'I was going to die': Kim Kardashian shares fears as she faces Paris robbery suspects

The Associated Press

· Posted: May 13, 2025 9:21 AM EDT | Last Updated: 38 minutes ago

Kim Kardashian said a soundless supplication — for her sister, her champion friend, her household — arsenic a masked antheral pulled her toward him successful a Paris edifice country successful the 2016 jewelry heist that changed her life. She was wearing lone a bathrobe. She was bound with zip ties. She thought she wouldn't survive.

"I was definite that was the infinitesimal that helium was going to rape me," she told a Paris tribunal Tuesday. "I perfectly did deliberation I was going to die."

The past clip Kardashian saw the men that constabulary accidental robbed her, she was bound astatine gunpoint and near locked successful a marble bath portion masked assailants stole much than $6 cardinal US ($8.4 cardinal Cdn) successful jewelry. Nearly a decennary later, she returned to Paris to look them — this clip from the witnesser stand.

Her grounds marked the affectional climax of a proceedings that has gripped France and reignited debates astir fame, privateness and what it means to unrecorded — and astir dice — successful public. The nighttime successful her suite during Fashion Week successful 2016 everlastingly altered her narration to fame and safety.

Dressed successful achromatic and wearing acheronian sunglasses, Kardashian stood successful the packed courtroom crossed from her mother, Kris Jenner. Her dependable broke arsenic she thanked French authorities for "allowing maine to stock my truth."

She told the tribunal that the attackers arrived dressed arsenic constabulary officers, with the concierge successful handcuffs. "I thought it was immoderate benignant of violent attack," she said.

She described however they tied her hands with zip ties, dragged her to the bathtub and pointed a weapon astatine her temple. One robber gestured toward her ring. "He said, 'Ring! Ring!' and helium pointed to his hand."

'The grandpa robbers'

French prosecutors accidental the men who orchestrated the heist — astir successful their 60s and 70s — were portion of a seasoned transgression ringing that tracked Kardashian's movements done societal media. Two of the defendants person admitted being astatine the scene. One claims helium didn't cognize who she was.

Twelve suspects were primitively charged. One has died. Another was excused owed to illness. The French property dubbed the radical les papys braqueurs — "the grandpa robbers" — but prosecutors importune they were nary harmless retirees.

Kardashian, who erstwhile shared astir each infinitesimal of her beingness online, aboriginal acknowledged the relation that visibility played. "People were watching," she said successful a 2021 interview. "They knew what I had. They knew wherever I was."

Earlier successful the trial, Kardashian's puerility person and then-stylist Simone Harouche recalled proceeding her shriek from upstairs: "'I person babies and I request to live.' That is what she kept connected saying, 'Take everything. I request to live.'"

Harouche, who hid successful a downstairs bath during the robbery, said she texted Kardashian's sister Kourtney and their bodyguard: "Something is precise wrong." She aboriginal heard Kardashian hopping down the stairs with her ankles inactive bound. "She was beside herself," Harouche said. "She conscionable was screaming."

Robbery 'forever' changed Kardashian

Harouche testified that the robbery "forever" changed her friend's consciousness of freedom. "She present has a wholly antithetic lifestyle," she said. "In presumption of security, she can't spell alone, she doesn't spell unsocial to places anymore. To suffer your consciousness of state ... it's horrible."

Judge David De Pas asked whether Kardashian had made herself a people by posting photos of herself with "jewels of large value."

"No," Harouche replied. "Just due to the fact that a pistillate wears jewelry, that doesn't marque her a target. That's similar saying that due to the fact that a pistillate wears a abbreviated skirt that she deserves to beryllium raped."

At the clip of the robbery, Kardashian was 1 of the astir photographed women successful the world, a planetary manner icon and societal media pioneer. In the days that followed, critics, including decorator Karl Lagerfeld, said she had shared excessively much.

But arsenic details emerged — the gun, the silence, the helplessness — nationalist sentiment shifted.

In the aftermath, Kardashian withdrew from nationalist life. She developed terrible anxiousness and symptoms of agoraphobia. "I hated to spell out," she said. "I didn't privation anybody to cognize wherever I was.… I conscionable had specified anxiety."