In the early morning hours of Sunday, Jan. 25, masked thieves climbed onto a second-floor awning at the famous German luxury department store Kaufhaus des Westens, then forced open a window. The three men, who were caught on surveillance tape, lowered themselves to the main floor of the store with a rope ladder.
The criminals managed to avoid setting off the store's security systems, including motion detectors, while breaking into cabinets and showcases at a boutique of the jewelry store Christ. They made it out of the building undetected, with jewelry and watches reportedly worth millions of euros. The robbery was unprecedented in its scale and daring, according to a spokesperson for the store. "There's no comparable crime in the store's history," said Petra Fladenhofer.
In the process, the burglars left behind the rope ladder as well as the glove that would provide investigators with the decisive clue, albeit a more complicated one than it first appeared.
When police found traces of DNA on a glove left at the scene of the crime, it seemed that the criminals responsible for Germany's most spectacular heist in years would be caught. But the DNA led to not one but two suspects -- 27-year-old identical, or monozygotic, twins with near-identical DNA.
German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the o. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.
According to the daily, the twins sent a message that they were "proud of the German constitutional state and gave it their thanks."
There is still no trace of a third suspect -- or the money.
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