Robber jailed over £500,000 Rolex heist at luxury Gleneagles Hotel
Written by News on 10/01/2020
An armed thief who stole hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of jewellery from a hotel has been jailed for more than 11 years.
Dean Jones, 39, was one of three masked men who smashed up a shop in the luxury Gleneagles Hotel in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, and made off with Rolex watches worth £516,750.
The gang were armed with large hammers, a machete and what appeared to be a handgun when they raided the premises in June 2017.
They brandished their weapons at hotel staff and guests before heading to the Mappin & Webb jewellery boutique.
CCTV footage of the two-minute raid was played to the High Court in Edinburgh and showed a shop assistant taking cover and hiding behind a mirrored door disguised as a panel in the shop.
The robbers then smashed each of the glass cabinets in the boutique before stashing the Rolex watches into bags.
Judge Lady Carmichael told the court “none have been recovered”.
The trio fled the scene before abandoning the Audi A4 they had used to drive to the hotel.
Jones’ DNA was found throughout the car and on a hammer left inside, despite attempts to remove forensic evidence from the vehicle.
The burglars then got into a nearby-parked Range Rover with fake number plates and travelled to Glasgow Central Station to board a train to London, where Jones lived with his partner and one of his children.
Within hours of returning to London, Jones boarded an easyJet flight to Malaga before flying to Morocco and Turkey in his bid to escape justice.
Detectives managed to trace his movements and he was detained by police at a Sao Paulo Airport after boarding a flight to Brazil – just one week before the other culprits were due to go on trial.
Jones spent months in a Brazilian prison before being extradited to the UK to face charges.
On Friday, he entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 11 years and four months in prison, with the sentence backdated to August 2018 when he was detained in Brazil.
When sentencing Jones, Lady Carmichael described the robbery as “an act of serious, premeditated criminality”.
She added she “could see no reason to distinguish” Jones from fellow robber Liam Richardson – who is Jones’ stepbrother and was jailed in October 2018 for the same amount of time.
The third man, Richard Fleming, was given an 18-year sentence with an extended three-year licence period.
Jones’ defence lawyer said his client had been unemployed and in debt “when he stupidly agreed to take part”, adding that although he had an extensive criminal record, he had no previous convictions for violence.
Following the sentencing, David Green, procurator fiscal for major crime and homicide, said Jones “was part of a gang that armed themselves and committed a violent robbery in broad daylight”.
He added: “This has been a long-running case for the Crown Office and it is thanks to the work of police and prosecutors, working with global law enforcement, that he has been brought back to Scotland to face justice.”
(c) Sky News 2020: Robber jailed over £500,000 Rolex heist at luxury Gleneagles Hotel
