The Life and Crimes of a Gifted Jewel Thief

Courtesy of Hulu

From the time he was a boy, Gerald Daniel Blanchard liked to figure out how things worked, especially cameras and electronics. This ability would have assured success in many different pursuits, but he chose crime. He liked to steal. He wanted to rob banks. More to the point, he chased the superior feeling he gained from outsmarting security systems. With increasingly audacious heists that swept through multiple Canadian banks until he was caught in 2007, Blanchard enriched himself and gained accomplices to expand his enterprise internationally.

Although he made millions, his exploits weren’t about the money. Blanchard grew addicted to proving his ingenuity. Outsmarting the banks, he said, “was like playing a chess game.” Hulu’s new documentary, The Jewel Thief, features an interview with Blanchard as it delves into his development, including comments from his mother, from an equally driven father he barely knew, and from several friends and associates. Blanchard, it seems, is a kid who never grew up. His impishness won people over.

Blanchard thinks it all began when he stole milk as a boy to aid his family. His first successful theft gave him a rush he wanted to repeat. He liked having things he wasn’t supposed to have. He’d get caught, get some light punishment, and then go right out to do it again. Defiance and a savant-like mechanical skill, paired with the ability to improve on his mistakes, turned him into a professional thief.

Blanchard is most famous for his theft in 1998 of a protected jewel, the 10-pointed diamond-and-pearl Sisi Star (a hair ornament for an empress), locked in a case in Austria’s heavily guarded Schönbrunn Palace. He viewed the jewel while taking a private tour, and had to have it. By then, he’d accumulated sufficient funds from his heists to hire a small plane from which to parachute onto the castle roof. He’d already figured out the security system. It was two weeks before anyone noticed the theft.

Blanchard shows a talent dubbed the “quiet eye.” It’s an enhanced visual perception that forms from heightened concentration that minimizes distractions. Skilled athletes, for example, can focus directly on a ball for longer periods than inexperienced players can, which reduces errors. Repeated practice helps to slow their cognitive processes so they can absorb the most relevant information for an optimal response. In the castle, Blanchard noted the guard posts, locked window, motion detection system, and even the type of screws on the jewel’s showcase. To calculate his level of risk, he weighed those things that would facilitate his theft against those that could thwart it. He’d done the same with the banks he’d robbed.

In the documentary, Blanchard responds to questions with a puckish twinkle in his eye, as if to say he can get away with anything. Yet his drive has deeper roots than a mere impulse to show off. It’s fueled by an addiction to enhanced self-regard. Stealing the jewel had no upside, since it couldn’t be fenced. He just liked knowing he could nick it. "I could have stopped,” he says about his string of impressive thefts, “but you always need that thrill."

Director Landon Van Soest sets up the narrative as a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game. Matching wits with Blanchard is a pair of Winnipeg cops who’d patiently tracked him and successfully anticipated the move that caught him. Still, it was Blanchard’s daring that had drawn Van Soest’s attention.

“I was hooked by this seemingly impossible heist,” he says, “but the story has so many layers. He’d been developing this life of crime from a young age. He owned it and had this drive to constantly outdo himself, to pull off larger crimes. He found something he was very good at and got recognition for. A Macgyveresque supervillain became integral to who he was.”

Blanchard was open to exploring his background. This is no surprise, since he’d videotaped everything he’d done. That’s part of his compulsion. The person who needs to believe he’s the best will always seek ways to prove it, especially when success enhances confidence. “I liked to antagonize them [bank security officials],” Blanchard says. “I knew I was smarter than them.”

Blanchard needed affirmation. He grew dependent on validation. While he perfected his double life, he lied and exploited others to support his craving. As fun as it may be to watch how he outsmarted these sophisticated systems, ultimately he seems hollow. The collection of videotapes that reassured him also helped cops build their case against him. The smartest guy in the room should have spotted the glaring flaw in his own security system.