Along with two other criminals, a violent gang member who once threatened to use pliers to amputate Ashley Cole’s fingers during a frightening heist at knifepoint was also found guilty of stealing the £3.5 million Portland Diamond tiara.
At Nottingham Crown Court today, Kurtis Dilks, 35, was found guilty of using cable ties to tie up footballer Mr. Cole and his girlfriend at his £3 million property in Fetcham, Surrey.
Along with being one of the three thieves at the centre of the tiara robbery in November 2018, he was a member of a group who used a sledgehammer to break into the home of former England player Ashley Cole.
Cole, a former defender for Arsenal, Chelsea, and Derby, told police that he knew “now I am going to die” as he described how the masked assailants bound his hands behind his back in January 2020 while he was carrying his little daughter.
Dilks’ DNA was found on the cable ties that were used to confine Cole and his companion, Sharon Canu, according to evidence presented at Nottingham Crown Court, making him the sole member of the group responsible for the crime to be apprehended.
But Dilks was also found guilty today of stealing the Portland Tiara, a £3.5 million tiara worn during Edward VII’s coronation that has never been discovered, together with Ashley Cumberpatch and Andrew MacDonald.
The “national treasure” and its corresponding brooch were stolen from the Harley Gallery on the Welbeck Estate in Worksop in 2018, which the court heard was a “shocking event” and that they would never be seen in their original condition again.
The 35-year-old courier said that the cable ties and knife seized at the scene in Fetcham, Surrey, in connection with the Ashley Cole heist had his DNA since they had been taken from his vehicle earlier.
Dilks, a resident of Clifton, was found guilty along with five other defendants for their parts in a series of robberies and break-ins that were “ruthlessly executed” between October 2018 and January 2020.
Dilks was found guilty of plotting with co-defendants Ashley Cumberpatch and Andrew MacDonald to rob the wife of former Tottenham Hotspur footballer Tom Huddlestone in May 2019 in addition to the attack on Cole and the theft of the tiara.
When the attackers broke into the residence as Mr. Cole was holding his small daughter and watched Netflix, they bound his hands.
When police unexpectedly came, the gang ran off while threatening to use electrician’s pliers to chop off his fingers.
According to testimony given in a prior court case, they forced him downstairs and gave him the impression that they were going to burn him alive or put acid in his face to prepare him for the torture.
In a previous hearing , Mr Cole sobbed as he told detectives in an interview played to the court: ‘I was on my knees, waiting to either be killed… I’ll never see my kids again.
‘The aggressive guy was shouting. ‘You are f****** lying to me, I am gonna do you’.
‘He kept saying, ‘Let me cut his hands. Let me cut his fingers. Give me his fingers’.’
The raid on Cole’s luxury property was particularly shocking – with the 41-year-old telling police how he feared he would be ‘set alight or murdered’ in front of children Grace and Jaxon, and partner Sharon Canu.
In a video interview Cole gave to detectives that was played to the jury, he described how the men wearing camouflage clothing and balaclavas burst into his home late at night as he started to watch a movie with Ms Canu in their bedroom.
Cole said he thought he was ‘going to die’ as he helplessly watched the gang run across his lawn, adding: ‘I have kids in the house, I have no help, it is just us now.’
CCTV footage showed Cole then being led downstairs by the men – who demanded to know where his ‘cleaning products’ were.
He told detectives: ‘I am thinking they are gonna put bleach on my face or burn me or set me alight.’
But bizarrely, one of the gang members sprayed Febreze, an odour eliminator, over his hands in an apparent bid to destroy DNA evidence, before moving him back upstairs – where Ms Canu ‘begged’ the men to leave.
Finally, the family’s nightmare ended when police arrived and rang the home’s entry buzzer – causing the raiders to ‘literally run off’.
They fled with five designer watches, a BMW smart key, headphones, a Gucci handbag, and mobile telephones – with Cole saying: ‘I was happy they hadn’t touched my kids. It was like a film.’
He will be sentenced next Friday.
Detective Inspector Gayle Hart, the senior investigating officer in the case for Nottinghamshire Police, said Mr Cole and his partner Sharon Canu are likely to ‘feel the after effects of what has happened for quite some time’.
Commenting on what the couple had to go through, DI Hart said: ‘The court heard from Mr Cole and his partner in their testimony, which was very powerful, where they genuinely thought they were going to die, given the circumstances.
‘It was absolutely horrific and they do still feel the effects of that.
‘People want to feel safe in their homes so that’s very difficult.
‘It’s the same for all the victims really, this hasn’t gone away for them at all, they are all still dealing with the after effects and these people invading their homes.
‘It is quite horrific so they are all still feeling the after effects of what has happened and probably will for quite some time.’
Speaking about the gang, DI Hart said: ‘They are certainly dangerous. There’s clearly some planning around this case, as we’ve heard around some of the reconnaissance on some of the victims.
‘They’ve gone very planned – the type of clothing where you can’t get recognised, the weapons they’ve taken, the tools they’ve used to get into the premises with things like ladders and sledgehammers, the actions they’ve taken to try and clean some of the areas up at the scenes, using cleaning products to try and eliminate any forensic evidence.
‘A very well thought out group of people, and will definitely use violence.
‘So, yes, a very dangerous group of people.’
