Jewellery worth €190,000 sold for €500 of heroin

A burglar who stole a safe containing €190,000 worth of jewellery which he sold “as scrap” for €500 worth of heroin has been jailed for four years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Gerry Connors, aged 28, told gardaí he had hopped over the garden wall of the house in Killiney, Dublin, to urinate and peered in a window. He spotted a glass jar full of coins and smashed a window with a rock.

He then went through the house and discovered the safe, which also had €10,000 in various currencies, in a press.

He told gardaí that he and his friends left in a van and brought the safe back to a halting site where he went through it. He thought the jewellery was “scrap” and exchanged it for €500 worth of heroin. Det Garda Kieran Murphy told James Dwyer, prosecuting, that the couple who owned the house were on holidays.

He said €50,000 worth of damage was caused to the property as it had been completely “trashed”. He confirmed the family were therefore at a total loss of €250,000 but said their insurance company paid out.

Connors had also carried out burglary two months earlier in Shankill where he stole car keys and items to the value of €2,000. He took a trial date but didn’t show up in November 2011. Gardaí later discovered he had fled to England and was serving a prison term there.

A European arrest warrant was secured and he was ultimately returned to Ireland in October 2014.

Connors, with an address at Rathmichael Halting Site, in Shankill, then pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to burglary in Shankill on April 1, 2009 and burglary in Killiney on June 16, 2009.

He has 115 previous convictions; 90 for road traffic and 12 for burglary. He got a three-year sentence for burglary in 2010.