Episode 9 Robbed, Raided, Reunited

We're on the case of a crime that affects 1.5 million of us every year - burglary.

Coming up...

Just gutted. Come home and found it like this. I'm still shaking now.

..we're with police as they hunt down criminals.

Police!

And we'll show you how much it means

when stolen goods are reunited with their rightful owner.

I had that tingling up the spine, and I thought, "Crikey, this is unreal."

It's absolutely unreal.

It's six in the morning in Hatfield in Hertfordshire, and DS Kerry Bull

is briefing his team ahead of a raid.

Morning, everyone. Welcome to Operation Scorpion.

This is part of an investigation into a conspiracy to commit burglary.

Their target is a prolific and convicted burglar

suspected of being involved in up to 100 break-ins.

Although he's already on probation, he's believed to be

part of a three-strong gang of thieves who use hire cars to go out and commit burglaries.

He's thought to be responsible for £56,000 worth of stolen goods.

We believe that he is breaking into houses in Hitchin,

the metropolitan area, and north Herts.

We will look to arrest him on suspicion of a conspiracy to burgle,

and do some methodical searching of all of the premises

that we know that he occupies or controls.

We believe that the suspect is staying with his mother,

so that will be the address that we try first.

That is in the Letchworth area.

We've managed to secure some evidence on this guy's mobile phone,

and it's vitally important that we recover that mobile phone today.

The police are increasingly making use of evidence gained from mobile

phones and in this particular case, the suspect's phone could be

the key to placing him at the scene of the burglaries.

Every time you make or receive a call or text message,

what will happen is your phone will look for the nearest mast

in order that it can transmit that signal.

By doing that, obviously it locates your handset, your phone,

to a particular geographical area of the country, and the great thing is that we can put

somebody in an area of the country, or in the same street where an

offence has taken place, hopefully at the time of that particular offence.

Kerry's colleague, DC Simon Reed-Purvis is on the raid team.

He's been an officer for 20 years and feels a great

sense of duty to bring burglars to justice.

These people don't realise the impact they have on people's lives.

The sentimental value of the jewellery that's stolen,

there's all sorts of things that go through their minds,

and the victim is very important in this.

Years ago when I was at school, they burgled our house in Durham and nicked the car.

You know, you come down in the morning and you find your school shoes have been stolen.

So, it's...

It's not a faceless crime. It's one that people want to put a face to,

and that's what we try and do.

It's 6.50am, and Simon's about to lead the officers to their suspect's door.

They will just give the door a tap.

If they answer the door and we get in, fine,

if not, they'll use force to enter.

This experienced team know that

catching the suspect unawares early in the morning is often the key to success.

They believe he's staying at his mother's flat.

KNOCK AT DOOR

Police with a warrant, open the door.

WOMAN YELPS Police!

-WOMAN YELLS

-Bloody hell!

We're here to execute a warrant.

As I explained, this is your address, this is what we want to search, OK?

We want to search the property in connection with a criminal offence like theft.

The suspect is calm and compliant, and promptly arrested.

You're nicked for burglary, that's the bottom line, yeah?

You are nicked on suspicion of being concerned in some burglaries.

Ain't done nothing wrong. I don't need to call anyone.

You know how it works. We'll ask you a couple of questions.

Whether you answer the questions or not is your decision, yeah?

And then we'll move on.

-Go on, mate.

-Ta-ra.

-Love you.

Although the suspect doesn't want to leave, Simon needs him out of the way.

He's taken back to the police station whilst the remaining officers

do a thorough search of his mother's flat.

We are not only looking for stolen items,

but also what they have been wearing, as well,

because quite often that's the only evidence

we can go on at a crime scene is fibres left behind or from CCTV.

It's not only clothing that the team are interested in.

When people go out burgling, they leave shoe prints

in gardens where they walk through the mud to get to windows.

They also transfer prints onto windowsills

and also leave them inside the property,

so it can potentially be good evidence for us

to link a burglar to a scene.

But the officers then find something really worrying.

It's normal to have an axe in your lounge under the sofa, isn't it(?)

I normally find, like, Jelly Babies and old sweets.

