Sledgehammer-wielding gang smash into businessman’s house, assault him and his spouse and take off with their £1MILLION uncommon watch assortment
A businessman has told how a masked gang stormed his home and attacked him with a sledgehammer before stealing a rare watch collection worth £1million in what he believes was a targeted attack.
Matthew Simpson and his wife were at home watching television and cooking dinner when two of the men dressed all in black smashed their way into their home and appeared in their kitchen.
They attacked Mr Simpson, 57, with a sledgehammer before shouting: ‘Where are the watches? Where is the safe? Where is your son?’
They then made off with Mr Simpson’s rare watch collection which he had built up over 20 years.
The haul included an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak QP perpetual calendar which was only released in February last year in limited quantities as well as a Rolex ‘Platona’ Daytona Cosmograph, made entirely from platinum, and a pair of matching ladies and gents rose gold Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ‘London‘ edition of which only 100 worldwide were made.
A large number of his wife’s designer handbags were also taken, including pieces from Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Chanel, Jimmy Choo, and Dior.
The most distinctive of which was a white Chanel ‘Boy’ handbag, in a style available only from Milan.
Matthew Simpson was attacked by the masked men armed with sledgehammers and pickaxes who smashed through the patio door and stole his rare, valuable watch collection and bags
Mr Simpson and his wife, who did not want to give her first name, at their home in Nottinghamshire
Some of the rare watches stolen in the raid. Crimestoppers is offering a reward for information
Mr Simpson and his wife, 53, who does not want to be named, said the attack was ‘absolutely not random’ and believe ‘somebody who knows us’ was involved.
Crimestoppers is now offering a reward of up to £7,500 for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for what police have described as a ‘vicious and frightening’ attack.
The couple said the gang could not have found out about the watches on social media as they did not share images of them or the bags online and very few people knew the extent of the collection.
Mr Simpson said: ‘There is a link to us somewhere. We don’t know how close it is but we know there is some information there.
‘We are hoping it is far away, we don’t want it to be family, close friends, colleagues, we want it to be as far away as possible but we have said to everyone around us that everybody is in the sieve and that sieve is going to be shaken and whatever comes through from it, if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, speak to the police.’
The couple, who have two grown-up children, run a heating firm together.
They were at their gated home in Kimberley, Nottinghamshire on the evening of Thursday, December 4 last year when they heard a loud bang and two of the men appeared in their open-plan kitchen having smashed through a patio door.
Their son, who lives with them, had left home to go the gym minutes earlier.
The masked gang were dressed in all black and armed with a sledgehammer and pickaxe
Mr Simpson said: ‘We were sitting on the sofa just relaxing watching telly. My wife was preparing dinner, just bobbing about doing bits for dinner when we heard a loud bang and looked at each other thinking “what was that?”
‘I then got up from the sofa and there were two guys all in black standing there.’
He said his first reaction was to try to get them out and he rushed towards the first man to push him back out the door.
At this point the second man who was armed with a sledgehammer struck him three times on the back.
‘As I was grappling with them I took a blow to the chest and fell back onto the sofa by this time my wife was here and saw me being hit and she jumped on him and told him to stop hitting me,’ he said.
Three more men then appeared and the gang, also armed with a pickaxe, started shouting and banging on the table with the weapons.
The couple said it was then that they shouted: ‘Where’s the watches? Where is the safe? Where is your son?’
While Mr Simpson went downstairs with two of the men to open the safe his wife was physically dragged upstairs by the other three to where most of the watches were stored.
Mr Simpson said: ‘They were constantly shouting hurry up I must admit I was a bit flippant I just said “you have just hit me in the knee with a sledgehammer and now you are telling me to hurry up”. I opened the safe and they took what was in there.
‘What was weird was it just kind of stopped then, there was no more harassment, no more shouting, it just sort of stopped. They had got what they wanted.’
Mr Simpson said: ‘For me it all happened so quickly you didn’t have chance to think or take in what was happening. My instinct was to get them out, there was no thought process, it was just “there are people in my house I have to get them out”.’
The couple’s CCTV cameras showed it had taken the gang 27 seconds to get from the woodland where they entered the property and into their home which they said added to their belief that the gang was linked to someone they knew.
Mr Simpson said: ‘The first couple of nights we stayed away, it was very difficult, we were in shock. We have put measures in place from a security aspect and I guess it is just time really.’
Mr Simpson said the watches were not only valuable but also held sentimental meaning.
‘They came for the watches pure and simple,’ he said. ‘The watches were a passion of mine and something that I have built over 20 odd years. They are not things you can just go out and buy, there is a lot of research that goes into them.
‘A lot of the pieces you are invited to buy, you can’t walk into these boutiques and expect to buy these off the shelf, the manufactures – because the relationship you have with them and the pieces you have purchased previously – they then invite you to buy these limited edition options.
‘They are generational things and I took a bit of pride in the fact that when I am no longer here my son could be walking around with a watch and that would have been his dad’s watch.’
The watches’ serial numbers are registered with The Watch Register which means any legitimate sale would be flagged with police.
Nottinghamshire Police said it was pursuing a number of lines of enquiry.
The men were caught on the couple’s CCTV cameras and automatic number plate recognition identified a grey hatchback vehicle with false number plates on the nearby A610 at the time of the attack.
The vehicle is then thought to have travelled out of Nottinghamshire, through Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire, before entering the West Midlands region.
Lydia Patsalides, Regional Manager for the East Midlands area at Crimestoppers, said anyone could give information to the charity without leaving their name or speaking to police. She said: ‘Your information could help stop further violence and bring justice to this family.’
