The beautiful blue Danube has taken on the purple colors of blood.
Milan Ljepoja, one of the most daring robbers of recent decades, was brutally murdered in Ritopek, on the outskirts of Belgrade, on the banks of the famous river.
Tortured.
Liquid.
Dissolves.
He was one of the brains of the formidable Pink Panthers gang, those Balkan robbers who gave nightmares to jewelers and policemen across the planet in the early 2000s.
From him, the Serbian police only found a few traces of DNA and burnt clothes in a building renamed "house of horror".
There, for 24 hours, this colossus of 1.92 m was tortured then dismembered by the partisans of a rival clan whose main representatives have just been arrested.
Milan Ljepoja had not given any sign of life since December 9, when he left his hometown of Nis, in the south of the country, to go to a meeting in Belgrade.
Falling into a real ambush, he was taken to this house in Ritopek where Veljko Belivuk, a local mafia, and his men tortured him for long hours.
A barbaric end, at 44, for this man who had entered with a crash into the "Who's Who" of world robbers.
300 armed robberies in 35 different countries
His “masterpiece”, he had signed on April 15, 2007 in Dubai.
That day, with his partner and three other accomplices, they robbed the Graff jewelry store in the “Wafi Mall”, a luxury resort in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
With the steering wheels of two Audis, they had burst into the opening of the gigantic gallery in a crash of broken windows.
Less than three minutes later, the gang walked away with a loot of 11 million euros in their pockets and, hours later, the team left the country without being worried.
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Breaks of the century: in 2007, the Pink Panthers stole 11 million euros from Dubai
The Pink Panthers thus entered the legend by specializing in spectacular attacks and targeting places deemed "inviolable".
Monaco, Paris, London, Tokyo, Geneva, Saint-Tropez, Courchevel: in a decade, this team would commit nearly 300 armed robberies in 35 different countries.
Milan Ljepoja was an officer of this real army made up of a little more than 200 soldiers employed at the option of the robberies.
For a long time, only his DNA taken from certain crime scenes betrayed his presence.
But Ljepoja falls for the first time in Liechtenstein.
He is incarcerated.
Not long.
Thanks to a transfer, he escapes with the help of accomplices who attack the prison van like a common diligence.
"An intelligent, multilingual, attractive boy"
In May 2008, another disappointment.
He was arrested by French gendarmes and Swiss police in a hotel in Gex (Ain) near the border… and near Geneva jewelry stores.
Confused by his DNA in the heist of Dubai, under the blow of an Interpol red card, he is also the subject of an arrest warrant from the Dubai authorities who intend to make him pay for his "exploits".
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Pending his extradition, he is imprisoned at the Health, in Paris.
Me Sandrine Pegand will defend him at the time to prevent him from being sent to the United Arab Emirates.
“I remember a smart, multilingual, attractive boy.
He told me that despite all these years on the run and in prison, he finally felt freer than anyone who lived on the other side of the prison walls.
The lawyer had finally saved him this perilous trip to Dubai.
After a few years in the shade, Milan Ljepoja had returned to Serbia and his hometown of Nis.
But he clearly had not turned his back on his criminal activities.
In Serbia as elsewhere, rival gangs involved in drug trafficking in particular are waging a merciless struggle.
It was in the context of these rivalries that Ljepoja was suppressed in December.
It took two more months for the police to trace his chilling end.
Dismembered, dissolved in acid, there was almost nothing left of the flamboyant thief.
Just his DNA.
The same DNA that made his legend and wrote the most spectacular chapters of his career.
