Kim Kardashian begged ‘Please don’t kill me! I have children’ as masked men put a gun to her head in an £8.5million raid at her Paris home on Monday.
Five English-speaking robbers posing as policemen are believed to have tracked her via her obsession with updating social media.
They tied up the American reality TV star in the bathroom of her palatial French residence and helped themselves to jewellery before escaping on hired bicycles.
In a stunning security lapse, her personal bodyguard Pascal Duvier was at a nightclub with her sisters Kourtney and Kendall at the time.
The mother-of-two, 35, pleaded for her life as the thieves bound her hands, taped her mouth and dumped her in a marble bath.
Within hours of her ordeal the ‘hysterical’ star fled Paris by private jet back to New York. Last night she was reunited with her rapper husband Kayne West, daughter North, three, and ten-month-old son Saint.
READ: Dodgy photographer questioned over Kim robbery: report
As French police were said to suspect an Eastern European gang with ‘inside’ help:
• Her social media updates flaunting her £3.5million diamond engagement ring were blamed for ‘telegraphing’ her whereabouts.
• The raiders, who spoke English with heavy accents, bore the hallmarks of the Pink Panther gang of criminals who have been linked to heists worth £280million.
• It was feared intimate secrets and photos of the star’s family could be revealed after two mobile phones were stolen in the raid.
• Celebrities including British star James Corden rushed to defend Miss Kardashian amid claims it was an elaborate publicity stunt.
• Security was questioned at the five-star Hotel Particulier Pourtales where Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio have also stayed.
• Her ex-bodyguard Steve Stanulis said it was a ‘crime waiting to happen’ because she and her family lived their lives on social media.
The drama began at 2.25am on Monday. In ski masks and police uniforms, the gang handcuffed and gagged the concierge of the nine-apartment Hotel Pourtales, which is close to the British Embassy, and forced him at gunpoint to open up the star’s £25,000-a-month flat.
They took a jewellery box worth £5.24million, her 15-carat diamond engagement ring and two smartphones, before fleeing on Velios – hire bicycles which can be rented all over Paris.
At the time her main bodyguard Mr Duvier – who hours earlier had boasted on Twitter that ‘you don’t become a bodyguard overnight... it’s a job with dedication, responsibility and passion’ – was at a Paris club with her sisters Kourtney Kardashian, 37, and Kendall Jenner, 20.
Miss Kardashian, in Paris for Fashion Week, was described as ‘badly shaken but physically unharmed’.
She is one of the most successful social media celebrities in the world, constantly filming herself to promote her various interests.
She has 81million followers on photo-sharing website Instagram, 29million on Facebook and 48million on Twitter.
Her family are almost as prolific. In fact last night, only hours after the drama, her other sister Kylie Jenner was tweeting about her cosmetics range.
Two hours before the raid Miss Kardashian had flaunted her diamond engagement ring in a video to her army of fans on the messaging website Snapchat.
Her husband gave her the piece – her second engagement ring – a month ago and she has been posting pictures of herself wearing it ever since.
After being interviewed by French detectives, Miss Kardashian boarded a private jet at around 10am. In New York police officers, a convoy of SUVs with blacked-out windows and more than 20 bodyguards were waiting for her.
Wearing all black, with her head down and her hair covering her face, she went straight into her Manhattan home with her husband.
West had earlier abandoned a New York concert mid-song, telling fans there was a ‘family emergency’.
When he first spoke to his wife on the phone, she was ‘terrified’ and ‘just hysterical’, a source told People magazine. ‘He said she was really upset and it took him a few seconds to understand what she was saying to him. He told her that he couldn’t care less about the jewellery, he’s just thankful she’s OK.’
The robbery had happened ‘really fast’, the source added. ‘Kanye says that it all hit her after the guys had left, and then it sunk in. She is very upset and couldn’t wait to leave Paris. She gave a statement to the police and left right after.
‘She got robbed of her jewellery, but doesn’t care. She is just happy to be alive. She has never been in a more frightening situation.’
A photographer believed to have been following Miss Kardashian since she arrived in Paris was being questioned by police last night. He is said to have gained access to a restaurant where she and her family were dining earlier this week by posing as a policeman. Security expert Bruce Anderson said Miss Kardashian’s obsessive presence on social media may have been her undoing. He suggested Twitter and Snapchat messages showing her location, combined with photos of her whereabouts and endless photos showing off her jewellery, could have been a toxic combination.
Peter Kirkham, a former Met Police detective chief inspector, predicted her jewellery would be broken up and sold on, possibly in London.
Her former bodyguard Mr Stanulis said it ‘wouldn’t surprise me’ if the robbery was a PR stunt, adding: ‘If this really did happen, she opened herself up to it.’
But James Corden wrote on Twitter: ‘People would do well to remember that she’s a mother, a daughter, a wife, a friend. Be nice or shut up.’
Daily Mail