Paris used to be “magical” for Kim Kardashian. But the armed robbery she experienced during Paris Fashion Week in 2016 “changed everything,” she testified Tuesday in France at the trial of 10 people accused with plotting and pulling off the crime.
She said she “absolutely” thought she was going to be killed, the Associated Press reported. Then when her robe fell open and exposed “everything” on her body, she was convinced she was going to be sexually assaulted.
“I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me,” she told presiding judge David De Pas. “I absolutely did think I was going to die.”
After hearing stomping on the stairs in her two-story apartment and calling out for one of her sisters, Kardashian had been shocked when strangers appeared in her bedroom. She tried to call her bodyguard for help, but someone snatched her phone away.
“I thought it was some kind of terrorist attack,” Kardashian said, per the Guardian, explaining she was confused when the men showed up. “I didn’t quite get at first that it was about my jewelry.”
Then, she said, according to the BBC, “They picked me up off the bed and grabbed me and took me down the hallway to look for more jewelry, more stuff.”
A gun was pointed at her back. “That was the first moment I thought, should I run for it? But it wasn’t an option, so I just stayed — and that’s the moment I realized I should just do whatever they say.”
Kardashian said she tried to communicate to the suspects that she had “babies” — at that time just two children, compared with four now — and needed to make it home to them alive.
The reality TV star and beauty mogul, who in recent years has been studying law, wound up with her arms and legs zip-tied and tape slapped over her mouth. The robbers ultimately abandoned her in a bathroom as they made their escape with loot worth millions.
Kardashian, who finalized her divorce from rapper husband Kanye “Ye” West in 2022, said the robbery “changed everything” about how she and her family travel. “We never thought we were never not safe before this.” Now she travels with multiple bodyguards who stay rather than heading off to a separate hotel each evening, she said. At the time of the robbery, the family had one bodyguard who had gone off to a club with sister Kourtney Kardashian.
Kim Kardashian now sheds her jewelry when she arrives home and sends it to a separate location for safekeeping so she can sleep comfortably at night, she testified.
The trial for the 10 suspects, ages 35 to 78, runs until May 23. Five are suspected of being in the apartment, while others are accused of helping to organize the robbery. While eight of them say they are innocent of all accusations, two men whose DNA was found in the apartment have admitted their guilt.
Yunice Abbas, 71, is one of those who has admitted participating in the robbery. He also answered the judge’s questions on Tuesday. Though he has written a book about his experiences that culminated in the events of Oct. 3, 2016, and has discussed it in interviews, Abbas told the court that robbing Kardashian was a job “too many” and said he “totally regrets” participating, per the Guardian.
Kardashian said she was shocked when she learned about the book, the BBC reported. “Not only did he do this, but now [he’s] making money off that — my jewelry, my memories, the watch my dad who passed away gave me when I graduated high school. I can’t get that back.
“It wasn’t just jewelry … someone took away my memories, and now he is capitalizing by writing a book? It didn’t seem fair to me.”
After the robbers fled, Kardashian managed to get her hands free and hopped downstairs to where her stylist and friend Simone Harouche was staying, the New York Post reported. When the Paris police arrived, she said, she was “confused if they were real police because the other guys were dressed as police.”
“I didn’t know who to trust,” she said.
The suspects face charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and membership in a criminal gang, all of which carry the potential for life imprisonment, the AP said.
Investigators believe the suspects gleaned clues from Kardashian’s social media posts at the time and exploited them to plan their crime. Since the robbery, she says she has drastically changed what she posts.
