons, there have to be unconscious motives.

- [Joe] Luckily I found the key to Peruggia's unconscious, his psychiatric evaluation.

After his arrest, his lawyers wanted a psychiatrist's opinion to help build his defense.

And the man to do that was Dr. Paolo Amaldi.

- Paolo Amaldi was director of the Mental Hospital of Florence, which was an incredibly prestigious job.

- [Joe] Amaldi's report details the extensive mental examination he gave Peruggia.

- Although Peruggia didn't seem very emotional, he seemed to be, for the most part, a good worker and sincere, but he did in the end, find him to be mentally deficient.

- [Joe] Mentally deficient?

To find out what Amaldi was thinking about what Peruggia was thinking, I tracked down Dr. Amaldi's grandson, Paolo Sorbi.

Growing up, Sorbi heard stories about Peruggia from his grandfather.

He and his wife, Sabena are college professors and have studied the Peruggia case.

(Paolo speaking in foreign language) (Sabena speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) The actual word Dr. Amaldi uses in his report is (speaking in foreign language) which translates to half-wit.

So now am I supposed to go back to Celestina and tell her that her father stole the Mona Lisa, because he was a half-wit?

(pensive music) This is my friend Nando de Stefano, owner of an LA pizza shop.

Nando translated Amaldi's psychiatric report in between customers.

- Vincenzo Peruggia is the first of three brothers and a sister.

(gentle music) - [Joe] Being the oldest son, Peruggia left his home in Dumenza to strike out on his own at a very early age.

- At 12 years old, he went to work in Milano and then he learned the job of the "Imbianchino".

Imbianchino, which is not the painter artist, but the- - The house painter.

- The house painter.

(gentle music) - [Joe] Peruggia worked in Milan for six years.

Then he did what just about every man from his area did, he left Italy.

(Pierangelo speaking in foreign language) (Italian folk music) (train whooshing) At the age of 20, Vincenzo Peruggia made the biggest move of his life, to Paris.

(upbeat music) - [Dorothy] Paris was a city of excitement and fun.

(upbeat music) - To many people, you know, it was like the capital of the world, if there is ever a capital of the world.

- The car was now becoming widely used.

The subway had opened.

The movie theaters were there.

(upbeat music) It was in every way, it seems to be a very modern city.

(upbeat music) - [Joe] In Paris, Peruggia continued to work as house painter right up to the time he fell ill with an occupational disease.

- "Intossicazione saturnine" is due to presence of lead.

- [Joe] So he got lead poisoning, right?

- Yes.

(suspenseful music) - [Joe] In a 1902 book called "Dangerous Trades", painters were at the top of a list of occupations getting lead poisoning.

- In the late 1800's and early 1900's, if you were a painter, you were still mixing pure lead paste with linseed oil.

The painters were handling and exposed to that paste and to the paint and had the particles all over their clothes.

There was especially severe exposure.

- [Joe] Sick and unable to work, he went to the Hospital Lariboisiere.

(suspenseful music) We found his name in the hospital records.

He was there for 15 days.

- If you were treated for lead poisoning, you had lead poisoning of a severity that is rarely seen today and that any doctor would find horrifying.

- Exposure to lead can shrink certain parts of the brain, most particularly the prefrontal cortex that is involved with decision making and long-term planning.

There's a lot of evidence showing a strong link between lead exposure and criminal behavior.

- [Joe] If lead poisoning can cause criminal behavior, maybe this would explain why Peruggia had two prior arrests.

(iron slamming) June, 1908.

Peruggia was in a town in France waiting for a train to Paris.

After having a meal with a little wine, he saw some kids rolling terracotta pipes down the street.

- Vincenzo Peruggia, he stopped himself to say this guys, "Hey, what are you doing?

What is that?"

- [Joe] As the kids ran away, Peruggia picked up the pipes, but intoxicated, (pipes clanking) he dropped one.

Some passers-by saw him and shouted, "Thief, Italian!"

