Two of the burglars who stole a golden toilet from Blenheim Palace were facing long jail sentences last night – but inconvenient questions remain over the audacious crime.
Despite a five-year investigation, police are under fire for failing to find the £4.8 million sculpture or track down the bullion merchants feared to have melted it down.
Defence barrister Crispin Aylett KC also attacked them for allowing three other gang members to cheat justice.
Allegedly involved in the conspiracy was a man named in the trial at Oxford Crown Court as Carl Davies who, he said, was ‘in this up to his neck’.
Mr Aylett said it was ‘a somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs’ that the other burglars had ‘filled their boots’ while police were ‘unable to flush them out’.
His client, Fred Doe, 36, was yesterday convicted of trying to sell the 18-carat gold loo, while Michael Jones, 39, was found guilty of helping to plan and taking part in the 5am raid.
The alleged mastermind behind the theft, career criminal James Sheen, 40, had already admitted his part.
However, a fourth defendant, Hatton Garden jeweller Bora Guccuk, 41, who had been accused of intending to buy the toilet, was acquitted.
During the trial, father of four Doe, who lives in a mansion near Ascot racecourse, was at pains to present himself as a respectable family man who mentors young boxers.
Multi-millionaire residential park owner ‘Fred’ Doe Senior, pictured with a luxury car, claimed his son may have been ‘victimised’ because of the family name and his gypsy roots
Fred Doe, 36, pictured at Oxford Crown Court, was convicted of trying to sell the gold toilet
An 18-carat solid gold toilet sculpture worth £4.8 million, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019 while it was featured in an art exhibition
‘Fred’ Doe Senior, previously known as Maurice Sines, with his wife Elaine at the Dorchester Hotel in London
What the jury was not told, however, is that his father, multi-millionaire residential park owner Fred Doe Senior, is an associate of the Kinahan cartel, one of the world’s most fearsome crime syndicates.
Like Sheen, the Does are also members of the travelling community. Speaking to the Mail exclusively last night, the elder Mr Doe claimed his son may have been ‘victimised’ because of the family name and his gypsy roots.
We will come back to this.
In a daring heist that made punning headlines around the world, the toilet – a sculpture called ‘America’ by satirist Maurizio Cattelan plumbed in at Blenheim Palace for visitors attending an art exhibition to use – was stolen in September 2019.
Just two days after it went on display a gang of five men screeched into the grounds of Winston Churchill’s birthplace in two stolen cars.
Extraordinary CCTV footage captured the unfolding raid as three of the men smashed their way through a window with sledgehammers and crowbars and emerged just minutes later with the toilet.
Multi-millionaire residential park owner Fred Doe Senior is an associate of the Kinahan cartel
‘Fred’ Doe Senior with a collection of luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce, outside his house
One of three men returning to the vehicles carrying a gold toilet seat, in the courtyard at the front of Blenheim Palace, as thieves rolled the toilet away and bundled it into the back of a car
It could be seen being rolled towards one of the waiting vehicles, which sagged visibly as its weight was loaded into the boot before the cars sped away.
After yesterday’s trial, Thames Valley Police said they believed within hours it was ‘taken to multiple locations, melted down and sold off’.
In a message to Doe, accompanied by a picture showing a wad of cash, Sheen bragged that he had made £520,000 from selling his share of the gold to a Birmingham jeweller.
The prolific thief has been behind bars since 2022, serving a 17-year sentence over a string of smash-and-grab raids in the Home Counties, including on the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket, Suffolk, when his gang stole the £75,000 Ascot Gold Vase and other trophies.
Jones worked for Sheen’s construction company and was caught on camera carrying out an amateurish reconnaissance of Blenheim Palace on two occasions, including the day before the burglary.
He took pictures of the window, which was later used by the gang to smash into the palace, as well as pictures of the golden toilet and the lock on the door of the cubicle. Giving evidence, he told the court he had used the toilet during his visit and described the experience as ‘splendid’.
Michael Jones (pictured) was found guilty of helping to plan and taking part in the 5am raid
The alleged mastermind behind the theft, career criminal James Sheen (pictured) had already admitted his part
Prosecutors claimed he was also part of the burglary gang that night.
Doe became involved when he heard Sheen – whom he knew through the traveller community – had snatched the toilet and offered to use his extensive contacts in Hatton Garden to sell the stolen gold.
Within hours of the burglary, Doe had contacted Guccuk, who ran a jewellery shop called Pacha of London, setting in motion an attempt to sell Sheen’s share of the gold.
