In Chap­ter 29 of “The Art Thief,” Meier presents a pho­to­graph of a stolen sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry gold-plat­ed medal­lion to Bre­itwieser in an inter­ro­ga­tion room. The police are uncer­tain about the extent of Bre­itwieser’s thefts, hav­ing found lit­tle dur­ing their search of his home. With the hol­i­days long past and no news from his fam­i­ly, Bre­itwieser, feel­ing des­per­ate, even­tu­al­ly admits to steal­ing the medal­lion.

Meier sub­se­quent­ly shows Bre­itwieser anoth­er pho­to­graph, this time of a gold tobac­co box—a piece he had stolen along­side Anne-Cather­ine from a Swiss cas­tle. Bre­itwieser, wish­ing to escape his high-secu­ri­ty con­fine­ment, con­fess­es to this theft as well. Meier then sur­pris­es him with a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs depict­ing var­i­ous stolen items, includ­ing an ivory flute and var­i­ous sil­ver belong­ings, lead­ing to an over­whelm­ing real­iza­tion for Bre­itwieser that he has been out­smart­ed. Feel­ing cor­nered, he con­fess­es to all 107 thefts depict­ed in the images.

Mean­while, Meier com­pre­hends the sheer scale of Breitwieser’s crimes but main­tains his com­po­sure as he lis­tens to the con­fes­sions. A police report inad­ver­tent­ly left open reveals the sto­ry of a senior cit­i­zen, James Lance, who dis­cov­ered numer­ous stolen items while rak­ing through the Rhône-Rhine Canal. Over three days, in a police oper­a­tion that mobi­lized up to thir­ty offi­cers, an aston­ish­ing array of trea­sures, includ­ing sil­ver chal­ices and an intri­cate­ly carved ivory piece, were retrieved. The total haul of 107 items was esti­mat­ed at fifty mil­lion dol­lars, linked to the cou­ple the OCBC had been track­ing.

With this break­through, Meier invites Bre­itwieser for a con­fes­sion, and soon after spend­ing sev­en­ty-nine days in impris­on­ment, he is dressed in his for­mer cloth­ing and trans­port­ed under guard in a train car with oth­er inmates. Despite his pri­or feel­ings of supe­ri­or­i­ty, Bre­itwieser now feels vul­ner­a­ble and anx­ious about his uncer­tain future as he trav­els to an unknown des­ti­na­tion, reflect­ing a stark turn from his pre­vi­ous con­fi­dence.