For the first time in his life, Vincenzo Peruggia was arrested.

The charge?

Attempted theft.

(iron slamming) - Okay, it looks like on January 24th, 1909, around midnight, Place de la Republique, he met a prostitute by the name of Abeille Kauffman.

- He said that he was coming out of a bar and all of a sudden this woman started to say, "Hey, what do you want to do?

"You want to come with me?

", da-da-da-da.

But he didn't feel like it.

He wasn't in the mood.

- [Joe] That's what Peruggia told Dr. Amaldi.

But the woman told the police and the press a completely different story.

- The woman got afraid and as she turned around, he hit her on the neck.

Even worse, he took out his pocket knife.

(suspenseful music) (woman screaming) - [Joe] But in the court documents we found, I discovered that Peruggia was charged with carrying a weapon and not having his immigration papers.

(somber music) Nevertheless, he was sent to jail for eight days.

Now, maybe Peruggia's behavior was caused by his exposure to too much lead or to too much alcohol.

But to him, these two arrests had a simple explanation.

- They were certainly linked in Peruggia's mind with hatred of Italians in France.

(gentle music) - Well, certainly the Italians were the single biggest immigration group in the city of Paris around this time.

(Jerome speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Peruggia came face to face with this prejudice when he found work with the company named Gobier.

Although his bosses considered him to be a fine craftsman, his French coworkers harassed him.

- In fact, Peruggia was called "sal macaroni", dirty macaroni, dirty Italian.

And this seems to have made him to a certain extent, in Amaldi's mind, a paranoid.

And that this showed up in the fact that he took such offense to insults by the French.

(guns banging) (ethereal music) - [Joe] I could never understand how a mentally deficient immigrant with a criminal record got a job at the Louvre.

Well, it happened because of this.

(suspenseful music) (canvas slashing) Two masterpieces slashed within two months of each other by two mentally ill people.

Security at the Louvre became the joke of Paris.

- [Milton] One of the newspapers had a proposal that the following notice be placed in all French museums.

For the safeguarding of the precious objects, the public has requested to wake the guards if they are found to be asleep.

(man snoring) - Journalists who were concerned about the system of security actually made off with pieces of art to show this is possible.

Let's get serious.

(riveting instrumental music) - [Joe] The way the Louvre got serious was to team up barking dogs with the night shift guards.

(dog barking) And to put the major masterpieces behind glass.

Peruggia's employer, Gobier, had the contract to do all the glass work in the Louvre.

Normally, they fixed windows and repaired skylights, but now the museum called upon the company to help cover 1600 masterpieces.

Peruggia was one of only five men entrusted to cut and clean the glass.

As he worked, he began to wonder why all this Italian art was in a French museum.

So he asked the Louvre's picture framer, Pavard.

- Monsieur Pavard would never answer him and always have done like little smirks, says, "Oh, you fool."

You know, "You don't know why?"

- [Joe] Then one day, Peruggia found out why.

- While he was waiting to start the job, he took a book and he start to look through.

And he saw in one of the pages, this caravan of paintings, statues that were coming from Italy, looted by Napoleon Bonaparte... Napoleon the First.

- [Joe] When Napoleon conquered a country, he stripped it bear of its art and sent it all back to Paris.

To Napoleon, Italy was one-stop shopping.

- Napoleon was still kind of a dirty word in Italy 'cause Napoleon really did a lot of damage in Italy.

He left a rather bad trail, which a hundred years later, might still have been felt.

- [Nando] I was disgusted.

And I thought to myself, if I can at least take one of these back to Italy, I would've done something that would be patriotic and good for my country.

- [Joe] Or as Celestina said.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) (Italian folk music) - [Joe] They say a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.

But in this case, it was the criminal's grandson.

Celestina was too frail to travel, but Silvio Peruggia was more than happy to retrace his grandfather's footsteps.

