[Image: WonderAI]
This one definitely reads like the plot of a Guy Ritchie crime caper.
The seemingly unconnected theft of a Ming vase stolen from a Swiss museum, a shooting at a comedian’s house in London and the robbery of a luxury apartment in Kent helped police untangle a web of international organised crime that had the fuzz scratching their heads for almost six years.
The key piece of evidence? An iPad that was found under the sand on the foreshore of the River Thames just downstream from the O2 Arena.
The discovery was pivotal to the investigation that has led to three people being found guilty at the Old Bailey of the near-assassination of one of Britain’s most notorious armed robbers. Found by a police officer with a metal detector on a cold November morning last year, the iPad was found caked in mud having been underwater for more than five years.
Forensics were fortunately able to clean it and found that it still contained a pink Vodafone Sim card. Call data were also salvageable and provided damning evidence on three men – Louis Ahearne, Stewart Ahearne and Daniel Kelly – who were all involved in a heist at a museum in Switzerland a month earlier.
So fortuitous was the find that Det Supt Matthew Webb told BBC he often wondered: “Is it calamitous blunders tripping them up, or was it just they were so blasé they wouldn’t get caught?”
The Ahearne brothers and Kelly first caught the attention of police after six bullets tore through a glass conservatory at a luxury property owned by comedian Russell Kane – that had been rented out to Paul Allen – in an affluent Woodford area on 11 July 2019.
One severed one of Allen’s fingers, and the other went through his throat and became lodged in his spinal cord, leaving him struggling to breathe and bleeding profusely.
One eyewitness described seeing an unidentified man vault a low wall, run between some bushes and get straight into a waiting vehicle, which immediately sped off.
Paul Allen became infamous as a key figure in Britain’s largest-ever armed robbery. In 2006, he was part of a gang wearing balaclavas and armed with AK-47s, who threatened staff at the Securitas depot in Kent. They stole £53 million (R1.2 billion), leaving behind almost £154 million that couldn’t fit into their getaway vehicle.
After the heist, Allen allegedly fled to Morocco but was eventually arrested in Rabat along with fellow robber Lee Murray, who remains in prison. Allen was extradited to the UK in January 2008 and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was released in 2016 and returned to his home in southeast London.
Ten months later, Allen almost died during the Woodford shooting, which left him paralysed. Prosecutors believed that the Ahearnes and Kelly were the shooters in that incident, saying, “This was a meticulously researched and planned assassination attempt by a team of men well versed in the level of criminality to pull it off.”
Following up on leads, the police soon discovered that the group’s criminality stretched deep into mainland Europe.
Just one month before the shooting, the Ahearne brothers and Kelly also forced their way through the front doors of the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, where they shattered glass casings housing 14th Century Chinese Ming Dynasty antiques. The men made off three vases with a combined insured value of £2.8 million (R65 million).
The trio were eventually apprehended when police staged a sting operation under the guise of buying the vases. By this time, the popo already had evidence against the pair in the form of DNA recovered from the museum and an identity used to hire the getaway car for the museum caper.
During a seven-week trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutors argued that international burglary proved the Ahearnes and Kelly were “at the top end” of criminality.
But little did they know that while pursuing the stolen antiquities, the three would leave behind nearly similar clues to give away their presence in the Woodford shooting. DNA samples collected from the fence around the property were found to “most probably belong to Louis and Kelly.”
CCTV footage also showed one of the men hiring a Renault, which was spotted at the Woodford home, as well as a local petrol station, where the men allegedly stopped because “Louis Ahearne was thirsty.”
The men were prosecuted, but detectives would have to wait more than five years to learn how the men knew of Paul Allen’s whereabouts.
During the trial, Louis made a statement that contained one intriguing detail: While heading back to Woolwich, the Renault had stopped at John Harrison Way, with Louis saying he “hoped CCTV would be recovered from the street which would show him getting some air” while Kelly disappeared in the direction of the Thames.
Det Supt Webb recalls: “We knew the vehicle had stopped in John Harrison Way and that Kelly got out of the vehicle – but no more than that. Didn’t know where he went, didn’t know what happened – just John Harrison Way.”
“Straight away, we were thinking if somebody wants to discard something critical, it’s probably going to be a firearm.”
It was this stop that led to the iPad being discovered in the River Thames. Ironically, Kelly only found out about the retrieved device just before the trial began. By then it was too late, and the iPad proved key to unravelling everything for police.
“Talk about people being flabbergasted and gobsmacked.” Det Supt Webb told BBC. “Det Insp Matthew Freeman called me and said we have gone to the Thames and found an iPad.
“I can’t repeat the words I used but my jaw dropped. What a beautiful piece of the puzzle to put together.”
Call data showed both the iPad and an iPhone 6 belonging to Kelly had contacted a select few numbers, including the Ahearne brothers. The SIM card was also linked to GPS tracking devices, which were found inside a car when Louis and Kelly were arrested in August 2019.
Email accounts were then linked to Kelly and a close associate. From that, police were able to examine 59 Amazon and eBay purchases – some included unregistered Nokia burner phones used to communicate in the murder plot.
Confronted with this evidence, all three men were each found guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder and will be sentenced on 25 April, bringing an end to their careers as international criminals.
Sometimes, it helps to have a little luck on your side. But not for these okes.
[Source: BBC]