Doesn't look like a lumberjack to me.

He wanted to stay because he wanted to see what we'd seized.

It's human nature. You want to know what you're going to be spoken to about.

You don't know what you might have found.

There might be something he's been a little worried about,

and if we found that in his presence, he may well be able to come up

with a story as to how it got there.

And the suspect would definitely need to come up with

a credible story to explain what the officers find next.

Just found a bag. Looks like his burglar kit, I would suggest.

-So we've got the hat there.

-The gloves.

-Crowbar.

-Like I say, we've got the crowbar.

-Hammer.

He's got this with some discs on, so he's obviously been cutting into some padlocks or metal.

-Potentially cut in from the...

-Yeah, exactly.

That's handy. Well done. Good find.

Why would you have a crowbar and gloves, woolly hat,

angle grinder all in one bag? It's your burglar's kit, isn't it?

It's not against the law to have that in your house,

it just points towards them being used for illegal purposes.

The team's found some useful evidence here to

establish that the suspect is indeed a burglar.

But apart from getting forensic evidence,

their main priority is to find the suspect's mobile phone,

because the data could hold the best evidence to put him

in the right place at the right time for the burglaries.

There's a number of mobile phones

that we've found that may link back to victims.

Although the officers have found some phones at the flat which

could be stolen, they really need to find

the suspect's personal mobile.

Finally, the breakthrough they've been hoping for.

We think we've found the mobile phone. It's there next to his bed.

If I were a betting man, I would say that's... That's the bad boy.

You know, we're only eight o'clock, so it's an hour and a half

into the investigation. Quite a long way to go yet.

It's a great result.

Simon can take the phone back to the police station for data analysis.

We got the phone back from the raid this morning. Fantastic.

It is the handset we were expecting.

What we can say is that that phone has been

present at a number of burglary scenes.

We know that the calls he made prior to and after being at those scenes

are to his known associates, so we can say with a degree of certainty

that we can put him at those crime scenes, which is fantastic for us.

And as a bonus, the police can also see that the suspect has been

texting a member of the gang at the precise time of one of the burglaries.

There is an incoming text from his associate,

and it's sent at a time

when we know they were in the act of committing a burglary,

and the text you read there is, "Is the back gate locked?"

What that does, it indicates that they are actually there together.

One is actually acting as lookout

and the second one has gone round the rear of the premises.

The mobile phone has also uncovered some unexpected evidence -

photographs the suspect and his gang have

taken of each other, boasting about their crimes.

This particular offender is clearly living a champagne lifestyle.

Pictures of him and his friends in hotels,

large amounts of money, a number of expensive watches.

And we are looking to see whether we can identify any of the items

that are on his pictures as to whether they are from different crime scenes around the south-east.

There's still some police work to do but at this stage, it does

appear that this suspect's bravado has been his final downfall.

We are experts in what we do in terms of building conspiracies, and of course it's about layering.

And one layer of information the police have found is

CCTV of the burglary gang together at a petrol station

near the scene of one of the crimes.

They think they are being clever in that they hired a car

so that there is no direct trace back to them,

but what it does do, it gives us

an evidential opportunity to show that they associate together,

and when you look at the images from inside the filling station

you can see all three of them together.

Any investigation is like a jigsaw puzzle.

The more pieces of that jigsaw we get, the clearer the picture we can

present to the Crown Prosecution Service and/or ultimately to a jury.

87% of people who've been burgled say they've been emotionally affected by what happened.

It's common to feel angry and shocked,

and to be left feeling vulnerable in your own home.

In Basildon in Essex, DC Alex Gartshore is on his way to an emergency call-out.

He's been an officer for over 29 years

and has seen the aftermath of many burglaries.

Yeah, we got the call.

Gentleman came home and seen the lounge had been turned upside-down.

Upstairs the bedrooms are all ransacked.

There would appear to be jewellery missing, possibly some cash as well.

Pensioner Brian had just returned home

when he spotted something was very wrong.

I seen my front door latch was skewwhiff, it wasn't straight.

And then when I come in, the first bit I see was all down here.