(light footsteps) (Silvio speaking in foreign language) (curious instrumental music) - When I woke up, I say to myself, this morning, I'm gonna do it this morning.

(curious instrumental music) - [Joe] At 6:00 AM, Peruggia got up, got dressed and left his room in the 10th arrondissement, about two miles from the Louvre.

Peruggia had stopped doing glasswork at the museum eight months earlier.

He had left Gobier and returned to house painting.

- I arrived at the Louvre around five after seven.

(clock rings) I was wearing my white worker's blouse.

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) - "What rooms have you crossed "to arrive at the Salon Carre?"

Peruggia: "I've crossed the first floor room "that leads to the grand stairs.

"I climbed the stairs.

"Then I arrived in the Salon Carre."

- [Joe] On a typical day in 1911, there were 166 guards.

On Mondays, when the Louvre was closed, 12 in the whole museum.

So Peruggia was alone with the Mona Lisa.

(suspenseful music) - "I wasn't sure that I wanted to take La Gioconda.

"There was Titian, Raphael, Correggio, Giorgione.

"But I made my choice at the moment."

(speaking in foreign language) (Silvio speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Back then, she was just another painting on the wall, not behind any protective barrier, just simply hung on four metal hooks.

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) - "I took it without making any noise.

"And I walked slowly on the wooden floor."

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Peruggia knew had to remove the Mona Lisa from her frame.

A nearby service staircase was where he planned to do it.

- [Translator] "I came down the small stairs, "leaving the picture on the landing."

- [Joe] He hid it behind some student copies that were left there.

- [Translator] "I went to the end of the stairs "to see if I could get out."

- [Joe] Peruggia knew he could use the door at the bottom of the service staircase to exit the museum, he'd get out even faster than he got in.

- "But I found that door was locked."

- "And with a screwdriver that I had brought with me, I began to try to undo the lock."

- "Even though I was able to take off the knob, "I was not able to open the door."

- [Joe] But then someone came down the stairs.

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) The man coming down the stairs was a plumber named Jules Sauve.

He didn't know Peruggia.

- When Sauve came to open with his key, he noticed that the nob was off.

- "He asked me about it, "and I said to him that I didn't know anything".

- "The worker went out".

(door slams) "And he locked the door again".

So he was still locked in.

- He was still locked in?

- [Letizia] Yes.

- [Joe] Peruggia couldn't escape the way he wanted to, so he ran back up the stairs and retrieved the Mona Lisa.

He stripped off the paper backing and rotated the four medal clips that held the painting in the frame.

(loud squeaking) (suspenseful music) Like many Italian Renaissance paintings, the Mona Lisa isn't on canvas but on wood.

(light knocking) Removing the panel wouldn't have taken very long, according to the conservator in charge of the Mona Lisa.

(Vincent speaking in foreign language) Peruggia hid the frame behind the other canvases and took the Mona Lisa back into the museum through the same door he entered.

(door slams) He couldn't be seen carrying the painting, so he needed to cover her up.

Here's how many people think he did it.

- He slipped it supposedly under his smock.

- [Joe] But I doubt that.

Using a model the same size as Peruggia, my daughter, Julie, this is what it looks like to try to put the Mona Lisa under under a smock, Instead, here's what Peruggia did.

Took off his smock, wrapped it around the painting, tucked it under his arm and walked out of the museum the same way he came in.

- "I felt very calm and very happy to do what I was doing "and to be able to bring at least "one of these beautiful paintings "back to Italy, to my country."

- "I got out of Louvre around 7:30 in the morning.

(clock rings) "I saw a bus pass by and I got on it" - "I immediately got off because I realized "that bus was not gonna take me home.

"Then I jumped into a horse-driven cab.

"I asked the driver to take me directly to my house."

(suspenseful music) (pensive music) - [Joe] From the moment the theft was discovered, the best police minds in Paris were hard at work, trying to solve the case.

- You walk into an investigation and as a detective, you have no clue who did this crime.

Okay, you have no idea.

