Housekeeper jailed for theft of Picasso from countess, 87

A GREEDY housekeeper was jailed for three years yesterday for stealing more than £500,000 of antiques and art from a wealthy countess.

Former showjumper Kim Roberts, 59, resorted to stealing from Gloria, the Dowager Countess Bathurst, after suffering a fall from grace and a ‘disastrous life’.

Among the art she stole was a Picasso sketch worth up to £100,000 and a still life by Ben Nicholson, valued at £400,000.

The mother of one also helped herself to silverware and other treasures in a crime spree prosecutors struggled to put a total value on, Gloucester Crown Court heard.

The Bathurst family home in Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire, houses treasures stretching back more than three centuries to the first Earl Bathurst, who was a patron of art and literature.

Roberts, pictured, was rumbled when she tried to sell the Nicholson painting to an art dealer, who became suspicious and got in touch with another dealer who knew the 87-year-old countess.

She checked and found it was missing – and realised that other property had also been taken.

The dealers set up the sale and when Roberts arrived, she was arrested. A set of keys to the countess’s London flat were found in her handbag.

The thief’s home was searched and officers found more than 50 stolen items – mainly antique silver.

Roberts, from Colyton in Devon, admitted stealing from the estate home in April 2013 as well as burglary and theft from the countess’s London flat between April and May that year. She also admitted stealing a £45,000 Volvo XC90 from interior designer Emily Olympitis in October 2012.

Roberts’s lawyer Simon Burns said medics had described her life as ‘disastrous’ after her marriage broke down, she battled depression, was in a severe car crash, and also developed a brain tumour.

Jailing Roberts, Judge William Hart told her: ‘There is a greedy and calculated nature to your offending. What you did in effect was to repay your employer’s trust with avarice and dishonesty.’