{"id":1024,"date":"2025-02-25T10:49:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T10:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/?p=1024"},"modified":"2025-02-25T10:49:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T10:49:01","slug":"trio-on-trial-over-6m-gold-toilet-stolen-from-churchills-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/trio-on-trial-over-6m-gold-toilet-stolen-from-churchills-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Trio on trial over $6m gold toilet stolen from Churchill\u2019s home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Three men are on trial over an \u201caudacious raid\u201d in which a gold toilet worth almost $6 million was stolen from Blenheim Palace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">The trio appeared in Oxford Crown Court on Monday, charged over the theft, in which the distinctive fully functioning toilet was stolen by sledgehammer-wielding thieves, who smashed their way into the palace.<\/p>\n<div class=\"relative items-center justify-center min-h-[1px] teads-inline-1 clear-both mb-4 hidden w-full md:block\">\n<div id=\"inline_1_teads_desktop\" class=\"h-[1px] w-full bg-white md:min-h-[1px] [&amp;&gt;div&gt;iframe]:h-full [&amp;&gt;div&gt;iframe]:w-full [&amp;&gt;div]:h-full [&amp;&gt;div]:w-full\" style=\"--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; box-sizing: border-box; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(217 217 217\/var(--tw-border-opacity)); border-image: initial; --tw-border-opacity: 1; height: 1px; width: 617px; --tw-bg-opacity: 1; background-color: rgb(255 255 255\/var(--tw-bg-opacity)); min-height: 1px;\" data-google-query-id=\"CL_zpurS3osDFZCmZgIdZJcKVQ\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/22160690092\/indailyqld\/news\/inline_1_teads_0__container__\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/22160690092\/indailyqld\/news\/inline_1_teads_0\" tabindex=\"0\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_\/22160690092\/indailyqld\/news\/inline_1_teads_0\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" aria-label=\"Advertisement\" data-load-complete=\"true\" data-google-container-id=\"3\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">The toilet \u2013 actually an artwork called entitled\u00a0<em>America<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 had been split up and disposed of since the September 2019 theft, the court heard on Monday (British time).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Created by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, it had been a star attraction in an exhibition at the Oxfordshire country house where Sir Winston Churchill was born in 1874.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Only days after the theft, the prosecution said on Monday, two men who used \u201ccar\u201d as a codeword for the stolen gold made contact with a jeweller in the London suburb of Hatton Garden.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Prosecutor Julian Christopher KC said the raid took just five minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cIt was an unusual work of art, being a fully functioning toilet made of 18-carat gold, entitled\u00a0<em>America,<\/em>\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cIt weighed approximately 98 kilograms and was insured for the sum of $US6 million ($A9.44 million).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThe gold it was made from was itself worth in the region of \u00a32.8 million ($A5.6 million) at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Michael Jones, 39, is on trial charged with one count of burglary. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Fred Doe, 36, and Bora Guccuk, 40, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property, namely gold, which they deny.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">A fourth man James Sheen, 39, has previously pleaded guilty to burglary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">The trial for Jones, Doe and Guccuk is due to last four weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">The court heard that the sledgehammers were left at the scene.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThe burglary was carefully planned and swiftly carried out,\u201d Christopher said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThe men, five of them it appears, drove through locked wooden gates into the grounds of Blenheim Palace shortly before 5am in two stolen vehicles, an Isuzu truck and a VW Golf.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThey drove across a field, up to the front steps and smashed and broke in through a window.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThey knew precisely where to go, broke down the wooden door to the cubicle where the toilet was fully plumbed in, removed it, leaving water pouring out of the pipes, and drove away.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cAll in all they spent just five minutes in the building.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cClearly such an audacious raid would not have been possible without lots of preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">The prosecution alleges that Jones took a photograph of the installation about 17 hours before the toilet was stolen, while he was at Blenheim \u201cas part of the reconnaissance for the burglary\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">\u201cThe work of art was never recovered. It appears to have been split up into smaller amounts of gold and never recovered,\u201d Christopher said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 font-serif text-lg sm:text-lg\">Jones was arrested on October 16, 2019. When police analysed his phone they found he had allegedly been searching for newspaper reports about the stolen toilet on September 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three men are on trial over an \u201caudacious raid\u201d in which a gold toilet worth almost $6 million was stolen from Blenheim Palace. The trio appeared in Oxford Crown Court on Monday, charged over the theft, in which the distinctive fully functioning toilet was stolen by sledgehammer-wielding thieves, who smashed their way into the palace. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,59],"tags":[19,45],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcasts","category-the-week-in-art","tag-featured","tag-podcasts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/futuredesignteam.in\/client\/politicus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}