It could be anyone in the world.

- [Joe] One of the first suspects police had was a mysterious young man museum guards often saw staring at the Mona Lisa.

- Perhaps someone had fallen in love with a painting and you know, couldn't resist.

It made sense, given the Mona Lisa, as a kind of original sex symbol in Western art.

(captivating music) (Pierre speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Foreigners like, the Germans.

(dramatic music) - What better time than to blame it on the Germans who are about to start World War I?

(loud scattering) - Many people thought that it was stolen by Americans because a lot of wealthy Americans were buying a lot of European art.

- One of theories circulated was that the Mona Lisa was to be found in a luxury apartment in Manhattan.

- We haven't even talked about Picasso.

(Parisian folk music) - [Joe] Yep, Picasso.

Spanish-born Pablo Picasso and his Polish friend, Guilaume Kostrowitsky, better known as the poet Apollinaire, were both brought in for questioning.

- Picasso had used stolen statues from the Louvre as models for his most important painting of this period, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

(gentle music) - [Joe] Picasso didn't know the statues were stolen.

He had bought them from the thief, a man who had been an assistant of Apollinaire.

Guillaume Apollinaire was brought in for questioning and actually spent week in jail.

(Pierre speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] The police thought they had a break in the case when they discovered something that Peruggia left behind.

(Jerome speaking in foreign language) - The fingerprints were found by noted French criminologist, Alphonse Bertillon.

- Bertillon was the one who founded some of the modern methods of identification.

- [Joe] Most of the prints were smudged, but one was clear enough to read.

So Bertillon started taking the prints of everyone with access to the Louvre at the time of the theft.

257 names were on his list, but there were no matches.

Police then called in Gobier's glass workers to be fingerprinted.

They all showed up except Peruggia.

(suspenseful music) This was Peruggia's neighborhood in Paris, at the time, the Italian ghetto.

He rented a tiny room at 5 Rue de L'Hopital St. Louis.

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) - Here we go.

- Number five.

- Come in.

(gentle music) - This is the official police photo of Peruggia's room.

(gentle music) Were we really in the place he hid the Mona Lisa for nearly two and a half years?

(camera clicks) Sure looked like it.

(gentle music) But where did he keep the painting?

(speaking in foreign language) So was the painting on the table when Peruggia got a surprise visit from Inspector Brunet of the Surete, the French FBI?

That's what Celestina thinks.

(Celestina speaking in foreign language) - Funny, but false.

So is this it?

In the Paris archives, my researcher, Stephane, found a new cache of documents.

One of the items was the actual police drawing of Peruggia's 9x16 room.

And I saw there was originally a closet next to the room.

In fact, you could see into the closet from a window over his bed.

And this is where Peruggia said he hid the painting.

- "The painting was where I kept my wood for the fireplace."

- [Joe] So why didn't Brunet find the Mona Lisa?

Because he didn't bother to look.

- "When the policeman came into my room, "he interrogated me and I gave all the answer "and then he went away."

That's it.

- Brunet could have solved the case right then and there.

He knew about Peruggia's two arrests for attempted robbery and carrying a weapon, but he wasn't interested enough to take Peruggia's fingerprints.

So the French police were never able to connect the dots.

- They couldn't imagine that it could have been stolen by a humble house painter.

They were looking for someone different because of their fantasies about the kind of person that would steal the painting and that got in the way of proper police work.

(ethereal music) - [Translator] "I kept on working, "not thinking about going back to Italy anytime soon, "because I wanted to let some time go by "and have the memory of the theft fade."

- [Joe] So Peruggia let two years, three months and 17 days go by.

- What the hell was he doing in those two years?

Did he ever take it out to look at it and admire it?

Or did he ever show it?

Well, he couldn't have shown it.

- [Joe] Turns out he did.

- "I showed the painting to Lancellotti only."

- [Joe] He showed the painting to Lancellotti only?

- [Yvette] Lancellotti.

