Billionaire entrepreneur and reality television star Kim Kardashian testified in a packed Paris courthouse on Tuesday in the trial of the suspects accused of robbing her at gunpoint, taping her mouth, binding her hands and stealing millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry 9 years ago.
Kardashian, 44, told the jury she thought she was going to be sexually assaulted during the 2016 heist and that she was sure she would not survive the ordeal.
“I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me,” she told a Paris court Tuesday. “I absolutely did think I was going to die.”
Kim Kardashian recalls the incident
Kardashian, who was tearful at times, said she was getting ready for bed when she heard loud footsteps ascending the stairs to her hotel room, telling the court that at first she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a Paris Fashion Week event in the early hours of Oct. 3.
She recalled calling out to ask who was there before masked men entered the room.
“I obviously was very confused. I had to make sense of what was happening. I was just about to fall asleep, naked with a robe on,” she told the court.
“Honestly, a lot of terrorist attacks were happening in the world, and I thought it was some sort of terrorist attack, and I didn’t immediately understand it was for my jewelry.”
She said the suspects arrived at her hotel dressed as police officers and held the concierge hostage. He was dragged into her room, handcuffed, according to Kardashian.
One attacker began gesturing at her diamond ring.
“He said, ‘Ring! Ring!’ and he pointed to his hand,” she recalled.
Kardashian grabbed her phone to call the police, but didn’t know the French emergency number. She then tried to contact her sister and bodyguard, but was stopped by one of the masked assailants.
The men then threw her on the bed, zip-tied her hands and held a gun to her head, she testified.
“I have babies,” Kardashian said. “I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”
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At that moment, Kardashian said she remembers worrying about what her sister Kourtney might have come home to.
“I thought about my sister, thought she would walk in and see me shot dead and have that memory in her forever,” Kardashian said.
The men then dragged her to the bathroom, she said, where they taped her mouth and told her she would not be harmed as long as she did not make any noise.
She recalled being handled aggressively by the suspects, but said they did not hit her.
“I was not hit. No, I was grabbed, and dragged into the other room, and thrown onto the floor, but wasn’t hit, no,” she told the court.
“[The gun] was pointed towards me to get me to go from room to room, and it was pointed toward me on the bed at the end.”
The last time Kardashian saw the men who police say robbed her, she was locked in the bathroom while the suspects stole more than US$6 million in jewelry.
Her testimony marked a long-awaited moment in a trial that has captivated France and the wider world for almost a decade, and reignited discussions about the price of fame as well as the risks of living in the public eye.
Kardashian is one of the most recognizable figures on the planet, a billionaire fashion and beauty brand entrepreneur, a reality television icon, a producer and a lawyer in the making, with a following of more than 350 million on Instagram alone.
But the robbery shed light on the dark sides of excessive exposure, and how fame can leave high-profile figures vulnerable to attacks like the one she survived.
Police believe the suspects watched Kardashian’s social media profiles to build a broader picture of her movements and used images she’d shared with time stamps and geotags to track her whereabouts in the lead-up to the incident.
Kardashian was joined by her mother, Kris Jenner, in the heavily guarded Parisian courtroom. Dressed in black with $1.5 million worth of diamonds draped around her neck — according to a press release her team sent to journalists at the trial, reports The Associated Press — her voice quivered as she thanked the French authorities for allowing her to “speak my truth.”
The accused and the aftermath
French prosecutors say the 12 suspects, who are between the ages of 60 and 70, were members of an old-school criminal ring.
Two assailants have admitted to being at the scene of the crime, and one claims he didn’t know who Kardashian was when the crime took place; another died before the trial, and a fourth was excused as a result of illness.
The group of criminals was dubbed “les papys braqueurs” — “the grandpa robbers” — by the French press, but Kardashian’s lawyers insist the men are far from a wholesome gaggle of senior citizens.
The suspects are facing charges of armed robbery, kidnapping and membership in a criminal gang, crimes in France that carry the possibility of life in prison.
After the men left the scene, Kardashian said she rubbed the tape binding her wrists against the bathroom sink to free her hands.
Her ankles still tied, she hopped downstairs to find her friend and stylist, Simone Harouche, who was staying in the room below.
Fearing the robbers could come back, Harouche and Kardashian fled to the balcony and hid in the bushes. While there, Kardashian phoned her mother.
Earlier in the trial, Harouche recalled hearing Kardashian scream from upstairs: “‘I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, ‘Take everything. I need to live’.”
Meanwhile, Harouche locked herself in a bathroom and texted Kardashian’s sister and bodyguard, writing, “Something is very wrong.”
Later, she heard Kardashian struggling down the stairs, her ankles still bound.
“She was beside herself,” Harouche said. “She just was screaming.”
Judge David De Pas asked Harouche whether she thought Kardashian invited the robbers by sharing images of herself on the internet adorned in expensive jewels — a line of questioning Harouche strongly rejected.
“Just because a woman wears jewelry, that doesn’t make her a target,” she said. “That’s like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped.”
Kardashian told the court that shortly after the Paris robbery, her Los Angeles home was broken into in what she believes was a copycat attack, adding that she can no longer sleep without guards and has between four and six at home at any given time.
“I started to get this phobia of going out,” Kardashian said. “This experience really changed everything for us.”
At the time of the Paris robbery, her bodyguard was staying in a different hotel.
“We assumed that if we were in a hotel, it was safe, it was secure,” Kardashian explained, adding that Paris, up until then, had always felt safe to her and that she would often walk the streets alone in the early hours of the morning to window shop or stop for a solo hot chocolate.
“It always felt really safe,” she said. “It was always a magical place.”
Kardashian received an apology letter from one of the suspects, and said she was grateful for the gesture.
“I do appreciate the letter, for sure. I forgive you for what has taken place, but it doesn’t change the feelings and the trauma and the fact that my life was forever changed, but I do appreciate the letter, thank you,” she concluded.
— With files from The Associated Press and Reuters
