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Legal Top Stories
Min-Jin Kym reunited with stolen 300 year old violin
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 31 July 2013
Acclaimed violinist Min-Jin Kym has described “an incredible feeling of elation” after her 300 year old Stradivari violin was returned over two years after it was stolen.
As previously reported, Kym’s violin was taken from a London coffee shop in December 2010. The theft was featured on the BBC’s ‘Crimewatch’ the following year, and a man and two teenagers were convicted for the crime. But the violin wasn’t recovered.
There was hope that a violin discovered in Bulgaria earlier this year might have been Kym’s instrument, but it was shown to be a fake. The real thing actually showed up in a property in the Midlands.
Det Chief Inspector Simon Taylor, who led the hunt for the violin, told the BBC: “I always maintained that its [the violin’s] rarity and distinctiveness would make any attempt to sell it extremely difficult, if not futile, because established arts and antiques dealers would easily recognise it as stolen property”.
On the find, Kym herself said: “Every moment of the day – even when I was sleeping – the loss of the instrument, the feeling of responsibility, was there. This had been the instrument I had been playing on since I was a teenager so it was a huge part of my identity for many years. [When I heard it had been found I had] an incredible feeling of elation. I’m still feeling the butterflies in my stomach”.
The instrument will be passed by police to Kym’s insurer, which paid out after the theft. But they then intend to return it to the musician herself.
