Through the summer months, the Wimbledon Prowler brazenly walked the streets with a tennis racquet in his hand, blending in with a thousand other part-time sports fans. And in the winter months, he hired a mobility scooter and moved freely around the Common being ignored by everyone because no one wants to get caught staring at a disabled person. Two disguises allowing him to hide in plain sight, so that any CCTV that did happen to capture him would not provide the police with an accurate description of ‘their man’. He was smart, bold and arrogant. He knew how people behaved. And he knew how to manipulate them. So, for five years, the Wimbledon Prowler evaded the police and all of their endeavours to catch him. The case had gone stale.

Between 2016 and 2021, the Wimbledon Prowler systematically terrorised this area of South West London. Sometimes there were months in between burglaries, but DS Richard Stanford always recognised the MO within a minute of entering any targeted house and could separate the Prowler’s burglaries from any others.

‘When you walk into a burgled property,’ he would say, ‘you can tell who’s done it quick enough. Some sneak in whilst the family sleeps, showing off how bold they are; some break in when the house is empty. Some cause as much damage as possible, to make evidence collection and fingerprinting a nightmare. Look in the fridge – if the food’s gone, we know it’s likely to be Jacko. Big Tony nicks kids’ toys for himself, along with small electronic items that are easy to sell on for a tenner a pop. Some villains go straight for the car keys. Some focus on jewellery, meaning they’ve probably already got a fence lined up. And if the house looks like it’s not been burgled at all, apart from an attic window being forced . . . then we know it’s more than likely to be the Wimbledon Prowler.’

The Prowler’s MO was to target houses where the roof was accessible via a lower extension, and people who owned a cat. When the owners were out, he’d enter through an attic window, as they were rarely-to-never attached to the security system. And all internal alarms would normally be off to allow the cat to move freely around the home. Once inside, he’d disarm the security system and eventually leave via the back door. Sometimes he got it wrong, of course. Sometimes the attic window was alarmed. Sometimes the cat was confined to the downstairs, so the upstairs sensors were active, but he’d discover that within seconds and manage to escape via a door before the police got close. DS Stanford’s biggest problem was that the Prowler was patient. He could go months without burgling. Which meant he could easily fall off the police radar and his escapades just be added to the growing pile of unsolved crimes.