They've tipped all the drawers and that out,

and then my bedroom upstairs, it's in a right state.

They've pulled everything out.

I had a few thousand pounds in envelopes

and they pulled everything out. I had it in between jumpers.

Brian's son Terry has come around to comfort his dad.

He's shocked at the state of his parents' home.

You can see...what they've done in here.

He had a fair bit of gold, and the gold has gone.

As you can see with the mess, we still haven't gone right through

to find out what the last nitty-gritty has gone.

Terry's devastated that the thieves have chosen to strike at this time.

His mother Joan is in hospital having a hip replacement,

and the worry is taking its toll on Brian.

I'm just gutted.

Gutted it's happened, and I just want him to hurry up

and get back on track. My mum don't know nothing about it.

We've got to try and keep it from her for a little while because she is so ill.

It's upsetting. It's upsetting.

There's got to be some stuff here gone

that's gone way back from my mum's mum, her aunts, her mum...

You get certain things through the family, through the years, passed down,

and it means more than what it's worth.

And that... There's certain stuff here, it's not going to be replaced, ever.

Brian and Terry are still trying to work out what's missing.

Alex starts to take down a statement.

Your wife's jewellery box, you said there were sovereigns in there?

Yeah, there was gold chains, sovereigns. Mounted sovereigns.

-How many sovereigns, do we think?

-Three.

-Three sovereigns?

Although the burglars have taken quite a valuable

collection of jewellery, it's the emotional impact of losing

family treasures that has hurt Brian the most.

Things that can never be replaced.

My mum's jewellery that I had, my dad's rings that I had,

they're all gone.

My mum had two sovereigns, my wife had her sovereign.

Me and my dad bought them down the gold market.

We went down there and bought them the same day.

So there is a lot of sentimental stuff there. I'm just gutted.

Come home from seeing my wife in hospital, and found it like this.

I'm still shaking now.

Alex needs to work with the father and son

to establish what forensic evidence there might be.

-So this window was actually open?

-Yeah.

I imagine he's climbed up on the bin with a view to sort of jemmy the window.

Amazingly, the burglars have left quite a clear footmark

on the windowsill, and it's Alex's priority to preserve it.

We've got a nice footprint there, so what I've done is put the wood over there.

If you can make sure when the scenes of crime officer arrives you point that out to him.

What I don't want to happen is, obviously if it rains or anything like that, for that to wash away.

The scenes of crime officer is busy dealing with other

incidents in the area, and can't come immediately,

so Alex has to make sure that the evidence remains untouched.

That would be collected by the scenes of crime officer when he arrives.

He'll cover that over and lift that,

and that'll be taken away as a complete lifting off the windowsill.

And then if we get a suspect in custody, as you are aware,

we always do the shoe prints for known burglars.

That can be compared against those shoes.

Alex leaves Brian and Terry in peace to try and come to terms with what's happened.

The next morning, scenes of crime officer Leo Thompson arrives

to discover what clues the thieves may have left behind.

He heads straight to the footprint left on the windowsill.

These are the gel lifters that we use for picking up footprints.

It brings up all of the detail.

Combined with the photography,

gives us a way of taking all this information away from the scene.

The hope is that the footprint will match a known burglar

already on the police database.

You do get to know a lot of trainer prints.

This one, unfortunately, isn't a whole trainer print,

and it's a little bit smudged, but the people in the laboratory back

at headquarters, they would be able to hopefully match it up accurately.

Although the footprint may be a great clue to discovering

the identity of the burglar, Leo won't stop there.

He spotted tool marks on the patio door and takes a cast of each one.

You won't see much from that, but the slight damage that you can see

here and here has all been recorded.

That can be matched in a laboratory to a tool at a later date

if we get a suspect or the tool that we think did it.

With Leo's investigations outside finished,

he comes into the house to check for clues in the bedroom,

where the burglars have ransacked the normally tidy space.

Where I had my money was here.

I had about ten or 12 Pringle jumpers there,

and it was in amongst the jumpers.

And they've just pull them out like that and...

-Here's one of the envelopes.

-The cash was in there, was it?

