I was a top footballer when I stole masterpiece The Scream – I went to jail & ruined my career, but I’ve got no regrets
HE was a rising football star who had a bright future on the pitch.
Pal Enger had money, drove top-of-the-range cars and partied with gorgeous women.
But his success came from crime, rather than the beautiful game.
Mafia-obsessed Enger was living a double life as a criminal, committing burglaries, blowing up cashpoints and running illegal casinos.
The Norwegian crook’s biggest caper came in 1994, when he masterminded the theft of artist Edvard Munch’s £120million masterpiece The Scream, from Oslo’s National Gallery, in an audacious heist lasting seconds — yet costing him six years in jail.
It was the peak of a criminal career which began in Enger’s poverty-hit childhood and sparked an addiction to lawbreaking — even while he was playing for Valerenga, Oslo’s top team.
He tells The Sun: “I grew up in Tveita, on the east side of Oslo, and people there don’t have much money.
“We started doing crime when we were very young and I found it exciting.
“I carried on because I enjoyed it very much.
“I had a good life.
“I travelled a lot between football and I used my money on cars — Porsches, Mercedes and BMWs.
“I did so much crime in my twenties that I had everything — cars, boats, money, the most beautiful women in Oslo. But I wanted more.”
Enger, 56, tells his full story for the first time in The Man Who Stole The Scream, on Sky Documentaries on Saturday.
The dad-of-five still remembers with pride his outrageous 1994 art theft — which sparked an international hunt for the canvas.
From his home in Oslo he says: “Maybe there are some things I would do differently in my life.
No regrets
“But the Scream theft was perfect.
“It was beautiful having the painting and knowing nobody else can touch it for a while.
“I have no regrets for that.”
Enger’s connection to the Munch masterpiece began as a young boy attempting to escape his violent stepfather in the high-rise flats of Oslo’s poorest district.
On first seeing the painting and its ghost-like figure clutching his ears as he screams in anguish, Enger saw a reflection of his own torment, and visited the gallery regularly to see it.
Together with best pal Bjorn Grytdal, Enger started shoplifting chocolates and progressed to hiding overnight in shops to steal watches.
They would raid jewellery shops, blow up night safes and cashpoints and “everything to do with smuggling, apart from drugs. Great fun”.
They also drew the line at violence and breaking into private homes.
At 15 they flew to New York, as Enger, obsessed with Mafia movie The Godfather, wanted to see where it was shot.
Team-mates at Valerenga, where he played for the youth team, wondered how he could afford it.
At 16 he claims he was on the verge of signing for Leicester City after a two-week trial in the UK, but work visa issues meant he was unable to stay.
When he made his professional debut at 18, in 1985, Valerenga were riding high, having topped Norway’s league table three times in four years.
Former team-mate Bengt Eriksen says: “He could be something big, because of his talent, his potential.
“He was always smiling and joking.
“He was very easy to like. But he got some other interests.”
Team-mate Erik Fosse told The Athletic website: “Pal never took the tube to the city.
“He would steal a car to make the journey instead.
“It was all a bit confusing, because we had a policeman in the same team.”
Enger also owned two pool halls, ironically favourite hangouts for the local cops, who were unaware of the illegal casinos in the back.
In the 1980s players in Norway’s top division often had sponsored cars with their names written on the side.
Although sponsorless, cheeky Enger had P.Enger written on his car as a deliberate play on his own name.
He explains: “Penger means money in Norwegian, but money isn’t what drives me.
“I always loved to play games.
“The stronger the opponent, the better I play.”
In 1988, at just 21, with the cash rolling in and his football fame rising, he decided to “show the world I could pull off something huge”.
He told Grytdal they were going to steal The Scream.
The pair planned the heist meticulously, aiming to cut through the thin glass of the National Gallery’s windows and grab the oil painting in seconds, but Enger miscounted which window to break through — and accidentally stole another Munch painting, The Vampire, worth £3.5million.
He says: “The disappointment lasted days, but then it started to become fun.
“We hid the painting in the ceiling of the snooker club.
“The police come there during the week to play pool.
