The ‘Mary Poppins’ nanny accused of driving off with £171,000 of boss’s property
A NANNY stole her new boss’s engagement ring, £25,000 Cartier watch and designer clothes – before driving off with them in the investment banker’s new Mercedes 4x4, a court was told yesterday.
Zoe Appleyard-Ley – a former girlfriend of tennis star Boris Becker and TV impressionist Rory Bremner – thought she had found ‘Mary Poppins’ when she hired Emma Currie to look after her two children.
The socialite employed Currie, 45, after seeing the well-spoken nanny’s advert on the Gumtree website. But weeks later, she allegedly stole £171,000 worth of Mrs Appleyard-Ley’s possessions.
These also included Chanel bags, a Tiffany clock, vintage champagne, a laptop, an iPad and coats by Alexander McQueen, Valentino and Dolce & Gabbana.
After driving away in the Mercedes ML350, Currie is said to have used Mrs Appleyard-Ley’s credit card to withdraw £900 and go on a spree, splashing out £594 on clothes and cosmetics.
But when she tried to buy clothes worth £579 at a Monsoon store, a shop assistant became suspicious and confiscated the card, the Old Bailey was told. Mrs Appleyard-Ley, 41, did not realise how much had been stolen from her £3.5million home in Belgravia, Central London, until two days later when police stopped Currie in the Mercedes near Gatwick and allegedly found it stuffed with possessions.
Currie told officers she had quit because she was never paid and had to sleep on a sofa in the children’s playroom. She also accused Mrs Appleyard-Ley of slapping her six-year- old son in the face, the court heard.
She claimed Mrs Appleyard-Ley was ‘ unstable’, took cocaine and drank heavily, and accused her of setting up an insurance scam by making out the items had been stolen, the jury was told.
Prosecutor Geoffrey Porter said Mrs Appleyard- Ley employed Currie in May 2013 as a live-in housekeeper and nanny who also helped her run a charity from the house. But things quickly started to go wrong, he said. On June 17, Mrs Appleyard-Ley discovered there had been a ‘major theft’ and that Currie had gone missing.
He added: ‘Property had been removed from the house and the Mercedes was missing.’ When Mrs Appleyard-Ley reported her credit cards stolen, she was told they had been used that morning. Mr Porter said: ‘The only people who had access to any of these items were this defendant and the Appleyard-Ley family.’
Mrs Appleyard-Ley told the court that Currie had seemed ‘Mary Poppins in a way’ when she interviewed her.
The banker’s estranged husband, Sven Ley, described Currie as ‘well- spoken and sophisticated’ and said the children seemed to like her. Mr Ley, an art dealer, was the only other person in the house on the night of the theft.
Mrs Appleyard-Ley told how she ‘panicked’ when she realised the Mercedes, which she had bought nine days earlier, was gone. She said: ‘I was calling for Emma and not hearing anything back.
‘I ran downstairs and saw... it was cleared out. I looked out the window and the car wasn’t there. What had been in the car was in the hall.
‘I panicked and was shaking. I noticed my handbag and computer were gone.’
Mrs Appleyard-Ley wept as she told how she dashed upstairs to see if her children were safe. ‘Thank God they were,’ she added.
She tried to ring Currie on an iPhone she had given her and sent text messages ‘begging her if I could have nothing else please could I have my computer with baby pictures of my children on’. Mrs Appleyard- Ley said items found in the car included ‘ things from almost every room in my house’. She added: ‘It never occurred to me she had been going through drawers in my bedroom.
‘I don’t think there was a drawer, a rail, a cupboard, that hadn’t had something taken from it. Also everything I had worn the previous month that I thought was at the dry cleaners was in a suitcase in the car.’
Mrs Appleyard-Ley insisted she only gave Currie her credit card to buy groceries. But Abigail Bache, defending, accused her of an insurance scam because she was ‘struggling financially’ after separating from her husband.
Mrs Appleyard- Ley dismissed that, and said the accusation she took cocaine was ‘a categoric lie’.
She also denied drinking
‘I panicked and was shaking’ ‘Everything she said was a lie’
heavily, and added of Currie’s claims about her: ‘It’s been investigated by social services and it’s deemed that everything she said was a lie.’
Police said a total of around £89,000 of stolen property was recovered but roughly another £81,000, including a Cartier watch, remains missing. Currie, of no fixed address, denies theft, attempted fraud, three counts of attempted theft and three counts of fraud.
After being arrested on June 18, 2013, Currie told police she took the car with consent to look for a new home, and claimed the items found in it were left there by the family, except clothes which she was asked to have dry cleaned.
She also insisted that she was allowed to use Mrs Appleyard-Ley’s credit card to run errands for her and was picking up items with it by prearrangement that day.
The trial continues.