Kim Kardashian detailed her experience during her robbery in Paris in 2016, including the fear sister Kourtney Kardashian would return to the hotel to find Kim dead.

Kim Kardashian is recounting the night of her robbery in Paris.

While sharing testimony on May 13 as part of the trial for the 2016 robbery, among the harrowing details the Kardashians star recounted was the moment she thought the intruders were going to kill her—and the fear she felt that her sister Kourtney Kardashian would be the one to find her body.

After recounting having been tied up with a gun to her head, Kim told the court, according to the BBC, “At that point I was sure that’s when they were going to shoot me. So I said a prayer for my family and my mom and my sister and best friend.”

She imagined Kourtney—who was with her in Paris but not present for the robbery—returning to the hotel room and finding her dead.

“I would be dead on the bed, shot dead, and she would see that and have that memory forever,” the SKIMS founder explained, per NBC News, adding of Kourtney, mom Kris Jenner and friend Simone Harouche, the latter of whom was in a different part of the hotel suite at the time of the robbery, “I hoped they would have an OK life after.”

When asked by presiding judge David De Pas if she thought she was going to die that night, Kim affirmed, “I absolutely thought I was going to die.”

Kim told the court that the robbers pulled her from room to room in search of her jewelry before leaving her—hands and feet tied together, with tape over her mouth—on the floor of a bathroom in the suite.

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The 44-year-old said after waiting a few minutes after it seemed the intruders—five of whom face armed robbery and kidnapping charges, per Reuters, while five others are charged with complicity in the heist—had left, she got herself over to the sink and used it to get the tape off her hands.

“I was able to get the hand tape off and then I hopped down to find Simone,” Kim continued, noting the stylist helped her remove the remaining bindings before Kim encouraged the pair to hide among the bushes on the suite’s balcony, in fear the robbers might return.

“I remember calling my mum from the bushes to let her know what happened,” Kim explained, “and then I think while we were waiting for my security to come Simone and I were trying to come up with a plan—if they come back should we just jump out the window?”

ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images

Once police arrived, the reality star recounted feeling distrust as the intruders had been dressed as officers

She recalled being “in a state of shock,” adding, “Wondering who I can trust, what if one of them is dressed like police but is really in on it?”

Kim detailed how the event altered her life. Whereas she used to travel with one bodyguard who would stay in a separate hotel, now Kim noted even at home in California, “I can’t even sleep at night if I know there’s not multiple security.”

For more on what the business mogul has said about the chilling encounter, keep reading.

(E! and NBC News are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)

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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.’”

Marc Piasecki/Getty Images

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 Kardashian/Instagram

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.”

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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.

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The Girls’ Lounge

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.”

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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.”

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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.”

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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. “

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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!’”

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

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.”