- [Joe] Vincenzo Lancellotti was an immigrant house painter from the same region of Italy, as Peruggia.

(Silvio speaking in foreign language) (Pietro speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Peruggia counted on Lancellotti so much, he claimed that he let his friend keep the Mona Lisa for six weeks as he built a custom crate to hold his treasure.

(saw whirring) My son and I built a crate that matched the description of the one Peruggia built.

It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be.

(man grunting) A crate this big and a room as small as his, it's no surprise that somebody saw it, namely Peruggia's girlfriend.

- "I had as a lover somebody whose name was Mathilde."

- [Joe] After his arrest, French newspapers reported, he fell in love with Mathilde because she looked like the Mona Lisa.

Yeah, if the Mona Lisa was a blue eye blonde who wore a headband because that's what Matilda looked like.

She was a German from the Alsace region.

♪ Oh, Mona Lisa ♪ And on one of her visits to Peruggia's room, she saw the crate.

- "And I told him, ha".

(laughing) "That once married, I didn't intend to keep it."

- [Joe] Well, there was no marriage.

In fact, Mathilde dumped him after finding letters from other women in his room.

Eventually, she left Paris for good.

(train whistling) (gentle music) - If I was in Peruggia's place, I would've awakened one morning and say, "What the hell am I doing with this?

"I better give it back."

(gentle music) - [Joe] On December 7th, 1913, Peruggia had a farewell dinner at his favorite cafe.

Feeling generous, he gave the waitress a five franc tip.

(register chimes) - He's got this painting.

He knows if he gets caught with it, he's gonna go to jail.

It's gonna be a bad time for him.

And he needs to get rid of it.

- [Joe] He let his friends and relatives know that he'd be leaving for Italy the next day.

- "Vincent told us "He had something very important to do "that would bring him fortune, glory and honors."

(man yelling) (crowd yelling) - [Joe] So Peruggia wrapped the Mona Lisa in cloth, then put her in the crate, covering her with a false bottom.

Then he filled it with clothes, tools, even his mandolin.

(upbeat music) (train whistling) - At the border, the box was opened, but no one saw that it contained the painting.

(suspenseful music) (gentle music) - [Joe] Now it was Celestina's daughter, Graziella's turn, to trace her grandfather's footsteps.

(Graziella speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Peruggia came to Florence to meet Alfredo Geri, a dealer in antiquities.

- "I have never known Mr. Geri.

"I learned about him by reading the Corriere Della Sera".

- [Joe] Peruggia read this Italian paper in Paris.

He saw an ad for Geri's Florence Gallery.

- [Translator] "So I write him".

- [Joe] I wanted to know what Peruggia wrote to Geri, so I came here.

(speaking in foreign language) We met with archive official Salvatore Favuzza.

He brought us Peruggia's file.

- [Translator] Yeah, eh, "Dear Signor Geri".

Yeah, that's the letter.

- Oh, can you read it?

(speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Wow, right off the bat, he's talking about selling the Mona Lisa.

Then on the next page, he unfurls the Italian flag.

(speaking in foreign language) He signs the letter, Monsieur Leonard V, as in Leonardo da Vinci.

In this magazine article from 1914, Geri writes about his first meeting with Peruggia.

- "At six o'clock precisely, Leonard came.

"I said to him, 'Did you bring the Gioconda?'"

- "Yes I have it, but it's in my hotel."

- "But is it the real Gioconda?

"You're not fooling me?"

- "I just going to tell you, that it's authentic."

- "How much are you asking?

- "500.

- "I finish his sentence and I say, "500 thousand lire?"

- "Yes".

- [Joe] In 1913, 500,000 lire equaled $100,000 or about $2,970,000 today.

- Back then you might have called that, you know, patriotism.

But today, we call it ransom.

- Geri persuaded Giovanni Poggi, director of Florence's famous Uffizi Gallery to meet with Peruggia at his hotel, the Albergo Tripoli Italia, later renamed the Hotel Gioconda.

