[MSN] A 27-year-old man who died this month is believed to be one of three masked gunmen who snatched the Edvard Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna from an Oslo museum in August 2004. Dead man's tale casts new light on Munch heist.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Dead man's tale casts new light on Munch heist
Last Updated: Thursday, November 30, 2006 | 12:05 PM ET 
CBC Arts 
A 27-year-old man who died this month is believed to be one of three masked
gunmen who snatched the Edvard Munch paintings The Scream and Madonna from
an Oslo museum in August 2004.

The same man is reported to have led police to believe the daring daylight
heist was linked to an earlier robbery in which a police officer was shot.

Munch's The Scream is back at the museum, after being missing for two years.
Oslo police say a man who died recently is one of the thieves.
(Associated Press) He may also have unwittingly informed on the mastermind
behind both jobs after he was befriended by an undercover officer and
secretly recorded.

The man, whose name is being withheld, died of a suspected heroin overdose
in an Oslo hospice Nov. 3.

A pending final autopsy report will help authorities determine if the death
was the result of foul play.

"We have no comment on who it is, because the case involving this person is
still being investigated because he recently died," said Oslo police Insp.
Iver Stensrud.

The man is reported to have confessed his role in the Munch heist on tape
while in conversation with an undercover officer. He is believed to have
died without knowing he'd become an informant.

The paintings were stolen in a daring daytime raid in full view of gallery
staff and visitors. Three masked men rushed in and snatched them off the
wall of the Munch Museum in Oslo.

The Scream and the Madonna were recovered by police in August, but police
have never said what led them to the paintings after two years of searching.

The paintings suffered minor damage and are undergoing repair at the Munch
Museum.

The Scream, probably the Norwegian painter's most famous work, shows a
figure covering his or her ears in anguish, mouth open as if screaming.
Madonna is a figure of a woman.

Police arrested six people in connection with the art theft, but only three
were convicted.

Norwegian newspapers say evidence from the man who died links the heist with
an earlier robbery of the Norwegian Cash Service, NOKAS, believed to have
been masterminded by a man called David Toska.

They report the man told his police contact that Toska had planned the art
theft to deflect police attention from the investigation into the NOKAS
robbery, which resulted in the shooting death of a policeman.