Rhino heads with horns stolen
Four rhinoceros heads with eight horns worth about €500,000 have been stolen from museum storage in Ireland.
Three masked men broke into a facility in Swords, north Dublin late last night and tied up a security man before the robbery, which lasted about an hour.
The raid took place at premises known as the National Museum Archives.
The rhino heads with horns had been taken off public display more than a year ago and put into storage after a spate of similar thefts from museums and private collections in Europe.
“The stolen rhinoceros heads have a total of eight horns that have probably been taken to supply the illegal trade in powdered horn that is used in traditional medicines in the Far East,” a spokesman for the museum said.
“Their price is based on weight and the total amount stolen could have a street value in the region of €500,000.”
“The National Museum of Ireland took the decision to remove all rhinoceros horn from display and the stolen specimens were placed in storage over a year ago. Currently there are no rhinoceros horns on display in the National Museum of Ireland – Natural History.”
Gardaí said that the raid took place at about 10.40pm at the building on the Balheary Road and the alarm was raised just before midnight when the tied-up security guard managed to free himself after the gang left. The man was not injured.
The robbers loaded the horns into a large white van.
A Garda forensic team has sealed off the premises to carry out a technical examination and an incident room has been set up at Swords Garda station.
Nigel Monaghan, keeper in the natural history division of the museum, said the horns were about 100 years old.
“We’ve never had to deal with something like that in our history, as far as I’m aware,” he said.
The heads and horns were originally trophies dating back to the early 1900s and preserved and mounted by taxidermists.
They included three black rhinos shot in Africa, including the Masai Mara in Kenya, and one white rhino from Sudan.
The horns are regarded as being worth more than their weight in gold on the black market.
The Europol police agency revealed two years ago that detectives had identified an Irish traveller gang behind a spate of thefts of rhino horns across the continent. They had been targeting antique dealers, auction houses, art galleries, museums, private collections and zoos and then sold them on to auction houses in the UK, France, USA and China.
The value of horns can range from €25,000 to €200,000 depending on size and weight.
Buyers use them as decoration, to produce luxury products and also for a supposed cure-all in traditional Asian medicine, despite the keratin substance being proven ineffective.
Keeper with the Natural History Division of the museum Nigel Monaghan, believes these horns are a target because they are used to in the treatment of various ailments including cancer.
"It is used for all sorts of things including cancer," he said.
"As you can imagine powdered rhinoceros horn, if its made up of exactly the same material as your hair or fingernails its hardly a cure of cancer
"Various scientists in the west have studied it in great detail and it does absolutely nothing for you whatsoever, you might as well be chewing your fingernails as taking rhinoceros horn."
