EXCLUSIVE: CCTV of meet between £1.1m watch robbery victim Oliver White and business owners 3 hours before his suicide 'missing' court hears

CCTV of an "intense" meeting between the manager of a luxury watch shop and its owners, including a man convicted in the Blenheim Palace gold toilet trial, the day after a £1.1M robbery and three hours before he killed himself is missing, a court was told.

Oliver White, 27, was tied up and robbed at the 247 Kettles store on May 25 2024, while uninsured watches worth over £1,160,000 were stolen, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

The whole robbery was recorded on the CCTV system at the 247 Kettles premises on the third floor of Parkshot House, Kew Road, Richmond, south west London.

Businessman Mannix Pedro, 38, from Woking, Surrey, planned the raid and provided a stolen Audi as a getaway car.

He has already been tried and convicted of conspiracy to rob in connection with the crime, jurors were told.

Three other men are now on trial in connection with the robbery.

Kyle Mehmet, 40, from North Road, Rotherham, allegedly grabbed Mr White's wrists, and tied them with zip ties, during the robbery while Junior Kunu, 31, from Lancaster Avenue, Mitcham, is accused of stealing the haul of watches at the same time.

The third, Michael Holmes, 34, from student accommodation in Norfolk Park Road, Sheffield, is alleged to have been part of reconnaissance or a failed robbery attempt at the store two days earlier.

He is also alleged to have helped on the day of the successful robbery, in the nearby, to help move the watches from the area.

The court heard another man, Michael Ashman, fled abroad and is yet to be brought back to the UK.

The jury has been shown evidence including CCTV, mobile phone cell site and ANPR data, of the movements of the defendants before and after the robbery as the watches, none of which have ever been recovered, were spirited away.

Phone messages and voicemails between some of the alleged conspirators also form part of the evidence.

Downloads from Pedro's phone showed a three–way conversation between him, Mehmet and another unknown man throughout March 2024, the court heard.

The court heard Kettles is a slang term for watches.

One sent from Pedro to Mehmet said: "The box and papers for the kettles are in there".

Others said: "Don't play with them when you are in there" and Mr Brown said this meant not to hold back and to use necessary force.

The three on trial deny the offence of conspiracy to rob and Alan Kent KC, defending Kunu, has suggested to the jury the robbery was a staged inside job.

The court heard before Mr White made a 999 call about the robbery at 3:15pm, he first called Conor Thornton, who was in the US, with 247 Kettles co-owner Joe Riley.

Mr Kent said Mr Thornton did not call police either, but rang convicted criminal Fred Sines, 37, who the court heard was another "partner" in the business.

The court was told Sines was found guilty of conspiracy to convert or transfer criminal property this year after he offered to sell parts of a stolen £4.3 million gold toilet that had been part of an exhibition at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire in September 2019.

After Mr White later called 999, uniformed police officers arrived at the premises, followed by Mr Sines, before DC Tom Waller, the Senior Investigating officer of the Met Police's Flying Squad, arrived.

The jury was told about a meeting the next day at the premises attended by Mr White, Mr Thornton, Mr Riley, and Mr Sines at just after 4pm.

It ended at around 5pm and about three hours later Mr White, who left separately to the other three, was found dead in a wood near Shepperton, West London, where he played as a boy after being found by a friend.

His suicide was as a direct result of the robbery, according to Prosecutor Edward Brown KC.

Yet, when police tried to also obtain CCTV evidence of the meeting, it was discovered that the harddrive had been replaced with a new one and the recording of the meeting has never been found, the court heard.

The court heard that Mr White offered to compensate the owners with £14,000 he had been saving for a deposit on a flat with girlfriend, and he evden attempted to transfer the money to them before his death, the jury was told.

Mr Brown said: "He was still very shaken up and did not want to speak even to his girlfriend, Alana Dredge, about the attack – they had been together for seven years and had been planning a life together.

"But he insisted on going to the meeting with his friends – the two owners – and with another man (Sines) who was part of the business the next day."

The jury was told that Mr White was "devastated" when the men suggested that he did not put up enough of a fight during the robbery.

DC Waller gave evidence about how the three defendants had been identified through CCTV, ANPR and mobile phone cell site data, before phone message evidence had also been used to link them to the plot.

Cross examining DC Waller, Mr Kent asked him about any investigations into the business owners and the meeting.

Mr Kent said external security firm CCTV from the main building showed the four men arriving and leaving after the meeting, but nothing was available from inside, where the cameras were separately controlled by 247 Kettles itself.

DC Waller explained he could not recall their movements as this CCTV evidence did not form part of the robbery investigation and said Mr Sines had not been asked to provide any statements.

Mr Kent said: "You say it was not part of the robbery investigation, but Mr Brown described the meeting as a situation that must have been intense.

"When Mr Sines leaves, he is on the phone isn't he?"

"I can't recall," said DC Waller.

Mr Kent said: "About three hours after leaving that tense meeting, Mr White took his own life. He didn't go home did he, so where did he go?"

DC Waller said there was some evidence of his movements from phone data, but the Met had not tracked the movements of the four men after the meeting in the run up to Mr White's death, as it was not considered a line of enquiry for the robbery.

He said: "There is a separate police investigation with Surrey Police and that might be something they looked at."

Mr Kent said: "So with all the tracking you can do and with what the jury has been told about the tragic consequences of the robbery, the Met Police haven't tracked these four men once they left the building?

"We can see four men go in and come out but we can't see what happened in the tense meeting as the CCTV was replaced or deleted. Mr White's family, you know, were anxious to see that footage of the meeting weren't they? because they were worried about what happened in that meeting. Perhaps because of its intensity? Their view was they were being lied to or fobbed off by Mr Thornton or Mr Riley."

"Yes, they were. His father made attempts to see that CCTV in the weeks after Oliver's death." DC Waller replied.

He added that enquiries by the Met in early June found that after the meeting on May 26 the hard drive for the CCTV had been swapped with a new one and the location of the earlier one which would have contained it was not identified.

Mr Kent asked him: "Who deleted it? You can say someone swapped it for a new hard drive. That does not happen by accident, it happens on purpose."

He asked DC Waller if it was Mr Thornton or Mr Riley who did it.

He replied: "It was them or someone else."

"Could it have been Mr Sines?," he was asked.

"It could be," he said.

DC Waller was asked what else the Met knew about Mr Sines.

He replied: "He is a male with a previous conviction from a well known offence earlier this year. In broad terms Fred Sines was one of seven men arrested for a well known heist of Blenheim Palace when a golden toilet was stolen.

"He was on trial at Oxford Crown Court earlier this year and given a suspended sentence."

Mr Kent suggested 247 Kettles was not a usual jewellery store, having no shop front, on the third floor of services offices, and which advertised on social media, mainly instagram, with products that were not insured.

Mr Kent asked if Mr Sines had refused to provide a statement to police, by DC Waller said he had not been asked to give one.

Mr Kent asked if police had investigated how Mr Thornton and Mr Riley, two men in their 20s, had become involved in a high-end jewellery business and DC Waller said he would have to refer to their statements.

Mr Kent said: "This is not your usual high-end jewellery shop. Is it a front for money laundering? Did you investigate that?"

"No, it was not part of this investigation," he replied.

"So, despite Mr Sines being a money launderer, you did not investigate the shop being a front for money laundering?," Mr Kent said.

DC Waller said: "It was not seen as a relevant line of enquiry."

Mr Kent said: "But, we do know that the footage went missing of that meeting on May 26 and Mr white didn't go home and that he commited suicide."

The trial continues.