When a superstar becomes a… superstar thief

In 1985, at the age of 18, Pal Enger made his professional football debut with Valerenga, a club from the Oslo association, in the Eliteserien, Norway's version of the Premier League. But for years, he had a terrifying pastime that eventually led to multiple prison sentences and the loss of his chance to become a football legend.

Childhood obsession

The recently released Sky Now documentary, The Man Who Stole The Scream, recreates Enger's crime spree, an almost unbelievable journey that could only have happened on film.

Since childhood, Pal Enger was fascinated by two things. The first was the mafia film The Godfather directed by Francis Ford Coppola. At the age of 15, he even used his hard-earned money to fly to New York to see where the film was being produced. The second was the haunting work The Scream by painter Edvard Munch. So, in 1994, he stole it.

Pal Enger had a bright future before stealing Edvard Munch's painting

Enger grew up in Oslo’s Tveita neighborhood, the crime epicenter of the Norwegian capital. Kids here either grew up to be criminals or to play sports . Enger chose both.

As a young boy, Enger would steal candy from local stores. Gradually, Enger progressed to more sophisticated and vicious crimes, such as robbing jewelry stores, cracking safes at night, and blowing up ATMs. His former partner, Erik Fosse, said he never took the subway into the city, but instead stole a Porsche, Mercedes, or BMW and drove in.

Enger first saw The Scream at the age of eight, on his first visit to the National Gallery. It was immediately clear to him that “there was something about it that belonged to me.” For him, the painting was an oil-on-canvas version of the trauma he had suffered at the hands of his abusive stepfather and a brutal neighborhood. Stealing the work would be the culmination of his life of crime.

But this is not the first time he has stolen a painting from his fellow Norwegian.

In 1988, Enger was a rising star on the pitch. “He was very talented,” said Dag Vestlund, Valerenga’s manager at the time. “He was small, quick and tough. I liked him a lot. He was always nice to me. Always polite, always humble.”

By his early twenties, Enger had it all: money, cars, boats, and “the most beautiful woman in Norway,” as he put it. But he yearned for something bigger, to show the world what he was capable of, not on the pitch but in the shadows. He decided to steal The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo.

The painting “The Scream” was stolen by Pal Enger in 1994.

Together with Bjorn Grytdal, his partner in many “jobs” from his early days of crime, he planned the heist meticulously. He began by scouting the area, counting every wall pillar and window around his target. Then one day he arrived, leaned the roof of his car against the wall, and climbed up. His goal was not to keep the painting forever, but just for a short time, to lift it from the corner of the gallery where he felt it had been wrongly placed.

The pair’s plan didn’t go perfectly, however. A miscalculation left them standing in front of Munch’s Vampire instead of The Scream. So they stole it instead. “It was frustrating for days,” Enger said. “But then it started to get interesting.”

For a while, they hid the painting in the ceiling of a pool hall that Enger had bought. It was a popular spot for local police to entertain. “They didn’t know it was just a meter away,” Enger said. “It was the best feeling. We let them play for free there.”

Enger had no intention of making any money from the painting. Unfortunately for him, Grytdal wanted to sell it. His accomplice therefore tipped off a neighbor—who turned out to be an informant—about the theft. Soon after, the police stormed Enger’s house and found Vampire hanging on the wall.

"I made history. Movies often make such things happen. But this is not a movie. This is real life" - "master thief" Enger.

Real life like a movie

Enger was sentenced to four years in prison for stealing the Vampire painting and his football career was over. But the story did not end there. In prison, he studied hard for a chance to re-emerge and thus earned the nickname “the questioner”.

When he was released in 1992, his mind was still filled with images of the orange, red and blue skies of The Scream.

On February 12, 1994, the eyes of the world were on the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, just two hours away. Enger seized the opportunity, knowing that most of Oslo’s police had been sent north to provide security for the big event.

Munch Room at the National Gallery

The night before the heist, he was terrified. Something inside him told him to stop. He was worried he would ruin the painting or be sent back to prison. But his desire for The Scream was too great. Knowing he would be prime suspect, Enger enlisted the help of a homeless man named William Aasheim—a fellow burglar—while he stayed at home with his naive wife miles away.

Aasheim and an accomplice used a ladder to climb up to the National Gallery window, smashed the glass, and climbed in. Just 90 seconds later, The Scream was gone, replaced by the words “Thank you for the poor security”!

“The National Gallery had no security,” said Oslo police chief investigator Leif Lier. “Thieves could have broken a window to get in and taken the painting. They had some surveillance cameras, but it was 1994, so the images were very blurry.”

Enger revealed that despite being a suspect, the police were unable to link him to the crime. He even posed for a photo for Dagbladet magazine at the gallery with the headline “I didn’t steal The Scream.” A few weeks after the theft, his first son was born. Enger placed an ad in the newspaper, claiming that his son, Oscar, had been born “with a scream.” He also made numerous anonymous phone calls, claiming to have the painting in his car. When the police stopped him and searched the car, they found it empty, to Enger’s delight.

But the fun didn't last long. Enger, through art dealer Einar-Tore-Ulving, tried to sell the painting. At a hotel in Oslo, Ulving met a man who claimed to be an art dealer from the Getty Museum. In fact, he was a police officer named Charley Hill.

Ulving offered about $400,000 for the $150 million painting. Hill agreed, and the two drove to Aasgardstrand, a small village south of Oslo, to retrieve The Scream from a vault. Ulving was quickly arrested, and Aasheim soon after.

Enger fled the house with his newborn baby strapped to his chest and drove away with a gun in his hand. Police followed him to a gas station and caught him before things could get out of hand. He was initially charged with “illegal use of a firearm,” but this was later downgraded to theft of The Scream, despite lack of evidence. He was sentenced to six years in prison, the longest sentence in Norwegian history for such a crime.

But prison wasn't the worst thing for Enger; it was the feeling of being deprived of The Scream. "I felt terrible, really terrible," Enger recalled. "It was almost like losing a child."

Enger is now practicing painting in the style of Munch.

In prison, Enger learned to paint. And now he claims people are lining up to buy his work. Norway’s The Scream (Munch painted four versions) now hangs in the new National Gallery – which opened last year and cost $630 million – which Enger says was built “for him”.

Looking back on his life, Enger says he might have done things a little differently. But he has no regrets about stealing The Scream: "I made history and it's a good story. Movies make things like that. But this isn't a movie. This is real life."

"Endless Scream" The Scream is a work of art by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, painted in 1893. The anguished face in the painting is one of the most iconic images in art, considered to represent the anxiety of the human condition. Munch's works, including The Scream, had a profound influence on the Expressionist movement. Munch recalled that he was walking at dusk when suddenly the setting sun turned the clouds “blood red”. He felt an “endless scream through nature”. Munch created two versions in oil, two in pastels as well as a lithograph.

According to TT&VH

Source: https://baohatinh.vn/giai-tri/khi-sieu-cau-thu-tro--sieu-trom/253774.htm