LINDA NICHOLLS was one of the stalwarts of the St Marychurch and Babbacombe traders’ association and a lady for whom no one had a bad word.
She cooked the food for the Millennium party and donated valuable prizes for charity raffles. Upstairs Downstairs, her old-fashioned antiques shop in Torquay, was packed with trinkets and treasures that she promoted with the slogan, “For those unusual keepsakes”.
But the most unusual thing about her merchandise was that an awful lot of it had been stolen from the homes of her neighbours. Many of those who lost their prized possessions were retired, some were her friends and customers and one was her next-door neighbour.
This morning Nicholls, 56, woke up in a prison cell at the beginning of a three-year jail sentence for conspiring to handle stolen goods. At Exeter Crown Court she admitted two other offences involving jewellery valued at £8,000 and Lladro porcelain figurines worth £12,500. But police think these represent only a fraction of a haul of stolen items with a value of £200,000.
Agatha Christie was born in these parts but detectives say it was Nicholls who was the English Riviera’s real queen of crime, heading a seaside syndicate of burglars who stole to her orders.
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Since her arrest in July the number of burglaries in the area has halved and high-value home raids have almost completely ceased. Dean Ham, Nicholls’s chief accomplice, was jailed for two years. Three other members of the gang are to be sentenced at a later date. Nicholls had recruited Ham, 44, on the day he was released from jail after serving time for a series of burglaries.
Ham, who has nine previous convictions for burglary and 13 for handling, used his contacts to secure a constant supply of stolen goods which Nicholls fenced. She also used her visits to clients’ homes as an opportunity to “case” the properties for other property worth stealing.
She would seek out specialist dealers to sell on the more valuable items. Once she negotiated the sale of items stolen from a neighbour’s home while attending a funeral at Torquay crematorium.
The less expensive items were sold through her shop. Upstairs Downstairs was advertised on the “devonsfinest” website as offering “a warm welcome, personal service, free gift-wrap and local delivery”.
The beginning of the end came in September 2002 with a burglary in Paignton. The next day, the victims’ daughter saw two rings in Nicholls’s shop that she was certain came from her parents’ home. The woman alerted police who later seized the items and began a methodical inquiry codenamed Operation Moonstone.
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Over the years Nicholls was persuaded to trust a dealer named John, who was really an undercover policeman. She told John that she was prepared to accept items even “if they weren’t right”. In March last year she called him and offered to sell a tray of stolen jewellery for £1,000.
Malcolm Galloway, for the prosecution, said: “Nicholls was happy to fence stolen goods from her next-door neighbour and conspired with others to handle the proceeds from burglaries of two of her unsuspecting customers.”
Judge John Neligan told Nicholls: “It is often said that if it were not for people who are prepared to receive, to fence, stolen goods there would be no burglaries.
“That is maybe an oversimplification, but you have committed a grave offence.” He added that many victims had suffered an emotional as well as a financial loss.
Arthur Christian, chairman of the traders’ association, said: “I always thought she was a very nice, agreeable and a genuine friendly sort. It just goes to show you can never tell.”
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