(speaking in foreign language) (Italian folk music) (speaking in foreign language) - [Milton] And he threw onto the floor, all the junk and down under the false bottom was the Mona Lisa.

- [Joe] Poggi said he wanted to take the painting back to the Uffizi for a closer examination.

- They examined it.

There were a couple of other experts there and they all agreed, there's no doubt about it.

This is the stolen Mona Lisa.

Bang, Peruggia's under arrest and in shock.

(camera clicks) (Graziella speaking in foreign language) (bells chiming) - As Peruggia sat in prison, the Italian people celebrated Mona Lisa's return.

For the first time in 400 years, she was back in Flores.

- Peddlers were selling all sorts of Mona Lisa knickknacks by the box load.

And there were Mona Lisa advertisements.

There were Mona Lisa hairdos.

There was Mona Lisa clothing.

People left love letters for the Mona Lisa.

(Italian folk music) (Angelo speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] 30,000 people passed through the gallery in just four hours to glimpse her, for just a few seconds.

The ones who couldn't get in, (people yelling) rioted.

After her week in Florence, the Mona Lisa traveled to Rome and was officially handed over to the French ambassador.

(speaking in foreign language) - Nevertheless, the Italian government did not for a second think they could actually keep the Mona Lisa.

- As we know, the Mona Lisa was not actually stolen from Italy.

It was never part of the Napoleonic loot.

- [Joe] That's right, Napoleon didn't steal the Mona Lisa.

- The Mona Lisa very legitimately belonged in France.

It had been bought by Francis the First from Leonardo.

- [Joe] Following a triumphant exhibition in Rome, the Mona Lisa was whisked away for a quick showing in Milan.

On December 31st, 1913, the world's most beloved masterpiece returned to her Parisian home.

(Parisian folk music) (suspenseful music) Vincenzo Peruggia's trial began in Florence on June 4th, 1914.

(Pietro speaking in foreign language) The prosecution thought they had an open and shut case against Peruggia.

- They were simply trying to argue that he was rational, he was in his right mind.

He just wanted to steal the painting and sell it and make money and therefore, he's guilty.

- "The only thing I had in mind was to give a gift to Italy "and I didn't intend to make any money off it."

- [Joe] But the antique dealer Geri testified that Peruggia wanted 500,000 lire and then the prosecutor brought up Peruggia's trip to London, the previous summer.

Peruggia admitted that while there, he went to see the art dealer, Henry J. Duveen.

- "Who me?

"To offer La Gioconda to the English?

"Who says this?

"It's fake, it's false, it's a lie."

- [Joe] When it was time for the defense, Peruggia's lawyers played the only card they held, Dr. Amaldi's diagnosis of mental deficiency.

- From Amaldi's point of view, he's only partially responsible for his crime.

He didn't have full control over his actions.

He was very childish and misunderstood the legal consequences of bringing the picture back into Italy, showing that he really wasn't totally mentally competent.

- [Joe] In court, the prosecutor disagreed with the psychiatrist's conclusion and said Peruggia was fully responsible for his actions.

- Doesn't it take some degree of intelligence to do what he did, to pull it off?

- [Joe] So why would Amaldi say Peruggia was mentally deficient, if all the evidence was to the contrary?

- If Amaldi was sympathetic with his patriotic cause, this may have at least helped to form his opinion and it is possible, he inflated this mental weakness in order to protect Peruggia.

- [Joe] According to Amaldi's grandson, that's exactly what happened.

(Paolo speaking in foreign language) Amaldi wanted Peruggia set free.

The tribunal disagreed.

(Salvatore speaking in foreign language) - Vincenzo Peruggia was listening to the verdict.

He says to the court, he had brought the smile of la Gioconda and so brought the smile on the face of the Italian people.

(Italian folk music) - I really wanted to return to Celestina with some proof that patriotism was at least part of her father's motive for stealing the Mona Lisa.

