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Kevin Nevers |
‘You are a real danger to women in London’
Robber who caused terror to Hampstead mothers given nine life sentences for attacks decribed in court as ‘callous and calculated’
KEVIN Nevers knew the affluent streets in which he worked and he knew the victims he wanted to find – pregnant women or women juggling young children and shopping bags, unable or unlikely to fight back.
He also knew how to rob. A criminal career stretching back to a childhood in the care of Camden social services had been “interrupted” by a seven year prison stint for violently robbing a Hampstead woman in 2001.
Released early on licence for that offence, he went back to the rich pickings within weeks, terrorising Hampstead women for more than a year before he was caught.
As Nevers, 41, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday for robbing nine women of £68,000 of rings and jewellery in a cluster of streets around Hampstead village, the statements given by his victims made clear that they would never forget him.
Seven of his victims were pregnant or had young children with them. All were traumatised, and at least four have moved away from Hampstead as a result.
Sentencing, Judge Inigo Bing told Nevers: “The area where these nine robberies took place should be one of the safest and quietest in London in the late afternoon or early evening. It is the time when women are often on their own shopping or taking their children for a walk. Each one of your victims ought to have felt entirely safe going about the routine of family life.
“For you the sight of these women provided the opportunity for you to ruthlessly and skilfully put to use your experience of robbery.”
Detectives believe Nevers had watched the women shop in Hampstead’s high street stores – Tescos and Budgens – and drink tea in Carluccio’s before walking home.
He followed them into quiet side streets like Church Row – and in some cases to their doorsteps – before grabbing them around the throat from behind and ordering them not to look at his face.
On three occassions he brandished a knife.
Police checks on Nevers’ mobile phone showed that on three occassions he had called jewellers within minutes of the robberies, and his oystercard showed frequent trips to the Hatton Garden area.
When the valuables ripped from his sixth victim turned out to be costume jewellery, he asked his seventh “Is this real?” – a sign that he was suspicious of the jewellers valuations, police alleged.
Detective Sergeant Paul Lincoln, who took over the case in March 2006, described Nevers as a “calculating, organised, intelligent, professional criminal”.
He said after the sentencing: “I’m sure the people of Hampstead will be relieved that he is behind bars. All of the victims of this man were traumatised and two took this very badly. Hampstead is certainly a safer place without him.”
The robberies were unusual because robbers normally operate in twos or threes, whereas these involved a lone attacker.
Police had identified Nevers as a suspect after his March 2006 attack but lacked sufficient evidence to bring him in.
DS Lincoln said detectives had agonised over whether or not to arrest him before deciding to place him under surveillance.
He said: “We could have tried to arrest him in April but had we arrested him and he had not been identified we would have had no case. We needed to catch him the act. It is a very delicate balance because of course you don’t want to subject more people to being robbed.”
In the end his fourth victim, a young American who was attacked in Haverstock Hill while she was seven months pregnant, was the only person able to positively identify Nevers.
She was described by Judge Bing as “an exceptionally brave woman”.
The Judge told Nevers: “Your objective in each case were valuable rings and you cared nothing for your victims. So long as you got away with a ring you did not care if your victim was with a child or children or was obviously pregnant.
“Indeed, I consider you deliberately and callously picked out such people knowing they were least likely to be able to resist your violent endeavours. You present a real and significant danger to all women in north London – and probably elsewhere – who are on their own and who have valuable rings or jewellery on their body.”
Nevers, who protested his innocence to the end, was sentenced to life for each of the robberies at Snaresbrook Crown Court. He will become eligible for parole after five and a half years.
Nevers claims he was ‘fitted up’ by vested interests
UNREPENTANT robber Kevin Nevers made an impassioned attack on the judge, police, and people of Hampstead after sacking his defence team and speaking out at his sentencing on Friday.
Insisting that he was an innocent man “fitted up” because he had once exposed a police informant, he described an elaborate network of freemasons colluding to have him removed from the streets to reassure the “rich... people who move in the shadows” in Hampstead’s community of “white men and white woman who have a vested interest in protecting the status quo”.
“I have watched a show trial unfold before my eyes,” he said, before addressing Judge Inigo Bing directly: “You are a judge whose reputation goes before him. Brutal, uncompromising, unreasonable and a policeman’s favourite.”
In the course of the trial Nevers hired, then fired, four separate solicitors, accusing them of “collusion” in the prosecution case.
They ignored, he claimed, evidence in the form of articles from the New Journal which reported robberies on women in Hampstead perpetrated after the time that he was in prison. He vowed to appeal. |
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