There was one and a half in that one, some in my wife's book,

that's gone, and I had a £3,000 envelope

where I'd sort of added to it. I'd sort of build it up to that.

Once it got 3,000, it was a bit thick so I started another envelope.

It's a risky business to store this amount of cash at home, and even if the crime is solved,

it's unlikely that Brian will ever see his money again.

But losing his wife's precious jewellery

is what's really upsetting him.

I mean, my wife's engagement ring, it would have still been on her finger,

but because she has had two operations in the hospital,

and they won't allow jewellery on the person...

The wedding ring she's got, because they tape that up and allow you to keep that,

but her engagement ring was on the little cabinet upstairs.

That's gone.

But she's had that on her finger for 50-odd years.

Although there's no way Leo can solve the crime immediately,

he is happy with the evidence he's gathered.

This crime scene has got potential, basically.

It's not always possible to say at the time where things

are going to go, but the tool marks are very good, they are good quality.

The shoe print has got some potential.

It really is a case of typing everything up,

going back to the station, logging all the exhibits

and then speaking to the burglary squad officers.

Leo may be hopeful about finding matches for the footprint

and tool marks, but in the meantime, Brian has to deal with

the heartache that the burglars have left behind.

Well, I would describe them as scum, aren't they?

Come into a place and ransack the person's home.

That's got to be with me for days, all this that I've got to clear up.

I still feel a bit shaky, but not as bad as what I was last night.

The victims of burglary often report that the worst part of the crime

is the distress felt when they lose an item of huge sentimental value.

And that's something one resident of Wimborne on the south coast

wanted to shout from the rooftops about.

HE CRIES: There is a town in Dorset, which you ought to know.

The people are so friendly, as on their way they go.

They might be friendly, but Chris Brown has reason to believe

there's a bad apple determined to upset his town crying cart.

In June 2012, he had his beloved bell stolen at the local folk festival.

I was devastated.

When I ring the bell, it's that point in time when my persona changes.

It's like walking on stage.

I did feel like, you know, I'd been kicked below the belt, really.

And what's a town crier without his bell?

-BELL RINGS

-O yea! O yea!

Fellow crier Owen Collier from Wootton Bassett knows better

than most that without this essential piece of kit,

Chris had effectively lost his voice.

To actually take the town crier's bell, I think it's a

pretty mean trick, because it's the main tool of the trade.

It's your badge of office, otherwise people don't know

whether you are a mayor, a mace bearer, a sword bearer.

It's like being a dentist without having a drill.

Family man and former social worker Chris is a well-loved character about town.

Since moving to Wimborne with his family 15 years ago, he's thrown

himself into community life, playing a vital role in the Mayor's office.

I do believe it's an honour to represent the town

and to hold a position like this.

It's something I'm very, very proud of doing.

There are some formal duties,

so to protect and uphold the name of the town and the council,

and as town sergeant as well, I hold the commission to raise

a militia in the town.

The town criers belong to a tight-knit community,

and Chris's old friend Owen is one of his biggest fans.

We appeared roughly on the town crier scene at the same time,

about 2003. And we've both served our towns for 11 years.

Chris is a great crier, he's got quite a distinctive voice.

Fiercely competitive on the competition circuit,

but we can still go and enjoy a beer afterwards.

And Chris is a popular DJ at Wimborne Folk Festival.

Every year he turns up in full town crier regalia,

and, of course, brings his bell.

It was the Friday evening that we'd got everything set up

and ready to roll, and the gig had started.

We had lots of really good musicians playing.

But sadly, amongst the happy revellers, a party goer with

an altogether different agenda was watching Chris's every move.

I always carry my bell in a little satchel,

and I always keep it with me. It's part of the act, as well.

I took the bag off and just put it down underneath the table

right next to the edge of the marquee.

And as Chris went about his DJing, the sneaky thief seized their moment.

By about 12.30 I was ready to go home and went for my bag

and the bell, and it wasn't there.

It just wasn't there. I was devastated, to be honest.

This bell means a lot me, so it was really upsetting.

But in a tent full of people who knew Chris and his bell,

how did the cheeky culprit make their escape?