And I hoped to find that proof in the Florence archives.

(speaking in foreign language) - Letters to his father.

- Oh, letters to his father.

- [Joe] The letters had been seized from his parents home in Dumenza, shortly after his arrest.

(speaking in foreign language) Okay, some of the letters weren't very helpful, but in the ones written after the theft, we discovered an important clue.

(speaking in foreign language) Here in his own words, was the secret to what Peruggia was thinking.

(speaking in foreign language) - And the day will come.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] The day will come.

(Graziella speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Are you surprised about your grandfather?

(speaking in foreign language) Should we tell your mother?

(speaking in foreign language) (heavily sighs) All her life, Celestina Peruggia believed that her father stole the Mona Lisa out of patriotism and because he didn't like being called "macaroni."

But now it was time to return to Dumenza and tell her the truth.

(speaking in foreign language) I was concerned about how she would take the news.

After all, she was 84 with a heart condition.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Translator] Oh, your heart hurts?

- Tell the Signora that we saw her father's apartment in Paris...

I told her what we learned about her father's life, his lead poisoning, his work at the Louvre.

And I showed her some pictures I thought she'd enjoy.

See?

- Ah.

- Like his room in Paris.

(speaking in foreign language) Silvio in the Louvre.

(speaking in foreign language) But then we came to the letters.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] I don't know, do we wanna do more?

(speaking in foreign language) As Sylvio read the letters, Vincenzo's veiled promise of a fortune popped up in every one.

(speaking in foreign language) I could see Celestina sink under the weight of her father's words.

And I started to wonder if I'd done the wrong thing.

(speaking in foreign language) (reflective music) (speaking in foreign language) (reflective music) - [Joe] Vincenzo Peruggia didn't serve his full sentence.

His attorneys filed an appeal.

(speaking in foreign language) - Wow.

They set him free.

(reflective music) - [Joe] But Peruggia didn't stay free for long.

World War I broke out a few days after his release.

He served in the Italian Army, but was taken prisoner by the Austrians and held as a POW for two years.

(somber music) At the end of the war, there was no work in Italy, so he returned to Paris.

With him was his young wife.

He couldn't resist taking her to the Louvre.

(speaking in foreign language) - [Joe] Vincenzo Peruggia lived the rest of his life in Paris, never committing another crime.

He was buried in a Parisian cemetery in 1925.

This was his grave site.

But after 30 years, the cemetery needed the plot.

So what was left of his body was moved, to the bone locker.

(somber music) The cemetery attendant told me I was the only person to ever ask him to see the grave of Vincenzo Peruggia.

(speaking in foreign language) (somber reflective music) Yes, Vincenzo Peruggia was a thief.

What he did was wrong and half-witted.

But to me, he was a man who was tired of a job that was making him sick.

He hated being looked down upon as an immigrant and he missed his home.

He thought that returning the Mona Lisa to Italy would make his family proud of him and be a ticket to a better life for them all.

I think many people can relate to a young man's wild dreams of fortune.

I know I could.

In a journal that I kept while I was writing my screenplay, I found an entry from 1979.

I was around the same age as Peruggia when he stole the Mona Lisa.

It says, "if I write the script and sell it, I will be rich.

"All I want to do is pay off the house and fix it up "and have some money in the bank "and some leftover to do some traveling."

So back then, I was thinking like Peruggia.

I wanted to make my fortune in one shot, too.

We just went about it in different ways.

(gentle music) Before I left Dumenza, there was one last thing I had to do.

I thought that if the town could remember Mussolini, why not its most infamous son?

(drill whirring) On our first visit here, we were told there couldn't be a memorial to Peruggia on public property, but we could put one on private property, like the house where Vincenzo Peruggia was born.

- Ciao!

- Ciao!

(speaking in foreign language) - So thanks to Celestina, (camera clicks) I could finally say something, I waited more than 30 years to say.

The film is done!

(group laughing) (dramatic music) (Italian folk music) ♪♪