As Kim Kardashian prepares to testify in Paris, where 10 people are on trial in connection with robbing her at gunpoint in 2016, here is what she’s had to say about the ordeal.
At least Kim Kardashian has had a lot of time to process what happened.
Because when she takes the stand May 13 to testify in the robbery trial that got underway in Paris last month, she’ll be revisiting what she has described as “the scariest thing” she’s ever been through in her life.
Nine men and one woman have been charged with robbery and kidnapping in connection with an Oct. 3, 2016, armed heist in which Kim has described being tied up and put in the bathtub of her apartment at the Hôtel de Pourtalès while thieves made off with millions of dollars’ worth of jewelry, including her 20-carat diamond engagement ring from then-husband Kanye West.
According to investigators, five of the 10 were at the scene of the robbery. Two of the defendants (dubbed “the Granddad Robbers” because most are on the older side) have acknowledged their participation, while the other eight have denied involvement.
One of the admitted perpetrators, 71-year-old Yunice Abbas, wrote in his 2021 book I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian that he helped serve as a lookout on the ground floor reception area of the hotel but did not personally threaten Kim.
“This time I do regret what I did,” Abbas stated in court April 29, per the BBC. At the time, he said, “We just grabbed the lady’s handbag, but I have discovered there’s trauma behind it.”
There were originally 12 defendants, but in the eight-plus years that have gone by, one person died and another is said to be too ill to stand trial.
Kim left Paris hours after the robbery, anxious to reunite with Kanye, 3-year-old daughter North West and 10-month-old son Saint West in New York. She then took a step back from public life, including a three-month break from posting on social media—an unprecedently long time for the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star.
French authorities came to New York to take her testimony in February 2017 after 17 people were arrested in connection with the incident.
“These arrests are a nice surprise because we might be able to find the jewels,” her lawyer in Paris Jean Veil told L’Express at the time.
But only one piece—a diamond and platinum cross that a passerby found the next day on the sidewalk outside the hotel, apparently dropped as the robbers fled—was ever recovered.
Kim didn’t return to Paris for almost two years, not until Kanye asked her to go with him to Virgil Abloh‘s debut runway show as artistic director for Louis Vuitton men’s wear in June 2018.
“I have so many special memories in Paris,” Kim reflected on the subsequent Keeping Up With the Kardashians episode that chronicled her decision. “I hope that this trip will just be so good that I can start to remember all the magical things about Paris and why Kanye and I fell in love with it.”
She and Kanye are no longer together, the SKIMS founder filing for divorce in 2021, but she has been back to Paris many times since.
As for what Kim plans to say in the witness box, “Ms. Kardashian is reserving her testimony for the court and jury and does not wish to elaborate further at this time,” her attorney Michael Rhodes said in a statement as the trial got underway April 28. “She has great respect and admiration for the French justice system and has been treated with great respect by the French authorities.”
The KKW Beauty mogul has detailed her experience over the years, and the emotion has been real. Here is what Kim has had to say about the 2016 robbery that left her forever changed:
After Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in the early morning hours of Oct. 3, 2016, in Paris, she didn’t post any personal content on her social media platforms until the following January—which, not coincidentally, timed with the new promos for the upcoming season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, premiering in March 2017 and featuring Kim’s first comments about her experience.
While she was working with Paris authorities in the interim, she chose to break her silence publicly on her family’s long-running E! show.
Talking to Kourtney Kardashian, who was sharing a room with Kim during their fateful trip but was out when the robbery occurred, and Khloe Kardashian, Kim recalled lying in bed in her robe, dozing off while she debated getting up to wash her face.
Then she heard pounding coming up the stairs toward her room. She called out, thinking it was Kourtney and her friend coming home drunk.
“Then at that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense,” Kim said in a confessional. “Like your stomach just kind of knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.’”
Through her partially open door she saw what she thought were policemen holding down another guy, who turned out to be the building concierge.
Seconds later Kim realized she didn’t know how to call 911 in another country. Then one of the men dressed as a cop came in, took her phone and threw her on the bed.
“And I was like, ‘This is it,’” she told her sisters. She recalled thinking, “It makes me so upset to think about it, but like, either they’re going to shoot me in the back, or if I make it and they don’t, there’s no way out.”
Of the jewelry she lost, “It’s all replaceable, none of it matters.”
Kim Explains Why She Told Her Story for the First Time on Keeping Up With the Kardashians
Before the March 19 episode premiered, Kim explained sharing her story in this way.
“Tonight’s episode is going to be very tough for me,” she wrote on Instagram, captioning the last family photo she had from Paris, a shot of her with Kourtney, Kendall Jenner and mom Kris Jenner. “However, I thought it was important to share this story through my eyes & not in an interview where my own words could be twisted. I have always shared so much & I’m not going to hold back when this was probably one of the most life changing experiences for me. I would never wish this experience upon anyone, but have learned some valuable lessons & feel so blessed to be safe home with my babies & husband. To my friends, family, and loved ones I can’t thank you enough for being there when I needed you the most. To the French police, thank you for your incredible hard work.”
Kim Reacts to Suspects’ Arrest
“I honestly never thought that they would catch the robbers,” Kim said on a May 2017 episode of KUWTK, referring to the arrests of 17 suspects that January. “I just thought so much time has gone on and I didn’t really realize how diligent the French police were being and just all the hard work they were really putting into it.”