Prosecutors accepted it was unclear whether this sale went ahead or fell through. The mysterious ‘Carl Davies’ was said to have been the first person to contact Doe about the stolen gold and to have gone with Sheen to Birmingham when he sold his share.
Thames Valley Police have vowed to try to claw back some of the gang’s profits through the Proceeds of Crime Act but say there was insufficient evidence to bring further charges.
Meanwhile, last night, Fred Doe’s father was vehemently protesting his son’s innocence, suggesting that while the trial itself was ‘fair’, police may have ‘gone after him’ because of who he was.
Jones carried out reconnaissance before the heist, was in regular contact with one of the ringleaders and took pictures of the toilet on his phone (pictured)
The sledgehammer-wielding gang were caught on CCTV (pictured) rolling the toilet out of smashed window and into the boot of a waiting car, before screeching away
Certainly, the elder Doe has a colourful past. Almost a decade before the Blenheim Palace incursion, another dramatic dawn raid was staged at his own estate.
Doe Senior was then known as Maurice Sines and resided in a mansion at Wentworth, Surrey, the golf resort where celebrities such as Sir Elton John and the late Bruce Forsyth once lived.
And he told the Mail how armed police burst into his home while he and his wife Elaine were sleeping and ‘pointed their guns at my head’, suspecting the fortune he has amassed from a residential park empire stretching from Norfolk to Dorset had been augmented by criminality.
At the heart of this accusation, which Doe Senior strongly denies, was his friendship with the members of the Kinahan gang.
He says his assets, including his fleets of luxury and historic cars, and a jewellery collection to rival that of the V&A, were frozen for five years after the police swoop.
During that time, he lived off a court-approved allowance and he says it was only after winning a £50 million forfeiture case, nine years ago, that he could resume the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
Though he presents himself as a man of simple tastes and has indeed since ‘gone back to his traveller roots’ by swapping his Wentworth mansion for a mobile home in one of his parks (albeit a very luxurious one close to Windsor Castle), by most people’s standards this is extremely lavish.
In a message to Doe, accompanied by a picture showing a wad of cash, Sheen bragged that he had made £520,000 from selling his share of the gold to a Birmingham jeweller
Posts on his X feed shows him cruising through Belgravia in a £400,000 Rolls-Royce Cullinan, golfing with stars such as Gary Player, and taking high tea with Elaine at the Dorchester hotel.
All this is relevant to the golden toilet case because he suggests police may have targeted his ‘innocent, role model of a boy’ as a ‘payback’ because they had failed to bring him down.
‘All this [the loo case] is about me,’ Doe Senior, 63, told the Mail as he awaited the trial verdict.
‘They [police] believe something that’s not there. We are straight, legit business people [but] if you listen to the stories . . . I’m Al Capone.
‘My son is like my dad was – he’d do anything for anyone. He has a heart of gold.’ Belatedly realising the inappropriateness of his phrase, he stops and adds with a hollow laugh: ‘No, don’t say gold.’
It is not the first time that Doe Senior has claimed police victimisation.
Other videos he has put on X show him complaining of discrimination against travellers after officers investigated complaints about a vast bonfire on his land and flag down his Rolls-Royce, which bears the number plate GYP5Y.
But he could hardly play the same card in court seven years ago, when he was seen driving his Roller away from a golf tournament dangerously and while disqualified.
A crowbar used by the toilet raider gang to steal the solid gold toilet
After a high-speed chase he abandoned the car and later lied that his chauffeur was at the wheel while he was in the back – having sex ‘with a bird’ who was not his wife.
As with the gold toilet theft, the seriousness of these offences, for which he pleaded guilty, was masked by some light-hearted headlines.
However, in truth there is nothing remotely amusing about the Blenheim Palace gang.
Described by a detective as ‘intimidating to people who get in his way’, Sheen is the kingpin in ‘the Kidlington gang’, a band of hardened professional criminals jailed for a total of 74 years for a string of high-value thefts in 2022 in which they used gas to blow up ATM machines.
He and his brother John had previously been jailed for 14 years for discharging a firearm from a car, injuring passers-by, while chasing a man who had taken up with his girlfriend.
The romance started while Sheen was serving yet another prison term, for car thefts.
However, when, inevitably, this saga is screened on Netflix it is the Doe family story that will provide the most fascinating subplot.
Though the 63-year-old patriarch has an undeniably dark side (as people who cross him discover to their cost), there are many traits to admire.
