It has been nearly four years since an 18-carat gold toilet worth nearly £5 million was stolen in an early morning heist at Blenheim Palace. While hopes of recovering the toilet are small with many believing it has likely been melted down, Thames Valley police have just announced that they have made a major breakthrough in bringing the culprits to justice.

At 5am on 14 September 2019, seven individuals broke into Blenheim Palace and stole the golden toilet which had been made by Italian contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan. Titled ‘America’, the toilet was part of an exhibition of the artist’s work which was about to open at Blenheim. Visitors to the exhibition could even book three-minute slots to use the toilet, which was fully functional and had been plumbed in. The thieves ripped the toilet from the wall, leaving behind “significant damage and flooding”, before making off with the loo in two cars.

At the time, Maurizio Cattelan was evidently shocked by the theft. He stated, “at first, when they woke me up with the news, I thought it was a prank. Who’s so stupid as to steal a toilet?” He added that he hoped “the robbery is a kind of Robin Hood-inspired action.” The golden toilet has been viewed as a 21^st century response to Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain – a porcelain urinal. Cattelan’s toilet, which is a commentary on the excesses of the art market and American luxury, was debuted at the Guggenheim in New York in 2016. For a full year, visitors were able to use it “in the privacy of one of the Guggenheim’s single-stall, gender-neutral bathrooms.” Described as “a cipher for the excesses of affluence”, the toilet received even more attention when the Guggenheim’s chief curator Nancy Spector offered it to the White House after she denied the loan of Vincent Van Gogh’s Landscape with Snow (1888) which had been requested by curators on behalf of then President Donald Trump.

In 2021, Matthew Barber of Thames Valley Police told the BBC that “recovering the toilet would be a challenge…If you have that large amount of gold, I think it seems likely that someone has already managed to dispose of it one way or another. It would be great if we can recover it and return it but personally, I’m not convinced it’s still in quite the same form it was.” Scotland Yard’s Charlie Hill, who helped recover Edvard Munch’s The Screamafter it was stolen from the National Museum in Oslo also concluded that the toilet had likely been melted down.

At the time, one man was arrested but not charged, and in the intervening years a number more suspects have been arrested, all of whom have been released. But now, authorities seem to be on the cusp of charging seven suspects with the theft. Thames Valley Police told The Sun: “A number of individuals remain released under investigation in relation to this case. A file of evidence is with the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] for a decision to be made on any charges.”