She continued, “To find out that there were so many people involved, hearing detail after detail, really just opened up a whole different perspective for me of feeling safe.”
Ultimately 12 people were charged and 10 went on trial in May 2025, one of the suspects having died in the interim while another was deemed too ill to stand trial.
Kim Came to Believe the Robbery Was Meant to Be
“I know this sounds crazy, but I know that was meant to happen to me,” Kim said during an April 2017 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “I am such a different person…I really feel like things happen in your life to teach you things, and this was like—it was probably no secret, you see it on the show, us being flashy, I was definitely materialistic before. Not that there’s anything bad with having things and working hard to get those things and I’m really proud of everyone around me that’s successful. But I’m so happy proud that my kids get this me and that this is how I’m raising my kids, because I just don’t care about that stuff anymore.”
The woman who admittedly loved flaunting her jewelry and took practically her entire collection with her to Paris on that trip? She emphasized, “That’s just not who I am anymore.”
The Robbery Changed Kim’s Approach to Security Overnight
“I should’ve had a security guard outside my door 24/7 when I‘m traveling,” Kim told Ellen DeGeneres, admitting she never used to think about it much, “and now I have several, just for me to be able to sleep at night.”
Kim Returns to Paris for the First Time Since the Robbery
Kim steered clear of the City of Light until June 2018, when she returned to Paris with then-husband Kanye West to attend their friend Virgil Abloh’s first show since being named artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton.
“Even though I’m nervous, I think it’s really important to Kanye to go,” Kim mused to Khloe and Kourtney before the trip. “I feel like it’s the right thing to do for Virgil.”
In a Keeping Up With the Kardashians confessional, she reflected, “”I have so many special memories in Paris. I hope that this trip will just be so good that I can start to remember all the magical things about Paris and why Kanye and I fell in love with it.”
Talking to her sisters once she was back in L.A., Kim admitted she was anxious but “fine” overall for most of the trip.
“It was so good,” she said. “Like, honestly, I’m so glad we went.”
Kim Calls Robbery “the Scariest Thing” That Ever Happened to Her
Kim may have found purpose and meaning, and preferred her priorities after the robbery, but it was still admittedly a horrifying experience.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through in my entire life,” she acknowledged on an October 2019 episode of Felony Files, “just thinking that, you know, you’re about to die…You’re bracing yourself for the moment they’re going to shoot you and kill you. That 10 minutes really changed my whole life. “
Kim Recalls Steeling Herself to Be Sexually Assaulted
Kim further recounted her experience to David Letterman on an episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction that dropped in October 2020.
Two masked men “were yelling at me in French and I just sat up, and they kept on saying ‘The ring, the ring,’ and I was just so startled,” Kim said. She eventually realized he was referring to her engagement ring, which she’d placed by the bed. “So I handed him my ring and he grabbed me, and I was wearing a robe and I wasn’t wearing anything under it.”
Blinking back tears, Kim added, “I don’t want to ruin my makeup.”
“He grabbed me and pulled me towards him,” Kim continued. “But I wasn’t wearing anything underneath, so I was like, ‘Okay, this is the time, I’m going to get raped, like, just deal, it’s gonna happen, like, just prepare yourself.’ So I did, and then—I don’t know why I’m crying, I’ve talked about this before—but then he tied me up with handcuffs and zip ties, and then duct tape, and then duct-taped my mouth and my eyes.”
Before he covered her eyes, Kim said, “I saw he found my whole jewelry box and held it up, like, ‘Aha!’ you know, like, ‘We got it.’ But I kept on looking at the concierge [who’d been forced to unlock her door at gunpoint] because I didn’t know who he was, and I’m like, ‘What is happening? Are we going to die? Just tell them I have children, I have babies, I have a husband, I have a family, like I have to get home! Tell them to take anything, I’ll never say I saw them, like, take everything!’”
Kim Couldn’t Stop Thinking About Kourtney Finding Her Body
As one of the robbers pointed a gun at her, “I just kept on thinking about Kourtney,” Kim told David Letterman. I kept on thinking, she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room, and…she’s going to be traumatized for the rest of her life if she sees me. We’re sharing a room, like, on her bed, but I thought that was my fate.”
But “this one guy, the guy that didn’t have the gun,” she continued, he kept saying “like ‘Shhh, if you shhh, you ok.’”
“He could hardly speak English,” Kim added, “but I was like, ‘Okay, is he giving me a signal?’”
“I’ve watched every single CSI show on the planet,” Kim quipped, describing how she tried to take a mental picture of her assailant so she could describe him to police, but “it all goes out the door.”
After she was tied up, “he picked me up and he put me in a bathtub,” Kim said, “and then he picked me up again and just put me on the floor and ran.”
The Shine Was Off the Diamonds for Years
“After I was robbed in Paris, I haven’t bought jewelry,” Kim said in an episode of The Kardashians after Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana presented Kim with a striking cross necklace in the fall of 2022 as a thank you for serving as creator director of their Dolce & Gabbana Spring-Summer 2023 show. “I haven’t really been about wearing jewelry, because when it was taken from me, it was such a—I didn’t know I was ready for that experience and what that meant, but I was. I was ready to, like, give it up.”
She added, “This symbolized to me more than just getting a diamond cross necklace. This, like, brought a piece of my glamour back to me, and that’s why it’s so special that I got it back from a really meaningful experience.”
Source: www.eonline.com