Priceless crown jewels, including two crowns and an orb, have been recovered after thieves left them in a rubbish bin marked 'bomb'. The jewels - which are valued to be around £5.5million - were stolen from Strängnäs Cathedral in Sweden back in August 2018, and the government and police force declared a national alarm following the serious daylight robbery, in which the thieves escaped on a speed boat. The contents of the bin were examined by the police forensic team and Swedish church experts, who confirmed that they were the missing 17th century royal jewels. However, they had been severely damaged.
The jewels have been recovered
A police spokeswoman told Sky News: "A security guard found what could potentially be the jewels in a bin. Work is under way to determine whether they are in fact the jewels that were taken." Three men have now been held in connection to the heist, and the trio have been charged for theft and handling stolen goods, with one of the detained admitting to supplying the getaway boat used by the thieves. At the time of the theft, police spokesperson Thomas Agnevik told the media: "It's 1-0 to them right now. I have talked to someone at the county administrative board that says it is not possible to put an economic value on them - these are invaluable objects of national interest. We are looking for a small and open motorboat. We have some different information about how exactly the boat looked. We are now examining all the tips we receive."
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The gold-plated and jewel-encrusted crowns were made for the burial of Queen Kristina and King Karl IX respectively and date back to the early 1600s. This isn't the first time a robbery attempt has been made on the Swedish crown jewels, as thieves managed to steal part of the crown jewels back in 2013, only for them to be recovered in a bin bag in a ditch following an anonymous tip off.
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