In Chap­ter 31 of “The Art Thief,” the nar­ra­tive revolves around the after­math of Bre­itwieser’s arrest fol­low­ing his moth­er, Sten­gel’s, chaot­ic response to dis­cov­er­ing his art thefts. Anne-Cather­ine, who wit­ness­es the arrest at the Wag­n­er Muse­um in Novem­ber 2001, has since avoid­ed cap­ture, but her con­nec­tion with the events unfolds slow­ly. In a May 2002 inter­ro­ga­tion, she denies involve­ment in the art’s dis­ap­pear­ance, main­tain­ing a brief account of the attic’s clean-out. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Sten­gel faces police ques­tion­ing where she admits to act­ing inde­pen­dent­ly with­out her son’s knowl­edge, express­ing guilt over her actions dur­ing this “cri­sis.”

Bre­itwieser grap­ples with the impli­ca­tions of his eight years of thiev­ery, which result­ed in over two hun­dred heists and hun­dreds of art­works stored in an attic—a mon­u­men­tal col­lec­tion that now rep­re­sents his men­tal bur­den. After some time, he seeks clear details from his moth­er, but pri­va­cy is lim­it­ed due to his jail sur­round­ings. He learns that Anne-Cather­ine rushed to inform Sten­gel about his arrest, prompt­ing her to climb the attic stairs for the first time in years. Sten­gel is over­whelmed by the enor­mi­ty of the stolen art and fears the con­se­quences of har­bor­ing these items could lead to her impris­on­ment.

React­ing out of des­per­a­tion, Sten­gel exhibits a “destruc­tive fren­zy” where she dis­pos­es of the art, giv­ing in to anger and fear of legal reper­cus­sions. She packs the items into bags and dri­ves to a seclud­ed area of the Rhône-Rhine Canal at night to dis­pose of them. She toss­es many stolen items into the water, assert­ing that they mean noth­ing to her. As more of the art is dis­card­ed, includ­ing large pieces like a 150-pound Vir­gin Mary stat­ue, she lat­er claims she man­aged this feat alone—a state­ment doubt­ed by Bre­itwieser.

The nar­ra­tive indi­cates pos­si­ble com­plic­i­ty from Jean-Pierre Fritsch, Sten­gel’s new part­ner, as police divers even­tu­al­ly locate more stolen art on his prop­er­ty. Through­out the chap­ter, it becomes appar­ent that Sten­gel’s actions are twofold: while she arguably seeks to pro­tect her son, she also acknowl­edges want­i­ng to inflict pain on him for the dis­tress his actions caused her. In a dra­mat­ic turn, she ulti­mate­ly destroys what remains of the art col­lec­tion by set­ting it ablaze, a final act laden with sig­nif­i­cance, reveal­ing both her vio­lent grief and com­plex mater­nal instinct.