Asked if she had a message for anyone considering similar attacks on high-profile individuals, DI Hart said: ‘I would certainly say that Nottinghamshire Police have done some excellent work with regard to this case.
‘They’ve continued with the tenacity and the dedication and diligence of this to get this to resolution at court.
‘So be assured if anybody else is out there planning something similar, we will be on them.
‘We will follow them, we will catch them and we will prosecute them.’
Ashley Cumberpatch, Kurtis Dilks and Andrew MacDonald were all also unanimously found guilty today of stealing the Portland Tiara.
The 6th Duke of Portland commissioned Cartier to create the tiara for his wife Winifred, Duchess of Portland.
She wore the diamond-encrusted headpiece, whose centrepiece is the Portland Diamond, to the coronation of King Edward, the Queen’s great-grandfather, in 1902.
Cumberpatch and MacDonald were also convicted alongside jewellers Tevfik Guccuk and Sercan Evsin, and co-defendant Christopher Yorke, of converting criminal property following the theft.
Prosecutor Michael Brady QC told jurors the items stolen during the burglary were passed to professional handlers Guccuk and Evsin, who were tasked with selling them.
The court heard it is thought the tiara and brooch were taken out of the country by Guccuk to his native Turkey after they were dropped off at an ‘ostensibly legitimate jewellery business’, Paris Jewels, in Hatton Garden, London, in November 2018.
Guccuk, who had papers to confirm he was a trader, told jurors his trip to Istanbul was for a rescheduled wedding and that he travels to the city regularly for business.
It is understood his flight was from London Heathrow Airport, and that the 41-year-old would have taken the items in his hand luggage.
Speaking of how the items would have been disposed of in his opening to the jury, Mr Brady said: ‘Those responsible for this part of what was highly sophisticated criminal offending, Evsin and Guccuk, operated an ostensibly legitimate jewellery business in Hatton Garden.
‘Such was the value and conspicuous nature of some of the items stolen that it was not possible to sell them in the UK.
‘The inference to be drawn from the evidence is that at times the property had to be disposed of abroad.’
Police rumbled the gang after detectives connected Go-Pro footage of the Harley Gallery, seized from Cumberpatch’s home in October 2017, with the theft. During the 10-week trial, the prosecution was able to prove the footage demonstrated a reconnaissance attempt by the 37-year-old ‘in plain sight’.
At the time the footage was seized, detectives were investigating Cumberpatch for possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence – namely a sawn-off shotgun found in a 95-year-old woman’s garden.
He was jailed for seven years for the offence in September 2019. Addressing the theft of the tiara in his opening, Mr Brady said: ‘It is difficult to overstate the importance and cultural value of these pieces of jewellery.
‘Other works of art that formed part of the same collection included masterpieces by Michelangelo, van Dyck, Stubbs and a pearl earring worn by Charles I at his execution.
‘These were trophy pieces of the gallery’s exhibition – extremely valuable, unique and of significant historical importance.
‘They were displayed for the public’s enjoyment. Their theft is a shocking event and means that they will never again be seen in their original state.’
On July 15, sentences will be given to all six offenders who were found guilty in relation to the theft of the tiara.
Today it was also revealed that a stroke of “absolutely fantastic luck” enabled cops to apprehend a violent gang when they stormed a jeweler’s 15 minutes after goods taken from a footballer’s home were delivered there.
Following discovering connections between the store and the 2018 theft of the Portland Tiara from the Harley Gallery in Nottinghamshire, the Nottinghamshire Police filed a search warrant for Paris Jewels in Hatton Garden, London.
On May 2, 2019, the police executed the search warrant without being aware of any connections to the night before’s robbery at the Caythorpe, Nottinghamshire, house of former Tottenham Hotspur and Derby County footballer Tom Huddlestone.
Officers discovered a bag of stolen, expensive items, including an FA Cup runners-up medal, behind the counter in the store, according to Detective Inspector Gayle Hart, who oversaw the investigation.
Only 15 minutes after the bag was left at the home, according to CCTV evidence, police arrived.
Speaking about the execution of the warrant, DI Hart said: ‘The inquiry team went down to London and while we were there we actually identified a jewellers we thought was likely to be involved.
‘A short time later we went back to that jewellers, which was Paris Jewels, and executed a search warrant and while there we recovered some stolen property, which we later identified as the majority of the stolen property from the Caythorpe burglary.
‘So we recognised that actually that was a burglary in Nottinghamshire, a tie-up robbery, and that the goods had turned up within 12 hours at Paris Jewels.
‘So that opened the investigation up really to look at what other burglaries had happened in Nottinghamshire and their movements within London, and we found that there was a significant pattern there.
‘That then opened it up around other suspects involved.’
Addressing the good fortune involved in linking the cases together, DI Hart said: ‘It was a bit of absolutely fantastic luck. ‘This really was the breakthrough to link all these jobs together.
‘So in terms of the Caythorpe tie-up robbery, that actually occurred on May 1 and the investigation team were currently down in London, so we were planning to execute our warrant on May 2, and indeed that’s what we did.
‘We actually went into the jewellery shop just after 11 o’clock that morning, and we’ve since learned that the property from that burglary in Caythorpe had clearly been delivered in the early hours of that morning, immediately after that burglary.
‘Then we recovered it in the shop probably only 15 minutes after it had landed in the shop.
‘The police then walked through the door and executed the warrant. So some good fortune, definitely.’