A burglar who stole £100,000 worth of valuables including Rolex and Cartier watches from Dynamo’s home has been convicted – and now faces years behind bars.
Alistair McWilliams, 32, broke into the 36-year-old magician’s £1.4m home in London’s Hampstead while he was on holiday earlier this year.
He denied it throughout the trial, instead spinning a bizarre story about interrupting a three-man orgy in Dynamo’s garden.
Dynamo only realised he’d been burgled when his security alarm company contacted him days after the break-in to warn that his alarm had been set off.
It happened while he was in South Africa between 12 and 26 May this year.
The thief propped a ladder up against the adjoining fence and vaulted over before smashing a rear door and ransacking the master bedroom, a court heard.
He pilfered expensive designer watches and other jewellery, along with an iPad, headphones, laptop, bags, belts and even a set of playing cards, which Dynamo uses in his magic acts.
A neighbour later reported seeing suspicious activity around the property on 15 May, days before security company ADT notified the magician – real name Steven Frayne – that an alarm had been triggered.
But another resident living nearby saw no sign of a disturbance and the security firm dismissed the alert as having been accidentally triggered by an animal.
McWilliams was arrested four months later after police recovered a DNA sample matching his on the branch of a tree overlooking the fence used to gain entry, the Old Bailey heard.
He denied breaking in to commit the burglary, and spun a bizarre tale of disturbing three homosexual men having sex in bushes close to the unattended house.
When the trio chased him for remonstrating with them he sought refuge through the property’s unlocked side gate, McWilliams claimed.
He insisted he could only have left the sample when he peered over the fence to check the coast was clear to make his getaway.
But a jury dismissed his account, finding him guilty of burglary following a trial lasting less than three hours.
It’s the latest in a tough year for Dynamo, who went public with his Crohn’s disease diagnosis in March after the condition left him bloated and in pain following a severe case of food poisoning.
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