‘I Thought I Was Going to Die’: Kim Kardashian Recalls Paris Hotel Robbery in Court

Kim Kardashian mouthed a silent prayer for her sister, her closest friend, her family as a masked individual dragged her towards him in a Paris hotel room during the 2016 jewelry robbery that altered her life. She was dressed in a bathrobe. Her hands were zip-tied. Her mouth was covered with tape. She believed she would not live.

“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.”

The Night of the Attack

When she heard footsteps thundering up the stairs that night, Kardashian said she first thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a night out. The noise got louder. “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” she called out. Moments later, her door flew open.

She begged the robbers: “I have babies,” she said. One replied that she would be OK if she stayed quiet.

The last Kardashian remembers seeing the men police accuse of robbing her, she was tied up at gunpoint and locked in a marble bathroom when masked attackers took over $6 million worth of jewelry. Last Tuesday, close to nine years later, she confronted them in court from the witness stand.

From Global Icon to Victim

When the robbery took place, Kardashian was a name that almost every woman in the world could identify. She was a style icon. She was a reality television star. Kim was a billionaire entrepreneur. She had honed a new form of fame one aired live, tweet by tweet, to millions.

But on the early morning of Oct. 3, 2016, that visibility was turned into a weapon against her. The robbery changed Kardashian’s life, and how the world perceived vulnerability in the online era.

She wore a black ensemble Tuesday as she faced her mother, Kris Jenner, across the highly secured courtroom. She spoke with a shaking voice to thank French authorities for “letting me tell my truth.”

Inside the Courtroom Testimony of Kim Kardashian

She explained how the attackers came to her hotel dressed as police officers and, pulling the concierge up by the handcuffs, went upstairs. “I thought it was an act of terrorism,” she explained.

They bound her hands, pulled her towards the bathtub and aimed a gun at her temple. One of them signaled at her diamond ring. “He said, ‘Ring! Ring!’ and he signaled to his hand,” she said.

French prosecutors indicate the attackers all in their 60s and 70s belonged to a veteran criminal group that monitored Kim Kardashian through her Instagram activity. Two of the defendants have confessed to being present at the scene. One of them says he didn’t recognize who she was.

Twelve suspects were initially charged. One has since passed away. Another was excused because she was sick. The French press labeled the group (asterisk)les papys braqueurs(asterisk) “the grandpa robbers” but prosecutors claim they were no innocent retirees.

Kim Kardashian, who once posted almost every aspect of her life on the internet, subsequently recognized the risks of that hyper-visibility. “People were watching,” she told a 2021 interviewer. “They knew what I had. They knew where I was.”

Impact on Life of Kim Kardashian

Earlier in the case, Kim Kardashian’s friend from childhood and later stylist, Simone Harouche, testified that she had been sleeping downstairs when the robbery broke out. She heard Kardashian’s voice: “‘I have babies and I need to live.’ That is what she kept on saying, ‘Take everything. I need to live.'”

Kardashian, she said, was “screaming with terror in her voice.”

Harouche locked herself in the bathroom and texted Kourtney Kardashian and the bodyguard: “Something is very wrong.” She later heard Kardashian thudding down the stairs with her ankles still tied. “She was beside herself,” Harouche said, “She just was screaming.”

Harouche stated under oath that the robbery “forever” altered her friend’s sense of freedom. “She now has a totally different way of life,” she explained. “For security, she can’t go by herself, she doesn’t go by herself to places anymore. To lose your sense of freedom. it’s terrible.”

Judge David De Pas inquired as to whether Kim Kardashian had provoked such an attack by posting the photos of herself wearing “jewels of considerable value.” Harouche scoffed at the idea. “Just because a woman is wearing jewelry, that doesn’t make her a target,” she said. “That’s saying because a woman wears a short skirt she would be raped.”

Critics such as fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld wondered if Kardashian had revealed too much in the days following the robbery. But as the facts came out, public opinion turned around.

Afterward, Kim Kardashian took herself out of the public eye. She suffered from anxiety and agoraphobic symptoms. “I hated to go out, I didn’t want anybody to know where I was … I just had such anxiety.”

Kardashian’s attorneys indicate she is “particularly grateful” to the French officials and prepared to face those who assaulted her.