Thursday, February 13, 2025

January 17, 2025

The Duke Of Westminster’s Stolen Cartier: How The High Society Middleman Was Caught

Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster and the richest person under 40 in the UK had three watches burgled from his family home in Cheshire in August 2022.

[Image: Facebook]

Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster and the richest person under 40 in the UK had three watches burgled from his family home in Cheshire in August 2022.

Looking at the above picture, you’d have to be a fool to steal from the Joffrey Baratheon-looking billionaire, but it wasn’t long before a certain Matthew Turner was fingered for the high society crime, which included the spiriting away of a particularly sweet Cartier London Tank JC.

Appearing in the Chester Crown Court soon after, it was revealed that Turner had a nasty cocaine habit, which led to him sneaking into the Duke’s bedroom while working on a renovation job at the Grosvenor’s 10,000-acre estate. Along with the Tank, valued at R400,000, Turner also admitted to snatching the Duke’s Panerai Luminor Marina watch (worth R160,000), and a Breitling that was a 21st birthday gift from Grosvenor’s mother and late father.

A century or two ago Turner would have had his head removed from his shoulders, but the modern monarchy is a forgiving (and forgetting) monarchy, and just as they don’t trade slaves anymore, they don’t just randomly behead people. Rather, the crown slapped the burglarising peasant with a 20-month suspended sentence, the judge saying, “You have escaped prison by the skin of your teeth.”

The Case of The Duke’s Missing Tank might have ended there, but no good story ends in a suspended sentence, and soon there were rumblings about the involvement of another person in the crime.

A respected horologist (ironically the same man who sold the watch to the Duke) is reported to have spotted a certain Nathan Elliott trying to flog the Tank for half a million rand at one of the swankier auction houses. Recognising the watch, the watchmaker informed the Duke of Westminster, who set the fuzz on the 31-year-old.

Elliot claimed that he had bought the Tank “from a friend” for £150 and “thought it was a bargain”, but having spent its leniency on the young Turner, the crown convicted Elliot of possessing criminal property on 13 January and slapped him with an eight-month prison sentence as Judge Simon Berkson said: “You acted as the middleman between the burglar and the seller. You played an important role.”

According to UK tabloids, Elliot was also sentenced to four years and ten months for his role in a ‘sophisticated and well structured’ conspiracy to sell cannabis. Quite the entrepreneur it seems.

The Duke told the court at the time that the watch was ‘of huge sentimental value, beyond their financial worth”. He added: “My bedroom is a private, extremely personal space within my home. I feel very uncomfortable knowing someone who is trusted to do a job has entered my room and stolen my personal possessions.”

The Duke at least managed to get his Tank back, but the other two watches remain at large. Perhaps next time we are invited to Eaton Hall for tea, we shall do a Hercule Poirot and try to find it. One of the skeletons in the royal closet must surely know where it could be.

[Source: Tatler]