I've got a suspicion whoever did it jumped up on the wall here

and went over that fence,

because that following morning, that fence was broken.

I'm so well-known here and everybody is my friend, really,

I didn't expect anything like this to happen.

But this wasn't just the loss of something that meant a lot to Chris.

The bell had an important historical value, too.

It was from the First World War and it was a trench bell that was

used for warning of gas attacks, and so it's particularly loud.

It would have to be loud to overcome all the gunfire.

And there aren't very many of them known to have survived.

And Chris wasn't the only one to miss his special bell.

It's been with me now for over ten years,

and I've been all around Europe with it, and my children have helped me

ring the bell on many occasions, and so it's really part of the family.

Determined to get his beloved bell back,

Chris started shouting as loudly as he could about his loss.

I phoned the police and they said, "Go around and see

"if you can put the word out, but make it as obvious and public as you can.

"You know, the harder it is to sell it on,

"the more likely you are to get it back."

Chris tried battle re-enactment groups, auction houses, and antique dealers.

And, as a part-time DJ with his own radio show,

he used the airwaves to make the local community aware, too.

Some of you may have heard already, but I had my bell stolen at the Wimborne Folk Festival

and I'd like you all to keep your eyes and ears open for it. It very distinctive.

The folk of Wimborne all rallied round,

and Chris's town sergeant powers of raising a militia actually came into being.

With the invention of social network media,

I started using those sites and putting up photographs,

and a lot of people were reposting it, so there was a lot

of public support and a lot of newspapers and the radio helped me.

It was brilliant the way everybody supported me

and worked hard to try and get it back.

But the bell was still missing,

and Chris began to wonder if what he thought of initially as a prank

was actually a more serious bid to earn the thief some money.

Some of the people that are stealing stuff at the moment, they don't

know the true value of things, and they'll melt down anything.

The value of it is what it is and the history with it.

But without any information coming forward from local scrap

metal dealers, Chris's search was no further on.

After ten days I had given up, you know.

If it was going to come back, I think it would have come back fairly quickly.

But just as Chris was about to throw in his town crying towel,

his old friend Owen came to the rescue.

I parked my car outside the house.

As I walked past Chris's car that was parked on the drive,

my wife said to me, "There is Chris's bell and bag."

So I picked up the leather bag and the bell and brought it in.

And I said, "This is what I've just found under your car."

I was shaking, I was physically shaking.

I had that tingling up my spine, and I thought, "Crikey, this is unreal."

It's absolutely unreal.

I don't think he thought in a million years that he would ever recover it.

Obviously somebody had a conscience and returned it.

And it might have been thanks to some business cards

left inside his bag, that Chris's bell was delivered

to his home for a reunion - a full 16 days after it'd gone missing.

O yea!

There used to be a railway, sadly it is no longer there,

but there is a town crier who stands proudly in the square.

It was amazing, an absolutely incredible feeling.

I really, really never thought I'd see it again.

Ding a ling, Chris! What a result.

There's just time for an update on today's stories.

In Hertfordshire, DS Kerry Bull and his team

secured a two-year prison sentence for the burglar they arrested.

The prolific thief was convicted of three burglaries

and his two accomplices received prison sentences, too.

One got two and a half years, and the other got three.

The main suspect has agreed to take part in Hertfordshire's

Choices And Consequences programme - the first of its kind in the country.

It offers career criminals the chance to break free

from a life of crime by admitting all past offences

and undertaking an extensive rehabilitation regime.

The court then decides if their sentence should be deferred.

If you understand why they have got into crime,

and you understand what triggers make them commit crime,

then you can come up with a plan to try and turn them

away from crime and break that offending cycle.

In Basildon, Essex, the burglar's footprint sadly hasn't led to

Brian being reunited with his stolen family jewellery or his money.

But he has taken the opportunity to upgrade the security at his home

and no longer keeps cash at his house.

And in the case of the Wimborne town crier,

the culprit was never found, but Chris Brown has a few

words of warning for whoever stole his beloved bell.

You were a bit of a naughty scallywag, weren't you?

And I hope you don't do that sort of thing to anybody else again.

That's all from us today. We'll see you next time.

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