“So I say to Bjorn, ‘They don’t know it’s hanging just one metre from them’. That was the best feeling.
“We let them play for free just to have them there.”
But Grytdal revealed the theft to a neighbour, who turned out to be a police informant, and soon the city was swarming with cops looking for Enger, who was hiding out in a flat.
Unable to leave, even to buy groceries, he decided to give himself up.
He and Grytdal were sentenced to four years in prison.
“None of the Valerenga team visited me,” he says.
“Someone gave interviews on TV saying, ‘How sad Pal turned out like this’. What an idiot. They used to buy stolen goods from me.”
On his release in 1992 Enger had no intention of reattempting the heist — until the Norwegian town of Lillehammer was confirmed as the host for the 1994 Winter Olympics.
He realised the bulk of Oslo’s police force would be there, and says: “It was a big opportunity for me.
“Because I missed the first time, it was in the back of my mind that I failed.
“I wanted to try to get the real Scream this time.”
Knowing he would be No1 suspect, Enger roped in William Aasheim, a homeless man, to commit the crime while he was miles away at home with his unsuspecting wife.
On Saturday, February 12, 1994, as the eyes of the world were on the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, Aasheim and another man climbed a ladder at the National Gallery in Oslo, smashed a window and climbed inside, cutting the painting from the wall.
It took just 90 seconds.
At Enger’s insistence they left a postcard reading: “A thousand thanks for your poor security.”
Amid mounting pressure, Norwegian police called in the art squad at Scotland Yard in London.
Although they suspected Enger and were watching him, they had no proof, and he delighted in flooding them with anonymous tip-offs that he had the painting in his car, so they would stop him but find nothing.
When his first son was born, a few weeks after the heist, he placed a notice in a newspaper to say Oscar had been born “with a scream”.
Scotland Yard brought in undercover cop Charley Hill, who posed as an art dealer from the Getty Museum in California and arranged to meet real art dealer Einar-Tore Ulving, who was acting as a go-between, and associate Jan Olsen, in an Oslo hotel.
Olsen demanded £315,000 or the painting would be destroyed, and eventually drove Hill to the village of Aasgardstrand, where The Scream was retrieved from a chalet cellar.
Gun offences
Grytdal, in Oslo with another undercover cop, was arrested, as were Olsen, Ulving and Aasheim.
Enger, aware he was next, grabbed a gun and, incredibly, strapped his baby son to his chest before driving to a nearby petrol station, where he knew he would be followed.
He was ambushed as soon as he got out of the car.
He says: “Before I know anything, I was on the floor and the baby was taken from me.
“They drive me directly to the police station, but they don’t charge me for Scream, because they have no evidence.”
Grytdal and the other defendants walked free, as under Norwegian law, the convictions were invalid because the British police officers had used false identities.
Enger, initially charged with gun offences, was later also convicted of the theft and jailed for six years and three months — Norway’s longest ever sentence for theft.
Nowadays he is an artist in his own right, and says fans are queuing up to buy his paintings.
The Scream is now on show in the new National Museum, which cost £560million and opened last year.
With a typical lack of modesty Enger adds: “When I see the painting now it feels different, because it gets the attention it was supposed to have before I took it.
“They hung it in the corner before but now it’s in the middle.
“They built a new museum because of me.”
- The Man Who Stole The Scream is available on Sky Documentaries and NOW from August 19 at 9pm.
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YOU don’t need to steal The Scream – you can shout about our brilliant copy instead.
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The original was painted by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. He suffered severe mental health issues, which he channelled into his distinctive art. The Scream was inspired by a moment he experienced when walking with friends by Norway’s fjords, when he said he felt a “vast infinite scream tear through nature” and recalls trembling with anxiety. He made four versions of the piece – two paintings and two pastels.
The 1895 pastel was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2012 for £74million, making it one of the most expensive pieces of art ever sold. Pal Enger was not the only person who has tried to steal The Scream. The second painting, from 1910, was taken from the Munch Museum in Oslo by masked gunmen in 2004, alongside Munch’s Madonna.
Both paintings were recovered two years later and three of the robbers convicted.