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Gypsies stole £1.2m violin
| The next day John Maughan and his accomplices, two
teenage brothers who cannot be named, went to an
internet cafe and looked up Stradivarius and 1696, the
year it was made, to find its value. When a man next to them noticed, the Irish-born trio offered it to him for £100. But he turned them down because his daughter already had a recorder. Maughan - who has more than 40 identities and 59 convictions for theft - was arrested with the boys aged 14 and 16 four weeks later after an appeal on TV's Crimewatch. |
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| Yesterday they admitted stealing the violin, which
has still not been found. Judge Deva Pillay adjourned
sentencing at Blackfriars Crown Court and warned them:
"All options are open. Inevitably there is going to be,
I suspect, one of custody."
The theives saw Miss Kym - a South Korean-born virtuso who has performed with London's Philharmonia Orchestra - enter Euston's Pret a Manger branch with her cellist boyfriend. The boys distracted staff while Maughan, 40, swiped the case from under her table. Prosecutor Mark James-Dawson told the court Miss Kym, 32, had bought the violin ten years ago for £750,000. |
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| Highly strung ... pricey violin |
He said: "She gets a violin of this value by trading up as one would a mortgage as she's become more successful."
The accused claim the violin was stolen from them along with two bows, one worth £62,000, in a burglary in Tottenham, North London.