The exhibition allowed visitors to look at and even sit on the statement toilet, which was designed by artist Maurizio Cattelan and plumbed in the palace, near the room where Winston Churchill was born (pictured: the empty space left after the toilet was taken)
From poor beginnings, Mr Doe Senior bought his first mobile home park as a young man and now has thousands of tenants, and a fortune said to be in the tens of millions.
He gives generously to charity and local community causes, and claims to live by a homespun moral code that respects honesty, hard work and family values.
That said, there are worrying blemishes.
In 2011, the British Horse Racing Authority banned him from the sport for 14 years for his alleged part in one of Britain’s biggest betting scandals; and his company, Sines Park Homes Group, has been fined for using threats during disagreements with residents.
One such case, involving a sales dispute, saw him criticised in the House of Commons for ‘a long track record of abusing’ his tenants and ‘making their lives a misery’.
Hatton Garden jeweller Bora Guccuk, 41, who had been accused of intending to buy the toilet, was acquitted. He is pictured outside Oxford Crown Court on February 25
However, the most damaging accusations concern Doe Senior’s links to the Kinahans. This emerged in evidence submitted to Ireland’s High Court by the country’s Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).
He is said to be particularly close to senior gang member Liam Byrne, with whom he has been photographed on a sunshine holiday.
He was also pictured among the VIP mourners at the funeral of Byrne’s brother David, shot dead in 2016 by a hitman from the rival Hutch gang, at a Dublin boxing match weigh-in.
When the Mail raised ‘the K question’, Doe Senior’s victimisation complex returned with a vengeance.
‘Being friendly with someone isn’t a crime, is it?’ he snapped. ‘Is it a crime to be a mate or go on holiday? Or have a game of golf? Or have a drink with somebody?
‘OK, I go to Dublin, there’s a christening, I take a Rolls-Royce, a Range Rover and Merc Jeep cos they need cars . . . and all of a sudden it’s me, it’s them [the cartel] it’s this, it’s that.’
Doe claims the judge who presided over the confiscation hearing that followed the raid on his Wentworth home supported this view, remarking that, in
his younger days as a defending barrister, he had also befriended criminals.
Despite exhaustive inquiries, it has proved impossible to find any record of this case, which he says vaguely was held in 2015 or 2016. His claims therefore cannot be scrutinised.
But he scoffed: ‘They said I owed £50 million, something like this [but] I didn’t give them 50 pence. I won everything. They got egg on their face.’
Whatever the sins of the father, of course, they should not be visited on the son and, until his conviction yesterday, Doe Junior had a clean record.
Nonetheless, his attitude during the trial smacked of entitlement. Wearing a £3,000 Louis Vuitton parka, he would park his £149,000 Range Rover Sport on double yellow lines and bowled into the court building flanked by minders.
Screen grab taken from CCTV dated September 14, 2019 issued by Thames Valley Police showing thieves loading items in the boot of the car as they rolled the gold toilet away
When you own a £4 million palace near Ascot racecourse and play golf with famous footballers and celebrities, serving as their middleman when they buy high-end watches and cars, parking fines are evidently of no consequence.
In the witness box, however, Doe Junior tried to present a very different image, telling the jury how he coached and mentored 35 ‘kids who haven’t had the best start’ at a boxing club in Camberley, Surrey.
One of his sons had represented England as junior boxer. He was also careful to mention his involvement in a Christmas charity that raises up to £40,000 each year for the benefit of sick and terminally ill children.
When it came to the source of his wealth, Doe said he ran a successful construction vehicle company and did some work for his father’s business.
While some gypsies had a penchant for gold, regarding it as a symbol of wealth and stashing it away rather than keeping money in the bank, he claimed he had never traded it.
Screen grab from CCTV dated September 14, 2019 issued by police showing two vehicles drivingthrough the main gate to the entrance in the courtyard at the front of Blenheim Palace
His only involvement in the gold business came when he occasionally ‘introduced people or sent them in the right direction.
From the age of 14, when he acquired a stainless-steel Rolex Yacht-Master, watches had been his passion.
Had he for a moment suspected that Sheen was a burglar, he claimed, he would not have taken his calls.
He had no idea the gold had been stolen and now felt ‘stupid’. The jury disbelieved him.
One wonders why, with all his wealth and standing among his community, he chose to risk embroilment in this squalid caper.
Whatever the truth, his doting father left the seat of justice saying he remained ‘proud of him, right down to his toes’.
