‘I went from being a petty thief to stealing one of the world’s most famous paintings – this is how I did it’-Meghna Amin-Entertainment – Metro

A man who grew up wanting to be a professional football player went from being a petty thief to stealing one of the world’s most famous paintings.

In 1994, Pal Enger hit headlines when he tried to steal Edward Munch’s The Scream, valued at £120million.

The heist, which lasted just seconds, left him in jail for six years.

‘By day, I was a professional footballer at the best club in football. By night, I was the best criminal in Norway,’ he says, in a new documentary following the heist.

At the start of his criminal career, Enger wasted his money and fame for petty theft, stealing jewellery, robbing ATMs, but still wanted ‘more’.

He wanted to show the world he could ‘pull off something huge’, and he did just that.

After a difficult childhood, he felt he could relate to Munch’s painting straight away, and set his sights on it.

Pal Enger, the man who stole The Scream, tells his story in a new documentary (Picture: Sky UK)

His difficult childhood made him relate particularly to The Scream (Picture: Sky UK)

But at first, their heist didn’t go as planned – with Enger and his co-conspirators stealing the wrong painting, and it wasn’t long before Enger had to hand himself into the police after going on the run.

At the time, the failure turned him off attempting anything like it again.

But he soon changed his mind, and after being released from prison in 1994, planned his perfect heist.

The documentary follows Enger detailing his plan and method for the heist – which he didn’t even commit himself.

Enger prepared his method, checking that the glass wasn’t bulletproof, seeing how long it would take to climb up a ladder to the right window, and timing the heist to perfectly correlate with the Olympics in Oslo, so the police would be otherwise occupied.

Then Enger returned to his family home, leaving the dirty work in the hands of two others.

‘I was the best criminal in Norway’ (Picture: Sky UK)

‘I was scared before, I felt like I shouldn’t do it, all night before,’ Enger recalled.

Despite his hesitations, Enger’s plan went ‘perfectly’, just as he intended, and they left with the masterpiece, leaving a note behind, on his instructions, which read: ‘Thank you for the bad security.’

‘I was so happy,’ Enger recalled. ‘I felt the power.’

At the time, he thought he’d keep the piece for a few years, after making a fool of the national authorities.

But suspicions around Enger grew ‘right away’ after his failed heist just years before.

He thought he was ‘untouchable’, even phoning into the police to throw them off his scent and just to ‘harass’ them.

Enger details how he pulled off the heist without even being there (Picture: Sky UK)

‘I was totally sure the police had no evidence on me,’ he says at one point.

However, his ‘foolproof’ plan wasn’t as safe as he thought, and as authorities tried to find ways to have the masterpiece return, international police teams were called in to help.

And after some undercover work with police disguised as art dealers working with Enger’s accomplices, it was actually a Scotland Yard officer who eventually caught Enger, arresting him at the time for gun offences.

He was convicted of theft and sentence to Norway’s longest sentence of that crime at the time – six years and three months in prison.

‘Every minute goes, I understand everything f**ked up.’

The Man Who Stole The Scream airs this Saturday, August 19, at 9pm on Sky Discovery.

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