'I was going to die': Kim Kardashian shares fears as she faces Paris robbery suspects in court

Kim Kardashian said a silent prayer — for her sister, her best friend, her family — as a masked man pulled her toward him in a Paris hotel room in the 2016 jewelry heist that changed her life. She was wearing only a bathrobe. She was bound with zip ties. She thought she wouldn't survive.

"I was certain that was the moment that he was going to rape me," she told a Paris court on Tuesday. "I absolutely did think I was going to die."

The reality-TV star and business mogul said she was getting ready for bed when she heard stomping on the stairs. At first, she thought it was her sister Kourtney and a friend returning from a night out at Paris Fashion Week.

"Hello? Hello? Who is it?" she called out. Then masked men stormed the room.

She grabbed her phone but didn't know the French emergency number. She tried to call her sister and bodyguard, but one man stopped her. The men threw her on the bed, zip-tied her hands and pressed a gun to her temple.

"I have babies," Kardashian said, according to her testimony. "I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home."

She was carried into the bathroom. One man taped her mouth. She was told she'd be OK if she stayed quiet.

The last time Kardashian saw the men that police say robbed her, she was bound at gunpoint and left locked in a marble bathroom while masked assailants stole more than $6 million US ($8.4 million Cdn) in jewelry. Nearly a decade later, she returned to Paris to face them — this time from the witness stand.

WATCH | Kim Kardashian arrives at court to testify:

Celebrity Kim Kardashian was seen entering a court in France on Tuesday to offer testimony against the men accused of robbing her at gunpoint in 2016.

Her testimony marked the emotional climax of a trial that has gripped France and reignited debates about fame, privacy and what it means to live — and nearly die — in public.

At the time of the robbery, Kardashian was one of the most recognized women on the planet. She had mastered a new kind of celebrity — one broadcast in real time, post by post, to millions of followers.

But in the early hours of Oct. 3, 2016, that visibility became a weapon against her. The robbery marked a turning point for Kardashian, and for how the world understood vulnerability in the digital age.

Investigators believe the attackers followed Kardashian's digital breadcrumbs — images, timestamps, geotags — and exploited them with old-school criminal methods.

Dressed in black and wearing dark sunglasses, Kardashian stood in the packed courtroom across from her mother, Kris Jenner. Her voice broke as she thanked French authorities for "allowing me to share my truth."

She described how the attackers arrived dressed as police officers, with the concierge in handcuffs. "I thought it was some sort of terrorist attack," she said.

One attacker gestured at her diamond ring.

"He said, 'Ring! Ring!' and he pointed to his hand," she recalled.

French prosecutors say the men who orchestrated the heist — most in their 60s and 70s — were part of a seasoned criminal ring. Two of the defendants have admitted being at the scene. One claims he didn't know who she was.

Twelve suspects were originally charged. One has since died. Another was excused due to illness. The French press dubbed the group les papys braqueurs — "the grandpa robbers" — but prosecutors insist they were no harmless retirees.

They face charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and membership in a criminal gang, offences that carry the potential for life imprisonment.

Kardashian, who once shared nearly every moment of her life online, later acknowledged the role that visibility played. "People were watching," she said in a 2021 interview. "They knew what I had. They knew where I was."

After the men fled, Kardashian rubbed the tape against the bathroom sink to free her hands. With her ankles still bound, she hopped downstairs to find her friend and stylist Simone Harouche. Fearing the robbers might return, they went onto the balcony and hid in bushes. While lying there, Kardashian called her mother.

Earlier in the trial, Harouche recalled hearing Kardashian scream from upstairs: "`I need to live.' That is what she kept on saying, `Take everything. I need to live."'

Harouche locked herself in a bathroom and texted Kardashian's sister and bodyguard: "Something is very wrong." Later, she heard Kardashian struggling down the stairs. "She was beside herself," Harouche said. "She just was screaming."

Judge David De Pas asked whether Kardashian had made herself a target by posting photos of herself with "jewels of great value."

Harouche rejected the premise. "Just because a woman wears jewelry, that doesn't make her a target," she said. "That's like saying that because a woman wears a short skirt that she deserves to be raped."

After the robbery, critics like designer Karl Lagerfeld slammed Kardashian for flaunting her wealth, with Lagerfeld telling the Associated Press she was "too public" with her jewelry.

But as details emerged — the gun, the silence, the helplessness — public sentiment shifted.

"I started to get this phobia of going out," Kardashian said. "This experience really changed everything for us."

She told the court her house in Los Angeles was robbed shortly afterward, in what appeared to be a copycat attack. Without security guards, she said, "I can't even sleep at night."

She now keeps between four and six guards at home.

At the time of the 2016 robbery, she said, her bodyguard was staying in a separate hotel.

"We assumed that if we were in a hotel it was safe, it was secure."

She said Paris had once been a sanctuary, a place where she would walk alone at 3 or 4 a.m., window shopping, sometimes stopping for hot chocolate.

"It always felt really safe," she said. "It was always a magical place."

The trial is expected to end later this month.