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## What Happened to the Men Involved
Vincenzo Peruggia returned to France after his release. He served in the Italian army during World War I. After the war, he returned to France, eventually settling in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris. He used the name Pietro Peruggia rather than his full given name during this period.
He died on October 8, 1925 — his forty-fourth birthday — of a heart attack. He was buried in the Condé Cemetery in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés. By the time of his death, the man who had hidden the Mona Lisa in a Paris apartment for two years had largely faded from public consciousness. The case had been resolved more than a decade earlier. The painting was back in the Louvre. He had served his time and resumed an ordinary life.
Alfredo Geri, the Florentine antique dealer who had received the letter from “Leonardo V.” and arranged the meeting that led to Peruggia’s arrest, was initially celebrated as a hero of the recovery. He had been alert enough to take the improbable letter seriously, cautious enough to bring in Poggi for authentication, and brave enough to contact the police while Peruggia was still present. The recovery of the painting from his hotel room would not have happened without Geri’s judgment.
However, Geri’s standing in the story subsequently became complicated by a question of reward. The Louvre had offered a substantial reward for information leading to the painting’s recovery. Geri and Poggi claimed that reward. The award was disputed, delayed, and eventually paid in a reduced amount after negotiations. The reward dispute became a minor footnote in the larger story, but it illustrated the way that the theft’s resolution created its own secondary conflicts over who deserved credit and compensation.