Grassed up! Garden raider's crime spree is gnome more

As the trail of missing garden ornaments spread across central Scotland to Stirling and Falkirk, the police realised they had a serial gnome thief on their patch.

Undercover officers launched an 11-day covert operation, staking out gardens across the area before finally catching up with Karen Stenhouse.

The unemployed mother-of-three from Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, was held responsible for a trail of theft which left gnome lovers in fear for their little stone men, not to mention their flowerpots, plaster animals and ornamental rockery stones.

Over a three-week period in 2005, Stenhouse crept up garden paths in the dead of night to steal gnomes, flowerpots and garden ornaments estimated to be worth more than 700.

She then sold the items on through car boot sales to supplement her dole money.

She hid the loot at the home of her friend Anne McCallum, a mother of three, also from Tullibody.

After the pair were arrested, police raided McCallum's home, where they discovered what officers called an "Aladdin's cave" of garden ornaments, including a grotto of 30 gnomes complete with red hats, fishing rods and wheelbarrows.

They also found dozens of ornamental rabbits, birds and hedgehogs.

A total of 132 garden ornaments were recovered, but only a handful of them could be traced back to their rightful owners.

McCallum and Stenhouse were originally charged with 42 separate offences of theft.

McCallum, 36, of Delphwood Crescent, Tullibody, said nothing in response to police questioning and, at Alloa Sheriff Court yesterday, Malcolm McBain, prosecuting, accepted her pleas of not guilty.

Stenhouse, 37, of The Braes, Tullibody, pleaded guilty to six charges of stealing gnomes, plant pots, pots of flowers, solar lighting and garden ornaments from addresses in Alva, Tullibody, Stirling and Bridge of Allan. The offences were committed between 24 July and 16 August, 2005.

The sheriff, William Gilchrist, deferred sentence for a social background report and an assessment of Stenhouse's suitability to perform community service as a possible direct alternative to jail.

Stan Quirk, the solicitor for Stenhouse, said he would reserve his speech in mitigation until the sentencing date.

Asked to comment as she left the court, Stenhouse said: "Not a word."

Police believe McCallum's house was used as a base for an organised criminal network which scoured gardens across central Scotland before stealing valuable ornaments. They suspect that the goods were sold on to unsuspecting shoppers at markets across Scotland.

The police operation began after residents in Stirling, Falkirk and Clackmannanshire awoke to find that their gnomes and other garden ornaments had apparently wandered off during the night.

Stenhouse and McCallum had been due to face trial last year but failed to turn up at Alloa Sheriff Court, which lead to the issue of warrants for their arrest and a fresh hunt.

As well as retrieving the stolen garden gnomes, police revealed that the undercover operation conducted in 2005 had led to them solving nearly 150 other crimes in the area.

A spokeswoman for Central Scotland Police said at the time that the raid marked the "the culmination of a highly successful surveillance".

She added: "While the recovery of the gnomes was one notable achievement of the operation, many other crimes were solved."

Detective Constable Roy Lake, the reporting officer in the case, said that many of the ornaments could sell for high prices on the black market.

He added: "This was a significant achievement by officers who have been investigating a number of reported thefts across the Central Scotland Police force area over the summer of 2005."

One of Stenhouse's victims, who asked not to be named, said last night: "I lost a little old man smoking a pipe and an old lady with a barrow.

"What gave me the creeps was that someone was so close to the house. She would have had to come right up our path to steal them. But the police were very sympathetic."