Marie-Antoinette's Watch: Adultery, Larceny & Perpetual Motion

Chapter 18

What happened next is a point of contention between Israeli detectives and Nili Shamrat. Shamrat, who at the time was a tenth-grade adviser at the Shal Havet Jewish Day School in Los Angeles, claims not to remember what was said in the trying months between her wedding to Diller and his death.

I began speaking to Shamrat in 2009, when a close relation put me in contact with her. We spoke primarily over the phone, and it was clear she was still very much in love with the man once called the "Kibbutznik burglar." It was strange - to speak about a Diller that many didn't know while the facts of the case began to pile up and meld into a mélange of fact and fiction. The press painted a picture of a narcissistic international playboy, while Shamrat told of a man who made delicious fruit sorbet and delightful vegan meals.

"Na'aman was a very, very unique person," she said one afternoon, wistfully recalling his ability to fix things around the house. She called it his "golden hand." She had a slight accent and her voice grew soft with her reminiscences.

"He did things that were definitely a crime, but he was really very positive in so many instances, so many other ways," she said.

According to the police, Diller took her to the L.A. Mayer museum shortly after their wedding, and showed her how he had accomplished the break-in. She was dumbstruck that her husband, the man she had known for almost three decades, had pulled off a final robbery before settling into the leisurely pace of middle age. She said he showed her a number of boxes at his home and at his Aunt Hilda's empty apartment and explained that they came from the museum. These were the boxes that Shamrat gave to Ephron-Gabai to return to the museum, and these were the boxes that contained the Marie-Antoinette.

"I came to her and I said I had inherited things that my husband stole," said Shamrat. "Before he died he told me that he stole them from that museum and that I wanted to return them to the museum. And I only had one condition: anonymity."

She chose the lawyer based on a friend's recommendation in Tel Aviv, and thought this would be the best and most legally prudent way to return the watches. She says she does not remember who first mentioned the possibility of a reward, but as far as she recalls it was mutually agreed upon that Ephron-Gabai would mention but not press the point. "I don't care what happens," she told the lawyer, "these things have to be returned to the museum."

I asked her why she didn't just leave the items on the doorstep of the museum. Why didn't she just ship them anonymously? She replied that she had no experience with this sort of thing and that she knew that these things need to be returned posthaste.

"I think the main reason was that I thought, really thought, that if any issue is like that, you go to a lawyer," she said. "Not having a lot of experience with lawyers in Israel, or hardly any I thought that the most common thing to do was to go to a lawyer who will take care of it."

"You know I could have left it and then nothing would have happened, but for me something that was stolen needs to be returned."

She wanted to do the right thing.

After the return of the watches, the police approached the Lidor/Diller family. They learned details about his previous crimes in other countries and information on Shamrat herself. The family told them about his lover, Julia, in Holland, and also revealed that Na'aman had owned a number of safety deposit boxes in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and France before his death. They said he received about 1,800 euros a month from a bank account in Paris, his main source of income, but the family, suspicious of its black sheep, believed he had more. By January 2008, the Israeli police had organized cross-jurisdictional investigations in Holland and Paris, where they hoped to find the last missing pieces from the L.A. Mayer collection.