The precious trinkets lifted from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum sometime this summer may have been purloined by staff members, museum officials say. “The items had not been insured because they were in storage; only exhibited artworks at the Hermitage are insured. Prosecutors have opened a criminal case but police say there remains a possibility the items, dating from the 15th to 18th centuries, had gone missing internally as a result of the museum’s chaotic catologuing, and might yet be recovered.”